Oct 22nd, 2008
100 Days
Juniper reminds of China all the time: energetic, optimistic, impatient, and creative: precious like a talented young adult ready to change the world. All what’s needed is a good tool chest and some practicing.
The timing is everything. Choose a good direction and the world changes according to the plan. A bad habit may hinder competitiveness beyond remedy. I am very fortunate to join the company at this time. The opportunity to participate an era does not come frequently. This, again, reminds me of China too.
I met many people and made friends. Breaking-in is always scary; Juniper made it easy. Several senior executives went to length to introduce me to other leaders. I became part of a company-wide tiger team. What followed was 6 weeks of whirl-wind accelerated assimilation.
In the midst of those, I was still moving back from Beijing to my west San Jose old home. I stole a trip back to Beijing to wrap up 3 years of life there. On my way back, I took a detour, too short, to visit Juniper’s Bangalore site. There I got a renewed appreciation of my 3 years as the remote guy. I came back mentally excited, physically tired, and over-whelmed by a garage full of moving boxes.
Juniper soon entered its annual planning cycle. Every companies does this. Juniper’s process is a familiar ones: messages exchanges at various levels until they are reasonably consistent. This is just like routing: adjacent nodes exchange information until their view of the world become consistent. Only the physical layer here is the budget.
I felt sure-footed enough to start trying out some change ideas. They coincided well with the second phase of the tiger-team project earlier. These new activities kept my daily calendar booked wall-to-wall almost everyday. The bus rides, 40 minutes one-way, gave me precious time to collect thoughts and calm-down from the adrenaline-filled days. I am not sure what will I do when winter comes.
100-day is just a calendrical event. Today will roll like yesterday or tomorrow. In my heart, this marks a milestone of becoming a part of this company. Many more friends to come, I am sure.
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