that’s whacked

gong zuo

Monday, Sep 13. 2004  –  Category: ChinaBlog

One of the reasons I was so excited to come to China was to experience what a daily work environment would be like…. here are my initial impressions so far.

It’s a helluva lot like the US. Of course, Sun environments don’t vary too much from place to place, and they’ve done a great job of emulating a US-like workplace here. Instead of offices, we’re all in cubes (’cept for the managers who have the outer permiter of offices). I actually think I prefer the Beijing setup. In Menlo Park I have an office which makes for some great privacy, but I feel it’s often too isolating. The Beijing setup is four “cubicles” that open up on the inside to each other. I guess the best way to illustrate is like so:

The perimeter offices have windows looking out, but more importantly, the cubicles inside have a really “open” feel to them. I really feel like this can enhance the collaborative feel, especially if people are seated according to team (as we are, since I’m sitting next to Robin & Colin, both on the same SKaDS-QE team).

Culture-wise, the engineers here seem to be much more quiet than the US. I definitely don’t see the same kind of thing with engineers roaming the hallways to say hi to other people. People seem to come in, sit down, and get their jobs done. Another interesting note: nobody listens to music. I love listening to some good music (not enough bandwidth to stream Digitally Imported into Beijing unfortunately, but I managed to bring over 20gb of mp3s on my laptop which Juk claims should keep me occupied for 10 days straight with no repeats.

One warning to any American/European engineer coming here to work at the Sun office: the coffee is shit. Oh man…you guys thought that Superior coffee we had in Sun was poor? That stuff is heaven compared to the Nescafe instant crap here [shudder]. Poorna and I are going to make a Starbucks run and get some better stuff tonight.

Everyone here has been super friendly and great about making sure Poorna and I have all the resources we need. ServiceDesk even got my SunRay account, and SunRay port enabled within a day.

Random thought of the day? I wonder what the Chinese urinal etiquette is? Of course, I’m used to the American Urinal Etiquette unstated rule of going every other urinal so you’re never standing next to another guy if you don’t have to, but I wonder if that is part of Chinese etiquette as well? Play the Urinal Game (flash) if you have a few mins.