Malaysia LSCA team celebrates!!

Well, the fiscal year has ended. AP is feeling on top of the world - preliminary results looks good. We still have to wait for the official announcements. But what the heck, the team feels confident of the results and was ready to party after a long hard year.

Friday evening, we adjourned to Chilli's at 1 Utama for a team dinner. It so happened that that day fell on, both Liew Ting Kok and my wife's birthday. So I got to bring her and Alex along (or contend with a really black face at home for not celebrating her birthday). We had to split into 3 tables as the crowd was quite large - 20 people.

Table 1 with the hip younger generation started off by ordering a round of margaritas. Then came the main courses. I'll let the photos speak for themselves.There were many more dishes, but by then my hands and fingers were all greasy and oily and I had to give it a rest.

After dinner, we adjourned to Neway for karaoke.

The night ended with last 4 people leaving the karaoke joint after 3am. I left at 11pm as Alex was getting too tired, but I heard many strange stories the following Monday.
There were a number of people who got so pissed drunk that they vomited in the loo, the ice bucket and the rubbish bin. One engineer fumbled and dropped his car keys through the gap of the lift doors. He had to travel back home to Setapak to get his spare keys and by the time he returned, his parking charges was more than RM40 (we only paid RM1 for parking the whole day!!).The guys lost out to the gals in the drinking contest. They just couldn't hold their liquor. So some of them pretended to sleep??!!

Well, we enjoyed ourselves. Next thing to look forward to are the slew of news from 1st December,

Hari Raya open House visits

The Muslim festival of Eid Fitri is almost over. But the Malaysian tradition of open houses has not abated. That is when we visit our Muslim friends (invited or otherwise) at their home for a bit of food, drink, and catching up.

The last week of October and beginning of Nov, my family and i visited Indah, one of our sales admin about 4 generations ago (as in 4 admin persons ago). We were amongst the first to reach there. Some other office mates arrived much later. Indah had a nice buffet spread laid out for her guest. My son enjoyed going from table to table to enjoy the different cookies that she had.She has a nice super link in Tropika 2 located within Bukit Jelutong. That is near to Denai Alam where I have purchased a double storey linked house. So I took the opportunity to recce the house - it is still being constructed.

Then the following week, we went to Maryah's house in Bandar Tasik Puteri, near to Country Homes, Rawang. and Madeline. What a loooonnnnggg journey to get there. The 3 musketeers met up there - Jeanie, Maryah and Madeline. Maryah prepared Asam Laksa, Ketupat with kerang, chicken nuggets and fried chicken wings. The Asam laksa was on request from Madeline.

Wan Yow said that if he had known, he would have made his request for special ffod too!!

Fiscal year 08 just started - changes galore!!

Today, 1st Nov 2007, the new fiscal year for Agilent starts.FY07 is over and done with.For those who had not met their targets, whether self imposed or expected, too bad, the slate is wiped clean and you start all over again. And what a start we have

As announced earlier, Chaiyapat Chirathamjaree and Koh Siam Teck switches jobs. Roger is now the new support boss for SMT. Cheng Ah Sai take on the business development position for Lab Informatics reporting to AP VP. Susmaryosep Ong, still has Channels but switches reporting to Teng in marketing. Want to win (Sheang Yin) has resigned from Singapore Sales - reportedly thumbing his nose at getting another month's bonus if only he would remain one more month. Mel Ng decides that Sales is a better life and has tendered notice of resignation to join the competitor - PE. Rumors of another support engineer contemplating resignation is rife. He may consider tendering for a couple of months of no pay leave.

They say it ain't over till the fat lady sings. Well, the fat lady did not sing, but she has to report to R Wong under SAPK sales. And her whole team is now on pay at risk! And that is just Singapore!!

In the world wide arena, my WW support boss has a new manager - Bill (not Sullivan), a product of Princeton U. HR teams WW had to size down as much as 50% in some cases. Quality teams and functions has been re-organized

As of today, the management unit (MU) of my CE Assist team has been mapped to the solution unit, i.e. the SU pays for everything the team incurs form today. By the end of the month, actually 1st December, the whole CE Assist team reports directly to SU - except me.

So what's in it for me? Once the management of the CE Assist team transfers to SU, I have to hire between 6 to 8 new staff, train them up and start a Global Technical help desk that has to operate 24 x 5

Looks like FY08 is a year of and for CHANGE!!

End of October - getting more stresssssssed!

Signs that stress is getting on me - I walk to the pantry to brew my pot of Chinese Tea in the morning and I forgot to bring the tea with me (first time ever!).

I see people on the street - looks familiar - but can't for the life of me remember who they are!! I met people in the shopping complex who "hey" me and I can't remember their names!.

I have my Window Media Player on shuffle mode and playing the more than 600 songs that I had ripped from my CD collection and sometimes a tune gets stuck in my mind the WHOLE day!! It is suppose to help me de-stress!

ARGhh!!!

I need to complete 15 performance reviews. So far 7 done with 3 acceptance.

I need to work with Penang HR to arrange to advertise, collect resumes, hire up to 8 people for the new Global Helpdesk that I am tasked to managed - by November 2007!!

I also need to make sure the transition of my current team to new management is smooth.

And of course there is my weekly teleconference on Wednesday nights which has now shifted to start at 11pm due to the end of daylight saving time.

Sigh!!

Stressful Month

For the past 5 years, the end of October is a stressful month for me. That is when I have to start preparing the performance evaluation of the individuals in my team, rank them and review their salaries with a view towards adjusting them.When I first took over the team 5 years ago, I had the unpleasant task of telling a majority of my Japan based team that their salaries would be CUT between 5% to 15%. And I had to do this for 3 years!! Why? Traditionally, salary adjustments in japan was based on seniority and not performance. So in the new Agilent, where salaries was based on performance and not seniority, they found many low performers being paid top dollars (or Yen). So HR instituted a 3 year program to bring the salary plans to a level to reflect on performance. I probably had a few of my subordinates calling me "baka" behind my back!!.

In the past 5 years, I have also seen the salary plans for China go from about 30% below the Malaysian plan to 10% above today. If you think operating in China is cheap, think again. Malaysia is actually cheaper for multinational companies. All of my subordinates - except those based in India, earns more than me when converted to US dollars!!. And India is fast catching up.

Since the financial crisis that Agilent underwent in the early years, our salary adjustments had progressed from hiring anniversaries to February of a new fiscal year. What this meant was that EVERYBODY gets their pay adjusted (if any) effective from 1st February. This year, 2007, it even got delayed to 1st March (but backdated to 1st Feb for accounting reasons).

Then a few weeks ago, all managers were informed that we needed to submit employees ranking, performance feed backs and salary reviews between 1st to 18th November!!. To get these done in a timely manner, many of us had to start at the beginning of October. Ranking was relatively easier and that exercise is completed except for the data entry into our HR system (which commences on 1st Nov). The biggest time thief is performance evaluations and feed backs. I have 15 people reporting to me. I spend an average of 1.5 to 2 days per employee to research , get feed backs from other people and write up the performance evaluation. That's at least one working month of information gathering and documentation!!. Wah liao - sure die!!

On top of that, my WW boss is asking me to set up a new team of 8 people. Between asking for resumes, interviews, hiring and training, I will be lucky to get enough sleep and maintain my medicated hypertension within safe levels. Challenging!!!!

So with that - my blog entries for the next few weeks would be less - if I am lucky - about once per week.