Emacs

The second week into Amazon, and there is still a lot to learn and catch up on. Learning just the development tools would take a while, not to mention my team's own software. My team is called Website Core & Tools and our software is highly leveraged in Amazon. This also means that we will have to understand a lot more than our own piece of code. I guess this would be a great opportunity to learn about Amazon's web technology, one that supports the world's largest retail website. This is one of the main reasons I decided to join Amazon.

Other than that, I have decided, finally, to learn emacs seriously. Have been avoiding it for 8 years when I was using Linux/Unix. Why I didn't learn? Cause I believe that a good GUI development environment (like UltraEdit/VS) would be just as good as emacs. This is the era of GUI based productivity improvement so we should take advantage of the new found power of technology. I was able to do some good development using these editors while staying on nedit/pico in Linux for most of my academic years. Why I am learning now? There are several good reasons. First is that there is no good GUI software editor tools, but I get some good support on emacs. Second is that I want to learn some new tool, and emacs will be a useful one in the Linux environment....esp remote environment.

A typically topic came up when I was having lunch with colleagues, and dinner with friends from MS. The topic is about salary package and also about new graduates. The verdict is that current new hires are getting higher salary than 2-3 years go, I guess the job market is now recovering and companies just have to offer higher salary to grab the talents. The other factor is that their is now a "cold war" between the large .com companies like Yahoo/Google/Amazon, all of them are diversifying their business and testing out waters in new areas of online services. This also means they are hiring a lot of software engineers to do the job. Google is setting the standard by giving high salary packages to new hires, this puts pressure on the other big companies to offer something better.

Another proposition that came up is that they are willing to pay higher salary to pull in the talent but after they join the company, they will not be getting any good pay rise for years. The catch is that you get the high start, it will be amortized over your years in the company. This goes for all the big companies, and from what we hear from blogs - Google as well. If you think about this, it makes sense and also benefits the employee themselves as well. Not many professions have a starting salary as high as software engineers. Like many engineers as well, you will hit a ceiling ($150k-$200k for a Principal Engineer?) - you just cannot get rich by being an employee - unless the good old technology bubble comes back again - highly unlikely.

With this in mind, my philosophy is to enjoy life and not just for work. Your are just working at most to double your salary which probably just means a better house. Since you are spending most of your mature life at work, you might as well find a position that you enjoy and have interest in. At least this way it will make your life somewhat meaningful. If you want to make it rich, you will have to take the risk and become an enterpreur........and their goes all your free time and to some extent, your life.

Is coming to US/Seattle the right choice? Is joining Amazon the right move? I cannot answer that now but I will make sure I make the most of the experience, enjoy it if possible.

A Fine Sunday

Had another day with quite good weather here in Seattle. Today I headed up to Pioneer Square and had a great coffee at a cafe near Occidental Ave. Remembered that I had one here two years back when I visited Seattle. Don't remember the name of this place (easily identifable by being across the street from a Starbucks), but it is one that have been around since 1986 and was opened by an Italian. This place is pretty quite in the weekend so making it a perfect place to relax and have a cup of good coffee.

On the way back I detour to near pikes market and grab this smoke salmon pate bread from a Polish bakery. This one is easily identifable by the aroma of the bread in a very small shop with a lot of people queuing for a piece. At around $4.25 a piece it is not cheap, but the quality is pretty good.

By the late afternoon the weather is getting cold again, I went back home and had some enjoyable time viewing the discovery channel. What is on today is about polar bears, and then a long series of episodes about Alaskian Crab Fishing - they claim to be the most dangerous job in the world with one man lost in sea every week of the fishing season. Dangerous but a good season could earn the deckhand $15-20k. A season is only from 5-7 days, this is because there is a quota on catches for the whole species (e.g. alaskian king crab) and once it is reached, the season stops. What grabs me is the shear forces of natural at the sea and what overwhelming experience it will be working out there.

