What doesn’t kill us can only made us stronger — German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche — his original words are: “Out of life’s school of war—what doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.”
Five years ago today, 01-23-2019, Wednesday, I was laid off from the company I worked for about 3 and half years. I saved the below email in my Gmail account.
Hi Minjie,
You mentioned to me this morning that you had a work computer at your home. I wanted to let you know we’ll be sending you a pre-paid box for you to send it back in.
Please let me know if you have any other questions.
Thanks!
…………
That being said, if you were working for the federal government and recently got laid off because of Elon Musk’s DOGE’s purge, and if you like to talk to someone – I am available.
Potentially I can provide some advice re: how to get back to your feet quick. I can buy you coffee, do mock interview during lunch (I will pay), and pay your Uber ride fee, if you have an onsite interview and need Uber/Lyft.
In my career, I navigated layoff situations a few times, and I was able to find something relatively quick mainly in the area of software development. I understand right now it’s a very tough job market in the USA. But it’s still possible to find something. I am a strong believer of 树挪死人挪活。I believe layoffs are usually blessings disguised in curses. Somewhat like divorce during a truly horrendous marriage.
Reference: I talked about more about layoffs here in my 2023 blog post.
Reasons for that: economy and layoffs – we have zero control on neither; at certain point, companies and organizations started to discriminate against older workers in terms of hiring and firing (layoffs), due to their potentially higher salary, higher healthcare expense, and so on.
Surprising, at least for now, AI is the not main reason for the tech layoffs, per the YT video below.
Note we have no controls over the layoffs, especially in terms of the company’s decision. In theory we have some influence such as do our job well, but this is not guaranteed to help one avoid layoffs.
Some of the things I can think of or I am doing
Blogging (make some ads money from Google, very hard). The downside of this one is it takes lots of traffic to generate a bit ads revenue. Similar for the YouTube video creation. For me this is even harder than the eBay.
Selling on eBay (is eBay increasing becoming a flea market, btw?). One side benefit of selling on eBay is declutter, as well as reduce, reuse and recycle theme. Reducing the carbon footprint is rewarding for me.
Part-time gig (e.g., adjunct teaching at Webster U). Note this is not scalable as it’s mainly selling time for money.
Stocks: note this one is risky. But it potentially could have more rewards (again, this depends on many factors, such as the capital one has).
Reading Time: 9minutesAnyone knows what this is? It’s a punched card for computer in the early days.
As the old Chinese sayng goes, 下棋找高手，弄斧到班门 (baidu)。下棋找高手，弄斧到班门。—-中国科学院 || Basically one needs to get trained properly or work at a place that has some good technology and process so that he or she can really understand what’ the proper way to do the work, and work with people.
Besides knowing the “what”, “why” and “how”, a few other benefits (some are not that obvious) include the prestige comes with a brand name employer (let’s just say Mastercard), as well as the confidence as well as experience, that one will likely gain from working at a place that have outstanding engineers and people all around. Those are probably similar reasons that parents want send kids to good schools (from K-12 to college), as well. Personally I felt I gained most of my confidence in life, during my middle school years at Zhenhai Middle School.
Re: confidence (or nervousness or introvert/extrovert). Now I think about it more, I tend to believe this is probably both a person’s personality, as well as a person’s background (life experience). I know I mangled a lot of things together here. But I have observed a lot of people over my school, career and friends circle. One thing we can agree is confidence is quite important in life and work. Also, whenever possible, I encourage my kids, my significant other, my friends, my students or my colleagues to help their confidence.
Got right training at the beginning of the career
My own exp at the my 1st employer (Unigraphics Solutions, EDS PLM Solutions, UGS, Siemens Industry Software, same company the name change was due to the ownership and corp brand change), and later Mastercard seemed confirmed this Chinese saying. I learned much on software development while at the UGS. And later at Mastercard I learned about customer production support, production release and deployment, at other places it could be DevOps team or Site Reliability engineering type of work, at MC it’s called BizOps, and I also acted as tech lead role there.
In case you are wondering what exactly UGS does, after reading the Wikipedia entry here. I would say it’s a software company that was founded 10 years before Microsoft was founded in 1976, at one time created its own OS and hardware, and those folks know a thing or two about software and software development. At the very beginning of my career, I saw the “punched card” above at one of the spare room or storage room in year 2000/2001 when I was working there. That’s how the software was written and integrated then 🙂
Job Title
One thing I noticed there is it’s quite hard to be promoted to the “Senior Software Engineer” title at UGS. It needs both years of work, and the recommendation of colleagues. Note it was in year 2000 till 2008. In other words, unlike the job title nowadays, “Senior Software Engineer” really means someone who is senior and has a lot of experience. Nowadays though, in many places, big or small, the lead/staff software engineer, principle software engineer are fairly common. So there is that. At one time, I ever got into a discussion with two “Senior Director of Software Engineering” at Ascension, regarding the difference of lead vs staff software engineer, and my preference for lead vs staff. Maybe we should all go with the “Member of Technical Staff” which is invented in the Bell Labs (I assume).
