Today I learned about an incident happened inside the company. The way it has been handled really shocked me. It totally contradicted my belief.
It was like I loved and trusted this person for so long, and one day found out that person did something which I cannot imagine him/her doing, and it was conflicting with what that person always claims. This person betrayed my trust, and I felt being cheated.
I'll try to use some means to figure out what exactly happened, since I have only heard words from one side so far. If this indeed turns out to be true, I know there is one thing I would do when I leave the company.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Saturday, October 28, 2006
The most expensive song I have played
[Ben and a couple friends eating in a restaurant on the tallest building in Nanjing, Ben found there was a piano nearby and offered to play a song.]
V: (to the waitress) Hi, can we use the piano over there?
Waitress: Yes, you can, 50 RMB.
Ben: You pay me?
Waitress: No, you pay it.
Ben: For as long as I can?
Waitress: For one song only, you have to pay another 50 for a second song.
[Ultimately the group decided to pay the 50 RMB anyways, and Ben played a song on the piano for 2 minutes.]
[Q suggested paying another 50 RMB for him to play the piano (which is basically making some noise), and let the waitress beg him to stop by paying him 100 RMB. Somehow this idea wasn't implemented. ]
V: (to the waitress) Hi, can we use the piano over there?
Waitress: Yes, you can, 50 RMB.
Ben: You pay me?
Waitress: No, you pay it.
Ben: For as long as I can?
Waitress: For one song only, you have to pay another 50 for a second song.
[Ultimately the group decided to pay the 50 RMB anyways, and Ben played a song on the piano for 2 minutes.]
[Q suggested paying another 50 RMB for him to play the piano (which is basically making some noise), and let the waitress beg him to stop by paying him 100 RMB. Somehow this idea wasn't implemented. ]
Someone more geekier
An other engineer from the Beijing office who is also in this recruiting trip with me is definitely more geekier than I am. Here is how:
- He can answer this question in 15 minutes while it takes me 30 minutes to come up with the solution.
- He can talk about technical questions all day long, while I am already bored after discussing them during every single meal.
- He can say something like "The complexity of my relationship is O(...) ..." , and he associates complexity with everything.
- He is more simple minded, pays no attention to human relationship, and we have a nickname for him - "Single cell animal".
And certainly his wife (well, future wife) must be more tolerating than mine.
- He can answer this question in 15 minutes while it takes me 30 minutes to come up with the solution.
- He can talk about technical questions all day long, while I am already bored after discussing them during every single meal.
- He can say something like "The complexity of my relationship is O(...) ..." , and he associates complexity with everything.
- He is more simple minded, pays no attention to human relationship, and we have a nickname for him - "Single cell animal".
And certainly his wife (well, future wife) must be more tolerating than mine.
Interview Thoughts
After interviewing for 4 consecutive days, here are some thoughts I would like to share.
Fact - A lot of companies start to give paper exams as the first filter in recruiting. Probably the companies found it more efficient than screening through the piles of resume and doing phone screens. But a pitfall is that students often need to go to more than one exams in a day, which adds to their already very busy daily life. And the questions on the tests? more or less the same. The same coding and algorithm questions. And I think since it is China sooner or later there will be tutoring classes targeting these kind of exams, and there will be "mock" exams, past papers...
Bad - Chinese students have very bad breath, and I wonder why. I suppose in this modern world everyone should have a tooth brush? Students shouldn't be smoking that much either. It's the worst when they sit right next to you and start talking...
Fun - I was told by one of the students Google is like 超女 selection. A student in Shanghai who failed the interviews came to Nanjing on train, hoping to take the paper exam again and get another slot for interview. This is like going to 南京赛区 after failing somewhere else. I don't think we will let that happen though, and this is probably something we never expect to happen at the first place.
Ridiculous - We had to keep the doors open when interviewing. I was told it is because an employee at another company got sue by a female student, accusing him of sexual harassment.
Bad - While the students are very good at fundamentals, they lack creativity and often cannot think outside of the model answer or what's given in book.
Learned - Some of the students are very nervous when they first come into the room. A small gesture such as a smile, handshake, and brief introduction is enough to help them loosen up and feel more comfortable.
Rewarding - One student gave me "feedbacks" towards the end of the interview. He told me that he learned a lot from the interviews we gave, how to approach a problem and solve it in steps, and the thinking process of keep on improving it, and he thanked us for giving him this opportunity. This made me feel that the entire week here is worth it, regardless of the hiring outcome.
Fact - A lot of companies start to give paper exams as the first filter in recruiting. Probably the companies found it more efficient than screening through the piles of resume and doing phone screens. But a pitfall is that students often need to go to more than one exams in a day, which adds to their already very busy daily life. And the questions on the tests? more or less the same. The same coding and algorithm questions. And I think since it is China sooner or later there will be tutoring classes targeting these kind of exams, and there will be "mock" exams, past papers...
