Josh's viewpoint: WORK

From what Heather tells me, several of you have asked about what my work life is like here in China.  It's interesting how many things are the same as back in the US, but there are obvious differences also.  I'll start with a few specific questions I've heard: 

What are the work hours?  This is mostly defined by the shuttle bus schedule.  The busses arrive at 8:30 a.m., and leave at 5:40 p.m. There are 6ish buses that run routes all over the city.  There are ~270 people who work at this facility.  Judging by the number of scooters and bicycles parked outside, probably 60-80 people ride these in, a few people walk, and there are no more than 30 parking spaces for cars.  Everyone else rides these busses or takes a taxi.  This isn't a Cummins thing, either.  Dongfeng (a large Chinese car and truck manufacturer) is near here and has many more busses than we do.  Citroen and Peugot are the same way.   

So most people get here at 8:30 and leave at 5:30.  Lunch starts being served in the cafeteria at 11:30, and the lights come back on in the office at 1:00 p.m. (more on that later). 

As Heather mentioned in her blog, I frequently have evening phone calls.  My program has a management review coming up, so many of these are function-specific reviews leading up to this.  I'll probably average 2-3 telecons per week in the evenings once we get through this review.  We also have meetings in the mornings here, for which people from Columbus call in in their evenings, so it's not just a burden for me.  Par for the course on a program being developed globally. 

How many other Americans do I work with?  None.  Seriously. There are two other American citizens that I know of out of the 270 employees here.  And I don't work directly with either of them.  One of the two is actually Chinese by descent!  My buddy Christos sits right across the aisle from me, and he is Greek.  There is one guy from India here on a 2-year assignment from Columbus.  Everyone else is Chinese.  I think there is a higher population density of us non-Chinese here at work than there would be in the population of Wuhan as a whole.  I heard that there were only about 2000 expats in this city of 9.5 million.  Figure in that some of those expats are from somewhere in Asia (we know at least one family from Singapore), etc., and we do stick out, much to my wife's dismay (hence the staring, following, touching, etc. when we're out).  Folks here just aren't used to seeing people who look like us. 

Do I have an interpreter to help me at work?  Yes.  He is named "everyone".  Essentially all of the professional staff here speaks English to some degree.  Some speak it very well, some not as well, but enough to communicate.  They all speak much better English than I do Chinese.  Our meetings are held in English, but if there is more detailed discussion needed, sometimes a couple of people in the meeting will speak in Chinese to make the discussion easier, then someone will summarize in English for me.  It actually works fairly well. One of my primary take-aways from when I was here in May is that you can't communicate and lead a team like you need to remotely, especially with different native languages involved.  A perfect illustration of this: I sent an email while I was here that I thought was very concise and clear and explained what sort of data I thought we needed to collect.  The person to whom I sent the email is a really smart guy, and he thought he understood exactly what I was looking for.  So he sent the data back to me.  Not what I wanted at all.  So I sat down with a pencil and paper with him in a conference room and in 30 seconds we got on the same page.  You really need that face-to-face interaction to be able to be effective. 

Other tidbits: Coffee and tea are free in the office.  When I was here in May, there was one drip coffee pot that was usually empty, and instant coffee in the "tea room".  This instant coffee has aptly been described as tasting like "soil".  But they now have one of those neat espresso-style machines that makes coffee way stronger than I'd normally drink, but better than instant.   

-Lunch is also free.  Worth every penny, too!!!  I'm hoping this helps me lose some weight.  The fruit is normally really good and some of the stir-fry things they have are OK.  No whole fish yet, like last time.  Most people here eat in the cafeteria every day, but several of the managers never do.  I'd like to go out, but a) I'm cheap, b) it's kind of a pain to arrange every day, and c) I really like the food outside of work, so I'd end up eating a lot more.  So I eat here with my team.  It's also a really good time to get to know the folks better. 

-We normally go down to lunch at about 11:45, and if it's not like walking on the surface of the sun outside, will sometimes go for a walk after lunch.  Then it's back up to our desks for a rest until 1:00.  Almost everyone who stays here for lunch goes to their desk, a conference room, or somewhere and puts their head down or lies down for a rest.  Someone comes around about noon and shuts off most of the lights in the office, then turns them back on at 1:00.  I have managed to actually fall asleep one day for about 20 minutes.  It sounds like a joke, but this really is effective.  I have never felt so good in an afternoon at work as I did that day.  I set my alarm on my watch to go off at 1:00 every day so I don't worry about oversleeping.   

-Those who work at COM (the office where I worked in Columbus that had a severe shortage of men's stalls) will appreciate that there are plenty of bathrooms for the number of people here. 

-The office is air conditioned, but much like any other building here, I don't think the insulation is very good, and the A/C has a hard time keeping up.  It is probably 75-78 degF in the office most of the time. 

-Everyone is happy to help.  I think some of this is because it's funny to watch me try to learn how to order a dumpling.  I spent a little bit of time on Friday putting together a powerpoint slide with some food-ordering basics.  I found out that google translate is not always accurate.  I don't know if this is because of regional dialects or people messing with google, maybe because "right" can mean the side of me that is not on the left, or it can mean correct, or it can mean politically conservative (some may believe those last two are the same), etc., and I'm not bright enough to figure out which of the Chinese translations is what I'm after.  But one of the admins here helped me get it put together and I was able to order a delicious meal (which the boys refused to eat) for us Friday night, with only a handful of giggles from the nice lady at the restaurant.   

-The dress code is different from what I'm used to.  I think some of this is due to the heat, and some is due to the fact that laundry is a real pain here.  Our washing machine is small, and the "drying" function on it is essentially useless, so everything gets hung on a clothesline to dry.  And with the relatively warm environment in the office, it is not uncommon to see people wearing shorts, T-shirts, untucked shirts, etc., and no one thinks anything of it. I'll tell you about some of those shirts too, when I am off the record.

-In Columbus, I'm used to being in meetings all day, every day. I probably average 30+ hours of meetings per week.  Some are very good and effective, others not so much.  Here, I am in 1-2 hours of meetings max during the day.  And they are mostly effective.  It isn't uncommon for a meeting to be scheduled for an hour and only last 30 minutes, because we covered everything.