The next job I would like to have, if I decide to do more serious engineering work anyway – probably some company like Apple, or more likely a remote friendly company who is a both serious/meaningful and fun/rewarding place, since I don’t have any intention to move to the bay area or Austin, where the engineering center of Apple is.
My observations on different workplaces in the area
Without that being said, I did worked at quite a few places in the St. Louis area, mostly as full time employee, but sometimes as IT contractor, and I believe it’s probably a decent idea to share my own observations and experiences. Note I intended this to be a straightforward (or honest) opinion from me, as practical as possible. You may refer to glassdoor.com or indeed.com to get others’ opinions. Disclaimer: when I evaluate a company, please note I am not evaluate its employees. For the most part I am talking about the culture and the management style.
======
Ameren: I interviewed and got an offer there once. But unfortunately the offer didn’t come as speedy as the one below. And at the time I already accepted Ascension’s offer. Later I got one more interview (probaly in year 2019) but that one didn’t yield an offer. If there is 后悔药，I may go there 🙂 One of the few commercial companies in the area that offers pension and I believe their pension is solid. We are not ditching electricity, even with all the EVs, right?
Ascension: they are the parent org of the largest catholic hospital chain in the US. In terms of all hospital chains, I think they are distant 2nd behind Kaiser Permanente whose presence is mostly in California and west coast. Ascension’s presence is mostly around mid-west, Texas and east coast from New York to Florida. I worked there for about 2.5 years. I should probably stick around a bit longer to make sure all my 401k (403b to be precise) vested. In general healthcare is not the most agile or nimble place to work, and Asc is no exception. In the time I was there, and after I left, I heard some crazy stories in terms of the corporate strategy shift, hiring/firing, and so on. The direct reason I left Ascension was I got a bit tired of my architect job, and felt I like go back to do more coding.
This is one of the projects I have some contribution (not much direct contribution, more like a caretaker, or pseudo type of role). The company probably spent millions of $ on the app, but I noticed it never really went to production. It was an executive’s pet project. The project has some dependencies on back end from a vendor. A new software development manager was hired before I left, and dare I say his performance testing plan (or scenario) was not realistic either. That being said, the dependencies on vendor for web service and data are also a big unknown at the time.
Btw, this reminds me it the failure rate on healthcare project is high, another one is MyMercy at Mercy that I worked on in year 2014 and 2015. One question I have: what’s the percentage of Software Dev project failure rate in the healthcare industry? Do we have any survey or data?
Bayer (formerly Monsanto): I interviewed there twice. No offer. One employee and one recruiter left me impressions. After the 1st interview (more than 10 years ago), the employee pointed out a silly mistake in my resume, it was a typo. None the less, very few people in America will point out your mistake, mostly because they don’t care or they feel not polite to do it. But no feedback means no improvement. The 2nd time, the recruiter Ray is a great person. Bayer (formerly Monstanto) is the pioneer in terms of AWS adoption in the area. Their CTO left for another company in the area (RGA – Reinsurance Group of America).
Charter/Spectrum: their main IT office is now in the Riverport Drive, it’s actually the very 1st building I started work for Unigraphics back in year 2000. I got one interview there (forgot which year). The tech lead (or architect) was pretty much a snob (over the years, I have done quite a few interviews, on both sides of the table. I did many tech interviews when I was working for Asc). I recall another similar situation at Reuters back in year 2009: a guy was quite arrogant there as well.
Centene: another healthcare place, this one is Medicaid insurance and some Obama care. I interviewed there twice: different time and for different positions (dev at their Chesterfield/Town and Country office via recruiter, and DevOps at Clayton). Overall I felt both teams are quite arrogant and obviously there was no match. The 1st time they left me there, when I was supposed to meet a director. But the director never showed up. At the same interview I learned a bit about how they handle multi-tenant for their core app (Medicaid management), essentially they setup one code and one DB (Oracle) for one state. They probably have a dozen or 20+ states and thus they have 12 or 20 code bases for each state. Obviously in a company like MC this would be laughable and will not work for the loyalty platform I worked on: we have way more than 20 customers. Incidentally at Asc, we did one database for one customer for the Covid Fast Screen app for our customers too (one code base though).
Later (last year or two) a friend (a former colleague) asked me whether I was interested in their team at Centene. I politely declined 🙂 Also Centene, along with Express Script and MasterCard, used to be on the top 3 hard working (or expect you to work hard) workplaces in the area. The rest of the places are mostly reasonable: 9 to 5 means 9 to 5. I worked at MC and I can say most positions involves some work: or some politics. Btw, regarding overtime, I talked a bit here, and also please refer to this Tweet (in Chinese) which is line with my view.
Cigna (formerly Express-Script): did I say it’s one of the hard working places in the area? The rumor I heard from a friend is at one time they pushed him (or his coworker) to work 120 hours per week. Horrendous place even for a few weeks, right? The reputation may have changed since the Cigna acquisition. I never worked there or interviewed there. But I almost got one interview there once (in year 2019?).
Emerson Electric (or the new co formed after White Rodgers, their former climate control division): I applied there once through recruiter (the White Rodgers or Sensi division, now called Copeland). That’s about it.