Bad - Chinese students have very bad breath, and I wonder why. I suppose in this modern world everyone should have a tooth brush? Students shouldn't be smoking that much either. It's the worst when they sit right next to you and start talking...
Fun - I was told by one of the students Google is like 超女 selection. A student in Shanghai who failed the interviews came to Nanjing on train, hoping to take the paper exam again and get another slot for interview. This is like going to 南京赛区 after failing somewhere else. I don't think we will let that happen though, and this is probably something we never expect to happen at the first place.
Ridiculous - We had to keep the doors open when interviewing. I was told it is because an employee at another company got sue by a female student, accusing him of sexual harassment.
Bad - While the students are very good at fundamentals, they lack creativity and often cannot think outside of the model answer or what's given in book.
Learned - Some of the students are very nervous when they first come into the room. A small gesture such as a smile, handshake, and brief introduction is enough to help them loosen up and feel more comfortable.
Rewarding - One student gave me "feedbacks" towards the end of the interview. He told me that he learned a lot from the interviews we gave, how to approach a problem and solve it in steps, and the thinking process of keep on improving it, and he thanked us for giving him this opportunity. This made me feel that the entire week here is worth it, regardless of the hiring outcome.
Thursday, October 26, 2006
The Sad Truth
Some highly confidential information within Google is exposed on a public blog today. It definitely would raise concerns within the company, and it may be a matter of time before some of the openly shared information become unaccessible to most employee. Google has long known for its open culture in sharing highly confidential information with its employee, and seemingly this culture may not scale with the company.
It takes a thousand people to protect a secret, and only one to leak it. Similarly, it takes a thousand conversations to build up a relationship, and only one to destroy it. This kind of inequality is really disturbing.
It takes a thousand people to protect a secret, and only one to leak it. Similarly, it takes a thousand conversations to build up a relationship, and only one to destroy it. This kind of inequality is really disturbing.
Price is ...
...pretty arbitrary in China. I mean, it really may not be proportional to the quality of the goods or level of services at all. Today I went to 夫子廟 with a friend, we had dinner there in a restaurant who apparently targets tourists. We paid RMB 80 each for some Dim Sum which tasted like shit. The night before I went to a local restaurant which had a special theme of ancient China. The food and services there are great, and we only paid RMB 25 each.
After dinner we took a stroll nearby and found a 2-RMB-shop that sells almost anything from knifes, hair accessories, to toys. And everything there is 2 RMB, which is equivalent to a quarter. I bought a lot of things there, and it felt like costing me nothing. While a comb there cost 2 RMB, another store right next to it sells combs for 80 RMB and above.
While this kinds of price differences can be found anywhere in the world, only in China it's to a certain degree that I almost lost the sense of price expectations.
After dinner we took a stroll nearby and found a 2-RMB-shop that sells almost anything from knifes, hair accessories, to toys. And everything there is 2 RMB, which is equivalent to a quarter. I bought a lot of things there, and it felt like costing me nothing. While a comb there cost 2 RMB, another store right next to it sells combs for 80 RMB and above.
While this kinds of price differences can be found anywhere in the world, only in China it's to a certain degree that I almost lost the sense of price expectations.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Engineers' Fun
Recruiting trip can be pretty boring, especially most of the candidate you interviewed are not good. The only rewarding parts are the great food here (may not be the best in China, but definitely much better than Bay Area), and the various conversation with other fellow engineers discussing technical questions.
It all started from the questions on the paper exam we monitored last night. Since we had nothing to do while standing at the front of the classroom, we went over the questions and started to come up with variations of the questions. So most of the conversations last night and this morning surrounded 2 technical questions:
1. Prove that the lowest bound of the algorithm to find the top Nth element within 2 sorted arrays of size N is O(log(N)).
2. Try to prove that the algorithm for finding the kth sum of 2 numbers, each from an array of size N, is/is not O(Nlog(N)). We came up with a close enough proof, although it still has a little pitfall when the distribution of the numbers in the array is exponential.
And surely we had a lot of fun.
Last night I got an email from a friend, who talked about how he played politics in a group to achieve what he needed. The way he planned and executed it was totally a piece of art, and to me, much more complicated than the technical questions we solved. I am sure I would never
be able to come up with that kind of solution in the same situation.
And that's probably why engineers can never be CEOs.
It all started from the questions on the paper exam we monitored last night. Since we had nothing to do while standing at the front of the classroom, we went over the questions and started to come up with variations of the questions. So most of the conversations last night and this morning surrounded 2 technical questions:
1. Prove that the lowest bound of the algorithm to find the top Nth element within 2 sorted arrays of size N is O(log(N)).
2. Try to prove that the algorithm for finding the kth sum of 2 numbers, each from an array of size N, is/is not O(Nlog(N)). We came up with a close enough proof, although it still has a little pitfall when the distribution of the numbers in the array is exponential.
And surely we had a lot of fun.
