Things that are true

Interesting image here. After reading that you will have a very powerful way to counter any disagreement.

Official News

It has to be official now: I am gonna change job. The new job will be putting embedded linux on smart cards and phone sim cards. Since I have yet to tender my resignation letter, I will run through my thoughts here.

There are two forces at play here: the pushing forces at my existing company, and the pulling forces of my new company (and its environment).

Pushing Forces:

1. Management doesn't respect engineers. Since the CEO is from marketing background, he trusts people who are similar to him. RnD is usually at the receiving end for all the blames and shit, while the marketing people take the credits and all the cool travel perks.
2. The Linux packages used by our products is very dated (most packages are from year 2000). This issue is much more serious for Linux systems because they change real fast. Needless to say, for my co's products, a lot of known bugs and security holes are wide open, inviting exploits. However, our technical manager is too afraid to change anything that is not broken.
   
3. All the staff are getting a 10% 'pay deferment' recently. In other words, all the employees' salaries are cut 10%. The management blames the world economy at large and said they will repay the deducted salary when the company's financial health improves. I am doubtful about that because it has a track record of not keeping promises. In fact, just a few months ago there were a few big business deals went through in the order of million dollars, and curiously employees got nothing at all. But when bad time is looming close, it swiftly puts the employees in front to cushion the blow. I can't deny those pointy-hair bosses are smart in someway.
   
4. No viable/value-adding projects ahead. I have finished my satellite demodulator project and the software was released Friday. After that my manager tried to talk me into a terrestrial DVB-T demodulator project. Although technologically they do differ, from an embedded system perspective, the difference is trivial. The demod chip can be viewed as a black box with a few modulation-specific outputs. Those outputs are handled in a similar fashion by firmware and thus there isn't much new stuff to play with.
   
5. My current place is in the east of Singapore. I rent a room in a 2-room flat. The landlord stays in the other room with his wife. Although he is a nice person, the problem with him is he is a heavy smoker. I am always choked by cigarette smoke seeping through my door when he smokes in his room. No, diplomacy doesn't work here.
   

Pulling Forces:

1. Phone programming seems something quite cool. During the interview, the manager showed me an OpenMoko phone. It is always interesting to play with new toys.
2. The CEO called me up personally and invited me to join his company. Note this doesn't mean he will be good to me or will put RnD at higher priority, but heck, at least I have a hope.
3. The offer is of course having a higher salary than my existing job, or else why bother?
4. I was told my job will be doing PoC (Proof of Concept) and technology transfer only. That means I have relatively more freedom to do things I like and choose technologies as I see fit.
   
5. The new office is at the west of Singapore, close to Biopolis.
   

Week in Review

These days Cuppa has been quite busy on several fronts.

Personally there is not much update, I am still like, hmm, an engineer. Some people keep on asking why I still don't have a girlfriend, since there are a lot of ladies showing interest.

Well, there are a lot of girls out there who are pretty and nice, however so far they still lack of something. I have pondered upon this question for years, and all I can conclude is the tactile memories in MSEE years ago are indelible.

Job-wise I am having a frantic rush for a product release tomorrow, only uncovering a lot of bugs at the last minute. This sucks...

Here is an interesting article supposedly for young engineers, but I think it is quite general for people young and old, engineers or not.

Politics... well, it ain't pretty either in Malaysia or US, I will spare you with all these.

On Foreign Talent and the Consequences

How to deal with foreigners, or to be politically correct, 'foreign talents', has been always a hot topic in Singapore (other topics could be ERP, where to eat, and how to do water sports without water)

Singapore government is trying its best to convince the mass, especially Singaporeans, the importance of attracting and retaining foreigners.

Among the reasons are these people can help Singapore to grow, and it is better to get them in instead have them compete with Singapore elsewhere. These reasons are indeed valid, however this doesn't capture the whole spirit of why it has to attract eligible foreigners.

The ultimate driver for all these is: investment. Investments come in many forms, and the most useful form for the government will be business investment (BI). BI not only contributes to the GDP, it also hires and trains the local people, and pays the bulk of taxes.

In order for a business to thrive, the government must be efficient and corruption free, on top of that, the country should have a fair tax regime, sufficient human resources, strong infrastructure, and an open, robust financial market. If we check this list against Singapore, we find that Singapore has been doing well on most items, except human resources which are always limited, and financial market which still weak in comparison with those of New York, London, and even Hong Kong.