Enterprise (now official brand is Enterprise Mobility): it seems they don’t treat contractors very well. I worked there at year 2013 as contractor and testify 🙂 I was told it’s going to be contract to hire, which is also my intention and expectation. At one time, I even got a manager. Note at Enterprises contractor doesn’t have a real manager (other than the person who approves the timesheet and thus the paycheck). But the project got cancelled in the middle, the only little nice thing is they gave me two weeks notice. In the US, it’s common practice employee gives 2 weeks notice before leaving, but the employers usually don’t. They could give severance pay etc., but they usually ask the employee to go immediately.
I work for them as employee now (different divisions inside the company), and I think they treat employees decently well. Hopefully a decent place to wind down one’s career and so on (maybe I should delete this comment 🙂 I think Reed Hastings of Netflix summarized this “family vs sports team” for workplace very well 🙂
Equifax: onsite interviewed there once (2018). No offer.
Government and government contractors: the federal government, from the Department of Agriculture (USDA), Federal Reserve, to USPS, to Boeing and their vendors. No comments. Never interviewed or worked in that sector. My gut feeling is they are similar to Enterprise, from organization point of view (big bureaucratic).
Mastercard: probably one of the highest paid place in the area (if we considering the bus and 401k match). On the other hand, you know the money is not free, right? Expect more stress from the work (both technical work and politics). Once I worked 2 out of 4 days in a thanksgiving break. That alone was the direct reason I got into fight with my wife. Money cannot buy everything. Remember their ads slogan: There are some things that money can’t buy; for everything else, there’s Mastercard.
Mercy: they pay better than BJC, may be similar to Ascension. It has similar problems as Ascension. Although my boss and coworkers are all good people.
Panera Bread: interviewed there twice, neither yield an offer. Should I say they are snob (I mean the corporate people, not the store people). The 2nd time interview was done via Zoom, as it was during pandemic. Their CTO is from Mastercard and it seems he brought over quite a few people over (is it legal?). Store people are all nice, and once I even saw the interviewer and their former CEO and founder Ronald M. Shaich at their Sunset Hills store.
Remote or WFH: this is a viable option now, because there are many companies that welcome remote workers in recent years, initially due to the pandemic, and now it’s become a norm for many companies now. Some companies that are remote friendly include Affirm: maybe they are looking for people from Square and Mastercard? 🙂
Siemens: I heard in recent years they are not as good as 23 years ago when I started there. It seems they are all work from home now and the Riverport Drive office (built in year 2001) is on the market. And it seems they rarely hire any entry level people in recent years.
Square Inc. (Block): the payment company founded by Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey. I actually interviewed for a DevOps (SRE) position a few years ago. A decent company, and the payment industry is a good place to be in terms of job stability and pay (think Mastercard :-).
Unidev: my suggestion is don’t go there. I went there due to quite unique circumstance 🙂 They do have one fantastic person though (hint: her current title is “Secretary & Treasurer”).
Unigroup: I worked as contractor there. They treated contractors better than Enterprises.
======
Bonus questions:
Is it okay to step back or go down career ladder in one’s career?
The answer is yes. You do what’s suitable for you and your family. Listen to your heart, and equally important or not more, listen to your spouse or better half 🙂 In fact I heard from one of my favorite (former) coworkers and he did that once in her career. And yours truly made this move in year 2021, too.
Also it seems the starting salary for the entry level position in the area doesn’t go up much. My starting salary for software engineer in fall 2000 was $56,000. And nowadays I think the average is probably 60 k or 70k. If we consider inflation in last 20+ years, the starting salary didn’t grow. That’s probably many young people left for Silicon Valley, Seattle, Dallas, or Austin for jobs.
Thinking it may be helpful for me to explain all this, as I never heard about those coming from China to the USA in late 1990s. Maybe the employers are doing those in China nowadays too, but at my time, I never heard about it.
Background Check
There are background check, and sometimes there are employment history verification etc. Nowadays background check usually has two approaches: 1) The government database check, e.g., before someone get firearms, they usually need to run a check; 2) The second approach is via a commercial company (database) check. I did both. Actually recently I just did one when I am volunteering for the school.
Example 1: there are companies that do background check for employers. such as this one called Clariti (now it’s a part of GHRR). You may read this clariti background check reddit thread if needed. It seems to me they are mostly trying to verify past employment history as well. Note in the reference check, they could do similar check, if it’s just a call from HR. I do follow the instructions carefully when I do this sort of thing. Below is copy paste of some of the instructions.
Complete all fields. Use your legal name and information and add any maiden or previous names to the additional names section. Please provide all addresses where you have lived for the past 7 years. Review your answers for accuracy and spelling. If you have any questions or special circumstances you should call our office at before submitting this request.
My comment: sometimes I doubt the effectiveness of this sort of background check. But we still need to respect the process though, as this is quite common step before some employers can formally onboard someone.
Example 2: I did this one MACHS Fingerprinting Background Checks website twice as a requirement for my volunteer work for Ladue School. I think first time they came to LMS and fingerprinted people on site. Mostly recently I went to this place called IdentoGo (it looks like a private company, but they work with government agencies such as FBI for background check). I go there, did my fingerprints, and they sent my information to their backend for more processing. And they also sent back information to the Ladue School on the 2nd day. It seems they are pretty efficient in terms of processing.
