Bjorno.licio.us

I was just reading Noah’s blog about his career path. Lets just say he’s working in smaller and smaller companies (Intel to Facebook to Mint) as he grows up (thot this sounded better than “ages”, Noah =)

I hate working in large companies and here’s my career path thus far:

Singapore Armed Forces: Biggest cluster-f”lower” organization you can ever work for in Singapore. Links you to almost every other friggin organization like Defence Science Technology Authority (DSTA or wateva), the Singapore Technologies (ST) group and all those little battalions.. The organization is about, say.. 10,000++ ?? I “worked” for 2.5 years, 1.5 years as a logistics officer. People always thinks its a crappy dark phase of their life but I actually learnt a lot about organizational culture and management when I was there. You simple have to when you work with so many different agencies and especially military drivers.

Motivation/ coercion takes on a whole new different meaning when you try to encourage someone to send 5 boxes into the jungle at 3am in the morning, or how about waking up to 35 missed calls by a senior commander between 2-4am in the morning. I always remind myself that the Israelis have it worse at dark periods of my life like that. Guess maybe thats why I stopped liking big organizations after 2002.

MOSS Equipment : Ahh.. Fond memories, my first startup with friends. 5 of us to be exact. Our biggest ever was 6 people, one hired hand. It sure felt good to do anything you want and smell that sweet air of liberty 1 year after leaving the thousand-member organization of the army. I enjoyed the independence of making decisions myself with no one being able to shove their own thoughts onto me. Did this for 15 months to leave for a new continent.

BitMicro: 50 employees I last counted. I went up the numbers game to a more hierarchical startup but in a different culture of Silicon Valley. It was much more cosmopolitan experience too, we had a Filipino management team, my entire department and my supervisor was Vietnamese and almost the entire company was Asian-American, save for 3 or 4 white guys and African-Americans. I quit after 6 months.

Alpha Innotech: Another startup in Silicon Valley. Again, small setup of about 50 people. My department was Iranian-American this time and I worked with a lot more white Americans. Being the only Chinese-speaking guy in my team, I worked with a lot more Chinese than ever in my life as I became the point man for a project with a Beijing-based company. Spent 13 months in this company.

Ahh, i count about 34 months worth of time spent in small organizations between 6-50 employees. My mentor thinks I should work in a big organization with a real brand name in order to make my resume look decent. His logic is that I can at least make my resume look like I fit within a big organization and be employable years down the road, should I fail in my startup. This beats having only small startups on my resume.

What would you do if you wear my shoes?