Work on Nick Wang

Road to Entrepreneurship is Long and Lonely and Full of Stress

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 08:54:33 +0000

The development of my site has hit a slight delay due to the developer I had hired is taking a 2 weeks vacation. I’m taking this chance to start entering some contents and check out the inner workings of Drupal. But it is putting some extra stress on me due to the progress of the project being stagnant. Recently, I’ve also started talking to my acquaintances whom I want to recruit to become my business partners. This basically means I have to “sell” my business idea / model to them. I’m definitely not a good sales person, so this is kind of tough for me. One of the people I talked to is my college friend who has been working at Microsoft since he graduated, switching from technical I.T. roles to marketing roles. So, he can help cover some business skills that I don’t possess. It was really hard selling to him, and I know he still isn’t completely sold yet, but I know if I get him to believe in my business and get him on board, he will be able to sell it 15 times better than I do! :) Besides, I totally understand his position as I had also been a satisfied employee at a major US technology company. I liked my job and although both he and I wanted to work on our own business, we were reluctant to give up our good jobs. Anyway, one interesting thing that he told me to beware of is to “not under-estimate the stress of having no full-time job”. It turns out his sister had tried her hands on starting her own business with her boyfriend, and during that time, they had received a lot of stress from the people around them. Unfortunately, I didn’t need him to tell me about that, as I am already suffering from a lot of stress from my family. This reminds me of a recent interview of a web entrepreneur in the US, he had had success with his previous web business and is now starting a new one, yet even with his experience, he said on some days, when it seems like there are absolutely no progress at all, he would still question himself… “What am I doing? Why isn’t it going anywhere?!”… That’s pretty close to what I’m feeling now too. At a time like these, when everyone around you is pressuring you to give up and “just find a job”… all you can do is to re-evaluate your vision… believe in the path you’ve chosen and continue to execute your plan!! It’s not easy, in fact, I can tell you I feel like SHIT right now! It’s definitely a lot easier to “just find a job” and become a “gear” within a machine again and do your 9 to 6. It really pains me to have the people close to me not believe in me and would rather have me submit to a 9 to 6 because of the pressure they feel from other people… Other people who doesn’t even know shit about me and my plans!!! But there’s nothing we can do about this. We all look at the world with our own set of values and we also judge other people based on that. You can’t win over everybody, and you don’t need to explain yourself to everybody. All you can do is stay focus on your vision, believe in yourself, work hard, network with the right people… and just NEVER GIVE UP! This is how all successful empires are built throughout history! As I get closer to launch, I can feel that things are within my grasp… yet at the same time, there are so many more things that can be expanded on… I can see the possibilities that will open up eventually as the business grow and expand. But for now, from my experience in Project Management, I know better than to lose control of the existing plan. I’m staying focused on launching with the foundation and features as planned on my functional requirements.

How to Identify and Hire Good People

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 09:04:32 +0000

Management that view their people as replaceable “gears” within a machine seems to be the norm these days, but that only applies to low level, mundane jobs that can be handled by robots. Obviously, this shouldn’t be applied to software developers. I would even argue that within any level of a company, it is crucial to recognize and keep your “Grade A” workers! I think I read about this in one of those Harvard Business books, a “Grade A” worker is not only more productive himself, but he also increases the productivity of those that work around him! In the case of a developer, various studies have shown that good developers can be between 10 to 20 times more productive than poor developers! But before we get to the part on how to keep them, the question should be… how to identify them during interviews and hire them?! That’s the question that bothered me the most. A few years back, when Yahoo!’s stock was doubling every few months and we were hiring like crazy, I read a book that gave me some interesting tips on how to do that. It’s really common-sense stuff actually… First, as the person hiring, you need to identify the characteristics you expect in the person you want for the job, and develop an interview technique that will test for these characteristics. Design some questions that can highlight the desired qualities of the candidate and have HR use those questions instead of their stock ones.

If time allows, after HR and someone from the hiring department had interviewed a candidate, a good next step for potential candidates is audition. Have the candidates present on a topic for 10 - 15 minutes in front of those they are likely to be working with if hired. This is also a good time to ask those theoretical / IQ questions and let the candidate think out loud. Give your team a checklist of questions also can help them focus on specific aspects of the candidate’s performance. Here, if candidates are not going to fit well with the team, it doesn’t matter how good they are, they won’t be productive and may actually decrease the productivity of the team! Finally, if auditions are not possible, instead of just sitting across a table and ask questions, work with them at a whiteboard! Walk them through some standard scenarios at work and ask them how they would solve the problems. Start with easy ones and increase the level the difficulty, note the level of problem at which they start to have trouble and how they handle it! For developers, have problems that test implementation-level, design-level, and analysis-level thinking. Both the audition and whiteboard sessions are looking for the ability to think, learn and adapt, more than just the experience or knowledge in a specific field. Hopefully, after these 3 to 4 steps, you’ve identified a few good candidates and also, those candidates will have a good impression of your company due to a good interview process. Once you’ve gotten your good people, a manager’s next challenge is to not lose them! :D LOL… May be I’ll write about that later…

太子英文會話，電腦，保習～香港，九龍，油尖旺

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 21:21:16 +0000

My first post in Chinese!! (Well… the title anyways…) This is basically a test of how good my site is optimized for search engines (SEO), or rather, how poorly are Chinese sites out there optimized. :P It’s not just a test for SEO though, I do want to tutor (English and Computer / Technology) and get a little income on the side… Education is part of my interest too… besides working on my “environmentally conscious restaurant menus” site, I am also looking into working something out with online learning. One of my favorite online learning site is JapanesePod101.com, I discovered it when I got my first iPod (5.5G Video… Yes, I didn’t think iPod was “ready” until it hit this generation!), and I had listened to it everyday for over a year when I was commuting to and from the Yahoo! office in New York. I absolutely loved (still do) their podcasts and it had definitely improved my Japanese skills by multiple folds! Because of it, I was able to engage in interviews in Japanese over the phone with one of the managers from Yahoo! Japan!! Even after I stopped listening to it (due to lifestyle changes), I still retained so much of what I had learned that I was able to score very close to a passing score on a mock JLPT Level 2 exam. (which from what I was told, is harder than the actual exam!) Once I’ve launched my current project, I will try to see if I can work something out with Jpod101 and may be create an EnglishPod101 for Hong Kong. Phew… long story… anyways… if you are interested in hiring me for tutoring, then please contact me at 6603-6127, or email clone {dot} of {dot} snake {at} gmail {dot} com, or simply leave a comment below. My name is Nick. A brief summary of myself if you haven’t read any of my other posts on this blog, I was born in Hong Kong, spent my high school / college years in the US, worked for internet giants like Microsoft MSN.com and Yahoo.com after I graduated. I just moved back to Hong Kong in beginning of this year after 16 years of absence, currently working on my own web project, hoping to create something meaningful with my life / time, (because life isn’t just about work and making money)… I hope to create something that Hong Kong people can be proud of to called their own.

Comments

suishoo — 2008-06-17 04:24:53

that’s interesting, i thought that podcast only has basics with lots of english. hm, i’ll try it.

Interesting insight into Crowdsourcing at App?e, from their Asia regional Head of Web Marketing

Tue, 20 May 2008 11:04:57 +0000

Since the planned move to Japan has been delayed to possibly the end of the year, I have started to send my resume out to local recruiters since early May. Almost immediately, I was contacted for a possible new role at App?e Asia. Hint: App?e is a fruit. The company is a major consumer electronics company which I have recently become quite fond of. So I was happy to learn from my recruiter that they were planning to add a new role in marketing + data analysis, and they are interested in my skills. The phone interview from Singapore went very well, we actually started by chatting about current events, how we each felt about the recent Olympic torch relay, the worldwide demonstrations and the Chinese nationals’ reactions. I told him that I found it sad that during the relay in Hong Kong, the crowds booed and yelled at and forcibly tried to stop a small group of protesters trying to raise concern for human rights in Tibet. Also, I found it ironic that Chinese nationals who grew up watching and reading state owned media / propaganda, are now protesting that Western media are “twisting the truth about Tibet to slander China”. (I should stop here, else I’ll go on for hours!) So anyway, this company is hugely popular all over the world, but it doesn’t have any official stores in the Asia region, hence the need to web marketing as they are selling through their online stores. We spoke briefly about the company’s need for marketing data and my past experience, and things seemed to match up quite well. So well that we could move on and talk about other things again. I told him about my interests in conservation and the environment, and how I’m trying to create a web community that will help steer customers to environmentally friendly restaurants. He asked me if I think App?e is a company that is environmentally friendly! Honestly, I think the company has a great image, but I don’t know how serious they are about being “good” to the environment. I also said that at this point in time, this whole “green” thing has turned into somewhat like a political tool. It is now bad for your company if you are not “green”! Next, I told him about my research into Crowdsourcing, I explained to him what it is and I told him about my friend Nishiyama-san’s company in Japan. I was really excited because I think App?e customers are known to be quite passionate about the company, and I thought we could really utilize crowdsourcing here to harness the power of their fan base to help the company! This is where it got interesting for me! He told me that although their company’s image seem to be quite open and innovative and user friendly… the fact is, (and we all know it), it is actually quite tyrannical. They like to keep things proprietary, controlled. Part of the reason is because it is run by the founder of the company, and whenever you have a company founder, it is hard to wrestle the control away from him. So, he basically told me, although it would be nice to have their fans help design their future products, it will most likely not happen any time soon. When I thought about the possibility of working at App?e, I was really excited about how I could get an inside scoop and make more connections for a possible partnership with Cuusoo.com in the future. His response just showed me that it may not be so easy for Cuusoo.com to break into some of these “old style” corporations. Still, I told him that although App?e may not officially embrace customer participation… as part of marketing, it is still good to utilize your fan base to help evangelizing. Besides, crowdsourcing isn’t restricted to just official products, at the minimum, we can still provide “official feedback” to crowdsourced designed after market products! We ended our ran overtime conversation with my view of an ideal role, their “not so sure if this position will materialize” (budget?), and more save the planet, use less plastic bag talks. (He mentioned that Ikea started charging for plastic bags and its usage dropped by 80%! That sure was impressive, and I would highly suggest supermarkets do the same, however, I think the typical Ikea customer only has to roll their shopping cart to their cars, so shopping bags are really quite useless! I doubt supermarkets can achieve the same results. Still, even a drop of 30% is better than nothing yeah?) Seems like all the jobs that can get me excited are not based in Hong Kong… sigh… Hong Kong… don’t you have anything exciting to offer?

