Today’s Wall Street Journal profiles Princeton Engineering graduate Dave Hitz, who cofounded NetApp, the Silicon Valley company specializing in the management and storage of digital data.
Among other revelations in the article by Elizabeth Garone: before coming to Princeton, where one of his roommates was Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Hitz attended Deep Springs, the all-male liberal arts college located on a cattle-ranch and alfalfa farm in California’s High Desert.
Hitz is the author of the intriguingly titled book How to Castrate a Bull: Unexpected Lessons on Risk, Growth, and Success in Business.
So how do you castrate a bull? Hitz gives a detailed description in this very entertaining lecture he gave as part of the Keller Center‘s leadership series.
Among other Hitz nuggets in that lecture: "The optimist says, ‘That glass is half full.’ The pessimist says, ‘That glass is half empty.’ The engineer says, ‘That glass is twice as large as it needs to be to hold the fluid it contains.’"
Later this month NetApp chairman and CEO Dan Warmenhoven — another Princeton Engineering legend — will be sharing his insights as part of the Keller Center leadership series.
Photo of Dan Hitz courtesy of NetApp
