WTF #13: Show Me the Money
In my last installment of WTF, I briefly discussed the career aspirations of my Chinese engineering team and how they wish they are no longer viewed by multinationals as second class engineers. In the comments section, “Bill” opined that: Hopefully as time goes on they demand increasingly higher salaries as well… I can only surmise the thinking behind this comment is that Chinese wages are horribly depressed and workers are powerless to do anything about it. Perhaps this stems from the well publicized stories regarding alleged helpless workers at Foxconn being paid a pittance to produce iPhones and iPads. Or perhaps it was simply tongue-in-cheek. But whatever…I’ll go with the former because it ties in nicely into what I’m about to write. I’ve been in China for three full weeks now. On my very first day at the company, I already had to deal with my very first major issue…
WTF #12: In the Belly of the Beast
That beast being China, the one that’s devouring all the jobs from the West. For the past two weeks, I’ve witnessed my team of chip designers at work, both analog and digital. I must say, they’re really good for their experience level. Companies similar to ours continue to expand operations in China. And we’re not hiring technologist either. These are real engineers with real engineering experience with some of the big names in the industry — Intel, Broadcom, Analog Devices, etc. What most multinationals tend to do is to see their Chinese (and Indian) engineers as mere supporting casts for their team of engineers in their home base, be it North America, Europe, or other parts of Asia (Japan/Korea/Taiwan). The Chinese engineers simply don’t have the same depth of experience when compared with developed nations. Hence, they simply cannot take on as much. But over time, as Chinese engineers gain…
WTF #11: Is It OK to Hire Women?
The graphic to the right is where FluxCorp is at right now. As far as hi-tech companies go, FluxCorp is a pretty old company, stretching back decades, so you can consider it quite established. Still, the company has been doing well financially recently, so it’s also growing, just not in North America. It is, however, growing quite rapidly in both China and India. And this is where I come in. I’m currently in Shanghai to hire a big wad of people to add to an already bigger wad of people here. The growth has been so rapid that FluxCorp China has literally run out of cubicle space. There are plans now to dismantle several recreational areas in order to make room for new hires. Much grumbling will ensue, no doubt. Shanghai is both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. The city is vibrant and is as modern as any…
WTF #10: Drinking from the Firehose
I started my move to engineering management in earnest last week by paying a visit to headquarters out in California. Before I left, I briefed myself on what to expect by reading a couple of management books. One common theme in both books is how busy and disoriented I will find myself in the beginning. Unfortunately, those books are right. I spent three days at HQ. Before the first day was over, my calendar for all three days were filled with meetings. I felt like a manager already! In the past, whenever I started a new engineering job, there was always a transition period of reading documentation and playing around with the software tools before one really starts to contribute to the design effort. This time around, there will be no such luxury. I am to take over the last phases of a project and to deliver it on time,…
WTF #9: Master of My Domain
For readers who are old enough to remember Seinfeld, one of the most brilliant episodes was The Contest where the phrase “master of my domain” entered popular culture. And the only similarity between that Seinfeld episode and this episode of What The Flux is that catchphrase. Master of my domain — that’s what it has been for the past decade and a half as a working engineer. I like to think that I know my domain pretty well — analog integrated circuit design. I also like to think that I’ve been a fairly decent engineer, that I’ve progressed and matured, and that I’ve mastered the challenges presented to me over the years. Still, in the last little while, things started to get routine, a bit boring. I felt restless, and that restlessness caused me to consider other career trajectories, perhaps even a jump over to *gasp* management. Eventually, I did…
WTF #8: Let It Be
I wake up to the sound of music, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, “Let it be.” — Paul McCartney As inclined as I am to favour the Christian faith, having Mother Mary speak to me as I awake would totally freak me out. Which is too bad, because the words she is imparting to Sir Paul is wisdom indeed. This past Friday marked my last day at my old position, my last day with the same local colleagues that I’ve been honoured to have worked with for the past 7 years. It was a day of mixed emotions, though I kept most of that emotion to myself. I called up those I worked with in the US, thanked them for having made my working life pleasurable, and uttering that old clichéd line about staying in touch. As for my local colleagues who are about to be…
WTF #7: Empathy
Given all the recent chit-chat about the humanities and “soft” skills, coupled with the fact that I’ll soon be moving into management myself, I thought it’d be a good time to discuss one very important specific soft skill in the workplace: Empathy. Do you care? Do you care about your fellow colleagues? Your boss? Your subordinates? A seasoned software manager writes in his blog, Stevey’s Blog Rants, that his number one tip for managers is empathy. Seems like a perfectly reasonable, perfectly human ability to possess, even for stereotypical introverted, socially-awkward engineers. According to a white paper by the Center for Creative Leadership, empathy has a direct correlation on job performance, although the strength of this correlation is culture dependent. North America and most European countries have a medium correlation between empathy and job performance while South American countries have a low correlation. Countries and locales in the Sinosphere —…
WTF #6: Bureaucracy
Despite FluxCorp being a multinational corporation, the amount of bureaucracy that I deal with day-to-day is usually pretty minor. That’s because I rarely stray outside of my job function. However, whenever I have strayed, that’s when I notice the huge bureaucratic machinery operating (usually) invisibly in the background. A couple of years ago, our satellite office purchased nearly a million dollars of lab equipment. We wanted to move some heavy workbenches from one room to another and was told by our Real Estate Department that it will take 3 weeks to secure a quote from local movers and that the cost of moving would probably be $3000. With that much money in equipment, we also thought it’d be a good idea to get a lock for the door. Unfortunately, Real Estate said they first need to go through a procurement approval process for the purchase, then send out a purchase…
WTF #5: The Undead Amongst Us
Back in WFT #2: Motivating the Unmotivable, I mentioned how I had been handed the impossible assignment of making sure my undead colleagues — working for now, but have been notified of their pending layoff — continue to be fully committed and motivated to the project at hand. At least one reader mentioned in the comment section how he was surprised that being an undead was demotivating. Although I responded to that comment in length, I had no concrete evidence that they weren’t doing their jobs. Well, I did, sort of. I was aware of their job searching efforts. In fact, I quite encouraged it. I quite like my soon-to-be ex-colleagues and I do wish better futures for them, wherever they may land. Then there was that time when I ran into the lot of them at a restaurant during lunch. We’re all working from home nowadays so running into…
WTF #4: Illusory Superiority
Illusory superiorty, a.k.a. full of ourselves. This is the only conclusion I can come up with to explain the surprise that all of us felt when FluxCorp decided to shutter our satellite design centre and to layoff my entire design team, save myself (who’s being transferred out-of-country). Last August, our team was re-org’d into a new division. We all thought it was a positive move. The new division’s goals were better aligned with the products we were working on and both our new manager and new director are old guards in this product line. Although we knew that our building lease was soon coming to an end and that an office move was likely in order to save money, we felt confident we would move along with everyone else to the new site. After all, why wouldn’t we? We are “wonderful” designers. We have a good reputation with the people…