My First Week at the Evil Empire

It's official. I've gone to the devil's side. I have joined the evil empire. I'm a member of their cult now. I am a Microsoft person.

After over a month of legal and immigration work, I finally started my new job at MS on Monday. First was one and a half days of orientation. Let the brainwashing begin! Maybe I'm just a little resistant to Microsoft, but the name was just everywhere! On the podium, in the slides, on the shuttles. The orientation is basically one giant session to glorify Microsoft. How employees love it here; how the company has evolved to cater more to employees. There's employee testimonials shown, statistics about human resources trends drawn, facts about Microsoft which rank it as a top company to work for displayed. I've never seen a company work so hard to make you like them.

Maybe they know they have a rather poor reputation within the geek world. Maybe they want new employees to be pumped and excited about their new jobs. Or maybe they just really really really believe in Microsoft. It's probably a mix of all three maybes. Some people here are really true champions of Microsoft. They believe in the company and they sell it. Scary, isn't it? I really hope I don't get brainwashed to that degree.

For now, I just want a job from which I can learn and grow. I haven't thought too much about my future career paths yet. We'll take it one day at a time.

My Last Day at Amazon

Last Thursday was my last day at Amazon. After merely eight weeks at the online retail giant, I packed up my things and left. Even though I had been looking forward to this day for a long time, when the time came to say goodbye, I was still a little nostalgic. It's really a shame that things didn't work out there.

I expected to just sneak out of there quietly, since I really hadn't been there long enough to know people well and make friends. So I was surprised when my manager treated my coworkers and I to a goodbye lunch for me. We went to this Japanese Fusion restaurant in the International District. In the middle of our lunch, we saw two employees who had just left our team for another team. My manager told them we were having a goodbye lunch for me and they look quite astonished. I believe one of them even said "Already?"

I had seen people at Motorola quit their jobs before. They would always make the rounds on their last day and say goodbye to everybody. In my case, I didn't think it was necessary for me to do that. First, it was kind of awkward that I was quitting after only a few weeks there. I think that sends a pretty clear message saying I don't like you to the rest of my team at Amazon. Second, I really didn't know anybody yet. So after lunch, I quickly packed up my stuff and sneaked out of the building.


Goodbye Amazon! Goodbye!

My Homemade Curtains

Curtains, curtains, curtains. Ever since moving into the new house, curtains, or lack thereof, have become a major headache of mine. None of our windows came with any kind of covering, so we had been debating how to best cover them while still preserving the beauty of this house. Almost every single house I've been to over the course of my life use venetian blinds, which I hate. Although they're cheap and easy to install, I just think they're bland.

I wanted draperies. Silk curtains. Colorful fabrics. I wanted to turn our home into one of those makeover projects on HGTV. Alas, everything on TV looks easier than it really is. Who knew curtains were so expensive? It's just fabric! After months of research, going to stores, looking at catalogs, I simply gave up on the idea of buying pre-made curtains. First they are really expensive, more than $200 if you want a decent design and choice of fabric. Second, most of them don't even fit the windows we have. But I refuse to succumb to those white blinds. No plastic strips on my wall. If I can't buy my curtains, I will make them myself. Needless to say, four months since moving, our windows are still bare.

I overestimated the amount of effort it takes to make a curtain. There's fabric selection, length and width measurement, curtain rod installation (of course I don't do that :))...etc. After we had decided on the kind of fabric we want, we found out that we had to special order them because the store didn't carry the amount of yardage that we would need. I had no idea that special ordering meant it would take forever for the fabric to arrive.

This past weekend, after eight weeks of waiting for the fabric, it finally arrived. So, with the help of my mom, I bunkered down and began making my first set of curtains. We first measured and cut the big roll of fabric I got into equal length sections. Since the width of the fabric is not wide enough for one panel, I had to join to pieces of fabric together to form a wider piece. While that sounds easy to do, just sewing straight lines, it is not. I must have sewn and de-threaded, sewn and de-threaded about 10 different times before giving up on perfection. I had to settle for my not so straight lines and sometime scrunched up fabric. I have new found respect for seamstresses.

So after a day of pinning, sewing, and ironing, I finally had one panel made. It was actually quite fun after I got the hang of things. I think things would go much faster if I wasn't such a perfectionist or if I actually had any sewing skills. Unfortunately, after I hung the one panel up, I realized that the color I chose, dark red, is way too overpowering for our small sized media room. Back to the fabric shop to order some lighter colored fabric - light gold. Red and gold, royal, I know. Luckily, I was able to save the red fabric for our family room. Otherwise it would have been heartbreaking for me to waste over 200 dollars worth of fabric.


