一名退役奥运选手的精彩后半场 从哈佛到谷歌

Emily Hughes may not have placed first at the Olympics like her big sis Sarah, but she’s quickly on the rise in Silicon Valley.

艾米丽o休斯也许不能像她姐姐萨拉一样在奥运会上夺得冠军，但她在硅谷的事业正蒸蒸日上。

Nine years ago, Emily Hughes was at the 2006 Olympic games in Turin, Italy, skating before millions of TV viewers. Today, Hughes is in the trenches at Google GOOG -0.73% working on Google Fiber, the company’s ambitious ultra-high-speed Internet initiative.

9年前，在意大利都灵的2006年冬奥会上，艾米丽o休斯曾在数百万电视观众面前表演花样滑冰。而如今，她已是一位谷歌人，供职于该公司超高速因特网创新项目Google Fiber。

This 25-year-old former Olympian joined Google as a business analyst in November, and it was her love of competition – and an extraordinary tolerance for risk-taking and failure – that helped her land the job.

这位25岁的前奥运选手在去年11月加入谷歌，成为一位商业分析师，而她正是凭借自己乐于竞争的个性，以及对冒险和失败的极强忍受力，获得了这份工作。

“I think in sports in general, there’s a lot of transferable skills that you can bring to the workplace,” says Hughes, who moved from Great Neck, N.Y., to San Francisco to begin her new gig at Google’s Mountain View offices. “In skating, every day, you fall and you have to get up. And falling is a pretty obvious failure. I’ve definitely learned from everything I’ve failed at.”

艾米丽表示：“我认为体育项目中学到的许多技能都能应用于工作场合。”她已经从纽约州大颈镇搬到了旧金山，在谷歌总部山景城的办公室内开始了她的新事业。“在滑冰时，你每天都会摔倒，你必须爬起来。摔倒就是十分明显的失败。每次失败，我都能从中吸取教训。”

As you may recall from the 2002 Winter Olympics, Emily Hughes is the younger sister of Sarah Hughes, the world champion skater who copped the Gold in 2002.

也许你能回忆起2002年的冬奥会，艾米丽o休斯就是当时获得花样滑冰金牌的萨拉o休斯的妹妹。

“I remember, I was 12 or 13 when Sarah won,” Emily says. “Every day, I saw her go to the rink, I saw her train and I thought, ‘I think I could do that too.’”

艾米丽说：“我还记得，萨拉夺冠时我才12或13岁。每天我都看她去滑冰场，我看着她训练，然后想：‘我觉得我也能做到她那样。’”

But the road to fame was a lot harder for Emily than it was for her older sister. In 2001, at age 12, she competed in the U.S. Figure Skating Championship, but then a couple of years later, Emily failed to make the U.S. team. In 2006, she was the first alternate to the Winter Olympics, and after Michelle Kwan withdrew due to a groin injury, she was named to the team. But she finished seventh overall.

不过艾米丽的成名之路要比她姐姐的坎坷得多。2001年，年仅12岁的艾米丽参加了美国花样滑冰锦标赛，但之后几年她都未能进入美国国家队。2006年，她成为冬奥会花样滑冰队的第一替补，在关颖珊因腹股沟伤势退出后，她递补入队，但最后只取得了第七名的成绩。

Amidst injuries and illnesses, her ambition never waned. Hughes went on to Harvard, and in her junior year, she decided to take a semester off to train for the 2010 Olympics. She failed to qualify.

尽管遭遇伤病，但艾米丽的野心从未减弱。她进入了哈佛大学。在大三时，她决定花一个学期时间来为2010年冬奥会训练，但最终仍未进入国家队。

“When I didn’t make the Olympic team, yes, that was a failure in a sense, but there were so many other things that I’ve accomplished because of it,” she says. For example, she had more time to join organizations such as Harvard’s “Women in Business” club and take on leadership positions on campus.

她说：“没错，当我未能入选奥运国家队时，有一种挫败感。但因为它，我又做成了许多其他事情。”比如，她有了更多时间来加入哈佛“商界女性”俱乐部等组织，并在校园中担任多个社团的领导者。

Her setbacks, she admits, also forced her to think to herself: “What is the bigger picture?”

艾米丽承认，她遭遇的挫折也迫使她反思：“更大的愿景是什么？”

After Harvard, Hughes worked at Deloitte Consulting and the International Olympic Committee, but she never found her true calling. Then last year, a friend who worked at Google told her about life at the Internet giant, and Hughes was intrigued. Google Fiber delivers broadband service at 100 times what Internet users are accustomed to. The service first launched in Kansas City, Mo., in 2012 and now operates in Austin, Texas, and Provo, Utah, as well.

