SHENZHEN REPORT ZJU - SFU Dual Degree Program IT Factory Survey

July 22 , 2016 - July 27, 2016 Shenzhen, Guangdong Province China Contents

Introduction to Shenzhen

How does the old fishing town become one of the most renowed global major metropolis of finance and technology?

p.4 Oracle Research & Development Center Co., Preface Ltd (Shenzhen Branch) Eighth floor, Gaoxin South 1st Road, Nanshan District, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China

Before starting the IT Survey Report, we Shenzhen Visit TP-Link Technologies Co,. Ltd. p.6 Group of Computing Science Dual Degree Program of Zheji- 相册 Fifth South Building, Keyuan Road, ang University would like to thank Oracle Research & De- Nanshan District, Shenzhen, velopment Center Co.,Ltd. (Shenzhen Branch) and TP-LINK Guangdong, China Technologies Co., Ltd. for letting us come visit the respective companies. We are happy to have a chance to get in touch with many aspects from what we surveyed. Through our p.14 talks and oberservations with the staffs of the respective companies, we gained great knowledges about almost every Conclusion relevant things that surrounds the companies. It has been Summary of our survey Comparison between two companies a very resourceful seven journey in Shenzhen for us, and we ED What are some influences we receive through out are looking forward to visit back again and use what we have seven-day journey? What is our next step? learned from our researches to excel all of our best in the future co-ops we get to work on. p.20 A brief introduction to SHENZHEN

The city is home to the Shenzhen Stock Starting from a High-Techonology The presences of big tech companies in Exchange as well as the headquarters of numer- Shenzhen indeed provides great opportunities to fishing port... ous high-tech companies. It also has one of the Industrial Park computing science students from mainland and busiest container ports in the world. The living outside the world to hone their skills and create standard in Shenzhen has greatly improved Shenzhen is a modernized metropolis high tech products. To us computing science stu- during the ascension. at the heart of the technology manufacturing One of the notable aspects that make dents, we are curious to discover more about this hub of China and the world – the Pearl River Shenzhen a fast growing economical hub is the metropolis, to know some big computer technol- The city has big parks and shopping malls Delta (PRD). A city that just 30 years ago was high technological developments. Shenzhen gains ogy companies in the zone, and to feel what is built at the central Futian District, as well as little more than a fishing village. With the vision the title “China’s Technology Capital”. This comes like to work in one of the greatest technological having fast and convenient infrastructure with of economic reform and openinvg proposed from the city’s renowned Hi-tech Park located in development area. As the main part of the com- transportation access to cities northward and by former leader Deng Xiaoping in 1979, the the Nanshan District. Founded in 1996, the zone pany survey of ZJU-SFU Computing Science Dual Hong Kong in the south. These elements com- fishing suburb has now grown to a modernized gets its reputation through its massive and inno- Degree Program, we decided to visit the compa- bined create a strong vibrancy to this city, which conurbation of over 10 million people. With the vative production surrounding electronic devices nies of High Tech Park of the international hub of gathers many foreign workers and investors to change of city status and designation of China’s we use in daily lives. Throughout the time, the Southern China. During the six-day expedition, we live or do business there. first Special Economic Zone early in the 80s, park has attracted many global high-tech giants members, in corporation with the same Shenzhen Shenzhen has become an economic power- including IBM, Philips, Compaq, Olympus, Ep- survey group, visited two technological companies house contributed by rapid foreign investment son, Lucent, Harris and Thomson, as well as the situated in the Technological zone in Nanshan Dis- and municipal planning. Shenzhen is a major leading domestic players including Huawei, ZTE, trict: Oracle Corporation and TP-Link. This survey financial center in southern China. Lenovo, TCL, Skyworth, Greatwall and Powerise. report will give out some brief introductions and contents provided by the notes taken from the presentations shown by each company’s repre- Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation, headquartered in Redwood City, California. The company primarily specializes in developing and marketing database software and technology, cloud engineered systems and enterprise software products—partic- 1 Copyright © 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. ularly its own brands of database management systems. In 2011 Oracle was the second-largest software maker by revenue, after Microsoft. The company also develops and builds tools for database development and systems of middle-tier software, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, customer relationship management (CRM) software and supply chain management (SCM) software. Ellison co-founded Oracle Corporation in 1977 with Bob Miner and Ed Oates under the name Software Development Laboratories (SDL). Ellison took inspiration from the 1970 paper written by Edgar F. Codd on relational database management systems (RDBMS) named “A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks.” He heard about the IBM System R database from an article in the IBM Research Journal provided by Oates. Also derived from Codd’s theories, Ellison wanted to make Oracle’s product compatible with System R, but failed to do so as IBM kept the error codes for their DBMS a secret. SDL changed its name to Relational Software, Inc (RSI) in 1979, then again to Oracle Systems Corporation in 1982, to align itself more closely with its flagship product Oracle Database. At this stage Bob Miner served as the company’s senior programmer. In 1995, Oracle Systems Corporation changed its name to Oracle Corpo- ration, officially named Oracle, but sometimes referred to as Oracle Corporation, the name of the hold- ing company. Part of Oracle Corporation’s early success arose from using the C programming language to implement its products. This eased porting to different operating systems (most of which support C). Oracle designs, manufactures, and sells both software and hardware products, as well - asof fers services complementing them (such as financing, training, consulting, and -hosting ser vices). Many of the products have been added to Oracle’s portfolio through acquisitions. China’s Investment in Numbers

