Stephen Wolfram Q&A
Submit a questionSome collected questions and answers by Stephen Wolfram
Questions may be edited for brevity; see links for full questions.
Advice
(12)August 31, 2009
From: Interview by Kaustubh Katdare, CrazyEngineers
What are your expectations from today’s scientists and engineers?
Make sure you always know the best tools. Keep learning. Don’t get stuck in some particular niche. The most exciting things are usually happening at the boundaries, where you need to know about several different kinds of things.
May 14, 2012
From: Reddit AMA
Many students struggle with basic calculus. What is your advice to students who rely on programs like your Wolfram|Alpha engine to get themselves through math courses? Do you think it’s ethical for students to rely on such programs to pass their courses?
I’ve been using computers to do math for more than 30 years now. For me, the important thing is that by using computers I was always able to do many more examples… from which I could get an intuition about how the math should work out. And once one can guess from intuition how a problem should work out, Read more
May 14, 2012
From: Reddit AMA
What do you recommend for current students who are interested in STEM careers, and want to make a difference?
I’m a huge believer in people doing projects they care about. Learn the basics. Learn the best tools. Then try doing projects. I’m not sure if I’m suitably unbiased in this, but I have to say that I think learning Mathematica is a really good start. It depends on your detailed interests, Read more
May 14, 2012
From: Reddit AMA
What are, in your opinion, the most important skills (mental and practical) for being able to hold a job at Wolfram Research?
Being smart, and being able to apply your intelligence with good common sense to a range of different issues. Communicating clearly, and interacting well with people. Being able to understand things quickly, get started quickly… but get things finished, at very high quality with great attention to details.
February 23, 2016
From: Reddit AMA
What is the one thing any student must try in college?
Hmmmm… I myself was only in college for about a year (in Oxford, long long ago) … and I spent most of my time in an underground computer room where I had access to the ARPANET, doing physics research. So I don’t have much to say from personal experience.
In today’s world, Read more
February 23, 2016
From: Reddit AMA
How do you promote creativity inside your developer community?
First, I hope, by providing tools that make it easy to be creative. I’m a big believer in the idea that languages help define what one can think about … and I hope the Wolfram Language lets people think creatively about a lot of things.
At least within our company, I like to try to lead by example. Read more
August 23, 2018
From: Interview by Haley Campbell-Gross, Human Current
What would be your advice for a young complexity thinker who just wants to dive into this field?
Well one piece of advice that might sound self-serving, but it isn’t in a sense is that I spent a lot of time building tools that I think are really well optimized to actually explore many questions. But among them, questions and complexity the whole Wolfram Language stack is really well optimized for these kinds of explorations. Read more
March 16, 2020
From: Reddit AMA
Our company just started remote work today. We have our daily stand-up in the morning as well as a casual catch-up in the evening just before we finish. Is this a good way to go about it?
Do it by audio. You don’t need to physically have everyone there. Just make sure they all have good audio connections (no weird “people sounding like they’re in caves” etc.). Personally I’ve never found video useful. (The closest I get is that if I think people are not paying attention, I’ll sometimes threaten that we should switch video on … Read more
March 16, 2020
From: Reddit AMA
What can you say to reassure managers and CEOs who are concerned that if they can’t see people working, they might not be working?
For me, the most important thing is what people produce, not which particular hour of which day they did it. Sometimes there are things that need to be done on a short timescale, and I pay a lot of attention to whether they’re done.
People in our company send out email reports about what they’re doing (usually weekly or monthly), Read more
March 16, 2020
From: Reddit AMA
How do you motivate staff that you know are dealing with their own anxieties and personal issues?
In general, I think it’s my responsibility to make sure that people are doing things that are interesting and important (and to communicate why those things are important and interesting). And then it’s the responsibility of me and our management chain to make sure that people are doing things which are a good fit for their skills, Read more
March 16, 2020
From: Reddit AMA
What would you say to a manager who wants employees engaged in remote work to be on a webcam meeting all day so they can be monitored?
One wonders what the manager is doing so that they are in a position to just be “watching other people work” 🙂
The only thing that I’ve heard is that sometimes there are groups where people like to have videos of each other running, as a kind of simulation of being in an office together. Read more
March 16, 2020
From: Reddit AMA
What does it take to intern or begin a starting position working on the Wolfram Language remotely?
Go to wolfram.com/careers!
A very good way to get involved is our annual Summer School https://education.wolfram.com/summer/school/ We’re not sure how this is going to work this year, but we expect to do something.
It’s notable that almost all of the instructors at the Summer School (who are mostly R&D staff at our company) were alumni of the Summer School in previous years. Read more