This photo was taken while I was having dinner in a Shanghai restaurant. This lady is Candy, who works in the biggest notebook manufacturing company in Taiwan/China.

Candy's company manufactures products for most of the big names u can find in the market ie. HP, Lenovo (IBM), Toshiba, Dell etc. Through her personal working experiences with the various companies, she told me tat frankly speaking HP is really a good company.

Recently at least 5 of my friends have applied for HP, and msned me for interview tips. Wellz.... I am actually not exactly excited or supportive of the choices they have made. I can only say if u wanna earn big bucks, dun join this company. The company only pays u a gross pay of less than 40k/yr for fresh grads. Even my juniors working at DSO/DSTA are earning much more than me. And do i need to mention those working in wafer fabs, who sometimes earn twice as much as me per month.

However, the exposure for working in this company is good, cos Singapore is the regional hub. Hence, the roles u play are regional roles, and u will have exposure working with people from other regions and also within ur own region. The company does provide you many external management courses at BIG HOTELS serving BIG BUFFET lunches. And of cos, overseas trips are marvellous. They give u SQ flights, send Merz Cab to pick u up from ur home, let u stay 5-star hotels and allow u unlimited overseas meal and transport claims.

So i am neither encouraging or discouraging my friends from joining me in this company. It really depends on what you want. Given a choice, i wud rather explore other choices first, esp if i am a fresh grad.