Oracle China provides great ammount of opportunities to prospect in the Asia Pacific region, and also brings people from Americas to work in a different envi- 6,150 ronment. Thus, the branches in China are vastly diversed, as programmers from China, India, Japan, the United States, and other countries work and communicate together.

Working along with the headquarters in the United States, together, the Chinese branch serves for over eleven thousands employees with their re- 11,000 nowed programmed products that fit each of their needs. The most notable brands such as Apple, Philips, Huawei, and Google are frequent users of programs made by Oracle for developing their projects. Also, the domestic branch make programs for many companies within the Mainland.

Internationally, Oracle gains great sponserships for their producing the best 800 of their products. The programs are supported by Java and the servers are Oracle in China: Main Points sponsered by Sun. Those are all famous companies in the computing field. Meanwhile, the Chinese section has numerous domestic partners.

Entered in 1989, Oracle’s establishment in China siginifies the second largest technology corporation’s recognition of the risr of Chinese market. Becoming the first world-class software company ever settled in China, Oracle gifts many China’s major customers their relationship-based database system. that they recently developed at the time.

After two years of developments from local businesses and sales services in China, Oracle took a Shenyang big leap for their to follow the pace of economic development by opening its very own co-limtied in Bei- jing in July 1991. Dalian

Beijing Since the opening of the Beijing headquarters, Oracle continues to expand its range of services with additions of main service bases in Shanghai and Guangzhou since August 2000. The company also pro- Shijiazhuang Xi’an Jinan vides Oracle9i, a business platform services, and many other application softwares to support the Chinese market. Besides selling programs, Oracle also opens training and technical support programs for program- Zhengzhou Chengdu Nanjing mers in China who has interests in mastering their IT skills or taking part in the jobs. By 2001, there are Hefei Chongqing 483 Chinese workers work at Oracle. Suzhou Wuhan Shanghai Hangzhou On October 2002, Oracle established their first very own Chinese development center in Shen- Changsha Taipei Nanchang zhen’s Hi-Tech Park, marking the start of China’s participation in the future major projects imposed by the 22 Kunming corporation. Besides software development, Shenzhen branch is also responsible for doing maintainances From the entrance to Chinese market in Nanning Shenzhen for products from the Chinese customers and emphasizes production specifically for the Chinese’s needs. Guangzhou 1989 to today, Oracle established 22 offices Hong Kong Office

Soon, the second development center opens in Beijing exactly one year after the Shenzhen’s opening. Research and Development in many major cities in the Mainland China. (R&D) Center

Oracle also has establishments at areas Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Suzhou, and outside of the Mainland From the co-operation between the company and the nation, Oracle and the Chinese markets both Nanjing are designated as the Research and share the same perspective to the improvement and growing of China’s technology field, but in varied Developing (R&D) camp. They are the front aspects. Oracle determines to continue contribution safe and reliable softwares that can help Chinese cus- runners for co-operating with internation- tomers with their business effectively. Whereas the Chinese market sees the co-operation as an opportunity to let Chinese workers to take part in the international stage of software prgramming and development, encouraging more young prospects from the country to communicate and learn from the skills and technology from the outside.

