I can tell when people are using ill-defined buzzwords that aren’t really conveying crisp concepts.” She tries to be tactful, but feels it is her responsibility to correct misconceptions, such as that blockchain is a panacea for all that ails society, or that we’ll all eventually be using quantum laptops.
In Search of the Heart of the ProblemĪs an advocate of simplicity and straightforwardness, Radia detests hype and jargon.
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When I went back independently, I wrote my thesis on how to make networks work, even if some of the switches are malicious.” That was in 1988, but Radia says she still runs into university professors today who have their students read her thesis as one of their first assignments. “If I had slogged through the first time, I would have done some tiny, obscure, incremental thing. This unplanned delay turned out to be perfect timing. So, when I couldn’t recruit a thesis advisor, I dropped out.” To me, that work was done by another species. I couldn’t imagine doing original research. “My perception in graduate school at that time was that everyone else was there because they were smart, and I just got in because I studied really hard. She went to MIT and majored in math, both at undergraduate and graduate school, but dropped out having done all but the thesis. Radia’s early career was just as nonlinear. “I think it’s the heretic in me that, when anybody says anything, I immediately start thinking, Well, let’s see, why would that be true? What are reasons on the other side?” My mind always seeks to look at things from different angles,” she says. “The kinds of things I are very simple, but extremely out of the box. These critical thinking exercises shaped how Radia tackles problem-solving. “ were clear about what our parents believed, but they would also say, ‘I can understand the other point of view.'”
“In my family, conversation was about looking at different sides,” she says. She laments that so many families today seem intent on “indoctrinating” their kids versus having conversations that nurture open-mindedness.
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She grew up in a household where the free exchange of ideas-even controversial ones-was encouraged. Radia credits her parents, who were engineers themselves, at least partially for her sense of empathy and deep curiosity. I’m good at getting to the conceptual heart of a problem, knowing what parts contain the irrelevant details and reaching a solution that looks like any 12-year-old could have done it.” Foundations in Empathy and Critical Thinking But also, the reason for the success of my designs is that they are very simple. “Partly, I was lucky to wind up in exactly the right job at the right time in history: the dawn of computer networks. “I’m not good at being self-promoting or acting important,” she says. Radia remains modest about these achievements. She’s an MIT-educated engineer, a revered author, and her innovations like Spanning Tree Protocol played a fundamental role in the evolution of modern Ethernet networks. There are, of course, many things Radia is-for one, she’s world-renowned. “I like to design things for people like me-things that are mostly auto-configuring and very resilient,” she says. Radia Perlman does not fit neatly into the bucket of “network engineer.” She is not an early adopter (“I barely know how to use a smartphone,” she says), nor is she a “tinkerer.” She has an artsy side-she loves literature and plays the piano.īut defying people’s presumptions is part of Perlman’s MO.
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