Part 1: Story: Welcome
WelcomeHere we go. Day 1 at Shenzhen Longteng Electronics. I’ve got a cubicle, a cool tablet with a keyboard and a camera view of the outside (no actual window, unfortunately), and a big manual binder sitting on the desk next to me.
My coworkers all checked in - by email, of course.
First off, we have Mr. Wang Yonghong, AKA The Big Boss. I strongly suspect this is the first and last time I will hear from him - unless I screw up royally, which I’m not planning to.
Next up, there's Carl Tesky, AKA ‘the other engineer’, and my next-door desk neighbor. We had a bit of a good conversation about the circumstances that collectively drove us here. I’m sure we’ll be partners-in-rhyme soon enough.
Whoa, this guy’s enthusiastic! Not shown in the email: Joe met me in person and he’s exactly as upbeat. He insisted I call him (just) Joe.
The only issue is I don’t really know what a Product Manager does - it’s not like he’s my boss, really, and his spiel suggests he’s more a wheeler and dealer than an actually, you know… manager.
I guess I’ll find out.
Ms. Lili Wu is straightforward, formal, and… I can just tell that when around her, you can feel that she’s in charge. ‘Nuff said.
David “Daiwei” Solomon - International Product Manager, whatever that means. From his email, I got the feeling that he’s a consultant - brought in to help with a “this is what Western audiences might like” outlook, maybe?
The other thing I should probably mention is that it’s pretty obvious that David is a biiiig Sinophile. The Chinese characters in his name are kind of the giveaway… among other things. To be fair, he did say I could come to him if I need help with translation requests, so things should work out fine.
Finally, we have Mr. Jie Zhang, AKA my boss. (Also Carl’s.) Like Ms. Wu, he’s very professional. More pertinently, he’s My Boss. It looks like I’ll be getting most of my work assignments from him.
That’s everyone in the vicinity of my office. All the people here seem really nice so far, and I’m excited to work with them. Of course, I probably shouldn’t make any judgements until I’ve been at Longteng a little while.
Let’s do this.