antipattern

You have to live under a rock not to have noticed that a lot of US companies are snapped up by Chinese companies. At least this was the case last year, with $3 billion in Chinese tech investment in the US. The invasion has however been slowed to a trickle with new administration policies. A lot of Chinese investment deals fell apart in 2019 because of this.

Some companies are not that lucky. Being bought by a Chinese company is an an interesting experience, to put it mildly.

The first thing to know is that your now-Chinese company also automatically gets a new employee called Confucius. No joke, this new employee is really the famous philosopher that often speaks his wisdom from fortune cookies when you go out for Chinese food.

Yes, THE Confucius has joined your company!

The result is that you often don't know how things work anymore. Confucius brings lots of new ways of doing things that you were never even aware of. Distilling thousands of years of traditions from this dude into the brain of an average startup dude in Silicon Valley takes a lot of effort.

Basically things get weird very quickly.

You might not know how decisions are made any more. They just land on your lap, with no warning. Nobody thought it was a good idea to you talk about it first. The business ideas don't make sense, but you have to make it work anyway.

Speaking your mind often causes trouble. You can't just say no to something. You realize it afterwards when the dynamics in the room just goes bonkers. Or the conversation just stops.

You might ask questions and never get an answer. You don't know if your Chinese boss is just busy, passive aggressive, not paying attention, or planning to fire you. You don't understand him. The instructions are vague and sometimes conflicting or not making sense.

There are a lot of meetings. And I mean a lot. You can't figure out why, because no decisions are being made. You can't understand a word of your Chinese co-workers when on a conference call.

Lots of travel. You try to understand the situation at the Chinese head quarters, but you give up. You ask questions, and people start whispering and not responding. It is just so weird.

Business decisions go into some other alternate universe where everything is a quantum superposition. Your business strategy might literally change 180 degrees from one week to another, and then back again. You look again and something changed.

The notion of focusing on one thing flies out of the window. Suddenly several businesses ideas pop up, and it becomes hard to explain how the fit together. It is like ideas multiply and everything is tried in some weird stir fry wok of a business.

You think you are doing well, but then find out, no you were completely wrong. Some good people get fired, and nobody can figure out why. Others just run for the hills, and they tell you they are so happy to be out of here.

Suddenly all sorts of privacy issues pop up. Huh, they want us to send the data to China? Can the Chinese government see all our data now? Should we tell our users? Explaining what privacy means becomes a problem – you try but it does not really sink in.

Security says: Don't take your laptop when you go to China, you will get hacked. Don't log into production systems from China. You can't basically work when there, since you can't log into most of the systems you need.

You suddenly have to deal with spy employees. Nepotism suddenly rears it head.

There are spectacular displays of wealth and really excessive parties. Crazy large business deals involving Chinese money start happening.

Where is all the money coming from?

WTF is going on?