Wang Shao-yu (王紹宇), a resident of Yilan County’s Jhuangwei Township (壯圍), received a job offer from Google and is set to start his new life in California’s Silicon Valley at the end of this month.
Having recently earned his master’s of engineering degree at the Vermont Avenue Campus of the University of California, he landed a job as a software designer at Google through a recruitment program for university graduates after passing a three-stage interview.
Wang credited his job to his parents, thanking them for their work and generosity in providing him with an education.
Photo: Chiang Chih-hsiung, Taipei Times
He said that his father, Wang Kuei-hsien (王貴賢), a plasterer, completed just an elementary-school education and his mother, Lin Mei-li (林美麗), who works at a school cafeteria, did not finish junior-high school.
They always emphasized the importance of education, Wang Shao-yu said.
Wang Shao-yu was selected as a member of the talented and gifted mathematics program in elementary school and earned admission into the National Tsing Hua University Department of Electrical Engineering, where he earned a NT$1 million (US$32,193) scholarship from the Ministry of Education toward further studies in the US.
Describing himself as “son from a blue-collar family,” Wang Shao-yu said that his classmates — many in the upper-middle class or children of wealthy businesspeople — were driven to cram school in expensive cars, while his father took him on an old motorcycle.
However, saying it is better to obtain success through personal achievement rather than depend on family accomplishments, he earned his status with greater diligence.
Saying that he is happy to share his experience with young people from low-income families, he said that his advice to them is simple: Do not place importance on pedigree and have faith in yourself.
“If I can do it, so can they,” he said, adding that education is the key to changing one’s destiny.
He said that with the widening income gap in Taiwan, children from low-income families face greater challenges in becoming successful, but, through persistent hard work, they still have a chance to realize their goals.
He is unable to disclose his salary Google due to a confidentiality agreement, but it was “quite an amount,” he said.
Wang Kuei-hsien said that he is very proud of his son, and he hopes that he will do well at Google and make Taiwan proud as well.
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