WTF #19: Sleeping on the Job
If a scene like the one to the left were to present itself at your office, a few things might cross your mind. Your fellow co-worker is a lazy bum. Or perhaps he pulled an all-nighter last night. Or maybe he’s dead. But this scene is one that is quite common here in China. Literally, sleeping on the job, right in front (and sometimes on top) of one’s laptop is quite the norm. Not the whole day, mind you, but for about half an hour’s worth after lunch. Some schools here even impose a mandatory nap time after the lunch break. I wouldn’t mind taking a little nap myself, except decades of cultural training in Canada has left me incapable of sleeping at the office. First, I’m too self conscious. Second, I don’t have that internal clock well trained enough to wake myself up after 30 minutes. I may end…
WTF #17: Seditious Traitor
A very happy fourth of July to my American friends, colleagues, and readers. On this most patriotic of patriotic days in the US of A, I am going to write a very patriotic-themed post on … Canada. The reason is simple. Tomorrow, I will leave this hockey-loving, maple-syrup-drinking, igloo-dwelling nation for one that produces no hockey, no maple syrup, and no igloos. Living and working in China will of course be very different than living and working in suburbia Canadiana. But more than lifestyle and cultural changes, a question that has come up in my mind is whether I should be working for “the enemy” at all. After all, China is seen by many in the West as their primary adversary on the international stage. One that sells cheap crappy goods. One that sells unsafe toys. One that unfairly manipulates its currency to maintain an economic advantage. And one that…
WTF #14: Thinking Ahead
One of the odd things I’ve come across walking the sidewalks of Shanghai are these peculiar ribbed designs on virtually every sidewalk I’ve come across. Here are a few examples courtesy of yours truly: These are sidewalks for the blind. Ribbed designs indicate a straight path while round bumps indicate a turn or intersection. It’s quite the sight as they’re not only put down outdoors, but also inside subway stations as well leading all the way to the subway doors. Shanghai is a fairly new city. It’s an odd statement seeing how Shanghai used to a stronghold of foreign presence after the Opium Wars in the 19th century. Still, much of Shanghai has been torn down and put up anew in the last decade. In trying to turn Shanghai into a modern and model Chinese city, someone (or some government body) had the foresight to think about putting these things…
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…
History Repeating Itself
There’s been a lot of consternation amongst engineers in the West, especially in the high tech community, about the rise of China and the continued bleeding of well-paying white-collar to that country. Those voices are especially loud in the US, of which I am glad to be an curious but uninvolved nearby observer. It seems some Americans are content to keep their eyes closed, relying on the solace of a glorious past and the strongly held, but ultimately fallacious, belief of an American exceptionalism that will no doubt carry them to victory. The masses, which are mostly aware of the decline in American manufacturing, has yet awoken to the fact that this decline has seeped into the knowledge sector as well. Then there are those that see the potential catastrophe of the current path, such as President Obama, who recently announced his new initiative (with an unfortunate acronym) called WTF…