If this software engineering gig doesn't work out, maybe I can make curtains full time. Then again, maybe not.

My San Franciscan Heart

Most people who know me probably know that I spent a good number of years living in San Francisco when I was growing up. From the age of ten through seventeen, the city by the bay was my home. When I moved to Canada in 1999, the definition of me was San Francisco. Even though Vancouver was a beautiful city, I never warmed up to it because I was always occupied with memories of San Francisco. When people asked me where I was from, I would proudly say "San Francisco!" I guess you could say "I Left My Heart in San Francicso."

Since I left, I went back to visit a couple of a times, each visit a memorable and heart warming experience. It felt comfortable to be back in a familiar city. A little more than a month ago, I went with Alex to Mountain View for a week when he was down for Google new hire training. This trip was my first trip back to the Bay Area in four years. I was excited to see the city again, anxious to show the town to Alex. I looked forward to stepping back in time momentarily and revisiting all the places I once called home.

But this trip was anything but heart warming. Something changed within me. I felt extremely sad and depressed when we drove past the street on which I used to live. Suddenly all the bad memories of life in San Francisco began to pour in, flooding my mind. My dad's depression. My mom's burden. Our struggle to stay. I saw my mom with bags of groceries fighting the crowd when Alex and I walked through Chinatown. I saw my dad walking back home on Van Ness Avenue as Alex and I drove down the busy street. I saw myself hanging around the Marina district as Alex and I ate dinner there. Bits of the past were flying towards me, overwhelming me. I didn't know how to deal with them. I didn't know how to deal with memories I didn't want to remember. I felt like I was being sucked back into the past, except I now knew how different life could be beyond the past. I felt like I was thrown back to live those seven years again, except I now knew the conclusion of that life.

As I revisit each part of my old familiar grounds, I realized how far I had gone since I left. This time, I went back as an adult. This time, I was visiting instead of coming back home. I guess at some point during these eight years, I left my San Franciscan home, and left my San Franciscan heart.

Our Lawn

Part of the headache (or joy) of owning a house is dealing with the lawn. I've always heard people complain about lawns and yardwork, but until I (or Alex) had to deal with it, I never thought much of it. The last weekend Alex and I spent a good afternoon outdoors taking care of our lawn.

In the one month that Alex was in California, the grass on our lawn has been growing as if it's on steroids. Originally we bought a manual push mower to mow the lawn since we really didn't have much grass. When Alex came back and noticed how tall our grass has grown, he decided that manually mowing this was just not going to work. It would take us weeks to complete the work, and by the time we're done, we would have to start all over again.

So we bought an gasoline powered mower. It's kind of funny that we're dealing with all of this right now. It almost feels like we are two kids playing house, pretending to be grown-ups. It still feels surreal sometimes that I own a house and I have to worry about things like the lawn, or weeds, or leaky roofs. I don't know when I will actually feel like a 100% adult, but I have not gotten there yet. Maybe when I turn 30 I will feel like one.

Never knew I had so much to say about lawn mowing. Enjoy the pictures!

My First Resignation

A month of working at that online-retail-giant-named-after-a-South-American-river, I am ready to say goodbye to it. It's been kind of a disappointment to me so far. Before joining, this company is one I've had my eyes on for quite a while. I applied right after graduating from college, but I didn't do well on the interview so I didn't get the job. When Motorola announced our layoffs, I decided to try again. This time, with more experience, I got in without much trouble. I was thrilled when I got the offer. So thrilled that Alex said he's never seen me this happy.

Well, a month into the job and I'm not so happy anymore. I now understand why a lot of people warned me about this company and why the turnover rate is so high here. Two words: it sucks. Well, at least for me it does. I took an SDET (Software Development Engineer - Test) role here because test development is where I want my career to go. I like building test infrastructures and enjoyed my assignments as an SDET at Motorola. The SDET position here seemed like a perfect fit for me. I would be doing Java development, which I have been doing for the past several years, and I would be doing test development, which is something I want to pursue further. Well, a month in and I am doing Java development and I am doing test development. I should be happy right? Not quite. One huge aspect of my job I didn't really consider was the team participation part. My company does not put much emphasis on Quality Assurance, at all. Because of this, most SDETs here work alone or consult developers when tackling testing problems. I am one of the few lucky people here who get to test an entire product by myself.