The reprentative introduced the main characteristics of the company. In fact, the presentation shows informative slides more basic elements that surrounds the Main Points workplace. such as working style, schedule, and social activities etc.

Products Database Cloud One of the biggest highlights of Oracle’s development Cloud computing has become very popular in modern is designing databases targeted for commericial uses such days because it is a convenient technology such that us- as business and commerce. Their programs are greatly ers can store messages and files into the cloud that can used by banks and entrepreneur’s organizations due to be accessed through any other devices. Oracle has taken their strong security features and user friendly interfac- great advantages in the field by creating revolutionized es. Oracle Shenzhen also takes part with the database cloud services in software, platform, and infrastructure A Visit at The Oracle Shenzhen Branch creation with main focuses on debugging recently made categories. Oracle cloud is a popular use in offices and projects, and also produces update patches to improve the facilities serving as a broad range infromation serving current products in used by costumers in Mainland China network. LOCATION and many other countries Oracle’s Shenzhen company is located at the heart of the Hi-Tech Industrial Park in Nanshan District. The main office is at the eighth floor Desai Techonlogy Plaza. In fact, part of the top half of Work Ethnics building is the working ground for the computer technology, with the eighth floor being the place Time for welcoming survey visitors and meeting conference. The working time in Oracle Shenzhen follows the same regulations as that of other branches in different countries. Work usually starts at 8 or 9 AM and ends at 5 or 6 PM for every weekdays. When it comes to doing big projects and meetings, workers will have to extend their time period at work. As for welfare, workers are granted 16 days of break in the first year of work at Oracle. OBSERVING OFFICE Unfortunately, we are told by the staffs not to take photos around their place without their per- mission. Thus, our team members take some notes around the facility as the staffs guide us through their Work Style office as a tour. Working style is relaxed, relatively, research lab can be observed, and the working ethnics there The entire eighth building belongs to the Oracle office, so it is considerably big. However, the are a little bit strict, working pressure. Resemblance to foreign working style. There are many office structures of an IT company is no different from any other typical offices: there is a seat and a big extracurricular activities, as well as events held by various organizations. Trainers get to co-op- arc-shaped table to every programmers. Undoutedly, every worker has a computer around him or her. erate with real-time work, which will occasionally grant research scholarship. Trainers do not Each of their desks have different kind of things on there. Some of them are beautifully decorated, such as need to work while studying research studies. There are many foreign workers who work at plushies placed around their laptops or computers and pictures pasted on their sticker board, while some Oracle, including the Shenzhen branch. Most of them come from India and the United States. does not care much about decoration and have tons of paperwork stacked on their desks. We see chunks of code appearing through the programmer’s screens as we walk by. And we somewhat feel astonished Pays and Benefits because we have not learned some of these codes yet. The atmosphere is not that really intesifying, as the workers we see are quite relaxed. Some of them are chilling out with their neighbouring colleagues Monthly salaries paid to programmers are based on the base salary depicted on their contracts. with chats. There is a worker taking a slurp of coffee while debugging his codes. There are some program- Everyone is paid differently depending on many circustances, including their positions and work mers taking a nap on their tables, possibly feeling tired after doing some long coding in the morning, It length. Most notably, additional salaries are awarded to selected workers to have outstanding was half past one in the afternoon when we got there, so we get to see some workers having their leisure achievements in the work field in precedent months. As for benefits, workers enjoy local -in period before their afternoon shift. Through walking and see the offices, we get an impression that the surance and housing funds provided by their branches to ensure their peaceful working and people working there feels just like working at home. While they have the jobs and duties to build or fix housing environment in Shenzhen. programs, they also have the freedom to spend the time on what they like to do during the resting period. Soon, we walked to the data storage section, where several tall servers are all lined up in a single Communications file. This is where many of the Oracle technologies are implemented within the system servers. There are Social dozens of cables connected from behind each of the servers to possibly each of the office computers, Global and Diversity possibly to allow workers to connect to the Oracle database for the use of their program developments. Oracle highly regards the social skills of their Furthermore, we come to the cafeteria. This is probably where many workers get their beverage to There are many foreign workers who work at Oracle, including the Shen- workers. The usual term is called “energetics”. their desks from. Besides coffee, there are also some fruits placed on the stands. Most notably, there is a Throughout the time, the workers would de- kitchen and refrigerator as well. There might be some programmers that know a skill or two in cooking, so zhen branch. Most of them come from India and the United States. velop their skills to interact with others and do that they can store some ingredients in the fridge and use them for cooking at lunch rather than going out extracurricular outside of their working field. of their office in serach for food. This is a great characteristics that Oracle has, which deviates from any other Chinese IT’s working ethnicities. Q&A Section with Post Graduate As an integral part of our survey, we let one of the Oracle Shenzhen programmers to have an interview with us. The person we interview with named Alex. He is a post graduate of Computing The 1st China team on Fusion Science in Hong Kong University and joins the Shenzhen Branch for three years. He is now in charge Core Development of debugging malfunctioned products provided by their costumers and developing updating patch A closer talk with CDC for relevance products. Please tell us what your ERP team is about.

