Madera native went from picking grapes to working for Bill Gates
Clyde Rodriguez spent his childhood toiling in fields picking grapes and garlic under a scorching summer sun.
The exhaustion of those days would finally end as a young man thanks to dreams of becoming a software engineer.
The Madera native went on to work for Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, and his love of computers has taken him around the world.
Recently, he returned home to encourage the next generation by delivering the keynote speech at Madera High School’s graduation ceremony. His story of overcoming obstacles as an immigrant farmworker was well-received in the agriculturally-rich central San Joaquin Valley.
“All of us are descendants of immigrants who, like others over the course of 300 years, have become integral threads of this country’s fabric,” Rodriguez said. “Consider that eight of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were themselves immigrants. As Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote in his timely musical, ‘Hamilton’ — ‘Immigrants, we get the job done.’ “
Some of Rodriguez’s biggest achievements: Following a conversation with Gates, he led a team that built a new Windows computer operating system that could consume vast amounts of information, and he later founded a team that developed cloud technology, which helps deliver services over the Internet and store data online. He’s also advised the United Nations on the use of technology for international development.
“It all feels like a dream at times,” the 49-year-old said. “Surely, this is someone else’s life. Surely, it’s not that of a farm kid whose earliest memories are those of living in a tin-roofed house in Tijuana without running water or electricity, where our family gathered around burning tires my father would gather for heat from a nearby drying riverbed — our noses covered in soot. But it is. It is my story. One I have come to accept with astonishment, humility and gratitude.”
After graduating from Madera High in 1986, Rodriguez was admitted into the competitive electrical engineering and computer science program at the University of California, Berkeley.
But during his second year there, tragedy struck. His father had been attacked, stabbed 20 times. Rodriguez withdrew from his dream school and returned to Madera to help his dad, who survived.
When he was ready to return to UC Berkeley, he was denied readmission. Undaunted, he enrolled in the university’s extension program, taking the same classes as fulltime students, then petitioned the dean of the college of engineering for readmission after a first and second semester.
“Each time he denied my request, finally telling me I did not belong there and to stop wasting his time and, he claimed, mine.”
It only strengthened his resolve. After a third semester in the extension program, where he helped teach a tough digital design course, Rodriguez returned to the dean — this time armed with letters of recommendation from professors. The university finally agreed to review his case and he was readmitted.
Six months later, he graduated from UC Berkeley. He so impressed his professors and classmates that he was asked to deliver his school’s commencement speech. And as he stood at the podium in May of 1995, the dean who told Rodriguez to stop wasting his time was seated just a few feet away.