Kobus Jooste, Co-founder and CEO of Syllable, is our guest speaker on this episode of Oceanside Chat: L.I.T.E. Beyond Generations podcast! Kobus is a technology leader and former director of software engineering at Google, where he worked on Google Assistant, Google Search, Verily, and Google Payments. Prior to Google, Kobus was a technical leader at VMware, IBM Research, and various start-ups in information technology and big data. Kobus has two decades of experience in machine learning, voice recognition, and natural language processing.

[Part I: Passion, Happiness, and Career Decision] Kobus found his passion for software at an early age and made practical decisions to build a successful career. When discussing the relationship between passion and career, he advised, “The important part is how do you measure if you are happy or not. And I don’t think getting into your passion will necessarily be a direct correlation with happiness.” He also described the contrast between large corporations and start-up companies. “I see large companies as an opportunity for you to learn when you don’t have the experience, and I see start-ups as an opportunity to have an impact if you have enough experience to know what to do.”