What is your main position in this Company? The ERP, known as “Fusion.” This concept is based on the cloud technology. It allows the informa- My job is to do maintanance to programming tion needed for ERP to be categorized and organized products that are either malfunction or has the po- for convenient uses.” The core of ERP is programs tential to cause problem with costumers’ interface. produced for financial company. It is important to The way I fix those problems is to develop a programs maintain the functionality of the project toward or some codes, place them into a patch file, and financial work. Oracle’s ERP has achieved 99% needs upload them onto the internet or send them to the by financial companies. However, Oracle continues to customers depending on the conditions. A single run- produce the remaining percentage of contents that ning program does not remain stable in a long term, may be useful for the needs in the commerce field. so maintanance is an important feature to keep track “There are many other companies developing those with the status of a certain products and constantly kinds of project,” said the general manager, “but we provide updating patch to strengthen the stableness lead in such field.” of the product.

Are there any university courses that can let Creativity us master our skills in programming effec- Networking Problem-solving What are your ERP projects programmed, com- tively so that we can do well in our future plied, and ran by? job? Teamwork Delivering “The ERP is mainly programmed in JAVA lan- There is no specific courses that you should guage.” take to do so, but I highly recommend to take some programming courses that you are interested in, Communication Leadership We are quite surprised to such statement. as well as work hard with your mandatory ones. To We curiously asked the manager why they do not master your skills in programming, just keep pro- Self-managing use C language in their project. “Programming gramming. The more codes and errors you encoun- language is not the key to what we work on,” the ter, the more skillful you are in writing codes. manager asked, “but rather, we strive for construct- ing ideas and concepts to the algorithm and interface structures that we have to implement into our Work From Home program.” He further emphasizes the importance ERP: Entrepreneur of English communication within his branch, since Oracle follows “work from home” regulation. there are many foreigners in there that work to- Accordingly, this regulation is beneficial to work- Resource Planning gether in a certain project, and English is the best ers who live far away from their company and Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is way to exchange ideas and correct each other’s mis- allows them to spend more time with their family. business process management software that takes on their programs throughout the developing Working from home creates restriction to workers allows an organization to use a system of inte- process. Last but not least, manager told us that activities with their company, but that does not grated applications to manage the business and skill is the top priority being looked by Oracle. Those affect workers communication during work time automate many back office functions related to who work at Oracle require great problem solving thanks to modernized online chatting system. -De WORK HARD, ability. spite the law in effect, Oracle does not encourage technology, services and human resources. workers to work at home long term, because this may largely affect their productivity. PLAY HARD! TP-LINK Technologies Co., Ltd., stylized, trademarked and marketed as TP-LINK, is a Chinese manufacturer of computer networking products based in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province.

