Working at Intel

What's it like working at Intel in China?

I commute to work on company provided bus. The ride to work lasts about 23 minutes. The ride home a little longer. I am a quite popular seatmate as one gets a free English lesson by engaging in small talk with me. ;-) I try to get a bit of a free Chinese lesson in return.

Our building has a small car parking lot since most of us commute by bus. There is also a bicycle parking lot.

There a cafeteria on the first floor. It serves breakfast and lunch. Breakfast costs about 50 cents US. Lunch is about $1 US. There is a small convenience store and Starbucks-like coffee bar in the cafeteria. A latte is $1.50 US.

I sit near a west facing window on the 2nd floor in a 2 meter by 2 meter cube which is similar to any cube in the US. All Intel employees have a cube, even the CEO. My "desktop" PC is an IBM laptop (T42) running Windows XP. We use Outlook for email. [We also use Sharepoint and shared network drives.]

We have a break area on each floor (referred to as "the pantry") with a water cooler (hot and cold), several small tables with chairs, microwave, fridge, and coffee machine. Free coffee, crackers, 4 varieties of tea bags, Sprite, Orange drink, and Coca-Cola (with straw) are also available.

With the cheap local labor supply, the bathrooms are in a state of constant cleaning, complete with the yellow plastic "CAUTION WHEN WET" signs in English and Chinese.

The meetings I attend are usually 100% in English, even if I'm the only native English speaker present. Occasionally, the discussion switches to Chinese for a few minutes while some point is hashed out, but then returns to English with a brief summary provided to me.

[I will write more later about S/W engineering in China and how it is similar and different from S/W engineering in the US]

Beer

How is the beer in China? Well, it depends. There is beer. There is cold beer: an improvement from 10 years ago. There are beer girls: girls in tight fitting logo clothes that try to sell you their brand as soon as you sit down in the bar or restaurant. There is a brand of beer called "REEB" ---- that's beer spelled backwards --- how good could that be? There is Tsing Tao. There are 7 flavors of TsingTao. There is a cold quart bottle of Budweiser "to go" for $1. There are cases of beer delivered to your home. There is Heineken and Corona. There are six-packs. There are Irish pubs that have Guinness on tap. There are at least 20 brands of beer in the Carrefour (like a Walmart) supermarket where we shop. However....... There are no pale ales. There are no IPAs... Sigh... There are no micro breweries (that I know of). There is a Trappist beer, Chamay, from Belgium at Carrefour that costs about 3 US dollars for a 12 oz bottle. It is pretty darn tasty.

Busy in Shanghai

Preparing for Shanghai was a mad dash in the end. We barely got ourselves out of Raleigh, leaving many loose ends. We didn’t get to properly bid good-bye to many friends and return all the email well wishings.

It’s been a busy 7 days in Shanghai. We had many accomplishments:

• Passed our health check-up (required for residency permit)
• Opened a bank account (with debit/ATM card)
• Bought transportation cards
• Found an apartment and signed the lease
• Attended the symphony
• Had the phone and ADSL installed
• Had our hair cut
• Visited with Sun-Ling’s relatives.
• John attended 2 days of IDF (Intel Developer Forum) at the Shanghai Convention Center last week.
  

Busy in Europe

It's been a very busy three weeks in Europe and one more week still to go. Not only have we been touring at our usual lightening speed but John has been emailing, phoning, scanning, and faxing back and forth with folks from Intel China in order to get his pre-employment paperwork done.

The past 2 days we have been staying with Sun-Ling's father's cousin in Gießen, Germany. We started in Krakow, Poland which was awesome, survived Oktoberfest in Munich, and are looking forward to Copenhagen next weekend. More trip info later.

China job landed!

News: John starts his new job as a QA Manager at Intel China in Shanghai on October 24th.

Top Ten things we’ll miss about Jacksonville

10.Chamblin Gold … I mean … Book Mine
9. Beaver St Farmer’s Market
8. First Wednesday Art Walks
7. Orchids
6. Book clubs and the Willowbranch Library
5. The beaches
4. Evening walks in Riverside/Avondale & Tuesday's @ the Cummer
3. The view of the St John's River from our apartment
2. Paddling with the Seminole Canoe and Kayak Club
1. Friends

The view from our apartment one morning last winter

The big migration

I have resigned from my consulting job at Winn-Dixie effective September 2.

We are moving back to Raleigh on August 27. I'll drive back to Jacksonville on the 28th to clean up the apartment and finish out the week at Winn-Dixie.

On September 3 we fly to Europe for our biannual European vacation. The rough itinerary: Krakow => Warsaw => Berlin => Weimar => Munich => Frankfurt => Copenhagen
When we come back from vacation, we’ll be busy getting our affairs in order so we will be prepared to leave for China.

Time difference

The time difference between China and Jacksonville is 12 hours for day light savings time. Each morning Sun-Ling jumps out of bed anxiously checking for crabs. This would be the end of a workday in China. On the other hand, our phone interviews happen at night between 8pm to 11pm, which means morning in China. I get home from work, eat, do the dishes, maybe go for a short walk, prepare a bit, and then wait for the phone call from China. The other evening Sun-Ling and I had interviews at the same time so one of us had to use the cell. So far, we have target American/International companies that have set up shop in China. Though we have generated some interest, landing a job is more difficult than we had expected.

Enlisting help

We realized immediately that we cannot accomplish this new mission all by ourselves. We started to mobilize family, friends, and strangers. We are still busy with this effort.

The big decision

Going to China has been on our list for a long time. Sun-Ling always wondered what it would be like to function as an adult in a country where she grew up. Admitted China has changed so much since she left. It might as well be a different country. John always boasted how he would be speak Chinese fluently, given the opportunity of living in China for six months.

On June 9th 2005 Sun-Ling was given notice by IBM to find a new job within 30 days or take a layoff package. John happened to be in the middle of exploring an excellent job opportunity with Sun Microsystems. Sun-Ling did what's expected (by who though?) and started to look for another mobile job. Two weeks later, we found out the Sun opportunity was not as good at we had hoped. Things became clear then.

Our Jacksonville experience taught us that life is about new experiences, not security. So, on June 24th we decided this is the time we make the move. For various reasons, we decided to look for tech jobs in China. For one thing, this will allow us to keep our house (a.k.a. very expensive storage) in Raleigh and have a US base.