Motorola

Very soon, we will enter the last 100 days of our “transition phase”. I volunteered and started engaging our 2 vendors who provides Career Transition services to come down to our office to give our employees a talk and overview on what the workshop will be about and how it can help us. Everyone will definately signed up since this is covered by Motorola. I see no reason why we should not.

On the other hand, Nz requested some of our managers to form up a S.W.A.T. team to “help” some of our colleagues to get a job. There were things like organising our own job fair, arranging career talks, networking with other company HR managers to see if there are positions available. Apparently, he feels that everyone is sitting there wasting their time and should be doing something more meangingful instead of playing kaixin.net, facebook or just surfing their day away.

Well at least to my knowledge, many of us are already venturing into entreprenurship. I know of at least 4 groups who are diong such. Nevertheless, I will continue to work on this SWAT thing even though i am already very busy with other stuff. Well, thats probably one of the last things i can do for the department , if it is really useful.

Do i have the following skill sets?

• Able to deliver results by motivating and inspiring your colleagues
• Skills to manage innovation in an international, multi-disciplinary business environment
• Entrepreneurial spirit to grasp business opportunities and the drive and determination to lead them to fruition
• Strong influencing skills, coupled with a natural ability to lead and take on challenges
• Experience/excellent track record in some of the following areas:
- R&D; of electronics products and systems;
- Management of people/processes;
- Interaction with customers/suppliers;
- Product development within strict timelines involving cross-functional collaboration
- Broad based HR generalist experience
• Excellent communication skills; fluent in English and preferably in one or more ASEAN languages

I think the answer is Yes. What do you think ?

Never Close your doors and shut your windows before the SUn Sets.

A follow up to the opportunities that was presented to me 2 days ago.

The talent sourcing guy call KS called me again for referral and i decided to ask him for the job description so that i can forward to my friends or colleagues who might be interested. Upon receiving the email, i find that the JD fits what i wanted and decided to give it a shot myself. If i managed to get into the position , i got to ask my boss for an early release . Anyway that will matter only if i am offered a position. This morning i got another call from KS asking me about more details if i am technically competent , and if i am a high performer in the organisation and many other questions. Well my doors are still open to them at the moment

The IOS ( Internal Opportunity System ) is still available, the new boss , also happen to be called KS . I was curious who he is and decided to pop by and see if i know him “by face”. For me, there are a couple of things i need to consider before i took up a new job . $$$is definitely one of them. Who you are going to work for and the people you are going to work with matters a lot too.
Although technically you cannot control if you are going to a new environment. But if i am doing a IOS , i will like to find out first. After considering all these i decided i will not be taking this position for now.

The main reason is as follows

Andy ” I like to know more about the position available and its job description.
Do I do that before or after the IOS ? ”

KS “you can get the brief JD from the IOS or we can meet to have a quick chat. The only problem is my boss is in this week and I am quite full in my agenda. Let see…”

He doesnt even want to talk to me! Makes me feel like i am desperate for the job. I will not forgo my severance for this. Nor will i close my doors and shut my windows before the sun sets.

I have my first meeting with my 2 new partners on our business plan. A lot of brainstorm ideas and overall , it looks exciting. Internet advertising is really a boundary-less investment and you can do tons of stuff with it. I setup google docs to stored our meeting invites and i am impressed with what google docs can do. I dont really have high expectations of this business partnership, but what i really want to achieve through this is to take something away in this 4 months from this experience. I am sure i will be able to do that.

Opportunities start knocking

1. Got an internal opportunity to take up the position of a Project Manager in the other sector. However i am still having reservations if i should seize that opprotunity due to a couple of reasons.

a. accepting the offer will means my severance package is gone. Though some told me is better to get a secure job than to get the $$$. No one can guarantee anything especially within Motoorla based on the current situation.

b. I am not sure if i want to seal up my own opportunites so early. Taking this offer now will laterally means i am not going to look for smoething else outside ( i can still do it , but no point since i wont have the package anymore if i quit )

c. I am reading up on Business Plans. You never know if your business ideas will end up giving you houses, bmws and 6 figure revenue.