Last night I got an email from a friend, who talked about how he played politics in a group to achieve what he needed. The way he planned and executed it was totally a piece of art, and to me, much more complicated than the technical questions we solved. I am sure I would never
be able to come up with that kind of solution in the same situation.
And that's probably why engineers can never be CEOs.
Monday, October 23, 2006
Sim Card and Recharge Cards
I was struggling to find recharge cards for my cellphone at the Beijing Airport. There are a lot of China Mobile counters, but they only sell SIM cards but not recharge cards. I already have a SIM card so there is no point for me to get a new one. To be more correct, they HAVE recharge cards but just do NOT sell them, and I think they only sell them with a new SIM card purchase. When I asked them if they have recharge cards, they will give me lame excuses such as they sell out of it.
I couldn't quite understand this. I know selling SIM cards are much more lucrative than recharge cards, since you can set the price for SIM cards arbitrarily based on the number (i.e. a good number worths "more"), but the recharge cards are all priced the same. But why not stock more recharge cards so you can sell both of them? I am sure plenty of people would like to recharge their phones at the airport.
But now that I think of it more, the profit from SIM cards is so much more than the recharge cards that the stores want to bet on business people who want to make urgent phone calls to buy SIM cards instead of recharge cards, and they don't care about the business of selling recharge cards (is that really zero profit?). If that's the case it makes sense economically.
Maybe there is another explanation to this. If you can think of one, please let me know.
I couldn't quite understand this. I know selling SIM cards are much more lucrative than recharge cards, since you can set the price for SIM cards arbitrarily based on the number (i.e. a good number worths "more"), but the recharge cards are all priced the same. But why not stock more recharge cards so you can sell both of them? I am sure plenty of people would like to recharge their phones at the airport.
But now that I think of it more, the profit from SIM cards is so much more than the recharge cards that the stores want to bet on business people who want to make urgent phone calls to buy SIM cards instead of recharge cards, and they don't care about the business of selling recharge cards (is that really zero profit?). If that's the case it makes sense economically.
Maybe there is another explanation to this. If you can think of one, please let me know.
Cars and The Devil Wears Prada
I didn't sleep at all on the flight from the States to Beijing, watched all 4 movies. Cars is definitely better than I expected. Even though I am a big time Pixar fans, somehow I didn't expect Cars to meet the bars of the previous releases, which can probably more or less be attributed to my lack of interest in cars in general. This movie has a storyline more complicated and appealing to adult audiences compared to its predecessors. In short, it portraits one of the small towns in the States which is half deserted. I visited one of those towns, Virginia City near Reno 2 years back. In a museum, we chatted with the owner, and he used to work in one of the Fortune 100 companies as senior management earning big bucks. He left the company after the company laid off a bunch of workers because jobs got outsourced. He felt the company is too "cold", and enjoyed living in a small town where people are much closer and more human.
The Devil Wears Prada is more than a movie about fashion. It brings up the dilemma of a typical working women who don't have work-life balance. One of the points emphasized in the film: If a woman give more priority to work than her family, she is more likely to experience a failed marriage than a man who does the same. Also, another point bring brought up many times: Often we complain that we don't have choice when it comes to work, when we need to pick up urgent cellphones when hanging out with family, when working late to miss other appointments with friends, but do we really have no choice or we have already chosen?
The Devil Wears Prada is more than a movie about fashion. It brings up the dilemma of a typical working women who don't have work-life balance. One of the points emphasized in the film: If a woman give more priority to work than her family, she is more likely to experience a failed marriage than a man who does the same. Also, another point bring brought up many times: Often we complain that we don't have choice when it comes to work, when we need to pick up urgent cellphones when hanging out with family, when working late to miss other appointments with friends, but do we really have no choice or we have already chosen?
Blog Started
So I finally decided to start a blog. There are a couple reasons to this:
1. Given I will be in China for the coming two weeks, this blog will serve as a communication channel to my beloved wife at home so that she would get a glimpse of what's happening around me.
2. I feel that my English writing skill is deteriorating fast, and I hope I can save it before I can only write C++ or Java. Afterall writing skill is important to a programmer too.
3. I am inspired by blogs of my friends, namely Eric and Niniane, whose blogs I found inspiring, informational, and entertaining.
So this will be a place to blog about my thoughts based on some observations, my views on a piece of news, technologies, etc. Hope this will not be one of the "three minute passion" things I have done.
1. Given I will be in China for the coming two weeks, this blog will serve as a communication channel to my beloved wife at home so that she would get a glimpse of what's happening around me.
2. I feel that my English writing skill is deteriorating fast, and I hope I can save it before I can only write C++ or Java. Afterall writing skill is important to a programmer too.
3. I am inspired by blogs of my friends, namely Eric and Niniane, whose blogs I found inspiring, informational, and entertaining.
So this will be a place to blog about my thoughts based on some observations, my views on a piece of news, technologies, etc. Hope this will not be one of the "three minute passion" things I have done.
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