We will skip the issue on financial market and focus on lack of human resources in Singapore. Due to geographical constraint, Singapore has limited human resources to draw upon. After getting talents from Malaysia for years, it already hit a limit on what it can get. Here is where other foreigners come into play. Not only they can meet the demand of employers, but these people also effectively drive down real salaries while supposedly push up the qualities among employees.

This scenario is mean and definitely not pretty to the employees. Now one not only must be good in what they do, but they must do that cheap enough to be attractive. In other words the profit-to-be-realized and price ratio of someone must be high enough to survive this globalized economy. Thus when we hear people lament and complain about foreigners taken up their jobs, we can safely assume they are either not at the top of the food chain, or having quality of lives which don't commensurate with their abilities.

So what can Singaporeans do? Actually they have two ways. The first way will be to improve themselves to the extent they aren't afraid of competition. The second way will be to become employers themselves, or in another word, to start on entrepreneurship. By no coincidence, this is one of the things the government is pushing hard recently. Again, it is BI, silly.

Therefore all Singapore employees rejoice! We know if we can't keep our jobs, we can always start our businesses and fry kueh teow, and the gar'ment will help us.

When Everything is Aplenty

Recently in IT, there is an explosion growth of everything.

Around ten years ago, things were much simpler. You didn't have much choice on hardware, OS, or computer languages.

However things have changed: There are a lot of devices that can beat any high-end desktop from ten years ago, and no one would ever dreamed then these devices really can compute.

Similarly there are just a hell-lot of operating systems. Aside from the oldies like Unix, Mac, and Windows. We have some pretty new contenders like Linux, and those old-but-revamped like Minix and OpenSolaris. I will leave Linux derivatives alone as there are too many to count. In fact, there is an OS which is a cross between solaris and Linux, but I can't recall its name off my head right now.

On the programming language front, there is literally a revolution. Partly because computers are much more popular now, and another important factor is nowadays computers are much more powerful with comparably more storage. The latter is important because theoretical stuff that couldn't be realized or too inefficient last time finally are possible now.

Given all the happenings in IT, do you think we are blessed, or cursed? You judge.

据说是台湾一小朋友画滴....

This Week in Review

This was not a hectic week professionally, even though there were customer complaints and feature requests, things were still under control. So no more update on work.

On my personal front, I quited coffee and things that contain caffeine effective Wednesday. All these stemmed from my recent unsatisfactory sleeps. I thought long and hard for the reason, and coffee seemed the chief culprit, and I am right. So far I have been coffee-less for 4 days and the sleep quality has been improving. Now when I am sleepy, instead downing a cup of coffee, I just go and take a nap whenever possible.

Btw, here are news that I am aware of this week:

1. China's milk scare is eclipsed by the space walk program. I think this is a very sad state of affair. Chinese (or the Chinese government) has a strange urge to please the outsiders (especially the Westerners) and from my observation, it is against its own people Chinese can be the most mean, cruel, and merciless. This happens at the government level and among the people. The Sanlu Milk Scare is a typical reflection of the mentality: "face is important, people's lives? Who cares?". Do note most of the affected babies were from middle-class or poor families, while better well-to-do parents definitely will buy foreign milk powders. This is yet another reason why the Chinese government only did the minimal to the officials responsible, well because the affected people are poor. They don't have the mean and money to litigate or protest anyway.
   
2. Wall Street Bail-Out. This is a very comical episode only available in US. Those working in Wall Street has fucked up while trying to rack in more money, despite the fact they are paid much higher than they should given their quality and contribution to the society, the magical moment comes is when they fail, they have the bless of Uncle Sam to foot the bill. In fact, those hardworking Americans who pay taxes promptly and deposit money in bank are actually in higher risks than those bankers: first they have to take the risks of failing banks and disappearing deposits, second they have to help those bankers to repay the debt bought by Uncle Sam. What do these people get in return? Yes, more taxes.
   
3. Symbian is very dead it seems. Symbian is bought by Nokia and UIQ and S60 are going to merge in 2009. It seems my phone is going to be obsolete in months. This story teaches me it is time to look out for Android or OpenMoko. For my next phone, I will opt for a more basic phone with a small price tag. Good for my mental and wallet health.