Founded in 1996 by two brothers, Zhao Jianjun and Zhao Jiaxing, with a network card they had developed, the company name was based on the concept of “twist- ed pair link”, a kind of electromagnetic cabling, hence the “TP” in the company’s name.

The networking manufacturer sells through multiple sales channels globally, including traditional retailers, online retailers, wholesale distributors, direct market resellers (“DMRs”), value-added resellers (“VARs”) and broadband service providers. Its main com- petition includes companies such as NETGEAR, Buffalo, Belkin, Linksys, D-Link andAsus.

TP-LINK began its first international expansion in 2005. In 2007, thecom- pany moved into its new 100,000 square meters headquarters and facilities at Shenzhen’s Hi-Tech Industry Park. TP-LINK USA was established in2008.

The products include wireless routers, ADSL, range extenders, routers, switches, IP camer- as, powerline adapters, print servers, media converters, Wi-Fi adapters and power banks. TP-LINK is one of the few major wireless networking companies to manufacture its products in-house as opposed to outsourcing to original design manufacturers (ODMs). The company says this control over components and the supply chain is a key competitive differentiator. Main Points Discussed

Information about the TP-Link headquarters is provided by the rep- resentatives of the department of human resource management

1. The main production within and outside of China are different to each other. Domestic products are mainly consisted of wireless products as well as Ethernet cables. Foreign products are mostly comprised of family equipment’s with smart technologies.

2. The working place resembles to that of a university, with many students with undergraduate degrees go there.

3. Product is the top priority. The department surveys market and project fields, as well as customer’s feedback, in order to create a product that can take advantage in all aspects.

4. The salary of TP-Link is above average in the IT programming field, but there is a huge gap difference in comparison with international companies.

5. The working pressure there is relatively small. It is quite relax- ing. Workers do not necessarily need to work overnight with certain projects, because the company maintains strict regulation of working time, from 8:30 AM to 6:00 PM. There is lunch break and nap time and there are some mandatory tasks need to be done at Factories certain time period. There are subcompanies located in Hangzhou and Shenzhen. Both of which are developer’s department of the networking device corpora- 6. The company raises salary routinely in March and September tion which mainly responsible for the project planning and program each year. Every worker gets a salary raise in March, but the raise in Productions creation sections. In fact, these activities are the main core of TP-LInk September is given to workers with outstanding achievements and in general. contribution to the companies according to their daily reports. Besides making modum and cable as their main production, the networking device company also creates part components compatible that can be used for compatible devices for different purposes. TP-Link involves with hardware development related to customer’s requriements. Their light and antenna are also favoured by other companies due to their great qualities

