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

Reading Time: 3 minutes There are a few ways to solve for it. I am aware of 3. For the problem above, I tried to guess 1st. Because the numbers are easy. A few years ago I came across the bar model approach from “Math in Focus“, because the school my daughter attends start adopting that math curriculum. Below

Reading Time: 2 minutes (Update 11-22-2023) I think one of the main competitor for Jack Henry is Fidelity Information Services ($FIS), and it seems something happened in mid 2021, and FIS start underperforming against Jack Henry from that time. See the 20 year stock chart above. It looks like the WorldPay acquisition was the main culprit here (Reuters: FIS

Reading Time: < 1 minute Amid the recent events, and I listened and watched quite a bit of YouTube videos and read a bit Twitter (now X) and some articles. It’s a complex issue and my only hope is we lose as fewer civilians as possible. I believe all lives are equal and unfortunately quite a few other people (some

Reading Time: 2 minutes 今天我想说说politics on offices(or fights on better cubicles or offices, think bigger cubicles, corner offices and so on 就是大家都想要好的cubicle 或是office). Not the traditional good old office politics. 不是办公室政治，而是关于争抢办公室的故事。 抢办公室 Fight for office 这两天美国国内一个较大的新闻是众议院共和党的领袖麦卡锡被轰下了台。一个附带的结果是众议院民主党的前领袖Nancy Pelosi 丢掉了她的又大又好的办公室 – BBC: Interim House Speaker ‘evicts’ two senior Democrats from Capitol; (Daily Beast) McCarthy Fires Parting Shot: Stealing Nancy Pelosi’s Office.

Reading Time: 3 minutes Or rewards credit cards. Today I received an email from PenFed Credit Union and they are asking me to lobby the congress on rewards Credit Cards. I no longer have their credit cards, I used to have their reward cards, and earned quite a bit gift cards from them. Basically I redeemed the points for

Reading Time: 2 minutes Yesterday at a WeChat group, I wrote 昨天在一个微信群里我写到: 我（My LinkedIn Profile 我的领英链接）在美国工作23年迄今呆过十个庙。。。 话说完后我想起来十个庙，与多数码工相比，也真是不少了，平均2.3年（2年4个月）换一个工作。还好只是换工作😂 又想起在罗拉时，有一回是参加大公司招新的大学毕业生的介绍会（一般会有免费的比萨🍕饼，对我这样的穷学生来说诱惑力还可以）。有一次好像是听Honeywell公司的老总(possiably Michael Bonsignore)：你们这些年轻人（当时我还不是大叔），从大学毕业到退休，大概平均会有七个工作。这个与他们那一代人一辈子，大概三十四十年的打工生涯，大多为一家公司打工的情况大为不同。 我记得两年多之前在找我现在这份工作时，我现在的大老板（也就是老板的老板，manager’s manager) 说小徐啊，你好像换了不少工作啊。他是印度人，不会说小徐，但是听他口气，他不喜欢 Job Hopper 或者说是经常换工作的人（言下之意缺少长性，或是知难而退？）. Job Hopper这个词在这里是贬义词。但是这个也是有点意思的问题。因为在美国做码工，要涨工资的除了升职，一个主要的方法是跳槽，不管是内部跳，还是跳外部。我想大多数上班的人，尤其是年轻人是会追求这个的，所谓升官发财。当然我现在已过了这个年龄，我现在如果找工作，不再过于看重这些。这是后话。另外一方面，一个码工如果要进步，就要不断学习。从这个角度来说，其实适当在内外部跳跳也是不错的锻炼机会。我的理解是两三年可以跳跳，换换，用英文来说是找到新的challenge. 退一步来说，比如我从software engineer 换成architect，后来发现会议，office politics 太多，就再换回来。也挺好。所谓的树挪死人挪活，我觉得是有道理的。还有一种情况，虽然是被动地换工作，但是找准新的更适合自己的方向，也挺好。下面是一个反例。 10 Years of same old same old 就着上面这个跳槽的问题。说一个极端的例子：比如说一个人在一个公司，做同样的事，做了十年。那么他/她是十年的工作经验呢，还是一年（假如那些事一年就可以学会的话）。其实你可能猜到我想说的意思：他这个应该算一年的工作经验。其实我想说的意思是：工作中要不断学习。如果觉得缺乏挑战，应该自己想想，有什么办法可以改变现状。我的直觉有一次我见到的裁员有点这个味道。 我前调一下上面这个不完全是仅限于技术性的工作。从职业发展来说，一个人随着年龄和经验的增长，一般来说最好也提高一下自己的沟通交流，领导才能。其实在家里也是如此（如何引导小孩）。只是耕种好自己的一亩三分当然也不错，但是有时候还不够。当然跟人的性格也有关系，比如说有的人就是在家里听老婆的，那也不错。或者说在单位就想做Individual Contributor (IC), 听领导吩咐，屁颠屁颠地去做，只要自己愿意/开心，也挺好。没有一定的定式。 我的第一份工作 是在学校找的。我当时是博士生，但是我感觉我的基础太差，最主要我当时很想出去工作了（我觉得做很多事兴趣还是相当重要的）。2000年，正好也是美国纳斯达克的最高点 （“The dot-com bubble burst in March 2000, with the technology heavy NASDAQ

Reading Time: 3 minutes And eat some moon cakes. I just realized I wrote something about mid autumn festival way back in year 2007. I believe I was in Shanghai when I wrote this, and it was after we had honey moon in San’ya, Hainan, China. Time flies. Now we have 2 kids, and I don’t see any special

Reading Time: 4 minutes Back to coding. When working on the same file at the same time, the old joke is try to check in your code change before the other girl (guy) does. This way you don’t have to worry about the merge (meaning, put in your code change while keeping the other person’s code changes). In this

Reading Time: 2 minutes 今天09/26/23 礼拜二美国总统拜登成为第一个在任总统正式加入美国汽车工人工会(UAW)的举牌子走路活动。但是凭我在美二十多年的观察，美国工会包括UAW的力量比克林顿当总统时应该是变弱了。美国的工会在历史上对劳苦大众的工资待遇是有帮助的：比如说煤矿的工会。我自己大概十一年前在煤炭公司上过班，我是白领，有一回我去参观了地下煤矿，据说这个是在美国算是非常先进的地下煤矿了，但是在地下总的感觉是非常不好。我想到工人他们在地下吃中饭，我们所谓的管理人员在办公室吃 Director of Business Process Improvement 让秘书准备的 Chicken Salad Sandwich. If you are curious about the daily lives in West Virginia and the coal mines there, there are quite a few videos on YT such as this one. 记得大概20年前，村里grocery store 的packers and cashiers 也举牌子走路。我也支持她们，not crossing picket line. 就去中国店或是Aldi 买菜。我个人印象较深的是有一回美国UPS 工人罢工，那次好像影响较广。好像也是我刚来美国不久，August 1st – August 19,