April 13, 2022 / Podcast Episode

Episode 32: Ion Stoica Interview

In this episode: Professor Ion Stoica, UC Berkeley. Founder of Databricks, Anyscale, and Conviva. Founder of Apache Spark, Ray, Apache Mesos. Immigrant from Romania in the 1990s.
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Episode Guide

In this Episode: Interview with Ion Stoica, Professor of Computer and Science at the University of California, Berkeley. [Wikipedia] [LinkedIn]. Director of RISELab at UC Berkeley. Leader and founder of Apache Spark, Ray, Apache Mesos. The founder of Databricks, Anyscale, and Conviva. ACM Fellow, SIGOPS Mark Weiser Award. Immigrant from Romania in 1994.

Topics in this Episode include: Nearly becoming an artist (drawing)! Nearly becoming a Physicist! The secret of Ion’s Entrepreneurial Spirit. How Databricks almost never happened! (How Databricks almost became a part of Hortonworks). Growing up in Communist Romania of the 1960s-90s. Thoughts on Communism. Impostor Syndrome. Doing a PhD while with a family+child.

This is the Second of 3 episodes on Romania.

  • mm.ss: Segment Info (Index)
  • 0.00: Voices in this Episode
  • 3.08: Act 0 – Introduction to and Biography of Ion Stoica
  • 5.25: Act 1 – Early Memories of childhood, and schooling, 1970s and 80s
    • 5.25: Growing up in Bucharest and visiting grandparents in a village 80 kms away
    • 6.06: He trained as … An Artist! Attending an art school in the mornings, and regular school in the afternoons.
    • 8.03: Different “profiles” in high school
    • 8.42: Exams exams exams – the differences between Romania’s school evaluation vs. US school evaluation
      • “Exam.. that’s practically the only thing that matters.” 
      • “Your GPA is not very important.”
    • 11.31: Army vs. College
      • “If you don’t get into the top colleges, the army is mandatory…”
      • “The rules change your behavior.”
    • 13.43: Serving in the Romanian military, the short 9-month version
      • “It’s a waste of time.”
      • “You started to meet your future colleagues.”
    • 14.46: Deciding between Physics college (without exam) vs. Computer Science
      • “Physics was well-funded…  because one of the children of Ceausescu (dictator) was interested in Physics.”
    • 15.36:  Deciding between Art and Science/Math/CS/Physics.
      • “In socialism everyone was getting more or less the same salary.”
      • “Higher salaries… waiters! Because you get tips. Which you cannot get as an engineer.”
      • “Science evaluation was objective… arts was subjective.”
  • 17.44: Act 2 – Communism, Ceacescu, and effect on Ion’s upbringing and family, 1970s and 80s
    • 17.44: Romania before Communism, and after communism
      • “Almost everyone I knew… didn’t believe in communism.”
      • “Romania before WW2 economically was pretty good…”
      • Mentioned in this act: Yalta Conference
    • 19.59: Russia’s claim to Moldova, and what Romanians think of it (and how it determined Romania’s position in World War 2)
    • 21.28: Communist party in Romania
      • “The communist party was not very representative.”
      • “If you have hundreds of thousands in a party, you’ll have some good people. But when it’s so few (hundreds in the Communist party), it’s going to be more brutal.”
    • 22.12: How Ion’s mother, a geologist, was kicked out from college by Communist Party
      • “Communism. You live in(to) this… big lie.”
    • 23.12: When the Communist party tried to recruit Ion because of his academic performance. And the Communist party “Folder” on Ion. 
    • 25.12: When Communism started to fall apart in Romania
      • “Communism in Romania was probably a bigger lie than in  any other country.” 
    • 26.37: Romanian Revolution of 1989, just as Ion was graduating from college  and starting a new job at the Institute of Research and Informatics, Bucharest,  1989
    • 27.46: Life after 1989 Revolution: Improved rapidly, but there was also corruption
    • 28.32: Starting a PhD in Romania! (on the side)
  • 29.13: Act 3 – First Encounters with Technology, 1970s and 80s
    • 29.13: First computers: Sinclair Timex and Commodore, at home
    • 29.55: First programming language: BASIC
    • 30.11: Punch card programming in college, and how it disappeared quickly in 1982/83
    • 31.16: Spoken Languages in school, home, and with friends: Romanian, English, French, Russian
      • “English was pretty universally taught in schools, besides Russian.”
    • 32.11: First encounter with research: Sneaking into an inaccessible lab
  • 33.24: Act 4 – Working after MS, at the Institute of Research and Informatics, Bucharest, 1989
    • 33.24: Centralized assignment of jobs after MS, 1989
      • “This is the only time in the Romanian education that the GPA really mattered.”
    • 34.39: First encounter with a startup in Romania
  • 37.06: Act 5 – Immigrating to the US, and moving from Old Dominion to CMU, 1994
    • 37.06: Coming to Old Dominion University for a PhD with Abdel Wahab, 1994
      • “During communism no one went to US for studies.”
    • 39.24: Advisor introducing him to Kevin Jeffay at UNC, who then introduced him to Hui Zhang at CMU (Ion’s eventual PhD advisor)
    • 40.42: Managing his family (with a kid) while doing a PhD. Wife giving birth in East Coast while Ion was on an internship in West Coast (Xerox Parc, with Scott Shenker)
  • 43.12: Act 6 – Next steps after PhD in 2000
    • 43.12: Going back to Romania was not an option. And Ion’s father as his role model.
      • “The reason I love Math is because of my father.”
    • 43.55: Ion’s philosophy of why borders don’t matter
      • “I was educated in a very open way.”
      • “One thing I started to resent very early on is nationalism, because communism was using nationalism as a tool to unify people.”
      • “People are not different – fundamentally they’re the same.”
      • “Hiring specialists from Romania was cheapa, and the education in Romania was very good.”
    • 46.45: Has the tech industry in Romania grown since 2000?
      • “Schooling was very good. College not so much.”
  • 48.19: Act 7 – His entrepreneurial philosophy, 2000-Present
    • 48.19: The secret of Ion Stoica’s Entrepreneurial Spirit. His first entrepreneurial venture – Conviva
      • “The way I think of impact… You improve the professional lives of some people.”
    • 50.01: A Story of Ion’s first experiences at Conviva, two technical (provisioning) problems, and how they motivated Ion’s next research on Spark and Mesos. Pretty cool technical problems discussed here!
      • “At Conviva I’ve seen some problems which were hard. It started to snowball.”
    • 54.06: The Story of how Databricks almost didn’t become a company: When Hortonworks was offered Spark, and they refused because they were building Tez. (Spark was built with Ion’s student Matei Zaharia). 
      • “We asked Hortonworks if they wanted to take over Spark…They were not willing… We started Databricks.” 
      • “I’m not starting Anyscale for money or fame.”
  • 56.17: Act 8 – Retrospective and Perspective 
    • 56.17: Handling Failures and Rejections
      • “It has to deal with your own expectations… the difference between reality and expectations.”
      • “If you have very low expectations (of yourself), you’re going to have fewer rejections.”
      • “We are good at solving problems… when you have a failure, look at it as a problem to solve. Puts us in an active mode.”
    • 58.57: Ion’s early fears: “The Fear of Being Wrong”
      • “If you’re right all the time you don’t learn much.”
    • 1.00.08:  If he  had grown up in the US (instead of Romania), all else being equal, would your life and career have been different?
      • “Growing up in Romania – I grew up in an open society, despite communism.”
      • “One good thing about communism… there were very few ways to have fun – two or three hours of TV, mostly news. So I read a lot. That shapes you.”
      • “If I grew up in the US, I would’ve been exposed much less to the world as a whole.”
      • “It was tough during communism… makes you appreciate things more, not take it for granted, makes you more resilient.”
      • “You grow in a country where it takes years to get a car. And it’s a big event!”
      • “The intangibles… environment and context which shapes you.”
    • 1.04.20: Teachers, Mentors, and Role Models: His father, and a History teacher in elementary school, Irina Athanasiu in college
      • “Just focus on doing great work – everything else will follow.”
  • 1.07.56: Thank you, and Ending
Featured in this Episode
Useful Links
Upcoming Episodes

