Intro

Swiftly, the days of internship at the BTES China has finally came to an end. It’s worthy of me to celebrate the very end of it, and an appropriate opportunity to review the days in the little crammy office, consisting with both members of the Marketing Department and the Sales Department, which is the so called the BM (Business Management) Department in BTES China.

From three different manners, the fairly educational experience of the internship with joy and excitement is going to be reviewed which are Corporate Culture, Business Management and Individual Productivity.

Corporate Culture

First of all, speaking of the Corporate Culture of BTES China, it is rather a company with German Corporate Culture than one with Chinese Corporate Culture. Working hours in this company rather flexible, allowing most of the employees to work from 9AM to 5PM, being different from most of the Chinese Companies. Apart from that, additional works after working hours is not encouraged. So, from my observation, employees here, at least in the BM Department, in BTES China, are enjoying a more pleasant working time than the majority of office workers in China.

Quite weirdly, most of the employees have an English nick name in the companies’ mailing system. Coworkers also call each other with their English nicknames in their daily working time. It is quite different from other joint ventures in Japan, which is a unique phenomenon in joint ventures in China. As an intern, I think Chinese should use their Chinese names for what it makes them Chinese. Usually in multi-culture communities and organizations, cultures from different regions and ethnic groups, or say, races, should be equally respected and presented.

For employees of different levels, they work and corporate in a harmonious manner. At least people look quite friendly to each other at the most occasions, unlike low level workers having to call high level works in a honorific form, or speak in such manner.

Business Management

From the perspective of an intern, the way the company do business is observed in a quite rough way due to the shortage of time. The BTES China, being a subsidiary of the Bayer Group, in charging the establishing of Chemical Plants and also Polymer Business. Apart from the old days, BTES China is now expending their internal business outwards to look for now development opportunities and chances of survival. Their sales value has been on a rapid growth in the previous year, and also by expanding the business externally, they have created a vast sales network inside the Chinese Polymer Market. Also being the headquarter in the Asia Pacific area, services from Bayer are sold to countries in the Asia Pacific from China.

Individual Productivity

Speaking of Individual Productivity, it has never been observed so closely and precisely before. Employees are always thought of as productive and energetic by college students, but ironically, it was not always the case in most offices in the world.

I myself tried to keep myself working all the time in the first few days here in the office, while after a couple of days, I simply find out the fact that no one in the office can keep on working all the time though such flexible working time is assigned here. The truth is that human beings can’t work like machines without stopping, while nowadays, office workers are forced to work like machines here day by day, which is quite rough. Maybe it is too naïve to think working is simply doing what you like.

One way of increasing the individual productivity from a programmer’s point of view is that companies like BTES China can introduce efficient computer programs like network spiders and huge servers to do jobs like gathering information and sorting contracts, which can increase the efficiency of the whole organization drastically, and cut the costs.

I made some effort to do a little bit programming to create a network spider but finally fail to accomplish due to the shortage of time.

Conclusion

As an intern here at BTES China, I learned a lot here. I reviewed most of the lessons I learned in the first two year in college in Japan. I saw different ways of corporate governance, a corporate culture which is quite different from that of Japan. The most important of which, I observed and learned the attitude that a normal office work should have in a global company. Frankly speaking, the experience doing internship here also told me the what’s important for me to learn in the next two years of my college life. The experience of internship here served as a light house, pointing the right way for me in the ocean of life, leading me to sailing into the future.