Comments

data — 2008-06-06 11:01:02

can’t agree more with your last statement. and i am thinking of making a crowdsourcing site for freelancers in hong kong.

admin — 2008-06-16 11:50:31

What kind of freelancers? I’m interested to know anyone doing anything related to crowdsourcing in Hong Kong! Do give me some details…

Hong Kong only cares about money, lacks innovation

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 11:38:14 +0000

(Rant!) Generally speaking, that is. I’m sure there are some innovators in Hong Kong too, but from what I can see, Hong Kong people and businesses can be summarized in the following few points:

Most people either work in (or want to work in) banks, insurance, or sales
Most people only care finding a job that makes more money
People would spend that money in foreign brand name goods
Local goods are seen as “cheap” and therefore can only command a low price
Businesses are either small retail shops, textile manufacturing in Chna, or cell phone / mobile phone, laptop covers (they have covers for everything!) (Sarcasm)

It’s really quite sad. Today, I went to meet with a company’s owner whom I thought may be a good local partner for future web development and retail supply logistic. However, I was disappointed to learn that he really doesn’t have a direction for this company. His main concern seems to be to just hang on to their biggest client, and continue to support their intranet, which they developed.

I don’t know if it’s a Chinese thing, but I get the feeling that as a race, we really need to learn some basic economics - “Supply & Demand”… It seems like all Chinese people know to do is to “be cheap”! Sell shit as cheap as possible!! Anyway, here in Hong Kong, designers really have it tough! My wife was a talented accessories designer in New York. She commanded a salary of US$ 70+K / year and could singlehandedly design an entire line of handbags for each season, from start to finish, including flying to Hong Kong to work with the manufacturers. Now however, even though the company she worked for wants her to continue to work for them after she moved to Hong Kong permanently, they don’t want to pay her a US salary anymore! The fact is, American companies are used to hiring people in Hong Kong for less than HKD 15000 a month (roughly US$1900 a month, or $23K a year!!) That’s the typical salary for an experienced designer in Hong Kong! So, even though my wife will be doing the same thing as she did in New York, those companies will not pay her the same salary, simply because the market rate is low like dirt! Why does it have to be this way? Why are untalented designers in New York getting paid as much as $90K a year, while designers in Hong Kong, which often have to come up with designs themselves, plus fix the sketches from New York designers to make them work, then travel to factories in China to do some of the tougher designs hands on, work late and work on Saturdays… only to get paid 1/4 or 1/5 of their New York counterpart?! Before I leave Hong Kong, I hope to do something good for the locals. Hong Kong doesn’t have any big internet destination like the Amazon.com for shopping, or tripadvisor.com for travels… currently, I’m thinking of creating a good, Chinese / English bi-lingual travel & food community based on Drupal. (Drupal 6 possess that localization options, but the problem is most of the modules are not ready for D6 yet.) Chinese people are notorious for eating all sorts of shit, and personally, I am against people drinking Shark-fin soup. I hope to create a registry to take advantage of the current “environmentally conscious” market, to hopefully drive business to restaurants that complies to international conservation laws of efforts. Hopefully, I can create something meaningful and benefits our planet. That, to me, means so much more than just creating wealth for myself.

Comments

Angus Lau — 2008-05-09 23:08:32

Hi nice to meet you. Couldn’t agree more with your post, but there is a small group of web entrepreneurs here, so send me an email when you get a chance and lets hook up.

Environmentally Friendly, Sustainable food supplies - Crowdsourcing meets Food meets Travel | My Journey to Japan — 2008-05-29 00:36:52

[…] mentioned before, I am creating a product that Hong Kong people can be proud of - a community to help people make environmentally friendly choices on food. I have spoken with some business partners and friends and we are all very excited about the […]

Developing Crowdsourcing Community with Drupal

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 12:34:34 +0000

In the recent months after I’ve moved to Hong Kong, I’ve been working with my former school mates from College to revamp their existing e-commerce pet apparel store and to launch a new business. For that purpose and in preparation for my new role in Tokyo, I’ve been devoting my time to 3 things, 1) learning to develop web sites with Drupal, 2) catching up with the latest SEO (Search Engine Optimization) topics and 3) brushing up on project management skills I learned and used at Yahoo. This post will be about part 1 - Drupal. I had learned of Drupal a few years ago, I was looking for an open source CMS to be used at work internally as an information sharing portal, and Drupal caught my attention because it received support from Google! I didn’t pick it at that time because it didn’t fulfill our functional requirements. However, I did tested it out and honestly, I found it “not very user-friendly”. It was obviously aimed more toward web developers than the regular Joe. What I realized was this: if you just want an easy to use web site to put up contents for yourself and your friends and family, then Drupal is not for you! (Use wordpress instead.) If you’re a business however, and you’re looking for quickly building a highly customizable, highly scalable web site, then use Drupal!

It’s obvious to me that being skilled in Drupal is actually a valuable asset on a personal level, and choosing to use Drupal is a major advantage for probably 80% of the businesses out there! However, I don’t know if it’s because of its weird name or something… it’s quite hard to convince people to pay attention to Drupal! When I try to garner interests in my friends, most of them would ask “What does Drupal do? Why is it good?” Hopefully, this “Implementing Drupal” video from Google Tech Talk can save me from repeating myself again! orz So, how am I going about learning Drupal? I’m not a web developer, although I am knowledgeable in PHP, Perl, Apache and Linux/Unix… I’m mainly a database guy. So, the whole web design AND development thing is quite a challenge for me. One of my bad habit is that I always like to do thing perfectly! I can see far into a “goal”, how a web site should look like and function… so, I want to do everything perfectly! The problem with this is of course, it’s not easy (if not close to impossible)! For example, with this wordpress blog, I learned to theme it with CSS until I feel that all the colors and layout is perfect! Luckily, that wasn’t too hard. With Drupal however, it’s a different story! I started with reading the Pro Drupal Development book by John VanDyk & Matt Westgate. After the first few chapters of learning how Drupal works internally, writing a few simple modules (or add-ons) to it, I realized this book isn’t what I need at that point in time! The best way to learn any web technologies is to get it up and running! I need to set something ASAP, start migrating some content to it from one of my existing web sites, and just run with it. However, this first step was still a necessity, as I needed to know, on a high level, how Drupal works. I always like to get a grasp on the nuance or “bigger picture” of whatever needs to be done. This way, I can make meaning out of it and delegate work to my team accordingly. So, next, I looked for theming tutorials. (I like my sites to look pretty!) I found excellent resources at Drupal’s theme guide, the Zen theme, and The Art Lab’s Drupal School podcasts. At this time, Drupal 6 was released, it has improved a little bit in terms of User Experience. I switched to it and looked up The Smashing Magazine for web design tips with Photoshop. I was able to create a pretty cool theme in a couple of days. And then… I realized… I can’t even post some contents in formats that I want! After doing some research, I realized that there are a few modules that are almost CRITICAL to any Drupal installs, (in fact, the power of Drupal lies with its vast library of modules!) Sadly, these moduels are not available for Drupal 6 yet!! So, I went back to my Drupal 5.7 sandbox. Installed CCK, Views and Imagefield… etc, and that’s where I am at right now… learning to create custom content types and views within Drupal. (This is part of the reason why just a vanilla Drupal install looks so boring… its basic content types - blog post, page, forum… they are all too basic and look exactly the same! BORING!!) It’s also at this time that I found this article about New York Observer (the newspaper) had migrated their web site to Drupal. The hired professionals to do this, and it is a prime example of how hard Drupal can ROCK if you know how!!!!

Private: Tokyo U Studies is Fail, but Work in Tokyo is Go

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 08:36:34 +0000

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Denial Letter from Todai :(, originally uploaded by cloneofsnake.

This is the letter I got back from the University of Tokyo. Yes, after months of research and preparation and writing that long ass research proposal, this simple 2 liners is what I got. “Sorry, you didn’t pass.” As I’ve noted before, I found out that they had removed the English info page for the foreign research student program in December. That already gave me a signal that they really are not ready to accept anyone… except may be the Monbusho scholarship receivers. So, I’m not too surprised. That was back in end of December. After that, I moved on to plan B, moved to Hong Kong to work with a couple of my college schoolmates on a web business. Also trying my hands on the local HK job market, but HK is a strange place… it values nothing other than Finance. My choices here are either work at an investment bank’s IT department and make tons of money but be bored to death, or go on my own starting a business. There is very little to choose from in between, there isn’t any large Internet companies that value high level IT folks and willing to pay a fair amount for them. (I guess everyone can easily get cheaper IT people in China.)

However, the good news for me is, back in February, I was contacted by one of friends whom I had met in New York, and whom had helped me tremendously with my applications to Monbusho and Todai. It turns out, his company is preparing to expand to the US / English market and he’s in the process of recruiting experienced IT professionals like myself. This is why networking is so important folks! Throughout the years, I’ve enjoying knowing and working with a lot of talented people. I am always interested in knowing what they do, what are their personalities, what are they good at? Because I know, one day, I’ll need their help or I’ll know someone that’s looking for someone with some specific skills, and I can hook them up. This is professional networking. For example, in this instance, my friend here found me, and I’m already looking at my list of professional friends… whose skills will I need? There’s an Associate Manager of Strategic Partner Development at Google, who used to be a Business Operations Analyst at Yahoo. She was extremely good at explaining to our customers how our business was helping them. (using data that I provided her.) She can really help out on communications. There’s an experienced Marketing Director who used to work for Microsoft and has since moved on to greener pastures. She can surely give us good advices in marketing. There’s an advertisement editor at Google/Youtube who could help on the ins and outs of advertising. A long time friend of mine who went to Cal Tech, and is now a Senior Mechanical/Manufacturing Engineer at General Motors. A manager of Corporate Social Responsibility at Burberry, who knows a lot of people and is definitely a good person to have in the current “environmentally conscious” corporate world. A multi talented designer from France. An I.T. security expert. Numerous talented developers and engineers…. etc. All of these people play a part in my plan for the future of the US expansion of this Japanese company! Really looking forward to this challenge! Next time, will update this blog on my recent studies on Drupal and web development.

Comments

admin — 2008-04-10 09:53:21

Azad!!! Whassup bro?!!! Congrats on the planned marriage! LOL… (wonder how lil’ bro is doing w/ his kid…) Man! Your biz is doing good enough for u to move to Hawaii huh?! That’s awesome! Dude, I have so much to talk to u about! I’ve lined up this opportunity in Tokyo, I’ll manage their expansion into the US market! May reach out to you if the owner is interested in the Latin America market. I’m really excited about this opportunity! His business is revolutionary! And my goal is to help it become a household name!!! Also been working with new web marketing firms in HK and Japan, I’ve been thinking how I can connect you to them… Let’s talk about the details over the phone! Jose IM’ed me last month, not sure how he’s doing though. Dude, how much tax u have to pay for last year? I paid that shit load for my Yahoo stock options, but could only get $7000 back from uncle Sam… Shit! LOL

AZ from Yahoo!NY — 2008-04-10 00:59:58

Hey there Nicky-James, wow, so this is what you have been up too, hiding in HK huh! Man, I miss you bro and all your old nintendo games. How’s life in HK? I still live in NY and business is doing great. Never went back to 9-5. Actually, my gf and I are looking into getting married and may be moving to Hawaii. I’m just waiting to settle a few biz stuff. Heard from Jose? How are your wife n family doing? Email me. Peace and Prosperity

Last Day at Yahoo! Farewell email from my manager

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 21:50:46 +0000

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04 My Yahoo Cubicle, originally uploaded by cloneofsnake.

Last Friday was my entire team’s last day at Yahoo! It has been a fun ride… My professional life has grown exponentially during my 5+ years of service there, and the main reason why I was able to achieve so much was because I was lucky enough to report to Phil Eisenberg for the first 3 years I was there. I’m forever grateful for having the opportunity to work with him.

On Friday, Phil came over to chat with us and also to me individually. (We had kept in contact over the past 2 years even if we weren’t working together anymore.) Before I left for the day, I sent out my farewell email to the remaining few old timers that still remain, and Phil replied with something that I thought would be great reference material to put on my LinkedIn profile.

\

—– Forwarded Message —-
From: Phillip Eisenberg
To: Nicholas Wang
Sent: Friday, June 15, 2007 6:19:23 PM
Subject: RE: Farewell

Nick,

Thank you for all your contributions through the years. You certainly made me look good as we grew the data quality department and made my job easier and many others as well. I hope you got as much out of the experience of working together as I did.

Good luck with your future endeavors and don’t be shy about going after what you want. I have worked with many talented folks over the years and you are very high on that list, so never doubt your abilities.

Keep in touch and let me know if you ever need anything.

Regards,

Phil\

I have to write something back as a token of appreciation. Fortunately, it will be very easy, as I had started documenting a list called “Management 101” during my days reporting to Phil. He is like a “wise old man” that leads by example, except he’s not old. :) I filled 3 pages of the word document with things I’ve learned from him!! I’ll be using that to write him a recommendation on LinkedIn.

I guess I’ll post that document here too, so check back later for “Management 101 from Phil”! :)

Monbukagakusho - the reason why I decided to go to Grad school in Japan

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 00:57:22 +0000

I’ve only just learned of this awesome Japanese government scholarship from my sister recently, after I told her that I’m being laid off. My sister was lucky enough to have done 2 exchange programs to Japan, once when she was in high school, she spent a summer in Kagoshima, Kyuushu. The second was in her last year in college, she went for a whole year at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo. It was at Aoyama where she met people who was on the Monbukagakusho (Monbusho for short) scholarship. I’m a typical elder child in the house. I studied boring subjects in college, got myself stable jobs at Microsoft and Yahoo! Never strayed far from the planned path. When my sister got to do the summer home stay in Kagoshima, I was quite jealous of her. I never chose to have any fun in school, all I thought about was picking the “right” courses to prepare myself for a career in the computer industry. I really wished I had taken chances to relax and do something crazy. Now, I’ve just passed the big 30 mark. (and by just, I mean more than a year ago :P) I finally have enough skills and experience under my belt to make me feel safe. I begin to think about stepping out of the “stable zone”… doing the “crazy” stuff. I’ve had some crazy ideas, one was to make films about sharks. I love sharks! And I fucking hate Chinese people for eating shark fins! I wanted to put some bogus research on film saying that shark fins are cancerous! So they would stop eating shark fins! Yes, the idea is bat shit crazy!:D

Some more realistic ones include a few web based businesses that I’m trying to put into motion now, and finally, going to Japan… I hadn’t really thought about this one, but once my sister told me about the scholarship, I did some research… and now I’m not quiting until I am there! Monbukagakusho (文部科学省) literally stands for “Literature, Science, Ministry”. Their English name is Ministry of Education,culture,sports,science and technology (MEXT). They have been inviting international students to study in Japan at state expense since 1954. I got most of the information from this website, there are seven types of Japanese government-sponsored scholarships available - research students, teacher training students, undergraduate university students, Japanese studies students, college of technology students, special training students and YLP students. The only one that I can apply for is the “Research Students” one. When I read the qualifications, it really hit me hard!

You must be under 35 years of age and a college graduate (includes prospective graduates). Or you must have completed 16 years of schooling.

Must be under 35 years old… that’s like saying to me, “you’re almost too old to make a change in life!” It really got me thinking! Where am I in life? Like I said before, if I have child support and a mortgage to pay, I probably would’ve looked for a new job already. Even if I spend a little time opening my own web business, I can imagine I’ll be back in corporate America’s death grip within 1 ~ 2 years. So do I want that? My answer is no. I think I want to work for an American company, but I don’t want to work in the US anymore. Getting this scholarship and going to grad school in Japan will allow me to achieve that goal. So, I applied. The results? That’s for a later post. (Hint: FAILURE!!)

Comments

David — 2007-06-30 01:13:02

Hey Nicholas, I have the same dream you’re pursuing at the moment. I’m still wondering why? though… Let me tell my story, perhaps we’ll meet up later in tokyo… my story is kinda weird, once I finished my bachelor I thought there was something missing in my life, I was kinda nerdy guy, pretty good at math I guess you can imagine how i look like… Anyhow, pretty much a tedious life I had, So I decided to live my country as soon as I got my diploma ( 我是哥倫比亞人 I guess having taiwanese family you got used to Chinese :p ) and I went to Montreal to improve my language skills, I spent a great time over there, every night was a blast, as i was in private language center as communication drills they had different events every night… well… time was gone I had again to move on… as I found an opportunity to go to Taiwan, I swear I didn’t think twice, just to get the experience, as I gotta admit I had good times over there, even though at the beginning it was hard time to me, I didn’t speak mandarin and my only weapon was my broken English… Once sucks of everything I enrolled me in a language center to learn the language… I had good times, but when I thought twice and reflecting about life I figured out there was still something else missing, perhaps I understood in taiwan that, no matter how good you speak the language or you know the customs always you will be a 外國人, anyhow I was having a good time, so I thought for a long while better, that I needed to keep growing in the professional field ( By the way I admire you, having worked in such a famous company, as you can see I’m 24 year old, and still my work experiences are 0.0, I mean real ones… ) back to the track I thought to stay in an asian country for many reason I won’t explain ( I know it sounds funny, but I applied a MICMAC algorithm to take the rightest choice ) well… one back to my country I started to prepare my papers, and it took me 4 weeks to get the papers, recommendation and so on… well, the fact is to my country colombia, there are just 6 scholarships and as far as I know the day i sent the papers ( lacking almost one month more there were applying over 700 hundred people ), Today they are discussing which ones are the fortunates be in the pre selected pool of 50…. if i get any news, I’ll let you know :p wish me lucky, who knows, I don’t wanna tell you bye, But see you there buddy :p

cloneofsnake — 2007-07-09 13:41:36

Did the Japanese Consulate in Columbia told you that there was only 6 scholarships & there were >700 applicants?! Damn!! It looks like you’re really gonna need some luck here! What’s your Japanese language level? It looks like you have a pretty good command of English, and your mother tongue is Spanish, right? I would think that you already have an advantage there, knowing more languages than most in the USA. Let me know how it goes, I hope the info I put up here will help you too.

Failure #1 - getting laid off

Wed, 30 May 2007 22:11:06 +0000

I wonder if I should count it as a failure, as I’m getting a hell of a good deal with the severance package and unused vacation time. Still, I guess when the news was first delivered to our group, I was a little disappointed. Considering that the weeks before I had consistently worked till the wee hours of the night (3-4 am) to meet the needs of the data migration project, and then the next week, we were notified that our positions were to be eliminated! Yeah, we were all a little pissed. In my case, I was offered to either move to California to join our Business Intelligence team, or to take a severance package and leave. Considering that all my stock options are all vested, and the severance means extra cash. I couldn’t find reason why I should continue to stay. I guess a lot of us feel the same way as Yahoo! has been suffering heavily from “brain drainage” in recent years. A lot of old timers had left and joined Google. Well, for me, there was one position that could’ve made me stay, unfortunately, I lack the Japanese Language skills so I didn’t qualify. (That should be failure #1 actually!) So, I happily took the loot and leave! I’ve always wanted to open up a business and work for myself, I kept telling myself to spend some time setting shit up online… but

when you have a full time job, especially one at a well-known company that doesn’t pay half bad… it’s really hard to take that risk and leave that comfortable position! I know quite a few people in Yahoo! and Microsoft who are in the same shoes as I was. I guess we’re all afraid of “change”. Another thing is timing. If I was married with kids to support and a mortgage to pay, I would totally freak and look for another job right away! Luckily for me, I still have the chance to be a little risky. I am getting married soon though! And yes, my fiance ain’t too happy about my decision. I totally understand, if I was her I’d feel insecure too! This is why I was so happy when she gave me her full support. Like I said previously, I don’t know if I’ll be successful or not, all I know is that I can’t give up. I can feel the insecurity too! At times like these, it really means a lot to have your loved ones give you their support! (Thanks!:)) So, here I am, 2 more weeks until my last day, not looking for another job, but aiming to go to grad school in Japan next Spring. Opened this blog to document my journey. Next up, my spectacular failure at getting the Monbusho Scholarship! (Oh it hurts!!)

Japanese Business Intelligence Analyst

Wed, 30 May 2007 21:26:34 +0000

Here’s the job description for the Japanese BI Analyst position. Since I’m leaving Yahoo soon, I contacted the hiring manager as she still hasn’t been able to fill the position yet. The managers who interviewed me and I all agreed that it’s an extremely challenging but fun position. Unfortunately, they are looking for a Japanese person who’s fluent in Japanese. This is the only position that I’m interested in enough that would make me stay with Yahoo. So… I guess it’s time to say good-bye… :(

Position: BI Engineer Location: Santa Clara, CA Job ID: RX1000018910 Job Function: ENGINEERING / INFO. SYSTEMS Department: Intl YST HQ Expense-Site Ops & Streaming Department Number: 505530-120

About Yahoo! The Internet is a big, busy place, and we at Yahoo! are proud to stand out in the crowd. As the world’s number one Internet brand, servicing over a half billion people, we’re determined to maintain our commitment to delivering news, entertainment, information and fun… each and every day.In order to maintain our position as one of the world’s most trafficked Internet destinations, we’re always on the lookout for people with big ideas and big talent to help us provide our visitors with the innovative products and services they’ve come to expect from Yahoo!. We’re looking for people like you. How Big Can You Think? About BU/Product Yahoo! We are looking for a highly motivated experienced talented BI engineer who can take on the challenges of designing next generation analytic data management systems that meet business needs in a fast paced dynamic environment. The scale of the problems at Yahoo exceeds industry standards by an order of magnitude and requires innovative practical solutions using a combination of Yahoo proprietary and industry standard technologies. Job Responsibilities/The Role/The Job We are seeking a BI developer to be part of our Reporting team in Sunnyvale, CA. The BI engineer will provide his/her customers with information and data they need for planning, analysis, and decision-making; work closely with those customers to understand key business drivers behind data requests. He or she will create and maintain database tables, scripts, and reports to support business intelligence across the company. The person in this position would also be required to work closely in collaborative efforts with team members in the Business Information, Strategic Data Services and other technology and business groups. Minimum Job Qualifications * Strong problem solving skills and ability to navigate complicated database relationships and understand how data can best be leveraged to meet customer needs * Takes initiative and able to collaborate in a fast-paced deadline driven environment with multiple priorities * Strong project management and leadership * Oracle, TOAD, and query performance tuning * ETL data process tool, prefer Ascential datastage * Experience working with large transactional and reporting databases (+50M rows daily) * Ability to learn proprietary query language (MyNA) * Bilingual - English and Japanese Preferable Job Qualifications * 2+ years demonstrated experience working as a database developer, performing complex and extensive SQL database queries, and creating and maintaining scripts and tables for Oracle relational databases * 2+ years demonstrated experience developing SQL-based and shell/Perl based aggregation scripts within complex development frameworks * 2+ years demonstrated experience working within Unix environments * Analytical mind * Excellent communications skills * Takes initiative and able to collaborate in a fast-paced deadline driven environment with multiple priorities * Experience with web design, HTML, Dream Weaver * Experience with Microstrategy * Creating/developing reports for end users EEO Statement Yahoo! Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. For more information or to search all of our openings, please visit http://careers.yahoo.com

Comments

Why hadn’t I study Japanese more seriously? « Before I Die — 2007-05-30 22:14:40

[…] Published January 23rd, 2007 Japan , Rant , Work Just spoke with the manager for a Business Intelligence Analyst position I found on Yahoo!’s internal job board. This job is perfect for me! I’ve been working […]

Japanese tutor Thursday night, surprise interview Friday!! « Before I Die — 2007-05-30 22:17:07

[…] from Yahoo! HQ a call again. My thought was, even if she isn’t going to hire me for the Japanese / English Business Analyst, I could still convince her that I possess the right skills, so if she has any other B.I. positions […]

So much to do… so little time… « Before I Die — 2007-05-30 22:19:59

[…] , Rant , Business , Work It has been 2 months since I last interviewed for that Yahoo JP Business Intelligence Engineer position, and they still haven’t found the right person. Proves me right… it’s hard to […]

Japanese Business Intelligence Analyst

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 15:44:15 +0000

Position: BI Engineer Location: Santa Clara, CA Job ID: RX1000018910 Job Function: ENGINEERING / INFO. SYSTEMS Department: Intl YST HQ Expense-Site Ops & Streaming Department Number: 505530-120

About Yahoo! The Internet is a big, busy place, and we at Yahoo! are proud to stand out in the crowd. As the world’s number one Internet brand, servicing over a half billion people, we’re determined to maintain our commitment to delivering news, entertainment, information and fun… each and every day. In order to maintain our position as one of the world’s most trafficked Internet destinations, we’re always on the lookout for people with big ideas and big talent to help us provide our visitors with the innovative products and services they’ve come to expect from Yahoo!. We’re looking for people like you. How Big Can You Think? About BU/Product Yahoo! We are looking for a highly motivated experienced talented BI engineer who can take on the challenges of designing next generation analytic data management systems that meet business needs in a fast paced dynamic environment. The scale of the problems at Yahoo exceeds industry standards by an order of magnitude and requires innovative practical solutions using a combination of Yahoo proprietary and industry standard technologies. Job Responsibilities/The Role/The Job We are seeking a BI developer to be part of our Reporting team in Sunnyvale, CA. The BI engineer will provide his/her customers with information and data they need for planning, analysis, and decision-making; work closely with those customers to understand key business drivers behind data requests. He or she will create and maintain database tables, scripts, and reports to support business intelligence across the company. The person in this position would also be required to work closely in collaborative efforts with team members in the Business Information, Strategic Data Services and other technology and business groups. Minimum Job Qualifications * Strong problem solving skills and ability to navigate complicated database relationships and understand how data can best be leveraged to meet customer needs * Takes initiative and able to collaborate in a fast-paced deadline driven environment with multiple priorities * Strong project management and leadership * Oracle, TOAD, and query performance tuning * ETL data process tool, prefer Ascential datastage * Experience working with large transactional and reporting databases (+50M rows daily) * Ability to learn proprietary query language (MyNA) * Bilingual - English and Japanese Preferable Job Qualifications * 2+ years demonstrated experience working as a database developer, performing complex and extensive SQL database queries, and creating and maintaining scripts and tables for Oracle relational databases * 2+ years demonstrated experience developing SQL-based and shell/Perl based aggregation scripts within complex development frameworks * 2+ years demonstrated experience working within Unix environments * Analytical mind * Excellent communications skills * Takes initiative and able to collaborate in a fast-paced deadline driven environment with multiple priorities * Experience with web design, HTML, Dream Weaver * Experience with Microstrategy * Creating/developing reports for end users EEO Statement Yahoo! Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. For more information or to search all of our openings, please visit http://careers.yahoo.com

Some emails between me and people who interviewed me

Mon, 02 Apr 2007 16:55:32 +0000

From: Nicholas Wang Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 8:33 PM To: xxxxx xx xxxx Subject: RE: RX1xxxx18910 - Business Intelligence Analyst Dear Ms. xxxx, As seen in my email to Mr. xxxx, I am writing to inquire about the bilingual BI Analyst position. From what I gathered in the job posting, the key point to this position is to be able to provide the right data to those customers, by truly understanding their key business drivers. Obviously, in order to do that, this person must first be able to understand the language that the data is in. Once we dove into the data and found the key metrics to measure those key business drivers, this person will create the tables in the data warehouse, set up ETL processes to fill the tables with meaningful conformed data, create reports… etc. Much of these already exists in our U.S. systems, this position is responsible for helping to migrate and implement our knowledge to Yahoo! Japan. I hope I’ve demonstrated that I understand both the business and technology sides of Business Intelligence. Recently, Hotjobs has started creating our own data warehouse while we are migrating our old CRM and web systems into new platforms. I have been actively participating in this process. I am familiar with ETL processes, OLAP databases, and the Business Objects applications. In terms of comprehension of the Japanese language, I am actually the person my Japanese friends would ask to fix their computers. I use a Japanese PDA (which runs Linux) myself. I have always wondered why Yahoo! Japan is so separated from the rest of Yahoo! worldwide. I know they operate as a different company, but Yahoo! users shouldn’t be separated due to that. If this position can help bridge Japan to the rest of the world, then I will be honored to be part of the team that made it possible. Most importantly, I’m eager to work hard to earn my title as a Business Intelligence Engineer. My managers and co-workers here can all be my reference, I would very much like to have the opportunity to conduct an initial phone interview with you if possible. I can be reached at my work phone – xxxxxxxxxx. Please feel free to contact me at any time. Thank you very much for your consideration. Best regards, Nicholas Wang

From: Nicholas Wang Sent: Friday, January 26, 2007 3:33 PM To: xxxxxx xxxxxx Subject: RE: your application for Saturn Y!JP Technical project management position Hi Ms. xxxxxx, Thank you very much for the interview. I have gained a better understand about this position. In summary, this position not only has to extract meaningful data and create reports for Yahoo! Japan, but also to pass on the knowledge that we have accumulate through experience here in the US. We will be educating them on our established processes and helping their front end developers with developing the right “standards”. We will then extract data from the standardized web logs, and create meaningful reports for the PMs in Japan. We’ll help them understand the key metrics, hence they’ll know how to allocate developers’ efforts in order to improve the search experience for the users, and in turn be able to see the results in the reports (and in revenue?). I hope I’ve demonstrated that I have a good background, allowing me to understand both the technical and business issues, and correctly identify the goal of a project. I also hope that my Japanese language skill was proven sufficient enough. I was quite nervous during the conversation, and towards the end, it seemed that my adrenaline rush was fading away and I wasn’t thinking very clearly. It was a very interesting experience. Once again, thank you very much for your time. I look forward to having the chance to speak with the PM and Engineer from Yahoo! Japan. Thank you very much, Nicholas Wang

From: Nicholas Wang Sent: Friday, February 02, 2007 8:01 PM To: xxxxxxxx xxxxx Cc: xxxxxx xxxxxx Subject: RE: Saturn technical position: RX1xxxx18910 - Business Intelligence Analyst Hi xxxxxxxx, 昨日の面接ありがとうございました。今回Yahoo! JPのBusiness Intelligence Analystについて、テクニカルの知識より日本語のほうが難しいですね。オラクルのパフォーマンスチューニングは本が読むならできる、でも言語は年に勉強しなければならないですね。僕にとってデータベースの仕事に興味がある、そして自分がこの仕事に非常にてきしていると思いました。　そう言うわけでデータベースに集中して、せいいっぱい勉強しました。五年前からBusiness Intelligence / Data Warehousing を目指した、 Hotjobs自身のData Warehouseを開発すること楽しみに待っています。実は今回の応募のおかげで、僕はもっと自信を持てるようになりました。もう少しだけだ、僕は必ずBusiness Intelligence Engineerになります。誠にありがとうございました。 Nick

So much to do... so little time...

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 22:06:05 +0000

It has been 2 months since I last interviewed for that Yahoo JP Business Intelligence Engineer position, and they still haven’t found the right person. Proves me right… it’s hard to find someone with that kind of technical skills while being fluent in Japanese. Meanwhile, my other option was to migrate to our own Data Warehouse team…

I called up the manager over in Sunnyvale after my former manager Phil told me that they’re are short on staff and the manager was thinking about bringing in some temps. That’s the problem with our big corporations these days, it happened in my Microsoft days and it’s happening again now. They just can’t hire any full timers. The manager acknowledged that he needed people, and he realized that it would be beneficial for his team to have someone “old school” like me. Yet, in the end, he had to bring in contractors. So… I’m still stuck here in the New York office. I’ve been keeping myself extremely busy though. I haven’t given up on Japanese yet… studying Japanese vocabularies and grammar at night. At work, when I have time outside of the data migration project, I study my new Oracle Architecture book. I’m also going to work with Phil on testing the data integrity of the Data Warehouse, just pending my current manager’s approval. I wish I have more time though, as I still haven’t gotten around to ripping Wordpress apart and learning to turn it into my web businesses. I’ve gotten through its “theme” and learned to manipulate it using CSS, but I’m not interested in it, I wish someone else can handle that shit for me. I will just focus on the backend. I want to finish all 3 tasks ASAP… how do I juggle all 3 tasks at once? I think my top priority is Oracle, as it is needed immediately for the Data Warehouse, and it’s the easiest out of the 3. Japanese will take the longest, in fact, I have the same feeling as one of my language partner… that I’ll never be able to become fluent in it. (Doesn’t mean I won’t try though.) Finally, the website. I’m really slacking off here… this is the one thing that can potentially bring in the most cash for me, but I’m putting it on the back burner… I guess I just need someone to work together … may be I should search for a wordpress user group in New York…

My Reply (Goodbye, my dream job, my chance to fly to Tokyo 4 times a year. (T_T)

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 18:38:24 +0000

From: Nicholas Wang Sent: Tuesday, February 06, 2007 1:21 PM To: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: RE: Saturn technical position: RX1xxxx18910 - Business Intelligence Analyst xxxさん、メールありがとうございます。　質問の答えは下に書きました。　よろしくお願いします。 Nick

________________________________________ From: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Monday, February 05, 2007 7:27 PM To: Nicholas Wang Subject: RE: Saturn technical position: RX1xxxx18910 - Business Intelligence Analyst

はい、僕は日本語の読むことは自信があります。　文法があまりよくないので、うまくかけないと思っていますけど、意味はだいたい分かるを思います。　スピードも問題ないです。

意味をせつめいするとは、英語でですか？ a. しつもんのせつめい： To verify the received URL, we used crawled. When we’re crawling, according to the “noindex” description on the meta tag, we record the information of “cannot index”. We can see the actual page, now there is no description however, do you have any idea what to do? In any case, since I think we’ll crawl one more time tonight, I think I want to wait for that progress. Certainly, since the setting has a 20,000 upper limit, I think we’ll have a better way to deal with it from now on but, the dividing of the feed, and also because it takes some time to involve the settings on this side, if time allows, I think we’ll see the result in tonight’s crawl. どのような回答が期待されている：受信者はどんなふうにその“noindexのページの記述がない”の問題に対処するとの回答が期待しています。 b. しつもんのせつめい： Can we just verify the possibility of making use of only a HTTP basic certification without an ACL? The pros and cons of using nothing but the HTTP basic certification, if it’s possible, I think we can definitely talk a little more with the US about the possible implementation date and, about the methods of quickening from now on. どのような回答が期待されている：これはACLなしのHTTP基本認証の運用で可能かこうかの回答が期待しています。 c. しつもんのせつめい： The handling of personal information by Japanese corporations, the confirmation surrounding the security is very serious. The expectation is that we at least need the operation department’s “OK” with the law, at the current stage, we will escalate through the head of development department. After certification, about the detail process of adding ACL to the server, can I contact you in another email? どのような回答が期待されている：そのセキュリティ周りの認証が大変のことを了解すると、また別メールで連絡するを待っているの回答が期待しています。 d. しつもんのせつめい： Regarding Yfed2, the presently taking place, the result of the test of the one part of GSP’s function upgrade for performance advancement, and the decision to switch over, we also just heard about it this week, therefore, this becomes a last moment communication, we apologize. Regarding the information for the performance advancement, since Mieko has sent a different mail, please reference there. Also, just like we talk about information relating to YFED in the past, if you have any questions regarding the migration to YFED2, please feel free to contact me. どのような回答が期待されている：移行のことを了解すると、ミエコさんのメールがをもらっていたことを確認して、ついにYFED2への移行に関して質問の回答が期待しています。

Comments

So much to do… so little time… « Before I Die — 2007-03-22 22:06:09

[…] and Thoughts and Rant and Business and Work cloneofsnake 10:06 pm It has been 2 months since I last interviewed for that Yahoo JP Business Intelligence Engineer position, and they still haven’t […]

Email from Japanese manager, to be replied in Japanese

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 22:21:32 +0000

Just got this email this morning… No pressure… take your time… except your response time will also be taken into consideration… so hurry up! LOL. I sent the reply by 1:20pm.

From: xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Monday, February 05, 2007 7:27 PM To: Nicholas Wang Subject: RE: Saturn technical position: RX1xxxx18910 - Business Intelligence Analyst Nickさん、インタビューお疲れ様でした。先週約束していた日本語のメールを遅らせていただきます。以下には、いくつかの質問が適宜に欄列しています。実際の仕事内容とは関係ないかもしれませんが、日本語の読み書きの理解力を判断できることを目的としています。お手数ですが、追って日本語でご返信ください。

ヤフー・ジャパンとの連絡方法は、基本的に八割ほどメール連絡となると思いますが、日本語でのメール通信に関しての自信はどれくらいありますか?時間的な要素も含めて返答してください。

技術陣からの質問の例を以下に挙げます。これらの質問の意味と、どのような回答が期待されているのかを説明してください。

a. 頂いたいくつかのURLを確認致しましたが、クロールはされていました。クロールはされているのですが、メタタグに記述されている"noindex"によりインデックスされていないとの情報が記録されています。実際のページを見ますと、現在はそのような記述は無さそうですが心当たりはありますでしょうか？いずれにしろ、今夜もう一度クロールされると思いますので、その経過を待ちたいと思います。確かに設定上2万の制限はあるので、今後対処をしたほうが良いとは思いますが、フィードの分割、及びこちら側での設定で多少時間がかかるので、時間が許すのであれば今夜のクロールの結果を見るのも手かと思います。 b. ACL無しのHTTP基本認証のみの運用で可能かどうかの確認だけでもとれますでしょうか？HTTP基本認証のみの運用の可否、もし可能であれば実装可能日を教えていただけると、早めに今後のやり方についてもう少しUSと具体的に話ができると思います。 c. 個人情報を扱う日本企業は、セキュリティ周りの認証がとっても大変です。せめて事業部単位でOKなように法律がなっればいいのですが、現段階では開発部長経由でエスカレしてもらうことになります。認証後にサーバをACLに追加する詳しい手順に関しては、また別メールで連絡していただけますか？ d. Yfed2に関しては、今期行われているGSPのパフォーマンス向上の機能のアップグレードの一部としてテストした結果、移行が決まったらしいですが、私たちも今週聞いた話だったので、連絡がぎりぎりとなりまして、申し訳ありません。パフォーマンス向上関連の情報はmiekoさんから別途メールが出ていますのでそちらを参照してください。また過去にYFED関連の資料はいっているようですが、YFED2への移行に関してなにか質問などありましたら、連絡してください。また、このメール対応の所要時間も教えてください。よろしくお願いします。 xxx