This is the second of 3 episodes on immigrants from Romania.

Look for our next episode, featuring the full interview with Rada Mihalcea (Episode 33).

If you liked this episode, you may also be interested in the Lead Episode for Romania – Episode 31, featuring two prominent immigrants from Romania who are currently in the US.

Recently on Season 2
  • Romania Segment
    • From Romania: Episode featuring 2 distinguished Computer Scientists (Ion Stoica, Rada Mihalcea). [Episode 31]
  • Israel Segment: 4 Episodes
    • Interview with Regina Barzilay, Prof MIT, and Cancer Survivor. Double Immigrant from Moldova to Israel, and then Israel to US. [Episode 30]
    • Interview with Moshe Vardi, Prof Rice Univ, and Winner of Gödel Prize and Knuth Prize. [Episode 29]
    • Interview with Tal Rabin, Prof UPenn and Head of Research, Algorand Foundation. [Episode 28]
    • From Israel: Episode featuring 3 distinguished Computer Scientists (Tal Rabin, Moshe Vardi, Regina Barzilay). [Episode 27]
  • India Segment: 3 Episodes
    • Interview with Pratima Rao Gluckman, author of book “Nevertheless, She Persisted: True Stories of Women Leaders in Tech”, and immigrant from India, and leader in Silicon Valley. [Episode 26]
    • IIT Madras, Computer Science Batch of 1998: Interview with 7 graduates from that batch (comprising about 25% of the batch). 4 PhDs + 3 Masters. 3 entrepreneurs, 3 industry long-timers, and 1 Professor (host). [Episode 24, Episode 25]
In case you missed it | Season 1

Season 1 featured 22 episodes where we visited 5 continents, and 7 countries. Check them out!

  • Credits
    • Music Credits for Podcast
    • The caption picture at top of page is of rock formations in Antelope Canyon, Arizona, US. Lands protected for and by the Navajo Peoples. Pic taken by Indranil Gupta. 
 The Immigrant Computer Scientists Podcast is available for free on your favorite devices & apps: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and many more!
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Professor of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign