M3, Inc.
@jooohn1234
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CTO at M3 DigiKar
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Love immutability
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Worked at M3 USA (NY)
for about 3 months
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NYC
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http://entermeus.com/112556/
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M3 USA (NYC)
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Maintaining MDLinx
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New small team with less than 10
employees
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1 frontend engineer + Chris!!!
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Location
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~ Dec 1: WeWork @ Penn Station
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Dec 1 ~: The new office @ Madison
Square Park
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Issues of MDLinx
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Using old technology
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ColdFusion
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On-premise servers
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Poor service level
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Service unexpectedly stops
once in a week (in my
impression)
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Poor UX design
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Specialty based sitemap
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Poor authoring system
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Need additional development
to add an image to an article!
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=> New CMS Selection
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New CMS selection
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Compared several options
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Contentful, ContentStack,
WordPress, SiteCore, etc.
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=> Contentful looked the best
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Developed workflow
supporting feature
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Show page preview
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GoogleDoc integration
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English
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It was not easy
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“What did you say?”
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Couldn’t catch what was said again.
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Heavily depends on its context / guess
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Couldn’t participate in “discussions”
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Recognized how bad I was at English
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Ability to watch movies without subtitles was required
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Workarounds
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Workarounds
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Confirm my understanding after discussions
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Create Confluence pages
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Easier to have text-based discussions
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Create prototype
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Working examples tell many things
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Has drawback
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Overheads
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No need if you’re good at English enough
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Improvements
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No, or few improvements
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No magic happened
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Stayed 3 months
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Watched 5+ Netflix series with English subtitles
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Just showed the reality of my English ability
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Keep practicing
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If you want to work abroad, start practicing NOW!
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Summary: English
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Realized how my English ability is insufficient
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Managed to make some values somehow
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With higher English ability, we could make more values.
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Keep practicing
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Just living in the U.S. doesn’t improve your English ability much.
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下手糞の
上級者への 道のりは
己が下手さを知りて一歩目
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Tech skills
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Tech skills in U.S.
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Everyone has its specialty
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Peter (Frontend Engineer)
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Some interviewees
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Meetups
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React NYC / 2w
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VueNYC
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@youyuxi talked at Vue X’mas!
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Japan engineers are
competent enough
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With their generality / specialty
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Especially in this phase.
https://www.meetup.com/vueJsNYC/photos/
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Tech skills save you!
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Complemented the
disadvantage of language
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Building prototypes quickly,
and prove its capability.
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Prove our competency.
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Drawbacks
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Showing prototypes made
participants focus on detail.
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Caused endless requirements list
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It’s important to clarify what is
the purpose of a discussion
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Control expectations
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Summary: Tech skills
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Japanese engineers are competent enough in the U.S.
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Other than language difficulties
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(I don’t know about big companies like GAFA though.)
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Don’t try to solve every problem with tech skills.
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Issues
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Decision making
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Ambiguous decision making process
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Endless discussion with endless requirements
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Took too long to decide one thing
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Making perfect system from the first
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No SaaS offers the perfect solution for us.
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“Done is better than perfect”
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=> Want to make a more agile team!
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Engineering Resources
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1 Frontend Engineer, and that’s all
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What were Japanese engineers for the U.S. team?
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Difficult to contribute in the Time Differences
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Does it mean there’s nothing we can do?
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Assumed minimum engineering resource
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=> Want to prove we can contribute to the U.S. team from
Japan!
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Summary
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Summary
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Practice English
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so that you can contribute to the team.
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Practice Tech skills
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so that you can contribute to the team
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M3 USA is still like a startup.
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There are lots of spaces you can contribute to.