A Journey Of Surprises
Serendipity
:
My team has to showcase our projects twice a year
My team celebrated my 21
st
birthday at the office
13
SPOTLIGHT
NOV 2016
UMP
大學廣場
I am now sitting at the Coupa Café in downtown Palo
Alto, where has been a landmark at the heart of Silicon
Valley for providing a decent environment for techies,
ranging from enthusiastic entrepreneurs to influential
venture capitalists, to exchange ideas, rest from their
busy schedules or even build the next Facebook. So I
am sure that here is the best place for me to look back
my astonishing voyage.
What is the work culture and
environment in Silicon Valley?
Working with people from different background is
definitely an eye-opening experience for me. I guess
most of you may wonder what the work culture in the
States is and how it is different from Hong Kong’s. One
simple example is about assigning tasks. My manager
here usually gave me a problem of what she was trying
to solve and the goals that she wanted to achieve. How
to do and what to do, they’re completely on my call.
You could definitely come up with crazy ideas. She
would not intervene a lot as long as you can finish your
tasks. Of course, she would be here to guide and provide
feedback when you need help. Being proactive and
taking initiative are the rules of thumb of working here.
Harry Chan (IBBA/ Year 4) joined the Cisco International Internship Program (CIIP)
earlier and has highly benefitted from his experience in the Silicon Valley. He made
much reflections of this journey and found no word other than“serendipity”could
accurately describe his accomplishment in CIIP.
Talking about work culture, you cannot underestimate
the power of flexibility and freedom here. Some interns
are given the chance to utilize some of their working
hours on the side projects that they are interested
in while the project may be irrelevant to what their
business units are doing. A distinguished engineer
mentioned that some of them could even file a patent
for the side project that they were working on! This
kind of environment undoubtedly cultivates innovation.
We are like a big family that we support each other