Reference Check
I have done reference check for colleagues and friends from time to time. For that purpose, I usually make sure I get an updated resume, and also ask my colleague or friend what should I say (I usually say nice things).
Drug Test
For my 1st job, I did the drug test via the hair sample. More common drug test is via urine sample. I did urine sample a few times in my career, all for pre-employment drug testing. Again the need for drug test also varies by employer.
A while ago, in year 2010, I got this rule from a friend. My friend spends most of time doing IT/software contractor work, long term contract though. I asked him “how long should I stay at this place because there is a senior guy seems doesn’t like me”, to be precise, he was trying to get me fired. My friend told me the rule of thumb below.
Try to stay at full time (employee, or permanent) position for one year. Stay at a contractor position for 6 month or more. Some old fashioned people may call out you as “hopper” or “job hopper” if you have a lot short stints in your resume.
And below is my recent observation and my quick thoughts. When interviewing for my current job, my big boss (my manager’s manager) did raise the tenure (short work stints) and I was prepared. “see, boss, I worked for this credit company for almost 4 years”. And I also worked for my 1st employer for 8 years. All are facts, but I stayed not just due to loyalty 🙂
#majorsObservation#onCareer: noticed an old friend, who went the manager track. Not many Chinese people are people managers instead of individual contributors. But I also noticed his last 3 jobs are all shorter than 2 years. My gut feeling is even 2 year is too short
I think the below tweet (or X) summarized it well. In other words, our day job is to bring the bacon (or bread) home. 用中文讲就是养家糊口。I am discussing a related question (overtime 加班）more below.
It’s not worth it. Ideally we should avoid overtime as much as possible.
Work smarter, not harder. –quote one of my former coworker at Unigraphics (UGS, EDS PLM Solutions, Siemens Industry Software)
I have been in the US for a bit over 25 years now. From time to time, I need to go overtime for the work. From my early days in the graduate school doing research for the professor, to work as progammer for my day job. Most of times it’s either voluntary, or I have no better other choices.
One night it’s already past 10 pm. But there is some urgent work or expectation for me to “solider on”. I was trying to fix some problems as a result from the security scan.
Later, once, I still went to work when I was coughing pretty bad. Eventually I went to urgent care due to that. It took me a while to recover from that.
97年夏天我第一次来美国，我的飞机航班是东航上海虹桥(SHA) 到洛杉矶 (LAX, China Eastern MU 583), 当时好像用的是麦道11(Btw, 93年好像有一次事故），再从洛杉矶坐TWA航班飞圣路易斯(STL)。我在洛杉矶机场犯了一个不大不小的错误。我当时很想上厕所，急着从机场（入境处和海关）出来，结果一出来就拿错了行李。等我发现我拿错了，我已经出了海关，我赶紧用我的英语跟美国机场的工作人员解释，还好他听懂了，让我进去跟东航的地勤人员说上话，交换了行李（取到了我自己的行李）。这个箱子是当时上海第一百货的牌子，估计我们都是在一百买的，这个箱子实用也较便宜。这一次是我的口语第一次在美国派到用场。
PS: 大概在2005/6年在圣村的机场，又碰到一件类似的事情，这一次是Diplomat的灰色硬壳箱。对方把我的箱子拿到家以后，没有多想，直接撬锁。后来她通过航空公司陪了我大概是五十还是一百块钱(USD)：她没有拿我的东西，就是赔我的坏掉的箱锁。那个箱子今年回国才退休。Also: I have other stories with the diplomat luggage (1 and 2) back in 2007 when I tried to replace a broken wheel. So this one really last for a long time: at least from 2007 to 2023. I think I bought it before 2007 too.
Learning Englishin Missouri S&T at Rolla
Note the adults tend to stay or social with her/his own ethic group or friends, and use the 1st language he/she is familiar with. When I was a graduate student in Rolla more than 20 years ago, I used to have an American professor, and he made a comment which I agree: American grad students stay with the Americans, Chinese students stay with the Chinese, and Indian students stay with Indians.
I have Indian born advisor, and I talked to Indian born graduate students. One nice thing is one fellow graduate student sometimes corrected my English, and that really helped. Not many people would correct or point out. Btw, that particular grad student is now a technology VP at a credit rating agency.
At one time, I was able to translate for the professors during a meeting. I think the fellow graduate student is from Africa and he has some accent, but it’s not too hard to guess or figure out.
Host family When I was new to Rolla, I got to learn the Stoltz family through the international office’s host family program. And they helped my English (via conversations), and get familiar with the America culture in many aspects. I still remember, the dinners, the trips to the Governor’s Manson, to Branson and the Xmas gifts.
Fraternity
At one time because I live with American undergrad everyday, and listen to their talking daily, I felt English is almost like “my native language”. Also once my “big brother” told me: you lived in a quite unique fraternity. And I agree: in the beginning of my stay there, I rode bike from school to the fraternity house every day. When the weather was bad I would call the house for help, and my brothers never failed to pick me up. That includes the rides in the snow days too.
I retook the English test again a few years later: got a “fair” grade from another Indian born professor.