Sales tax in Seattle

Didn't know that Seattle's sale tax is so high until I went retail shopping today! A whopping 8.8%, I think San Francisco is only about 8.5%............and that place is considered one of the most expensive place to live in US. Did some research and the break down is: 6.5% state tax, 1.9% is Seattle City tax, and 0.4% tax for regional transport authority (guess the free ride in Seattle downtown does not come for free after all). On top of this there is a 0.5% stadium tax in King County in restaurant & bar, and 2% extra rental car tax. The recruiters and website tells me that the cost of living here is 30% lower than California......I only see the 9.3% income tax difference at the moment. I guess the houses are relatively cheaper than in bay area but they are NOT cheap, way over priced.

The good thing is that (I heard) Washington residents can deduct this sales tax amount from their income tax. So for me who is paying 25-28%, this would mean a discount of 25-28% on sales tax. Effectively the sales tax would be around 6.5%. The messy thing is in calculating this amount.

Was surfing around about tax issues and I hit on this blog about reasons for housing crash in the bay area (CA). I don't really believe it will be a crash, but a small decline is evitable. But what is interesting in my little research is that the median price of a house in the Santa Clara County is $650k, where as it is $400k in King County (WA). I guess that is where the other percentage in cost of living went. For foreigners that come to work here, like me, it doesn't really apply as the renting price has been relatively constant over the years. The blog also talk about rent versus buying a house. I always believed that if you can save voluntarily and can put time in diversifying your investment, you can do just as well renting as you would in buying a house in the long term. Spectulating in housing market in the short term is another thing all together.

Sunshine Saturday in Seatte (SSS)

Today is a SSS (Sunshine Saturday in Seattle), an acronym I have now started myself after having two consecutive rare Saturdays in Seattle. A very pleasant day indeed. The picture of the cherry blossom I post out, well, it is a pity to see that the tree has reach the peak of blossoming and is now loosing the flowers......but a great day it is, too good to stay in the apartment. Pity I don't have a car yet, else I would have drove out of the downtown area and into the lakeside or something. Remembered that there were some good cafes around the Greenlake area.

Managed to get myself out of the house by lunch time, and had a decent coffee at a local cafe hear the pike markets. Surprisingly the barista there is very good at making the steam milk used for the Latte. In America, especially in places like Starbucks or Seattles Best, they concentrate only on the coffee bean and lacks discipline in training their barista "How to make steam milk 101". If you see a cafe that use a pitcher that is too big, or the barista uses a spoon to control the milk/or transfer the cream, then you better just go for a non-milk based coffee. Big pitcher implies they put priority into serving fast coffee rather than a quality coffee. Using spoon means that this barista is NOT a barista - just another part-time dude. Yes, I am picky with my coffee..........I guess that is because there are a lot of good local cafes around Sydney, just got spoiled. I see coffee as an enjoyable treat rather than a morning brain rush.

One thing I spotted is that this local cafe has far less customers than the near by Starbucks which is packed with tourist. I guess Starbucks did a great job in brand marketing and creating this "trendy culture".

Apart from a coffee treat, I also did some shopping at the shopping center in downtown. One thing I see is the difference between Macy and Nordstorm. In Sydney terms, Nordstorm feels like David Jones, pushing for personalized service - they dedicate a staff to follow you up. Macy on the other hand is the Myers where it is a nice place but with mid-end items. I see a big difference in terms of customers, where Nordstorm is drawing the crowd - even when there are not much stuff on special. The bags they use also say something about the shops too. Macy uses a plastic bag whereas Nordstorm uses a classy cardboard bag with rope handles - now that is what draws in the females. The result of this errand is that I got a Ben Sherman jacket which was on special at Macy-- very nice one, black with a trace of dark purple. Was shopping for a 7's jean but they don't stock it in Macy's. So ended up at Nordstorm where I found a good range of nice jeans from G-star, Mavin, to 7's. Found this bootcut 7's with the right size (29s are hard to find in US!) and the right length......and the right colour too! Found the cutting, style, and fitting just too nice........so I dig into my wallet and made the purchase. This purchase really hurts my wallet, but I needed a good pair of jeans.......I am one of those that wears the same pair for years and years and years. Now I have a great bootcut to go with my Dr Martens boot.

