#is probably still going to be delayed because HR is incompetent. yet I’M the one who faces the consequences of their incompetence. not them.

[nicoladoeschina]

The Seedy Underbelly

In truth, I am really having a hard time with this new job.

So.... Why?

Why am I doing this now?

I think the answer is simple: so that I’m not tempted to try it again later.

This is a retrospective analysis.

From the outset my thinking was more upward looking.

I was curious. I still am curious. I wanted to know how Chinese companies operate.

My reasoning is that many foreign companies are doing business in China.

I thought it’d be a good angle to get to know them from the inside, so as to better deal with them on the outside.

But even before I formally took this job, I already knew how this one operated.

Horribly.

Already in May, the hiring process was chaotic.

The day after the fancy interview at headquarters, I was verbally told I’d been selected.

Nothing in writing.

I didn’t get more than a casual: you’ve passed, and your stated salary requirements will be met.

The HR employees then commissioned me to obtain many many documents so they could prepare a working visa, that would lead to huge spends of time and money on my part.

I didn’t even have an offer in hand! But if I failed to present the documents, then I Definitely wasn’t getting an offer. It was a Catch-22.

The month of running around Beijing admist garish uncertainty of employment was absolutely wrenching – for me, and for all my close friends/family that had to listen to me bitch for hours in frustration.

I had travel plans to execute on. I had, and still do have, a life to lead. How could they leave me in this limbo? Professionalism? Efficiency? Both null.

After much aggravation, I let them know that I was leaving the country on June 30. It was non-negotiable.

Over the course of the next 6 weeks, I continuall and more firmly, asked for my offer letter. Yet, I was continually met by garbage delays.

Truly, no good reasons were provided for such gross incompetency.

The night before my graduation, I raised hell. The morning of the ceremony, I got my offer. Then I promptly submitted all the pre-visa documents they requested of me. Phew.

Come mid-July two weeks later, I was contacted with my contract.

I was told that even though the stated working location was Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, that this was for government relations/taxation purposes.

As for signing the thing, I was already traveling, so I managed to print it, sign it, then had to scan it to my mom and trouble her to mail the parcel overseas.

Another big hassle.

At this point, I began to wonder about what a professional life in Beijing would look like. So it dawned on me to ask if they would provide assistance for finding housing in Beijing.

And what do you think I learned then?

Oh, by the way, don’t worry about housing in Beijing yet...because you’ll be training in Hohhot for three months at the beginning!!!

What?

You’re only telling me that... now? What if I didn't ask? ...

Knowing what I know now from other recent hires, they wouldn’t have told me. Period.

The Indo girl wasn’t informed of the three month Hohhot stint until after she bought her plane ticket to Beijing. And then she only had a week to prepare.

She’s still paying rent on her Beijing apartment now...

The others, they probably had even less notice.

Lucky me, I put the feelers out about housing in mid-July...

What the actual fuck?

How can any respecting corporation pull at stunt like that on their new hires?

What is the point? It’s not like the HR people don’t know the drill. All new management hires must complete the same process.

Did anyone care to tell us at the interview? No.

Did anyone care to tell us upon the offer? No.

Did anyone care to tell us on signing the contract? No.

Did anyone care at all to tell us one once of information about any fucking thing?

WHAT THE FUCK.

Back to the summer.

The third week of July, I received notice that my non-criminal record check was not sufficient.

Let’s see... that’s Three Weeks after I submitted my information.

As I was traveling, I told HR they must wait.

When I arrived home in mid-August. I went through hoops for the next two months collecting all the necessary documents to approve a new non-criminal record check.

Why did this take two months? Oh yeah, because no one had any clue how to help me and i was having trouble helping myself.

There’s little information online about it.

OHHHHH and best, the Chinese embassy official site hasn’t been updated since 2015.

I should have been smarter and contacted a visa agent from the beginning. But since the NYC consulate is fairly close, I thought I could manage on my own.

I was wrong. I needed the help and eventually wound up paying a service.

(At least I bought myself two amazing amazing months at home. Big upside)

Why was it that the HR for this huge company had no idea how to advise me?

I’m the first (of two) foreigners that they’ve ever hired at the entry level.

The company employs several foreign experts, but of course they are managed much differently...

Once I arrived in Hohhot, it became overwhelmingly apparent that none of the beyond the HR staff and foreigner stuff, no one in management has any knowledge of anything even so slightly removed from their narrow purview. 

Great.

No one knows a fucking thing about anything.

But they’re all generally really nice though...

Let me describe how Chinese companies really work, from the inside.

One umbrella, Three buzz words:

Inefficiency via Over-employment, Under-training and Lots-of-Ass-Kissing

Now, you might ask, how do they function at all?

The answer is very Very VERY slowly.

There are SO MANY people. And so LITTLE skills among them.

Imagine trying to make an assembly line out of a non-linear process. That’s Chinese corporations’ approach to management.

The Chinese government views employment like the Western governments view human rights: necessary for stability.

If Chinese organizations only staffed the number of people needed for the work, there’d be massive havoc in the streets.