TV and Movies are also a very important source of education for my Oral English. Back in those days it was mostly the Blockbuster videos, and just movies on the TV. Now it’s mostly streaming mostly from Netflix, Amazon and Hulu. American middle schools and high school tv 📺 or movies 🎥 High School: Gilmore girls (Netflix) High School: Breakfast club (I watched via Amazon Prime, free) College: back to school 🏫 (Amazon, for a fee)
Holiday themed movies
Love Actually (a classic, watch it on Netflix before 12/31/2023)
Romantic series: the Virgin River (Netflix, the series 5 just debuted and the last episode has holiday theme/Christmas celebration)
Other comedies:
Seinfeld
Friends
No Hard Feelings (Jennifer Lawrence, new on Netflix)
NPR
Most listened programs: morning edition, all things considered, market place, planet money and ted radio hour.
Listened in the past, enjoyed but no longer available or no longer listen much due change of taste or programming: Diane Rhem show, Fresh Air (Terry Gros), Car Talk, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, Weekend Edition.
I taught in China. Many years ago in SH. Failed. Will talk more about that exp. later, hopefully 🙁
When I was new to Rolla, I failed in the Teaching Assistant (TA) English test – later I tried to practice oral English with a English teacher during lunch (once a week). I didn’t teach when at Rolla (again because I flunked the spoken English test), and had to look for RA (research assistant) job in the school. Later on I taught in Abacus Rolla, to a few fellow grad students, and I did okay. It was friendly environment too.
This fall I started teaching graduate course at Webster U. 韦伯斯特大学客座教授（其实就是兼职 adjunct professor 🙂 Couple funny things:
I was nervous before doing this, but my wife and 13 year old daughter were quite nervous too;
I think it’s giving me some energy interacting with younger folks (all graduate students are younger than me). I do interact with my kids quite a bit too: to be precise more than interacting with them, or Uber-ing them around. But most kids will eventually grow up and live on their own. That’s where interacting with young folks becoming more important: I believe that’s one reason Warren Buffett likes to teach at school sometimes, or hosting the MBA students at his company’s HQ or at the annual shareholder meeting. Also the BRK meeting, plus Charlie’s Daily Journal Co and past Wesco shareholder meetings allow both of them to interact with many people, including many young people too. That’s one secret sauce of their longetibity.
Reading Time: 4minutesWhen I was little, my maternal grandma sometimes would say my elder bro is suitable for a carpenter due to his calm demeanor. This is just a picture of a carpenter (not my brother)
Surviving as an IT, especially a software developer contractor is not easy, from my personal experience and observations. I have mostly been an employee (sometimes people call it full-time), with a few stints as a contractor (my LinkedIn profile here). I worked as a contractor mostly because I needed to bring bread (or bacon) home, or in one case I needed to make a switch from software consulting back to a developer job.
Second class citizen
This reminded me of “second class citizen” label which I think it is how many H-1B visa holders were treated in this country. I think being a contractor is not easy in the sense of job security. I have my share of misery when working as a contractor – in some cases, the misery was not directly related to the fact of being a contractor, in other cases, it was. For example, once I made a dumb (but honest) mistake during my testing, I sent out 4 testing emails to real customers, the issue was somewhat like this HBO integrated testing email incident (I got the HBO email btw). I think that’s the main reason they let me go shortly after. When you think about it, do you really want to work for such a place (given choices)? In this case, I was the scapegoat for the incident, just like the “intern” was the scapegoat for the HBO email incident.
I think of this topic because, in the current project, I have been working on for the last 2 years, we have tons of contractor turnover, and it seems to me mostly the termination was initiated from our side. But I don’t have any input due to my career level or title. This is also one major downside of being a contractor – easy for a vendor to terminate, and also in some cases a contractor will become the scapegoat for some mishap or mistake in the project.
Sometimes or a lot of times I felt contractors are basically second-class citizens in the company. Personally, I don’t want to treat contractors like that. I am just stating some observations I have. There are exceptions: if the contractor is high skilled, works for the client for a while, or has a good relationship with senior management.
There are usually two scenarios in which a company hires a contractor, staff augmentation, and project outsourcing (the vendor company will staff a complete project team in this case). I have seen terminations in our current project for both scenarios.
In the past, in year 2015, when I was with Mercy Health, and working on the MyMercy project. And one day (April 2015?) we laid off all the contractors on the project due to the change of project direction.
Back to the Carpenter analogy, I do think there are still things a contractor can control in terms of her/his job security. I don’t think the contractors who worked on the MyMercy project have much control. But for the current project that I am a part of, it seems the people who were let go have one thing in common: basically in one occasion or another, they pissed off “the boss” (I would not name the names obviously).