2. Head hunting company called me for a position as a software manager in a MNC company. I told them i am only available in October. Didnt really tell them it was a retrenchment. THey thought i am under contract. Didnt have any more details on it, so i just sent them my CV

3. I am still in thoughts about doing my own internet business. reading up a lot and doing a lot of research. Wasnt really putting my chips that it will make it. But , all great ideas always come from crazy ideas first. I have talks with a couple of colleagues and hopefully we can form a partnership to dive deeper into this area.

Whether it is (1), (2) or (3) , it looks interesting. I still havent feel the “pain” of retrenchment though i am only left with 136 days. In fact i quite like my life now since i haev a lot of time to explore the various paths that i can take after Sep30.

Cheers

Time passes real fast, our time left with Moto is about 5 months. The amount of workload / projects in the office is getting lesser and lesser. At the same time , we have a few more cases of colleagues finding jobs and requesting for early release.

Through K.T, i get to know that C.B. is also looking around for business opportunities. I spend an hour talking with him today. As he mentioned , the higher you are in the rank , the higher you are paid and the harder you will find to get a job outside especially in the current global situation. C.B. is looking at partnership and see if there is an opportunity to do something we can really call our own. I am quite interested in his vision and decided that well maybe i should not get myself tied to a job now first. Moreover Mrs Chan indicated a very strong interest to take a break in europe and states. In Fact she already done the planning and completed it for 12 days europe trip. Yippee!

Starting a Business isnt tough, running a business is the challenging one. If i dont try, i will never know if i will like it or not. Even though it fails, it probably will be a valuable lesson in life and i believe i will definately learn something out from that experience. I wouldnt consider myself a late starter. In chinese they call it ????? . having been working for the past 9 years, i have gained enough experience to venture on my own and not too late to afford any major failures i hope. Giving myself 12 to 18 months of time span, even if it doesnt work out, i can still go out to look for a job , dont forget i will very soon be PMP and ITIL certified. Haha.

Maybe i should really start thinking about this seroiusly. A couple of actions i should start doing
1. Get the proposal template from C.B. and start working and identifying on “opportunities”
2. Get some good books on business proposals and startup.

I hope this isnt another “??????”.

The calm sea before the storm ? Motorola is expected to do the Q1 earning reports this week or early next week. We know the handset business is not going anywhere , and the company has decided to shift the focus to “smartphones” and prioritised America, China and Latin America market. The share price has been climbing steadily in the last 4-6 weeks. Does that indicate recovery sign ? or is just ???? ?

There are a lot of firsts today.

- This is the first time i watch show with some of my colleagues/lunch mates even though we have been working together for at least more than 4 years.

- This is the first time i watch show during official office hours.

- This is the first time i purchase 23 movie tickets at one go.

Kat Tan , the dept secretary decided that we should do something on a monthly basis to keep everyone together since we are the remaining bunch of “piglets” waiting to be slaughtered. The first even that happened in the month of April is Movies on Fridays. We selected the show “The International” since it just starting showing on screen on THursday and everyone have not seen it. Verdict 1* , dont watch it.

We are already discussing what else we want to do for the remaining fridays already.

Goo33 Summit @ Oplus

1. Lessons Learnt – wear as simple as you can next time. My Burberry polo tee become Size XL after my colleagues attempted to take it off from me. L-O-L

2. Andy “Enjoy yourself last nite?”
Joe ” Yaman”
Andy “Moto Colleagues hard to find”
Joe “I cannot find this happiness in new coy”

I thought i didnt expreience the other part of the field , that is why i thought this pasture is always the greenest. now that these words come out from people who has seen both sides of the pastures, it seems like Moto is still the best place to be in !

3. how we spend 1.1k in 3 hours. Here is the damage list

Yesterday Nz drop me a email and tell me ” we need to talk”. Was thinking what it could exactly be? Could it be work related or department related?

In the end , it was neither. He was concern about my recent indulgement in running and gaming and thought it could be a “delayed post-retrenchment obsessive behavious” ( DPOB ) . I told him wasnt , but was touched that he showed that concern to me.

Anyway we have a 20 mins talk about myself . Hopefully, our boss-employee relationship will continue somewhere else after Sep30.