面接のためにチューターを探しました

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:52:00 +0000

先週の金曜日、ヤーフーHQの日本人マネージャーからemailを貰った（もらう）。　その昼、僕から電話して、日本語で面接試験をさしあげました。　その前の夜、チューターを雇った(やとう)。　一時間のなかに以下の例の言葉を受けたけど、本番の面接の時ぜんぜん使わなかった。

引っ越す　（ひっこします）　to move　
**ー　自己紹介**
　　　　　　　　*つとめーwork*
XX会社　に　勤めております　(名前）と申します。
XX大学　で　XXYY　を　勉強いたしました。
**ー　志望動機(しぼうどうき)　はなんですか？**
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　*はたらくーwork-仕事をする*
(Job Title applied for)　として　働くことは　以前からの目標でした。
(Current Company) で　５年間　(Current Job Title)　として
*まなぶーto learn　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　to utilize*
学んだ　知識と経験を　(Job Title applied for)　として　いかしてみたいと思ったからです。
**ー　長所　・　短所　（ちょうしょ　・　たんしょ）**
　　　　　*ろんり　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　つねにどりょく*
長所は　論理てきで　目標に向かって　常に努力をするところだと思います。
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　*とりくみーeffort, (to handle, to manage?)*
短所は　ひとつの事に　真剣に　取り組みすぎるところです。
**ー　この仕事で何を学びましたか？**
　　　　　*のうりょく*
自分の　能力に　自信を持てるようになりました。
　　*じょうし　　どうりょう　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　たいしょ*
**ー　上司　や　同僚　と　問題がおきたとき、　どう（いうふうに）　対処しますか？**
(no answer to this... too hard)
Finally... Any questions to ask Yahoo JP?
Y!JP　はソフトバンクによってマネージされていると聞きましたが、将来てきに　ほかのヤーフとの融合(ゆうごう）を考えていますか？

チューターのお姉さんは、次のレッソンで尊敬語と謙譲語を教えてで。。。 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_honorifics そして、金曜日の朝、その面接を準備して、いろいろの言葉を書いたんだ：

仕事をしております　・　働いております
検索し　(けんさくし)　・　検索されて出てきます　・　検索しやすくなる為に
建議　（けんぎ）　・　提案（ていあん）
目標に到る　（もくひょうにいたる）　to arrive at goal
ある時
緊張しています　（きんちょう）
正に　（まさに）　correctly
見つける　（みつける）　to detect
解決策　（かいけつさく）　・　解決できる
聞いて　・　ききたくない　to hear, don’t want to hear
作る　・　つくって　・　造っている　・　作ります
使う　・　つかえます　・　使えない　・　使っている
諦める　（あきらめる）　to give up, to abandon
差し上げる　（さしあげる）　to give up, to offer
決まります　・　決まる　・　きまった to be decided, settled
These two came from the interview: きかく - 規格　(standard) ・　企画 (project, planning)

更に、以下の言葉　日本語で　どう言いますか？

My thought was that, this position requires technical skills and Japanese language proficiency. If they can’t find a person with both of these skills, then I’ll have a good chance of getting the job.
“to me”, as in “This job is very important to me.”
I don’t work with “Oracle” every day, so I don’t remember some of its details.

一生懸命（いっしょうけんめい）勉強している。

Comments

Dave — 2007-04-09 01:41:18

Hi, I saw your post on Japanesepod101.com I work in Tokyo and live in Tokyo and honestly, most non-Japanese people here refuse to do business (even if it is for an IT Position) in Japanese. I’ve been studying Japanese for over 9 years and I’ve never taken a JLPT or any crediting exam to show my Japanese level because conducting business in Japanese is risky if you are a non-native speaker. From my personal experience if you misinterpret what your client wants, you may end up losing your job quite quickly. Anyway, if you still are trying to get a job in Japan good luck!

cloneofsnake — 2007-02-02 19:57:39

I bombed the interview with a Japanese engineer… sigh… language is so hard… oh well, here’s my thank you letter to him anyway. Hi Kazuhiro, 昨日の面接ありがとうございました。今回Yahoo! JPのBusiness Intelligence Analystについて、テクニカルの知識より日本語のほうが難しいですね。オラクルのパフォーマンスチューニングは本が読むならできる、でも言語は年に勉強しなければならないですね。僕にとってデータベースの仕事に興味がある、そして自分がこの仕事に非常にてきしていると思いました。　そう言うわけでデータベースに集中して、せいいっぱい勉強しました。五年前からBusiness Intelligence / Data Warehousing を目指した、 Hotjobs自身のData Warehouseを開発すること楽しみに待っています。実は今回の応募のおかげで、僕はもっと自信を持てるようになりました。もう少しだけだ、僕は必ずBusiness Intelligence Engineerになります。誠にありがとうございました。 Nick

Sawako — 2007-01-30 03:15:20

Hey, this is Sawako, one of Julie’s friends. “to me” - 「私にとって」 Just one thing I noticed: it should be「勉強をしました。」over 「勉強いたしました。」B/c you’re talking about yourself, you don’t need to be so polite when conversing. Julie is rooting for you~! She’s a great sister! Good luck!! さわこ

cloneofsnake — 2007-01-30 10:12:20

Thanks Sawako! I’ll take note of the polite forms. Here’s one more I learned just now: 　　しょうらいせい・みぬく・さいよう彼の将来性を見抜いて採用しました！すぐ　　　　　　　　　　　なれる直ぐに”オラクル”の仕事に慣れる構いません　・　かまわない　I don’t mind at all お構わなく　please don’t fuss over me, please feel free Some more random words I learned: 目指す・めざして - aim, shoot for 　　　　　　　　　　　どりょく B.I.を目指して懸命に努力する背景・はいけい - background 選ぶ・えらびます・えらんで・えらばれた - select 応募・おうぼ - application 応募する・応募資格 - apply, application qualification 職業的・しょくぎょうてき - professional 言語・げんご - language 挑む・いどみます・挑みで・挑まない - challenge Thanks to Ariko on this one: “I thought, I would be able to do this job well.” わたしは、自分がこの仕事に、非常（ひじょう）にてきしていると考え（かんがえ）ました。 and here’s what I can say: 僕にとって　データベースの仕事に　興味がある。　そして自分がこの仕事に、非常にてきしていると思いました。　そう言うわけで、データベースに集中して、せいいっぱい勉強いたしました。　そして今の仕事を貰いました。

Japanese tutor Thursday night, surprise interview Friday!!

Sat, 27 Jan 2007 22:28:23 +0000

Well, on Thursday, even though I was a little embarrassed and all, I decided to give the manager from Yahoo! HQ a call again. My thought was, even if she isn’t going to hire me for the Japanese / English Business Analyst, I could still convince her that I possess the right skills, so if she has any other B.I. positions open in the future… etc etc. I called twice, she picked up the phone on the 2nd time, she seemed very busy, typing very fast… I quickly told her about why I had called back, that I had done some research on DataStage, and explained that I have a good understanding of the processes and technology behind it… etc. To my surprise, when I finished, she thanked me and told me that at this point, I’m going to be further interviewed by others, either about the technical stuff, or about my Japanese proficiency! I was shocked! Was I still in the game?

Either way, I’ve already hired the $45/hr Japanese tutor Thursday night. It was cold that night! And I had to walk from 77th & Lex to 75th & 1st to meet her. She didn’t help me much with traditional Japanese interviews, but more like a typical US one but in spoken Japanese. In the end, I basically have a list of typical interview questions and my answers, in Japanese. Friday morning, got to work, opened my Inbox, there it was - Japanese manager from HQ, setting up an interview with me at 1:30!!! I freaked out!!!! HOLY SHIT!!!! TOO SOON!!!! Also, the title of the job wasn’t just a B.I. Analyst, but some Y!JP PM stuff… I went & grabbed a bagel and coffee, then whipped out the notes I got from last night, typed it out, thought about what else I would say to the manager, especially regarding the technical stuff I do at work, looked up any words that I may need to use on the net and on my Nintendo DS. 1:30 came around, I called her from a meeting room… We started in English, talked about the position, she explained to me that it actually requires more than just the back end, technical, querying / reporting generating part… we’ll also need to educate Y! JP, I don’t want to go into details here… Anyway, we then switched to Japanese, she asked me to tell her my work experience since graduating from college, then more in depth about what I did for Yahoo! Hotjobs in the past 5 years. That’s about it… I asked her how was my Japanese, and she said I passed, she asked me how long have I studied Japanese, and I told her 2 years of high school and 1.5 years of college, after that, it’s just talking with friends and watching “dorama”… she laughed at the dorama part. She asked me if I had live in Japan! I said no. Then, she told me that if I go on, the final interview will be with the PM and Engineer from Japan. Oooh boy… Till now, I still can’t believe I did that… I don’t think my Japanese level is good enough… my only hope is that they can’t find a fluent Japanese speaker who has the technical skills that they need. Now, back to studying!!

Oracle, DataStage, Japanese - What I'll do so I can get the job next time!

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 22:56:00 +0000

Since yesterday’s disastrous interview, I seriously thought about what happened, and came up with a plan to address the problems.

