Reading Time: 3 minutes Originally written 2005-02-08 Holiday Inn Clinton After I picked up the rental car (with GPS) at Newark airport, I was on the way to my destination. I took an exit on I-78 by accident, with the help from GPS I did get back to the road without problem. At about 9:40 PM I arrived the
Reading Time: 5 minutes The IT software engineer job market seems warmed up a little bit recently, from my observations. I am getting some emails from the recruiters, and they looked like real jobs or openings. I think during the middle of last year (June 2024) I came across the software engineers job chart from (FRED) Software Development Job
Reading Time: < 1 minute What doesn’t kill us can only made us stronger — German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche — his original words are: “Out of life’s school of war—what doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.” Five years ago today, 01-23-2019, Wednesday, I was laid off from the company I worked for about 3 and half years. I saved the
Reading Time: < 1 minute Reasons for that: economy and layoffs – we have zero control on neither; at certain point, companies and organizations started to discriminate against older workers in terms of hiring and firing (layoffs), due to their potentially higher salary, higher healthcare expense, and so on. Surprising, at least for now, AI is the not main reason
Reading Time: 9 minutes As the old Chinese sayng goes, 下棋找高手，弄斧到班门 (baidu)。下棋找高手，弄斧到班门。—-中国科学院 || Basically one needs to get trained properly or work at a place that has some good technology and process so that he or she can really understand what’ the proper way to do the work, and work with people. Besides knowing the “what”, “why” and “how”, a
Reading Time: 2 minutes Thinking it may be helpful for me to explain all this, as I never heard about those coming from China to the USA in late 1990s. Maybe the employers are doing those in China nowadays too, but at my time, I never heard about it. Background Check There are background check, and sometimes there are
Reading Time: 2 minutes General Rule of Thumb on the length of work tenure A while ago, in year 2010, I got this rule from a friend. My friend spends most of time doing IT/software contractor work, long term contract though. I asked him “how long should I stay at this place because there is a senior guy seems
Reading Time: 3 minutes Using Spoken English the 1st time in the USA 97年夏天我第一次来美国，我的飞机航班是东航上海虹桥(SHA) 到洛杉矶 (LAX, China Eastern MU 583), 当时好像用的是麦道11(Btw, 93年好像有一次事故），再从洛杉矶坐TWA航班飞圣路易斯(STL)。我在洛杉矶机场犯了一个不大不小的错误。我当时很想上厕所，急着从机场（入境处和海关）出来，结果一出来就拿错了行李。等我发现我拿错了，我已经出了海关，我赶紧用我的英语跟美国机场的工作人员解释，还好他听懂了，让我进去跟东航的地勤人员说上话，交换了行李（取到了我自己的行李）。这个箱子是当时上海第一百货的牌子，估计我们都是在一百买的，这个箱子实用也较便宜。这一次是我的口语第一次在美国派到用场。 PS: 大概在2005/6年在圣村的机场，又碰到一件类似的事情，这一次是Diplomat的灰色硬壳箱。对方把我的箱子拿到家以后，没有多想，直接撬锁。后来她通过航空公司陪了我大概是五十还是一百块钱(USD)：她没有拿我的东西，就是赔我的坏掉的箱锁。那个箱子今年回国才退休。Also: I have other stories with the diplomat luggage (1 and 2) back in 2007 when I tried to replace a broken wheel. So this one really last for a long time: at least from 2007
Reading Time: 4 minutes Surviving as an IT, especially a software developer contractor is not easy, from my personal experience and observations. I have mostly been an employee (sometimes people call it full-time), with a few stints as a contractor (my LinkedIn profile here). I worked as a contractor mostly because I needed to bring bread (or bacon) home,
Reading Time: 3 minutes My wife who started working for a localization company since this past April, for the most part she was happy. But recently she started to talk about this exact issue of her leader (more a tech lead or project lead, not necessarily a manager). This reminds me of my own experience of dealing with micro
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