When my maternal grandma joked that my elder brother could be a carpenter. Note carpenter is like a contractor or a skilled professional in the rural area where I grew up. I recall one carpenter built the 1st multiple stories house in our neighborhood: at that time, it cost more than 10,000 Chinese Yuan (RMB), and it was a fortune for all of us at that time. My dream then was to make 10,000 Yuan 万元户. Now I think about why my grandma said my brother could be a carpenter (and she didn’t say I could), one reason I think is probably I was not as calm as my brother 🙂
In the US though, probably applicable in China nowadays too, besides doing quality work, improving marketable skills, etc. A contractor needs to be a little bit more outspoken, and at the same time not piss off the client, the manager, “the boss” etc. The last part is really an art and not science. As one of my colleagues likes to say: one needs the “read the room” skills 中文就是察言观色的意思吧。Last but not least, something I learned over the years, is we all need to have some stories to tell (#storytelling). This is helpful or useful sometimes during job interviews, think of the behavior questions the HR or managers sometimes would ask: tell me a challenge that you encountered recently, how you overcame it, etc. Make sure you have those in your inventory and use them as you see fit.
(Update 02-07-2024) Personally I don’t recommend work as contractor – especially if one is the sole bread winner for the family. I understand in the US all employments are AT WILL, in theory an employer can lay off full time employee at any time (vice versa). || There are a few cases I think it’s okay to work as contractors: 1. 家里等米下锅；2. If it’s a consulting company such as WWT, Accenture etc., because they have bench time. Also they can put a contractor (consultant) at another client due to their connections. My 2 cents.
My wife who started working for a localization company since this past April, for the most part she was happy. But recently she started to talk about this exact issue of her leader (more a tech lead or project lead, not necessarily a manager). This reminds me of my own experience of dealing with micro managers and micro management. It seems to me, in her case it was mostly her lead is fairly new to the position, and he listened to the client especially a guy who was on the team and has since moved to the client company as an employee. I can understand to some extent. If I was in his position (being new and would like to please the client), I may do some of what he did. Basically he wanted my wife vetting the “slacks messages” with him before posting them directly, also he made some changes to the messages and it seems to my wife he made it worse (I didn’t see the messages, so this could be a bit subjective to say the least). But I do know my wife is somewhat technical and she used to be testing engineer (quality assurance) and she does find bugs and sometimes would discuss those with me. For example, recently she saw a text in the web page (website) was wrong, and she asked whether that text is pulled from the backend (database etc.)
I don’t have a lot experience like this. But I can certainly empathize. I recall at a small contracting company I had a project lead like she has now. In that case I was let go eventually and I found a new place. Another case, at a coal mining company, my boss was also new, and he would like to make sure that I do the job properly especially in terms of the pace. So he started to do some Xcode (I was doing objective C development work for iPad). But he quickly realized that I was not goof around, and gave me a longer leash.
I have seen two micromanagers in my last job. I didn’t work for them, and I did work with them. One manager, and I think he is probably 20 years senior than me (I am pretty old). And I think he is just old fashioned manager. He would stand there, and use hand gesture to the people who report to him: you, come here. And once he had a fallout with one developer (which looking back, we should not hire, I will write about the interview later). Basically he won’t accept the developer’s code. Essentially he was saying that code is junk (which again may have some truth). But the way he communicated was blunt to say the least, and I had to step in and play a peace maker.