Oracle- I need to put Oracle way up there on my resume! Right now, I have SQL Server and MySQL listed. With Oracle, it’s not like I don’t know it, I just don’t work with it everyday. I did create a whole bunch of queries to export data from Oracle, but I do all of the data manipulation in SQL Server after the data are imported there. This situation is only going to get worse, as Hotjobs is in the middle of moving both the CRM and web apps onto new platforms, which will be moved to Yahoo!’s main campus in California. The old databases are being phased out after the migration.

I had just lost my access to the Oracle reporting database last month!! So, I need to do something to regain, no, UPGRADE my Oracle skills! My solution? I’m going to install an instance of 10g on my personal Linux box. I’ll go through this book (Expert Oracle Database Architecture: 9i and 10g Programming Techniques and Solutions) cover to cover. Much like the way I learned SQL Server 7 back in the days at Microsoft. DataStage- I was asked about it, I’ve never used it, I know that it is being used in our new platform to import data into the data warehouse. I understand the ETL process and like I said, I do it manually by looking at database diagrams, query the data and spool the results into text files, FTP them into a central location, import into a staging database and manipulate the data, then finally, myself and others query against the final results for reports. Today, I did a little research on DataStage, found a tutorial on IBM’s website, read through the PDF. As I’ve suspected, it provides an easy to use UI to do basically what I do manually. Just like First Logic and Business Objects, a couple of training sessions should get me going on this no problem! Japanese- Finally, the biggest problem! In the interview, I was told that they need a “native speaker”… well, I’m not a native speaker… but, what’s the definition of a “native speaker” aside from being Japanese? My reading comprehension is fine, I’ve read user comments and booked ryokans and hotels on Japanese travel sites, communicate in Japanese with people in Japan and with my Japanese friends here in New York. So, is “being able to communicate” good enough? While other people might have lied and just say they’re “native speaker”, I’m just not the kind of guy that can lie like that. So, I’ll let others be the judge. I’ve hired an experience tutor here who’ll test me in a mock interview tomorrow. Let’s see what the result will be! Anyways, whatever the result might be, I’ve decided that I’ll get serious and pass the JLPT Level 2 exam this year. I’ll take that as a “certificate of native speaking level”.

Why hadn't I study Japanese more seriously?

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 18:24:18 +0000

Just spoke with the manager for a Business Intelligence Analyst position I found on Yahoo!’s internal job board. This job is perfect for me! I’ve been working steadily toward Data Warehousing / Business Intelligence as my career path, this position requires Oracle skills (which I have, though not extremely efficient as I don’t work with Oracle databases everyday), DataStage (and ETL tool) and Japanese language skills.

I haven’t used DataStage, but I understand the ETL processes and I have been doing similar “Extract, Transform & Load” process RAW, by writing the queries in Oracle, spooling the results to text files, FTP’ing the files to another database server, loading the data into one central database and make the necessary transformation so all the data are uniform and can be queried together. Finally, setting it all up in a cron job to be run automatically. So basically, to learn to use DataStage is NOT a problem for me. It’ll be easy. The problem is the Japanese part. This position is required to communicate with Yahoo! Japan, get the right data from their web log files, ETL them into a data warehouse and create reports for them. And although I am pretty confident about my reading & listening comprehension level, the manager stated that it will basically require a native speaker… Sigh… and I thought I would have an edge here since I have the tech skills and know pretty good Japanese. This makes me regret why I hadn’t taken Japanese studies more seriously and take the JLPT exam. I’m pretty sure that if Yahoo! Japan calls me for an interview, I would do OK even now. But I’m definitely going to take the JLPT Level 2 exam this year!!! I will achieve official “native level” within this year! Now… if I can just get my hands on some DataStage skills… …

Comments

Oracle, DataStage, Japanese - What I’ll do so I can get the job next time! « Before I Die — 2007-01-24 22:56:07

[…] and Thoughts cloneofsnake 10:56 pm Since yesterday’s disastrous interview, I seriously thought about what happened, and came up with a plan to address the problems. […]

2007 New Year Resolution

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 17:13:31 +0000

How creative! I can’t think of a better title. A lot of things are happening, there are a lot of things I want to do, a lot I need to write down. My brain is a complete mess, so I’m jumping right in and start writing! Start small, and keep the ball rolling. Things I need to touch upon are:

Wedding
Work at Yahoo
Personal Development - blog, web dev, Japanese
Personal Business - My ideas, How to Start

Wedding Yup, I proposed to Queenie on 12/21/2006, right before our 2 weeks visit to Hong Kong. While in HK, I met with Queenie’s parents, bought a ring, we arranged our parents to meet, found a few “lucky dates”, we already had our sights settled on The Peninsula Hotel for the Wedding Ceremony and Banquet… The date should be 11/29/2007. There are so much to do for a wedding, I can’t talk about everything here. The one thing I need to say is… it’s expensive! I am trying to set a goal for myself to earn an extra $30K US dollars this year to cover the expenses! :P Work at Yahoo! Coming Feburary, I will have completed 5 years of service at Yahoo! Hotjobs. I’ve been involved in many projects, giving me exposure to almost all layers of the business, from billing to user experience. It has been good times, especially the early years, when everything was in turmoil and I could see what needed to be done, and just jump in and do it. Nowadays, there are a lot more red tapes and things go a lot slower. Regarding my career path, I’ve stated that I wanted to become a Business Intelligence Engineer. Currently, we’re migrating our CRM and front end to a new platform and work are being done in Sunnyvale’s main campus on developing a Data Warehouse. I’m trying to move there to become part of that team. I’ve spoken with my managers here in New York, and I’ve met the manager from Sunnyvale and spoke to him about my interest in joining his team. There weren’t any open racks as it was the end of 2006, but I’m confident that once they’ve gotten the racks in 2007, I will be able to transfer over there. I’ll save the details on this for another post. Personal Development I haven’t really touched web development since I left Microsoft’s MSN in 2001. Professionally, I’ve had my sights set on database technologies and Business Intelligence. However, social networking and Web 2.0 sites like flickr, del.icio.us, digg, WordPress and many personal blogs, have reignited my interest in creating web sites. I’ve installed WordPress on my FreeBSD box at home, trying to learn CSS and PHP through it. One problem I realized is that I tend to mind too much about the technical details. Cal Henderson of the Flickr fame had given his advice based on his experience, and that is to start small, get your first readers, and then grow along while your site is live. I’m trying to start a couple of blogs this way - one is about Japanese living in New York City, and another is about Traditional Chinese culture in modern Chinese societies. Finally, I’ve been learning Japanese through a podcast called JapanesePod101. I’ll try to take the JPLT Lv. 2 this year, and I’ll try to use JPod101 alone to accomplish this. It’s going to be a good experiment. Personal Business Finally, my business. I’ve registered and closed a S-Corp in 2005, wasted thousands of dollars and contributing to the IRA and the statistic of 99% failure rate of businesses in the US. I’m not going to repeat that! I hope that with the experience I gained through the blogs, I will create a couple of communities sites - one related to gaming and one related to food and travel. My goal is not to make a lot of money, I’m interested in these topics and I hope that I can create something that can support me enough to move around and live in different countries. If there’s one thing that I need help on here, that would be VC. How and where do I get venture capitals? Where are my angels?!! :P Alright, that’s enough for one post. Until next time.

Reading materials left in men's bathroom

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 10:40:00 +0000

1031 01 Toilet Drinks Originally uploaded by cloneofsnake.

This happened at my office in NYC. I sent the following email to our social alias. *Just wanna say thanks to the guys who are always so enthusiastic in sharing their reading materials in the bathroom. I’ve enjoyed your Sports Illustrated and ESPN articles by spreading the pages on the floor with the bottom of my shoes. However, please note that nobody likes to touch another person’s belongings in the bathroom, so can you please refrain from stuffing your print outs into the toilet seat cover bin? I just want

to sit on the toilet covers, not toilet covers that had contact with papers that you’ve touched. Today however, when I turn to grab a sheet, to my horror, there was a cup of black liquid sitting there, blocking the way. I was stunned for like 5 seconds. I think this was the first time I’ve seen drinking beverages inside a bathroom stall… I just couldn’t associate the 2 together, I didn’t know what to do! Anyhoo, to the guy who left his beverage in there today… WTH man?! 99.999% of the human population don’t drink while they are sitting on the toilet! But if you like to do that, that’s fine, I respect that… but can you NOT leave your drinks in there for the next person to enjoy? That’s just disgusting Thanks! Nick* \

What was the first fucking thing I say?! Should've listened to me SUCKAAAAAASS!!!

Thu, 26 Jan 2006 17:00:00 +0000

What was the first fucking thing I say?! Should’ve listened to me SUCKAAAAAASS!!! It has been 4 months since we were first told about the Data Cleansing project, and finally, they’ve put out project plan 1.0, with what I had originally proposed on the first fucking day… HA!!! What did I tell ya?!! SUCKAAAAASSS!!! :)) LOL Here’s how the story goes… in Sept.‘05, my manager and our relatively new Business Analyst (B.A.) pulled us into a meeting to tell us that, finally, the Data Cleansing project is about to start and we’ll be responsible for it. Great!! My manager gave a brief sum-up of what has happened on the CRMS migration (upgrade) project so far. The key things I’ve learned from that meeting were 1) We’ll be buying data from D&B. 2) Data Conversion team will come up with the migration logic to “put current data into correct places in future system”. 3) We will be responsible for cleaning the data so that we can feed the future system with clean / meaningful data. Now, what was my first statement on “what to do”? I said: “We need to know about Data Conversion’s stuff. We should look at what their logic is, where they pull those data from, and do our cleansing against that set of data.” MADE PERFECT SENSE, YAH? What did they say? “No, we don’t need to know their stuff, we just clean everything!”