BTW, Ben Sherman's website is quite good! Hippy and creative, I like it!

On the way back home I dropped by pikes market to get some fruit & fish. This place is always packed with people in the weekends, rightly so as there is plenty of good cafe and a great view of the harbor esp in great weather. Just decided that while I am still living in the downtown apartment, I will make Saturday my fresh food's day. Today I got a fresh Swordfish steak and some beautiful green grapes. Not cheap in pike's market though.

Zonman

Driving at night towards Amazon's so called PacMed building (12th ave), it reminds me of Batman's Gothic City and the building where Batman lives. I guess if you map that to Amazon then there should be a Zonman inPacMed =D.
I do wonder why Amazon choose that building and one I can think of is that the building looks like a A shape, and also does have a good view of the Seattle business district. At night you can see the curve of redness from the traffic, and the dizzling lights from the office buildings.

Like most large & young technology companies, Amazon is trying to place a hip culture into the workplace. I heard that Microsoft also have their own internal campaigns to fire up their employees. Not to mention Google's own culture of not doing evil and Yahoo's Purple Cow. I think all these loses meaning when you are not some fresh grads in their early 20s. Maybe as you grow older it is harder for you to get excited about anything. Still remember way back in high school I get exciting about the smallest of things.

The first great thing I came across as a newly reinvented developer is the open source software called Synergy. It is one of the software that you always wanted but is never around. Well, here it is, for free too! Synergy is like a virtual KVM switch for your mouse and keyword. It lets you move you mouse from one machine to another over the network, without the need to press any keyword and without the need for physical hardware support. It even works between Linux and Windows machines. Now I have a development environment where I can just move to my Windows box seamlessly.

First week working in US

Only been a week but it feels like a month!

Starting work in Amazon and the first week is just mainly reading materials and setting up my development environment. Also spent a lot of time kickstarting my new life in Seattle. Lucky we had a few days of great weather around here (see pic above, it is at the apartment complex I am staying currently).

Like any new person in arriving in US, I had to apply for SSN (you do NOT need anything from your employer to apply, just need a valid working visa and passport) but found out that I applied too early. The lady at the SS told me that I should have went after 10 days before I apply since it will take time for my entry through the US custom to be available for them to check. Now I will have to wait for upto 4 weeks for them to check through this "manual" process................now I know!

As for bank account, you do NOT need a SSN to open a bank account. Just as all as you have a passport and valid working visa then it should be fine. Also ask the HR about any deals they might have with the banks........as it might offer more services for free and also some fee waiver.
Heard that First Tech CU is not bad, and Washington Mutal offers some free foreign wire transfer........will look more into it later on. Just need to get paid first.

Other than that I have been roaming around the Seattle area, getting use to the area so that I can live a bit more smoothly. Managed to stock up a lot of food so that when my car rental runs out I can still live by for a while..........else can buy more expensively at Uwajimaya. This japanese supermarket is pretty great, got a lot of good Asian food but is a bit expensive comparatively.......you pay for what you get: quality!

On top of that, I also manage to get broadband access installed this week, faster than I expected. But the temporily broadband cost quite a lot, I am sure someone has made a cut out of it.

There is still so many things to look into........mobile phone deals, second hand car, another place to rent, rice cooker. Amazon has some great deals on mobile, just about deciding which handset to get and also the carrier. In terms of car, it is a big headache.....not only do I did to decide on the model, also have to worry about financing too. I know some people that got leasing for a new car without needing credit history (Z350 on 6-7%pa), but getting finance for a second without credit history could be a nightmare. Right now looking at getting a 240sx or a miata....should be a fun car to mess around with. Comparatively, seconds in Seattle has less variety and cost more than in the bay area.