Photos taken with TP-Link Shenzhen Branch staffs on the day of survey July 25, 2016 After a couple month of coding with Java, we step forward to coding with big Working Overnight Q & A with TP-Link Programmer projects for commercial use. And the Q: Do you ever spend overnight working two mates soon acquired the skill of Java with your programs due to difficulties you Programming through all the assignments find at work? and projects encountered and constant If I do not have my current finished, I may codings. It is really effective. A: There are some cases in the past that I bring them back home with my office In this programmer’s inter- have to work with my program after six in laptop to continue my work. Neverthe- How About C? view, we are lucky to invite two the afternoon. However, concerning the less, for every working day, I have to write programmers who are graduates of Q: You said that TP-Link Products pro- time factor, when it comes to creating or a brief diary to record the activities I have Zhejiang University, one who works grammed through Java, but do you workers fixing products for customers, we will tell done throughout the time I am at work. there for six years, and the other ever use C in your development? them when we will have the codes done recently joined early this April. and give the updated patch to them. Basi- They are there to talk about the life Diary A: We do use C in some part of the pro- cally, we give ourselves enough time to do as a programmer in this networking grams we create, but as for the main our work, so overnight work is not preve- factory. Q: Can you tell us someting about the core of the project, we encourage to use lant. diary you mentioned earlier? Java because it is more efficient and easily readable by us. Nonetheless, I think A: The diary I talked about a moment the key part about being a programmer Project Work Experience ago is an email that contains information is not specializing a certain language you about my daily work activities and future find interesting. Every application can be Q: How complex a typical project is? Q: How long have you guys been working schedules. I send that email to myself, achieved by any kinds of language, but the at Tp-Link? so that every morning I get to work and point is you must develop a clear algorithm A1: For us, writing codes does not take a lot open my email, I can easily get notified to make it happen. By doing projects, you of time, but the following procedures are. A: I just came here recently and make my preparation way more con- can get in touch with all kinds of languages, Compling and Inspection take time because and have worked for about half a year. venient. functions, and error, making your range of there are a dozen of programmers debug- skills much wider. This is the richful part of ging your codes. You have to take note on Schedule being a programmer. all kinds of situation this program may face. Tutorials In order to pass, the program has to over- Q: What is your plan at work like? come them all. Otherwise, the program Q: What do you think about the tutorial Veteran needs to be recoded. A: We start working at 8:30 in the morn- you attend after work? Does it have make impact to your programming skills or ing and end at 6:00 in the afternoon. In Q: You have been working at TP-Link for A2: Depending on the size of the project, work routine? the first couple hours of work, we usually 6 years. Does your position change over the program can be small there is not that check our emails for notifications relating time? much requirments or conditions. If there is A: The tutorial is undoutedly helpful. The to some work we have to do. Then, we a lot, then it makes sense that the prgram classes serve the purpose for novices would start coding and debugging odes A: There is no modification with my occu- may be a big one. for the remaining time in the morning. At to become more skillful at work. I know pation or duty, and possibly never will since noon, we have lunch and nap until 2:30 two colleagues in class, despite they are I am a veteran at the debugging depart- PM. We continue our duty in the after- graduates from Computing Science, they ment. In my early career, I was usually get Mistakes noon with some progress on some recent have barely used Java language through- called to do some work. Now, I am the one Q: Are mistakes found in inspection fre- product development. Occasionally, we out their studies. TP-Link heavily relies on that leads my team to do work. quent? will have meeting around that time peri- Java, so the course itself is emphasized od. By the time the company closes at six, by such language. We are told to do com- A: Inspections can help you find logical -er plete assignments with this language. rors at its finest. Small problems like array overflow can be fixed without assistance. ED Conclusion

Overall, from the two tech- Nevertheless, despite those main nological companies we surveyed differences, the main goal both com- throughout our six day journey, we panies strive for are the same: idea and not only learned what the foundations competence. As computer program- and characteristics companies are in mers, it is important that we build up general, but also we got the vibe of our programming skills and share our what working in the company is like. ideas with each other in order to cre- Both companies behave as excellent ate great products that fit many people examples for us to discover the main needs. The best way to practice these components and system that func- two skills would be getting in touch tions an entire typical IT company. with the world of computer technolog- Through the consensus of our feed- ical development. In other words, do backs toward the visited companies. co-op with relevant companies. We came to a conclusion that the University studies teach you Oracle Corporation has more advan- how to write program, whereas co-op tage compared to TP-link in terms of guides you to implement what you the cooperation and working ethnics. learned from school towards real-life Oracle has stronger brand customers applications. We get to communicate that they develop their programmed with workers and build up your skills products for, as well as maintaining a in the work field in co-op and they are much comfortable working environ- beneficial for our future occupations. ment to allow their workers to excel From the survey report, we not only greatly at manufacturing their works. get the feel of working in an IT company, but also encourages us to get our- On the other hand, TP-link is a young selves start up with working at ones. brand. It does not have as much resources and welfare as that of Ora- cle, but it is on the way of enlarging its customer range and continues to bring influence in the Mainland China.