Sin-Yaw @ Juniper

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.

Once a quarter, Juniper has a company-wide pizza-lunch. Around lunch hour, Sunnyvale-based employees go to a big hall across the street for about an hour of company all-hands. Pizzas and drinks will be provided. Since we are a networking company, anyone can also watch the event via live streaming.

Scott Kriens, CEO for 12 years, introduced the new CEO, Kevin Johnson. Mr. Johnson talked for about 15 minutes and gave us a glimpse of his personality and style. He is about 4 things: passion, get out of comfort zones, investing on people, and facing up big problems. His credentials are impressive: having brought Microsoft from roughly where Juniper is today to where Juniper wants to be. Both Scott and Kevin were proud to be members of the “0.00″ club: Juniper’s stock price did not change when the news broke. That’s a perfect balance: stock market acknowledge both Scott’s past contribution and Kevin’s future potential.

Scott then gave a very touching short speech on his 12 years at the helm. He talked, passionately, about his two children and described his emotional tie to the company the same as to his children love. Standing ovation.

The event ended with Scott embracing Pradeep Sindhu, founder and CTO, and Kevin Johnson.

Hey, do you guys do beer busts too?