Since then, I’ve raised my objection at least 3 more times, each time our B.A. and managers reaffirmed that we shouldn’t limit ourselves with Data Conversion’s stuff, we should clean everything. So what happened? Our extremely creative B.A. went and came up with some truly spectacular projects - like “get all dinstinct values for all editable fields in CRMS”… shit that wasted a lot of my time, working late nights to pull him the data he needed to support his imagination. As expected, his spectacular projects were met with spectacular failures each time when he presented to the other teams in meetings. He got his ass handed to him every time, and it pissed me off b’coz what I’ve been saying were right! Somehow though, he continued to believe that he was on the right track and he “owns” the desgin process. The end result was a big arguement that took place after one meeting where he had just presented his “solution” to account merges - a spreadsheet with like 50+ columns that would show how accounts were merged together. Obvioulsy, it was shot down in the meeting, I don’t understand how some people can make up so much bull shit. “Why aren’t more people interrigent, rike me!” LOL… I was so deep into his bull shit that I had completely lost sight of the big picture. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… “Bad managers severely limit other people’s productivity”. Like how my B.A. was limiting me to work with senseless things that he had created. The turning point came when some product manager from the corporation office in Sunnyvale had some high level questions about the goals and “expected results”… our B.A. couldn’t confirm the answer and he let the corporate product manager ask me directly… that’s when I finally got the break and think broader and deeper into the situation. (Those high level questions helped push me to create the solution.) I had to ignore the B.A.’s spreadsheet (and pretty much anything that his creative juice produced). With clear understanding of the project goals and end results, I synced up with the Data Conversion team, and was finally able to create the heart of this project… the complete process of Input/Output to feed and receive data to/from Data Conversion. (That’s why in the beginning, I said we need to know about Data Conversion’s stuff… it’s coz we need to feed them with clean data! I was right!!!) With this solid, technical piece created, I was finally able to stand firm and said “No dude! Look, here it is! I’ve created the entire process. THIS IS THE SOLUTION. THIS IS WHAT WE NEED TO DO.” Just last week, we were able to formalize the project plan. The B.A. still writes the stuff, and it still has a lot of bull shit, but at least the “heart” of it all was written by me, and hence the process, even the spreadsheet output, now makes sense. He was able to present it to upper management and for the first time, got the approval. Today, we had our first “Thursday Data Conversion Meeting” in which everyone had looked at the plan and said it was good. :D LOL! ALL THANKS TO ME!!! God I’m good!

Quote from Slashdot - Going Native Among the Users

Wed, 25 Jan 2006 16:32:00 +0000

Manager of the Year Originally uploaded by theoriginalbman.

The smart programmer … (a) Listens and nods his head while Management says “We want this, We want that” … (chances are this is all wrong); (b) Sits down with end users (secretaries, etc.) for a while, every day, staying out of their way but watching them work, and asking the occasional question; (c) Figures out what the end users really want, need, will accept; (d) Codes for the end user, then spins the thing so Management thinks they’re getting what they (foolishly) asked for. LOL… this is sooooo true! http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=175060&cid=14557868\

Birthday card for Jose, picked one that jokes about "Casual Friday"

Mon, 28 Nov 2005 14:25:00 +0000

Birthday card for Jose, picked one that jokes about “Casual Friday” It was my colleague Jose’s bday yesterday, and my boss IM’ed me this morning to get him a cake and a card. The card I picked has an old B&W photo of four men in their underwears and pajamas, and inside it says “Wishing you a birthday more exciting than casual Fridays!” If you haven’t heard me rant about this yet, what happened was, aside from my part-time job working at a computer store, I’ve never had to abide to any “business dress code”. This summer, when I started wearing clam diggers to work, (I ’ve always wore shorts to work in summer since my days at Microsoft.) my manager sent an email to the entire team about dress code. Since I’m the “worst” dresser in the group, I think that email was mainly directed at me, and now… I got this card! LOL… I just brought the card for my manager to sign too! Fortunately, she had a good sense of humor and laughed about it. (I don’t know what she really thinks though.) If u’re intested, here’s the email:

Guys -

Just a reminder about dress code - I have definitely seen us slacking this summer and want to address it because team appearance is very important to me. We sit in an open pit with the people we service and it is in our best interests to be as professional as possible.

In the manual it states: Dress Code: Business Casual. Business Casual is still professional dress - jeans are acceptable only on Fridays.

I want to expand this to clarify that T-Shirts (Logo, etc - not to mean short sleeve shirts), Shorts, Flip Flops, Wife-beaters, and any thing else that you wouldn’t expect to see in a place of business is not acceptable.

I understand that exceptions may need to be made on an individual basis but I expect them to be exceptions and not the norm. Please make sure you are adhering to this policy going forward.

If you have any questions, please let me know.

Honestly, I don’t really care. At first I was like… “Shit! I’m in tech yo!! Why the fuck do I have to wear “biz casual”?! But the truth is, I’m fine with slacks and shirts… I was just not happy at having idiotic, completely unnecessary rules applied to a whole team of people! (I brought down the entire team b’coz I wore shorts.)

Management 101 - by Nicholas Wang

Sun, 31 Jul 2005 02:18:00 +0000

Management 101 - by Nicholas Wang Saturday night, went to watch Fantastic 4 with Queenie and Miho. The subway was packed on the way back, it really sucked! The reason why I like living in Astoria is b’coz it’s less crowded than Manhattan but is still pretty close to everything. I really hate it when I’m going home in a packed subway. Anyway, on my way back, I was thinking of work (yes, my mind skips all over the places all the time). I’m revising the scripts for account suspension, which was developed 9 months ago, also by me. It’s in testing stage now and I need to set up the entire testing procedure and shit. I could’ve started doing testing early last week, but since moving to the Sales Ops department, I’ve been binded by a lot more “rules” and red tape. One of the rule is, I can’t communicate directly with anyone outside of our department anymore, and that for me is a real pain in the ass. After finishing development, I had to send a written report to my manager, and then she’ll communicate on my part to the programmers in MIS, and come back to me with the “OK go ahead”, along with her expectations to see the resulting changes to current data once my new script runs. Basically, what could’ve been a 2 hours communication with MIS directly by myself, is now changed into a week turn-around time.

It’s kind of funny, there’s a Chinese proverb - “When you hang around with 3 persons, you must be able to learn from at least one of them.” Now I understand that not only can you learn from others who are better than you, but you can also learn from others’ mistakes! :D When I was in the Data Quality department, I had started a simple doc called “Management 101”, it’s all stuff I learned from my manager at the time. I learned a lot from him, but it wasn’t until now that I realized what’s the greatest thing about his management style. My current manager is very strict, she values structure very highly, she doesn’t like her staff going around her back to ask other people anything because she said it would make her look bad. If possible, she likes to control every little detail of what you do. On my ride home, I realized that the result of this method is that your staff will grow dependent of your instructions, and in the long run, you’ll find that your will always have to “tell your staff what to do”, they won’t know how to take initiative and be “self-reliant”. This method SUCKS when implemented on creative minds and developers. It’s basically stopping the creative train with rules. My last manager in comparison, was the exact opposite. He let me know early on that he expected me to explore and find errors in the system and then fix them (hence Data Quality). When I have questions, I would ask him first as he was very knowledgable of the business, but he also encouraged me to go directly to the source and ask people in other departments. We would have weekly meetings and he would ask me what I’ve found and what I’m working on. He would ask me questions, provoking me to think deeper into the issues that I had found, and in many cases his questions would let me to discover broader problems. I learned a lot and came up with a lot of ideas. When I present my ideas to him, a lot of times he would shoot them down… but he also told me to not give up so easily. Basically, I learned that my manager may shoot down my ideas a lot, but if I think I’ve got a good thing, don’t be afraid to argue with my manager! Under this management method, your staff will become highly creative and self-reliant. Like myself, I alone attacked the ONE problem within our company! I asked the right people about the products we offer, the databases’ structures… I single-handedly created the database view that became the “bridge” of two systems. I came up with the ideas, initiated projects, developed, implemented and then moved on to the next project. I know that the biggest problem with this is that it lacks structure, but I still think it’s the better way. We should let ideas flow at the top and put “helpers” on the side to help with organizing and documenting.

Work on Nick Wang

Road to Entrepreneurship is Long and Lonely and Full of Stress

How to Identify and Hire Good People

太子 英文會話，電腦，保習 ～ 香港，九龍，油尖旺

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Interesting insight into Crowdsourcing at App?e, from their Asia regional Head of Web Marketing

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Hong Kong only cares about money, lacks innovation

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Developing Crowdsourcing Community with Drupal

Private: Tokyo U Studies is Fail, but Work in Tokyo is Go

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Last Day at Yahoo! Farewell email from my manager

Monbukagakusho - the reason why I decided to go to Grad school in Japan

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Failure #1 - getting laid off

Japanese Business Intelligence Analyst

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Japanese Business Intelligence Analyst

Some emails between me and people who interviewed me

So much to do... so little time...

My Reply (Goodbye, my dream job, my chance to fly to Tokyo 4 times a year. (T_T)

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Email from Japanese manager, to be replied in Japanese

面接のためにチューターを探しました

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Japanese tutor Thursday night, surprise interview Friday!!

Oracle, DataStage, Japanese - What I'll do so I can get the job next time!

Why hadn't I study Japanese more seriously?

Comments

2007 New Year Resolution

Reading materials left in men's bathroom

What was the first fucking thing I say?! Should've listened to me SUCKAAAAAASS!!!

Quote from Slashdot - Going Native Among the Users

Birthday card for Jose, picked one that jokes about "Casual Friday"

Management 101 - by Nicholas Wang

太子英文會話，電腦，保習～香港，九龍，油尖旺