Chapter 3 [Participating in the reorganization process of Acer in 2000]

Source: https://www.facebook.com/794648900700097/posts/2130086867156287/

[The Origin and Today of James] Chapter 3 - Participating in the reorganization process of Acer in 2000 (01/28/2022)

Back to Taiwan -

At the end of 1999, a week before Halloween in the United States, the Taiwanese general manager flew to the United States and made a special trip to the United States to meet me. The first thing he said was to ask me if he could return to Taiwan to help for a year. Don’t say for a year, I will go back and help until the company is back on track.” (When working in a large company, don’t form cliques, don’t be classified as a vice president or the top manager of a department, you are thinking about the best interests of the company, and you are willing to help any vice president or general manager succeed, so that all senior managers will have the opportunity to think of you as a lonely person.)

In fact, Acer began to have a crisis in 1998 and 1999. The company's performance was poor, the R&D organization was unstable, engineers were very demotivated, people were panicked, and the company's PM was also very inexperienced, causing the company's internal friction to be very serious. Although I am in the United States and care about everything about the Taiwan head office, there is a voice in my heart that keeps telling me, "James, if you have the ability, you can return to Taiwan to help the company." At that time, I was already prepared in my heart, waiting for when someone from the Taiwan head office would come to me, so when this happened, I already knew it in my heart, and I was already prepared. So when the general manager of Taiwan came to the United States and said the first thing to me, I immediately agreed. A month later, I was transferred back to Taiwan to be responsible for the R&D engineering design department of desktop computers. I gave up the generous salary in the United States (the annual salary in the United States was 160,000 US dollars at the time) and was transferred back to Taiwan. The salary was changed to the Taiwanese salary, leaving only a monthly salary of NT$130,000. The annual salary was less than 50,000 US dollars. I also paid US taxes. At that time, I told Acer's general manager and the HR department (usually the HR department is the company's worst department for employees), "I'm here to help the company, and I don't care about salary."

At that time, the general manager had handwritten 100 stocks, a promise that he could give me when the company was stable in the future. Later, due to the company's organizational reorganization, the manufacturing and brand departments were separated, and I was transferred to the brand department. The 100 stock dividend promises became a blank check.

What I want to express here is that since I was assigned to Acer in the United States in 1990, the company has always given me the opportunity to learn and grow in the multimedia laboratory, with an annual budget of several million US dollars. Therefore, when the company needed it, I resolutely returned to Taiwan to assist. This was the best time for me to repay the company after cultivating me for more than ten years. "Money" I can earn by investing it myself.

The choice between accompanying my daughter and the company -

At that time, I went back to the United States for almost a week every month and a half because I have a five-year-old daughter who needs her father's company. However, for the sake of the company, I could only go back and forth between Taiwan and the United States. Every time when I go back to the United States and pick up my daughter from school, the teacher sees me and tells me, today I watched Jamie (My daughter’s English name)’s face looked happy and bright, knowing that her father was coming back today. Every time when I wanted to go back to Taiwan, my daughter would send me to the airport. She would be very sad. Sometimes she would jump on my suitcase and hold the suitcase to prevent me from leaving. At that time, she almost shed tears, but I still told my daughter very strongly that dad needs to return to Taiwan. There are many people there who need dad. For so many people, dad must be separated from you for a short time. But dad promised you that I will come back to the United States to stay with you for a long time after everything is done. In fact, at that time, I still felt deeply guilty and reluctant to let go. After all, my daughter was at such a young age, so I had to be separated from her due to official business, and only occasionally reunited for a short time. This was really difficult for my daughter. This is the main reason why I left Acer and retired early four years later, when Acer's stock price stabilized and reached more than $100. It was also when I reached the peak of my career.

During the past four years of working in Taiwan, I would contact my daughter every day and I would definitely talk to her. It's usually lunch time in Taiwan, and it's time for my daughter to go to bed in the evening in the United States, so I spend some time with her. At that time, Yahoo had just launched Yahoo Messenger, and we chatted and played O X games on it. In addition, I bought two sets of fairy tale books, one for her and one for my office. Every day I ask her what story she wants to hear today, and Dad reads it to you. After reading the story, she goes to sleep peacefully. This is almost something I must do every day. I am very grateful to my secretary at the time, May (she is really a first-class secretary), who helps me prepare lunch every day. I can have lunch in the office with my daughter. Although I am in Taiwan, I can still communicate with my daughter every day. (So ​​I suggest that if you work out of town for a company, you should try your best to contact your family at home every day and stay familiar with your children. This is very important).

The key to whether a company's development will be successful in the long term -

Let me mention Yahoo Massager here. Generally, small departments of large companies are not taken seriously. Although Yahoo Messenger is a very good product, if it continues to develop well, it will be a pioneer of successful social media, at least comparable to the current WeChat or Line. They are equally successful, but because such a department is not valued in a large company, I often say that a good product may not be successful in a large company, but a good product in a small start-up company will be successful if it does nothing else but just this product.

This can also be applied to investment. If a company is too diversified, it usually cannot focus. Therefore, it depends on whether the company is focused on each business group. Usually new business groups should be centered around the company's core business model and will have more room to survive. Just like Yahoo Messenger, in a company that is completely focused on search engines, such a product is too far away from the core business model and is usually not taken seriously and will not succeed. But now, like Apple, Tesla or Amazon, their new business units are expanding around the company's core business model. Many applications, Apple Pay and services after Apple's mobile phones, and Amazon's cloud computing and global logistics are all developed around a core business model, but Google and Facebook is not slowly expanding around one main business model. The new business groups are too far away from the core business model. Except for Google's search engine, Google Maps and the rest of YouTube, other products are too far away from the core business model, so almost no other products can succeed. Facebook also has the same problem.

What is the most important thing in life -

At first, my daughter was in a private elementary school. The school was very stressful. My daughter had to take a ten-question math test every morning when she entered the classroom. She had to finish it in one minute. She was not a child who got started early. Sometimes she was too nervous and would skip the questions and forget to do them. My mother was very strict at home, so my daughter was under a lot of pressure to go to school. She would sometimes cry when doing homework at night. I was on the phone, but I couldn’t help. I was really reluctant to give up (if it weren’t for the company, it would not be worth being separated from my family, so if I want to be sent abroad) Or friends who have left home, I would recommend that the whole family stay together as much as possible. I am also very opposed to young international students), which is also one of the main reasons why I have to return to the United States as soon as possible. I must let my daughter grow up healthy and happy. If I am around, I can accompany my daughter to do her homework. At least she will not be so stressed and can feel her father's company. Fortunately, my daughter was transferred to a public school in the third grade, and everything returned to normal, and her daughter returned to the happy childhood that a child should have.

Life has responsibilities at different stages at different times. I usually use 10 years as a unit to focus on the most important things during this period. Nothing else can hinder this most important long-term goal. For example, the 10 years of studying are meant to study hard (this is why I didn’t have a girlfriend in college), and the 10 years to start working after graduating from college are 10 years of working hard. When children are born and grow up, you must put your children first. When anything affects you, the important factor in making a decision is to ask yourself what is the most important thing in these 10 years, so that you can clearly make the most correct judgments and decisions in life.