There are 1.4 billion people in China. Every year, there are 10 million new college graduates.

Excess labor may be good for keeping blue collar wages low to boost competitiveness, but in white collar work, the mandated hiring of excess labor has led to rife inefficiency.

Now, you may be thinking, hasn’t the government been trying to tackle this problem by trimming massive State Owned Enterprises since the ‘80s?

They’ve definitely made strides in transforming SOEs from hugely unprofitable corporations with cradle-to-grave care for millions of employees and families, to profit-making firms that hold up reasonably well some to competition, right?

That’s right. But they’re still ungodly bloated with workers.

The private sector may have developed in the era of opening and reform, but many Many MANY Chinese companies still actively practice over-employment.

They play a numbers game. 

White collar labor is still fairly cheap. The employees are all responsible for little, but there lots and Lots and LOTS of them.

You can see how this quickly leads to bureaucracy – to keep everyone feeling important.

I can give countless examples from my own experience this month, describing in detail, just how many people become involved in even the simplest tasks.

The assembly line isn’t linear, remember?

In fact, it’s a good mix between horizontal, diagonal, and vertical. It’s 3-D, really.

I honestly don’t want to go into the examples because they make me too infuriated. But know that the problem is not only acute, but prolific.

It is overwhelmingly compounded by buzz word No.2: under-training.

So you have this huge bureaucratic fucked assembly line mess, and now imagine no one knows what they’re doing...

Why?

I can speak about Yili, though in regards to other Chinese firms, I can’t tell you anything concrete.

At Yili, all new management hires must complete three months of training in Hohhot. This includes: One month of courses about company culture, business practices, and rough overviews of Yili’s departments, and Two whole months of “interning” at Yili’s factories around the city.

In theory, this could provide a fantastic foundation of base knowledge for all incoming management employees.

But there is, of course, a big catch. Two actually.

One, is that the factory “internship” is a wash. After brief introductions to processes, we are made to sit or stand, observing automated processes for 8-to-13 hour shifts at a clip. Observing only. We don’t have any real knowledge about production, we’re in marketing or sales. If the training was actually training, than this could be a bit long, but a great experience. Instead we’re left milling around doing absolutely nothing for months.

Two, is that over the course of these three months training, we have absolutely ZERO job-specific training.

That’s right. Zero.

But once our training period ends, we’re thrust right into our roles in business development, or media coordination, or etcetera.

Our bosses are supposed to function as mentors. Though, from what I’ve learned about mentors or “internships” here in China, is that they’re shit.

So basically, we’ll finish the training and be handed a list of tasks as if we know how to complete them.

Where does that leave us? OH YEAH, asking colleagues for help.

But what happens when, in an over-staffed company, every colleague is asking everyone else for assistance on this, that or the other thing?

That, my friends, is inefficiency on a huge scale.

Buzz word number three is the last piece of the puzzle. Ass kissing. Lots of it.

Many people are familiar with Chinese culture’s deference and respect to status.

There are positives and negatives to this. Definitely many positives in an authoritarian system... cough*

But in a corporate setting, deference leads to dishonesty.

And worse yet, indifference to the circle of inefficiency it’s creating.

No one wants to make anyone look bad.

But, oh wait, THEY LOOK BAD. Almost everyone, LOOKS BAD, all the time because they don’t know their left from their right, nor their own shit from the chocolate-covered soybeans in Yili’s yogurt products.

No one will say that the factory internship is garbage, because then the internship supervisors will lose face and get in trouble. No one will say that they’ve received inefficient training for their required job, because the training school supervisors will meet similar consequences. But then the poorly-trained trainees, struggle greatly with their new tasks and must call for help constantly, miring everyone in the web.

The problem compounds and compound, both across departments and across rank.

The Chinese cultural element that breeds filial piety at home, also breeds horrible inefficiency in the workplace.

Rife inefficiency has still managed to render many Chinese firms successful at home in their government protected, sheltered economy. If they all operate similarly, then of course there can still be big winners.

Though, should these firms encounter international competition – where the leanest and meanest reign supreme - they’re in for very hard reckonings.

The large, very successful companies competition internationally such as Alibaba, I can’t speak for.

But i do believe i write with honesty that the three buzz words, one umbrella analysis of Chinese corporate culture is both spot on and scary, for me personally. I signed up for this, knowing i’d have a really hard time. But i committed. 

I still dearly hope that this is a positive building block that will help me moving forward. 

It is my goal to avoid complete disenchantment that will chase me away from China completely. There’s only so long as I can being the only competent one in the room. 

But I hope these fears are shattered soon by some fantastic coworkers at the Beijing branch. My fingers are crossed! February I’m looking at you! Come sooner!

In the meantime, I’m pursing things that interest me such as travel writing, and learning new things.

I’ve updated the inspirational quote on my desktop to:  What you’re doing is worth it.

It’s all too easy to get bogged down in the weeds of daily nonsense here, so i need to remind myself that the long game will bare fruit.

Peace.