从哈佛毕业后，艾米丽先后任职于德勤咨询公司和国际奥委会，但她始终没有找到自己真正的职业兴趣。然后在去年，一名在谷歌工作的朋友跟她讲述了自己在这家互联网巨头的生活，这让她十分感兴趣。Google Fiber提供的宽带业务速度是互联网用户习惯速度的100倍。这项业务首先于2012年在密苏里州的堪萨斯城试点，如今业务范围还拓展到了德克萨斯州奥斯汀市和犹他州普洛佛市。

“Every time I talked to her, she just raved about Google’s culture and her work,” Emily says, referring to her friend. “Before that, I hadn’t really thought about working at Google. I used Google every day, but it wasn’t something that I ever thought, ‘Oh I could go work there.’”

艾米丽谈起这位朋友时说：“我每次和她聊天，她都热情地描述谷歌的文化和她的工作。而在那之前，我并没有认真考虑过在谷歌工作的情形。我每天都用谷歌，但从来没有想过‘噢，我或许可以去那里工作。’”

Her friend passed on some information about Google Fiber, and she applied. Clearing a first-round interview, Hughes went through six hours of on-site back-to-back interviews, with only a lunch break– not unlike the times she used to scramble to find time for lunch in a jam-packed training day.

这位朋友给她传来了Google Fiber的相关信息，然后她提交了求职申请。在通过第一轮面试后，艾米丽进行了连续六个小时的现场面试，只是在用午餐时休息了一会——这跟她曾经在紧锣密鼓的训练日里挤出午餐时间没有什么不同。

Certainly, Hughes possesses the most critical quality that Google seeks in its employees. “The No. 1 thing that you look for is passion,” says Jonathan Rosenberg, who wrote the best-selling How Google Works with Google chairman Eric Schmidt. “You want the kind of person who is constantly learning.” Google’s career website notes that the company looks for people who can show they’ve “flexed different muscles in different situations in order to mobilize a team.”

显然，艾米丽拥有谷歌最看重的员工品质。乔纳森o罗森伯格曾经与谷歌董事长埃里克o施密特合作撰写了畅销书《谷歌如何运作》（How Google Works）。他表示：“你首先要寻找的就是激情。你想要那种不断学习的人。”谷歌的招聘网站也提到，公司寻找那些能够证明自己“在不同情况下能采用不同方式调动团队”的人。

Flexing different muscles — well, Hughes is a pro at that. “With skating, constantly being corrected and told how to do something differently has helped me take constructive feedback better,” she says.

采用不同方式——好吧，艾米丽是这方面的专家。“在滑冰时，我经常被纠正，被告知要用不同方式来完成动作。这使得我能更好地接受建设性的反馈。”

Hughes is simply the latest in a lineup of former Olympians working at Google. The company claims to employ at least 10. Athletes, in general, appeal to the Googlers who do the hiring because a sports background teaches you to handle criticism and adapt.

艾米丽只是正在谷歌工作的前奥运选手团队中的最新成员。谷歌公司已经招聘了至少10名有过奥运会经历的员工。运动员通常能引起谷歌招聘者的兴趣，因为运动背景能教会人们应对批评，提高人们的适应力。

Game Theory Group CEO Vincent McCaffrey, who helps companies recruit student-athletes, doesn’t know the Hughes sisters, but he theorizes: “I would imagine Emily and Sarah have probably received a ton of feedback in their life — some of it very direct and even harsh. Employers want to hire young people who are able to take constructive criticism well.”

Game Theory Group公司首席执行官文森特o麦卡弗里经常帮助各家公司招聘学生运动员。他并不认识休斯姐妹，但他从理论上推测道：“我可以想象艾米丽和萨拉在她们的运动生涯中可能已经接受过无数反馈意见——有一些非常直接，甚至很伤人。雇主希望招到那些能够很好地采纳建设性批评的年轻人。”

Global services firm EY has studied the link between sports and leadership in the C-suite. In a 2014 global survey of 400 female executives, EY found that 52% played sports at the university level. Those women, like Emily and Sarah Hughes, honed their time management skills while juggling schoolwork and training — an excellent path to consistent overachievement.

全球服务公司EY对体育运动和高管层领导力的关系进行了研究。2014年，EY对全球400名女性高管进行了调查，发现52%的人曾经参加过大学级别的体育运动。这些女性与艾米丽和萨拉一样，在课业和训练之间挣扎的过程中，锻炼了她们管理时间的能力——这是不断取得超预期成就的绝好途径。

Indeed, growing up in Great Neck, Emily and her five siblings (Rebecca, David, Matthew, Sarah and the youngest girl, Taylor) were all overachievers. All six participated in figure skating or ice hockey.

确实，在大颈镇长大的艾米丽和她的五个兄弟姐妹（瑞贝卡、大卫、马修、萨拉和最年幼的妹妹泰勒）都取得了超出预期的成就。而所有六个孩子都参加过花样滑冰或冰球运动。

Emily and Sarah credit their father for getting them into skating. John Hughes is a Toronto-born lawyer who played hockey for Cornell University and was drafted by the Toronto Maple Leafs.