That should get me trained plenty, having to do everything by myself, right? In a way, it would teach me a lot of things. For example, I would have to do all sorts of testing that I've never done before, like stress and load testing. But in another way, it's teaching me the wrong way to do things. Because of their lack of direction on testing, everything here is somewhat "hacked". So essentially, I would just be creating a bunch of little projects here and there to solve temporary testing problems. I wouldn't be able to build a test infrastructure, or at least learn how to build one. Because of their lack of emphasis on testing, I have no one to learn from, no one to consult with on the subject of testing. There is no test architect to guide the general direction of testing, and there is no team members to consult with about how to test a feature. I would very much like to become a test architect at some point, but I am way too inexperienced as of now to take on that role.

The culture of this company is also a sore point. Because they're a retail company, they have very very low profit margin. They don't have the financial resources as say Microsoft or Google, who mark up their products quite a bit. For this reason, they must operate efficiently and cheaply. That means that everything has to be done quickly and new features have to be out much faster than normal so they can attract customers. There's always a trade-off between delivering products quickly versus delivering a quality product. When a product is shipped quickly, quality usually suffers. When a product is shipped with top-notch quality, it usually isn't delivered that fast. This company values shipment date much much more than product quality. They provide a free service for online retailing, customers don't have to pay to use it. It's okay if a bug or two is found, as long as customers can find what they're looking for. But it's not okay if they lose a potential group of customers because they did not deliver a new service quickly. As a result, their services are usually released in lightning speed but with lots of bugs. To remedy the bug situation, instead of prolonging the release period and hire more staff to test it, they make their developers go on-call to handle any crisis.

So after a month, my position here has become "just a job". It is just the wrong fit for me. As a result, I will soon be quitting this job and moving onto another company who values quality a lot more - Microsoft. I know, I know, it's the devil. But hey, for a career in test development, Microsoft is the place to be. My stint at this company will be short, but I rather leave a bad impression here than waste my time doing something I don't like doing here. I haven't told my boss here yet as I'm still waiting for Microsoft to take care of my visa. I am dreading the conversation with my boss but I can't wait to get it over with.

I can't wait to quit.

My Employment Stress

It's been a crazy and stressful month, to say the least. The ax fell two weeks ago and my worst fear was realized. I got laid off. The company 5% staff reduction (rumored to be much more than 5%) affected pretty much all of our office. Our corporate VP flew into Seattle two weeks ago to discuss "future business plans". In reality, she flew in with an entourage of HR staff to reduce her staff. Out of almost 100 employees in the office, only 23 were left after the reduction. Development, test, program management, and several other departments were all wiped out, completely. Although most of us saw this coming, it was still shocking to watch them "clean the house". All of a sudden, all that we had worked for was no longer relevant. The deadlines, the pressure, and the commitments all disappeared with one announcement.

I had never been laid off before, so all this was new experience to me. I had, however, watched former co-workers get laid off at Infowave when I was a co-op there. I have to say now that watching somebody get laid off is entirely different from being laid off myself. When the announcement was first made, when I first got the little purple folder which contained my severance information and whatnot, I was almost relieved to hear the news. Maybe I had been anticipating it for too long and it felt nice to finally know something concrete. At least now I knew I no longer had a job instead of not knowing whether I would have one tomorrow. It was satisfying just to know my fate, instead of waiting for it to unfold.

That satisfaction, however, did not last long. Motorola gave us two weeks of grace period to basically wrap things up and look for a new job. But I knew in two weeks I would be out of a job. The consequences were greater than having no income for me. I am in the U.S. on a work visa. Without employment, I technically cannot stay here. Suddenly, all these problems started to weigh in on me. Loss of a job, visa problems, mortgage payments...since when was I supposed to know how to solve these problems. I remember my mother solving these kinds of problems not long ago. When had the torch been passed on to me?

But in life, there is no time to ponder, no time to question, no time to doubt. There is only time to accomplish, to "do". Before the layoff announcement was official, I kind of saw the storm coming and started applying to some jobs already. After the official announcement, all I could do was keep applying and preparing myself for those dreaded technical interviews.

Perhaps the experience of applying for co-op jobs during the Dotcom bust is still haunting me, but I worried constantly that I wouldn't find a job, I wouldn't get my visa renewed, and I would leave the country. I don't know how my mother did it all these years, weathering all these setbacks and hardships in life, but now that I am getting a taste of it, I know it's not easy. Nevertheless, aside from the stress of unemployment, the search for new employment also brought about a sense of excitement. After working at Motorola for close to two years, I was growing a little bored of my job. It was exciting to think about working in different companies such as Amazon or Google, companies that I've also longed to work for.

To find out more, read the next post. :)