Another case, the new manager in another city called a Zoom meeting, and in the meeting essentially he sided with one developer, and fought against another two. Such a rookie new manager mistake. We had to calm the manager down, and told the manager it’s not the right forum for this. But if the manager can think, that’s not the right attitude to handle any workplace dispute either.
This also reminded me one more thing. That is how we micro manage our kids. We are not helicopter parents, as shown in the new Netflix movie No Hard Feelings. But I think my wife now realized she probably micro managed too much on the girls sometimes 🙂
今天我想说说politics on offices(or fights on better cubicles or offices, think bigger cubicles, corner offices and so on 就是大家都想要好的cubicle 或是office). Not the traditional good old office politics. 不是办公室政治，而是关于争抢办公室的故事。
1. Never trying to take back the bone already in a dog’s mouth. 英语里的谚语，从巴菲特的伙伴查理芒哥那里听来的，不要在狗的嘴巴里试着去拿回已在她嘴里的骨头（英文原话：The one way, the only way to get that dog to bite you was to try and take something out of its mouth after it was already there.）。
我做码工的地方我好像基本上没有独立的办公室。上面提到的煤炭公司算是有一些办公室，当然也有工位cubicles，也就是我等小不拉子们坐的位置。煤炭公司(Arch Coal, now Arch Resources post the bankrupcy and re-org)其实一开始我有个semi-private 办公室。我老板把我安排到一个角落里的办公室，那里原来是一个美国小伙，desktop technician 如果我没记错。我一次，我才刚去不久，我有点咳嗽，他好像很不开心。
我以前去过微软，应该是2002年，我有朋友在那里上班。我去有西雅图时去了他办公室，一个人一间，没有窗户。他说他们一般是赶进程的时候才会去办公室。微软在Richmond, WA 的园区很像一个大学校园，有树有湖。他说有个湖叫 Lake Bill, 据说是有一回庆功，大家一高兴，把比尔盖茨 (Bill Gates) 扔到湖里去了。我记得有两个车位是有名字的(Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer 当时微软的CEO)，其它位置随便停。这一点我觉得很不错。后来我去了一些地方，等级分明，停车位也有很多各种讲究。其实也是公司/单位文化的一个反映。
我自从上班以来好像就没有办公室。我在罗拉读研究生的时候有。有时候还只是一两个人的办公室（semi-private). 但是也有坏处，我刚来美国不久，我常去一个TA的办公室，我在我的桌子上放了一个数码相机，后来我发现我的相机不见了。这个办公室旁边有一个Lounge, Soda machine, 等等。我走开一下，很多时候会把门开着，可能是有人在那里顺走的。或者是有办公室钥匙的人。后来我有了一个更好(privacy)的办公室，我捡到一个可以折叠的沙发（可以睡觉）：有一次有一两个晚上因为要赶RA的工作，就在在办公室里睡觉（这个好像跟微软的部分员工，在开发Windows NT的时候，为赶进度，在办公室门板上睡觉一下（我是从网上和从我的朋友那里听来的）。另外一次，我捡到一个旧冰箱。就差一个微波炉了。
First Job
言归正传。我的第一个东家是Unigraphics Solutions (后来的名字有EDS PLM Solutions，UGS，Siemens PLM Software 等）。最早的办公室是在村里西北脚的Earth City (Riverport Drive)最高的办公楼：我在这里不详述Earth City 和Riverport Drive了：有段时间我经常去星巴克，当时我很想附近就有：最近的星巴克是在旁边的270和St. Charles Rock Road (印象中这一家开开关关，现在是开的）, 靠谱的一直有的星巴克在270和Page交界的West Port。现在这个办公楼是被本地较大cable/internet 公司租用。几年前（大概是）2019年初的时候我找工作，又去过那个楼。那个地方其实离村里的机场很近。我第一年在公司上班的时候，也住在附近的公寓。2001年九月十一那天，（我们应该都知道那天发生了什么），之后有几天，所有民航飞机停飞，感觉天空有平时没有的宁静。
我记得有一次，有个其他部门的同事工作三十周年庆祝。我当时的老板（美国人）私下里跟我们说，三十年前坐cubicle，三十年后还是坐cubicle。他说的是有点道理的。Sad but true. 当然我也记得我们的manager 和大老板的靠窗的corner cubicle 要大一些，大老板的cubicle好像还多一个挡板（better privacy）。
WFH
我的第二份工作AutoDesk是在家上班。那是2008年十一月份。公司有一些关于在家里上班必须有的一些条件，具体忘了，好像是说要有一定的空间。2020年因为疫情很多人开始在家上班，很多夫妻一起在家上班。我的建议是让老婆（boss）先挑办公室。 我有时候不喜欢总在家里呆着，就带上笔记本电脑去外面，当时一年多我去了 Barnes Nobel（书店）, Borders（这个书店现在已经没有了）, Bread Co and Starbucks. 可能去的最多的还是面包店。我去那一家面包店有十八年了，有一个我喜欢的位置。
AutoDesk 的工作可以在家工作（在当时不算多），但是也有一些坏处，比如说要差：有时候要坐小飞机。我记得大概是2009年春节我去了密西根一个小镇。坐小飞机不是很安全，那时真好出了一件事：Colgan Air Flight 3407。PBS有个相关的纪录片。
换工作 and Hearsay听说的故事
2010年初，我的老大快要出生，我也换了个在办公室（工位）上班的正常工作。但是我很快发现这个小公司我可能呆不久。美国大公司（大锅饭）和小公司很不一样。这个小公司大概是两个人合开的。理论上我们有一个小组都是Union Pacific(UP) 的合同工, 两个老板（President and VP）以前帮UP做过事，现在他们帮UP维护两个系统：系统是关于运输和财务会计方面的(Accounts Receiveable and Revenue Integration Systems)。那一天（大概是2010年2月中的某一天）我们有三个人一起开始（这是其中的一个同事）。老板不直接管我，他们让两个project leader （相当于tech lead)管我们。我想有两个理由他们不喜欢我。一个是我不能提供剩余价值。什么意思呢：就是我发现我的两个华人朋友（老员工）除了做UP的事意外呢，还帮老板他们做其它的项目（比如说一个户外活动商品的网站等等）。还有一件事，我是后知后觉，我发现他们对我下午三点多的时候出去走15分钟很有意见。类似的问题，我大概每天九点左右到，四点多走，他们也有意见。
我大概做了半年多意识到这个问题，开始努力找工作。我问了我自己的朋友，也问了我的华人同事，感觉我除了找新工作没有其他好的办法。因为老板们会听project leader的话，而我没有多少说话的机会。在美国公司上班久了可能大家会知道公司内部等级是非常森严的。但是我找工作的速度没有赶上他们的速度。其实这个也是因为大公司和小公司的差别，大公司吃大锅饭，老板不会斤斤计较，小公司就相反 – 我当时还没有意识到。有一次，我太太告诉我家里有不明的烟 (look for “minor scare”)，这个火可不是开玩笑的。我马上就离开公司到家里，没有跟同事打招呼事后也没说。我事后听说对我不满的project leader 以前曾经跟另外一个同事以拳相向，同事之间动手在美国是比较少见的事情。不过我想那个家伙也不奇怪。
关于美国上班地方的一些暴力的统计：Workplace violence: homicides and nonfatal intentional injuries by another person in 2020. There were 392 workplace homicides in 2020. There were also 37,060 nonfatal injuries in the workplace resulting from an intentional injury by another person.