艾米丽和萨拉认为是父亲引领她们进入滑冰领域。她们的父亲约翰o休斯出生于多伦多，是一名律师，他曾经是康奈尔大学冰球队的队员，还曾经被多伦多枫叶队选中。

Emily recalls her mom, Amy, lining up all six kids in age order (Emily is second-youngest) and tying their skates at the community ice rink. Emily and Sarah, who started skating when they were about three years old, are different in personality — Sarah is gregarious with a big presence, while Emily is reserved and quietly personable — but as children, they were both “competitive in our own way,” as Emily puts it.

艾米丽还记得，她的母亲艾米按照年龄顺序（艾米丽是第二小的），让所有六个孩子在社区的滑冰场上站成一排，她给孩子们一个个系滑冰鞋的情景。艾米丽和萨拉在三岁左右时就开始滑冰了，她们性格很不一样——萨拉很合群，存在感很强，而艾米丽比较内向安静，非常迷人——但如艾米丽所说，作为孩子，她们都“以自己的方式竞争着”。

When 12-year-old Emily stood in the stands and cheered on her big sister for a Gold medal in Salt Lake City, she knew she wanted her own shot to skate on Olympic ice. “After that, I was like, ‘I want to be an Olympian too,” she recalls, adding, “A little bit easier said than done.”

当12岁的艾米丽站在盐湖城的看台上，为取得金牌的姐姐欢呼时，她知道自己也想在奥林匹克赛场的冰面上滑行。她回忆道：“在那之后，我表现得就像是‘我也要当奥运选手。’”她又补充道：“说起来容易，做起来难。”

Randy Appell, her chemistry and biology teacher at Great Neck High School, recalls teenage Emily dealing with her high-stress position. “The fact that her older sister had already won the Olympic Gold must’ve put an extreme amount of pressure on her. She may have felt it, but she never let it show.”

艾米丽在大颈高中的化学和生物老师兰迪o阿佩尔回忆起青年时期的艾米丽应对高压的办法：“她的姐姐已经赢得冬奥会金牌，这件事想必对她造成了极大的压力。她也许感觉到了，但她从来不表现出来。”

Sarah’s Olympic stardom landed her on the cover of TIME Magazine, and when Emily was heading to Turin four years later, she was cast as America’s great hope —another Hughes champion-in-the-making.

萨拉冬奥会冠军的身份使得她登上了《时代》周刊封面。四年后，前往都灵的艾米丽同样肩负着美国的厚望——休斯家的另一位运动员即将夺冠。

Her seventh-place finish at the Olympics that year was disappointing, but it was not the thing that would define Emily Hughes. She had other assets — her brain and her passion to succeed — to fall back on. She remembers her dad always emphasizing that she is a “student-athlete” and that “student” always comes first. Her parents never gave her or Sarah breaks on studying, even when they were training five hours a day. And given the choice to enroll in the regular chemistry class or an honors course, Appell recalls, Emily insisted she take the advanced class.

那年她以第七名的成绩结束冬奥会之旅，确实令人遗憾，但这个成绩并没有反映出艾米丽o休斯的强项。她拥有其他可以倚仗的资本——她的头脑和她对成功的激情。她记起父亲总强调她是个“学生运动员”，“学生”永远是第一位的。在学业方面，艾米丽的父母从来不会放松对她或萨拉的要求，即便她们每天要训练五个小时。阿佩尔回忆道，被要求在常规的化学课或程度较难的课程之间做出选择时，艾米丽坚持要选后者。

“I always brought my books everywhere,” she says. “I was going to every competition lugging this backpack around, or you know, doing homework in the car on the way to the rink. It was always important to keep my grades up.”

艾米丽说：“我总是随身带着课本。每次参赛时，我都会背着这个双肩书包，在前往滑冰场的车上写作业，你知道的。促使学业成绩持续上升，总是非常重要的。”

As for Sarah, who is now 29, she found a new path from the Olympics too. She’s executive vice president of business development at the Kingsbridge Ice Center, a $350 million project to build the world’s largest ice skating complex in the Bronx.

如今已经29岁的姐姐萨拉，也从奥运会中找到了一条新的道路。她现在是Kingsbridge Ice Center负责商业开发的执行副总裁，这是一个3.5亿美元的项目，计划在纽约布朗克斯区建立全球最大的综合滑冰场馆。

Both sisters refuse to have one-dimensional careers.“I was always impressed by how tough Emily was when we were younger,” Sarah says. “She would kill herself working, working, working, but somehow, she always found some time to have fun.”

两姐妹都拒绝接受单向的职业生涯。萨拉说：“当我们小的时候，我总是震惊于艾米丽的坚韧不屈。她不断工作、工作、工作，简直要把自己累死，但不知怎么搞的，她总能挤出一点时间来寻找乐趣。”

“To accomplish big meaningful things,” Sarah adds, “you need to be focused but allow enough distractions to make it a fun and worthwhile journey.”

萨拉补充道：“为了实现有意义的大事，你得保持专注，但也要分出足够的精力，让追逐目标的过程充满乐趣和价值。”（财富中文网）