Interviewing, Pickpockets
Trip Start
Apr 26, 2006
1
11
13
Trip End
May 10, 2006
Shanghai,
China
Friday, May 5, 2006
Today was the interview day for SMIC. I got up and took the company bus from the living quarters to the head office. What was weird was that as I was taking the bus, I saw 3 bus full of young Chinese girls coming back to the Living Quarters. Apparently these are the night shift of IC operators. The IC foundary runs 24 hours a day with 3 shifts. In China, these shifts are performed by poor young girls. It's pretty depressing to see these buses full of tired and depressed looking girls walking back to their dingy dormitories...
I arrived at the company headquarters and met with Mr. BK Liew who was the VP of the marketing department. He was a stern but fair man who gave me an overview of the company and of what to expect in the company. He also gave me a few pricing questions and I think I aced them. Next I met a Mr. Jackie Hsu who was did Service Engineering. We didn't speak much about the job because I wasn't a good fit for his department however we spent most of the time talking about life at SMIC. Finally I met Gideon who was a young man my age. He was also a Stanford graduate who came to SMIC in 2002 when it was still a small company. He was the 1st in the strategic marketing department as in now the assistant manager here. I cool thing was that he had a similar background to me and we talked a lot of about working/living in Shanghai at SMIC. I found later that if things went well I'd work for him.
All in all I think I did fairly well to pretty well in the interview. I spoke with BK on the way out again and he basically said that all he asked for is that I'd be able to carry my own weight and also to be able to commit to about 2 years of service. The reason being is that they will be investing heavily in training me the first 6 months or at the very least they'd like some return on their investment. Therefore the judgment of offering employment will be determined by how likely they deem that I would commit to 2 years and also if I could do the job. I'm pretty sure that i got the 2nd part down but it all depends on the 1st. I'm pretty confident in the interview but regardless of the results, I'll probably not take the job because the salary is only ~40% of what I'd get in the US. Even if the cost of living is less than the SF/Bay Area, the salary differential is a bit too much. If i could get ~2/3 of a US salary, I'd do it.
Pick Pockets
In the evening we went to dinner at a vegetarian restaurant in Shanghai. Food was decent but the highlight of the evening was when we left the restaurant. My mom got her wallent pick pocketed from her purse. Real pain in the ass not because of the lost cash (probably about $30 total) but rather the credit cards. Good thing my sister told my mom to keep her driver license at home. Credit cards are easy to replace. Getting a new DMV license can be a pain in the ass. Long story short, it spoiled our evening and we ended up just going home afterwards.