*** 以下我会慢慢更新 I will clean up below soon， may start a new story as this one kinda getting long ***
More cubicles
Arch coal: my cubicle moves (small shared corner office, cubicle near CTO, the cubicle near the “office fight”); and the girl who “lost” office. For that matter, heard from coworker helping set up CNN cable for ACI CEO, and oh, she helped the Outlook password change (same time on laptop and iPhone), this used to be an issue for me (one best practice is change it in one place 1st, let it sync in, before opening another app. 环保分子抗议。
EHI (2013): I left too many Panera bags there (quote my friend)…
MC: I found out I no longer have a cubicle: after open office remodeling and back to work. Nobody told me (some may know).
Standing desk and Open Space? Hype or doing actual good?
Asc: Edmundson, Cortex (big boss has better cubicles, just tables; open office remodeling – phone room).
I maytalk about job searches, interviews (both from job search and from the hiring point of views), and hardware next, using my own stories, so stay tuned (hint: hardware itself is not the most important). 大家有什么想法意见，也可以在下面留言，或发email到：minjie.xu@gmail.com 🙂
Yesterday at a WeChat group, I wrote 昨天在一个微信群里我写到: 我（My LinkedIn Profile 我的领英链接）在美国工作23年迄今呆过十个庙。。。 话说完后我想起来十个庙，与多数码工相比，也真是不少了，平均2.3年（2年4个月）换一个工作。还好只是换工作😂
又想起在罗拉时，有一回是参加大公司招新的大学毕业生的介绍会（一般会有免费的比萨🍕饼，对我这样的穷学生来说诱惑力还可以）。有一次好像是听Honeywell公司的老总(possiably Michael Bonsignore)：你们这些年轻人（当时我还不是大叔），从大学毕业到退休，大概平均会有七个工作。这个与他们那一代人一辈子，大概三十四十年的打工生涯，大多为一家公司打工的情况大为不同。
是在学校找的。我当时是博士生，但是我感觉我的基础太差，最主要我当时很想出去工作了（我觉得做很多事兴趣还是相当重要的）。2000年，正好也是美国纳斯达克的最高点 （“The dot-com bubble burst in March 2000, with the technology heavy NASDAQ Composite index peaking at 5,048.62 on March 10 (5,132.52 intraday), more than double its value just a year before. By 2001, the bubble’s deflation was running full speed.”），我记得我在3月20日面试一家软件公司，并拿到Offer。我记得大概是1999年夏天，学校有不少研究生同学在圣路易斯找到软件开发的工作。记得九九年时的起步年薪大概是五万美元（或稍多一些）。我2000年三月开了五万五，老板挺爽快，给了我五万六。一方面是中大型软件公司，另一方面当时市场也不错。十年以后，我发现在圣村，软件工程师起步的薪水大概是六万的样子。当然2000年到2010年美国的通胀不算严重。
读音乐专业后来成为高级码工的人我见过一个，在2000年秋天在罗拉的UMSL extension 一起上过面向对象的设计课程的一个美国人。面向对象是什么其实不是那么重要。你就把它当成2000年的dot com frenzy (internet bubbles), 或者相当于现在的AI, chatgpt 就可以了。那些新的东西是有用的。但是同时我们必须认识到good old human intelligence, good old 4th grade math are probably more useful and long lasting. 说到那个音乐系的哥们，他后来是村里还不错的咨询公司的Principal Software Engineer. 记得他当时开个宝马三系，还有点拉风的- 基本上相当于现在的特斯拉(3/Y系)吧。我当时开的是91年丰田卡罗拉的手动。我自己是罗拉机械工程硕士，在读研期间上了几门计算机课。我在国内自学过一些计算机，考过国内计算机程序员水平考试（复旦大学负责主办的）。但是我的编程水平真正提高应该是我的第一个东家。
我昨天在油管上看到一个华人小老弟的一个关于找码工工作的视频，觉得不错，先放在这里。还有这一个，好像是亚裔的小妹（HOW I BECAME A SOFTWARE ENGINEER | no CS Degree, career change + advice. I agree with her on the part that money is not everything, which is pretty relevant for me at this time of my career. I guess it’s harder to say for her at her stage of career as she just got started, nonetheless it’s even more impressive when I think about it.）。 这两个视频都是英文。正好可以练一下英文，至少在我所在的美国中西部，面试一般还是英文。Btw, I found Travis Media has this video on interview and job search that’s very good.
Career Ladder
Title for (application or software) programmer or 码工，software engineer, application or software developer. Or just a coder at informal settings. 我可能以后会讲一下升职和常见的career ladder. 比如说奈飞的L5 是相当于谷歌的L多少。我想我们华人除了比小孩爬藤以外，在硅谷的华人码工不少会在意这个级别，因为级别与工资奖金💰是挂钩的。当然我现在的观点，钱不是最重要的因素，但是多刚刚起步的码工来说，一般因为家庭和职业的原题，这个还是比较看重的。我印象中有些老板也同意或说过类似的说法。
People who have impact on my career (not a complete list yet)
