An Interview with Bill Hewlett

Gemperlein: What do you think will be passe after the year 2000?
Hewlett: The slide rule. haha. . . Things that require a lot of detailed memory.

Gemperlein: Do you think kids will still be taught arithmetic and the like?

Hewlett: Sure. Gotta learn. The multiplication tables, can't bypass those. Numbers, you can't get away from that. Another question is whether kids should go into engineering or not.

Apprenticeships were present in the U.S. economy for years and years and then it became socially unacceptable to be an apprentice. I think that's a great mistake.
If you've got any doubt, don't go into engineering because there you're with absolutely dedicated people who've spent their life on this thing. They get up at midnight, or go to bed at midnight. And if you don't have that devotion, you're not going to get anywhere. So it's a difficult field as far as complete concentration. You can do a lot of fun things, but it requires concentration.
Shroff: You feel that a college education is important. I was wondering what would you say to someone to only wants their high school diploma? What would you say to these people?
Hewlett: This has to do with apprenticeships. Apprenticeships were present in the U.S. economy for years and years and then it became socially unacceptable to be an apprentice. I think that's a great mistake. You see it in Europe. In our company in Europe, you're expected to take on trainees. We've failed miserably in the area of apprenticeships. It's essential.

Socially we look down upon apprenticeships. We should get back to trade schools. There's nothing wrong with it, learning how to use a hammer.

Also, didn't do very well the first two years at Stanford. After that, things were fine.
Why didn't you do very well? Were you partying?
Probably was.
Matter of fact, when I was in college, a lot of engineering was how to do it. And how to do it was taught by industry. And so much so that industry didn't get the training they needed.

So companies like General Electric and RCA set up their own training schools, graduate schools, because the college was not teaching the subject. On the other hand, they were teaching subjects that were long understood in the field. So you were duplicating and not really getting much for it.

Shroff: So you say that experience in the work force is a viable skill. Do you at HP provide a lot of internship to students?
Hewlett: Yes, we do. And we have another program, we have a MESA program, mathematics, engineering, science, and something else. Where you go down into underprivileged areas such as East Palo Alto and the companies put in training programs there and train these kids and they come out and do very well.

I forgot the numbers, but it's something like 85% of students who enter get a job and keep it, for, say, 5 years afterwards. Very successful program. By Reverend Sullivan in Philadelphia, who was a Baptist minister, a wonderful guy.

Gemperlein: So you'd say that if a person was looking for a job you wouldn't discriminate between a person who had learned on the job and another who had a college degree?

Hewlett: Not if it's a job that requires practical knowledge, but the guy with the college education could go farther.

You're not going to admit it?
Oh, yeah.
Gemperlein: When young people in school think about getting into science and technology, do they make one big mistake?
Hewlett: They don't have enough arithmetic. It's not a hard subject.

Gemperlein: And you think that schools aren't teaching enough arithmetic now?

Hewlett: Well, I think that a lot of them are not.

Shroff: I was curious, you had a private school education but your children had a public school education. Am I correct on that?
Hewlett: Well, it depends on what part of it you're talking about. As far as I was concerned, for high school, I basically had a public education. Went to Lowell High in San Francisco.
You were partying?
Sure.
And that was a great experience. Younger, I went to a private school in first through sixth grades. I didn't do very well. Also didn't do very well the first two years at Stanford. After that, things were fine.
Shroff: I look to you as a founder of Silicon Valley, and I wonder what major changes have occurred since the farm fields that it was in the 1930s and now? What were the major changes that you saw during that time?
Hewlett: Well, the role of the university. I think Stanford had a major impact in that whole area, not just science, but as they grew, they also took on the social sciences. It was a very broad-based university. I'm prejudiced, but anyway. I've got 3 grandchildren going to Stanford.