The Vietnamese industries looked like what I imagined our industries to look like here in the U.S. However, the working conditions and wages leave something to be desired. The place that stuck out the most with bad working conditions was II-IV, even though I'm sure it is the same all over the city. II-IV stands out because we asked the guy who was giving us a tour, and he said that they lived in dorms smaller than us with twice the people, and their wages were exponentially lower than our minimum wage. We could also see the working conditions firsthand, and I could tell they were not so great. Vietnam does have some diversity issues in the workplace as well. I remember at the Glass Egg, one of the higher-ups was a woman, which was a really big deal. That still exists in some places in the United States, but nowhere near as bad. And really, gender is one of the only diversity issues that they can obviously discriminate against, so its one of the only ones they have to focus on fixing. I think this all effects the business in the United States, because we would not be able to produce the same amount of things for as little money. The working conditions and wages of the workers at II-IV were pretty bad, and people in the United States would not be able to work like this. This effects the business because we have to outsource the petty work like this, to countries just like Vietnam.
This trip made me realize that a broader education would benefit everyone. More and more jobs require foreign interaction, and these two weeks showed me that you have to actually learn how to interact with foreign people, even if you have a common language. Talking with these students was difficult and draining even though their English was understandable, and this was only chatting about our lives. In a professional setting, language is even more important, yet difficult for both parties, the native and the foreigner. I am glad I had this experience, because it was the first step in learning how to interact with people abroad, and the key is patience. I think that broadening the classroom experience into learning about different cultures is a good idea, but the most important thing we can do is learn at least one different language. In my time abroad I noticed that almost everyone spoke enough English to communicate with us, and in America this just would not be the case, even with a more common language like Spanish or French. I think learning a different language is the most important step to preparing for a global economy, and I plan to continue taking Spanish classes and spend at least a semester in a Spanish speaking country.
A lot of companies that we talked to and the people that they met didn't give us too much information about the colleges they went to. The man who gave us the Phu My Hung presentation did, but his is a special case that links in to what I previously said about learning languages. He went to college in the United States, became fluent in English and got a degree, and is now probably pretty well off even though he was pretty young. Most of the people we met did have training though, just like here in the USA. The main company that talked about technology was Glass Egg. A main strain on their business was keeping up with the new technologies, between the video game platforms and the programs they made their products on. Without life-long learning and new training, the business would never advance. If the employees don't learn anything new, the business won't produce anything new. An example of business competition that we all can see is Apple iPhones and the hundred other "smartphones" from different brands. These other companies had to learn how to perfect the touch screen in order to compete with Apple.
The only article I read in Vietnam had to do with my company, Phu My Hung. It was about some land opening up, and it was a debate over who was going to try to get it. There are similar land disputes in the U.S., but it is still different because of how the Communist government gets the last say in it. The connections that were made between people's social life and professional life were their respect for elders (or higher ups) and sometimes about religion. When I asked people what they knew about the U.S., they generally had a good idea about what was going on. Some of the students I asked gave the same response as I would, which was a shy laugh followed by some obvious facts like Obama's our president. I think they knew a bit more about us, but didn't know political lingo well enough to start an argument or anything. Sadly, I knew nothing about their country, which was once again a bit embarrassing, and once again stresses the importance of a broader education, and also shows us that a current events class could go a long way. Vietnam's industry's issues do not really seem to effect us over here in America, but it is still something that we should know about.
Compared to the communication between us and the Vietnamese students, communicating with the business students seemed like a piece of cake. However, it was definitely hard to try to work with a cross discipline team. There was the basic challenge of business students not knowing engineering lingo, and vice versa, so every little question about something turned into a back story on some general business concept that us engineers never learned about. I also noticed that there was a distinct difference just in how the engineers thought compared to the business students. This mainly came out at some points when us students were free to ask the companies questions. The business students' questions were definitely more about the economy and the business strategies behind the companies, while the engineers asked more technical things when possible. This gave me an insight into how it will be in the workplace, and I can see how hard it is going to be. Industrial Engineers will even have a totally different way of thinking than Chemical Engineers, which I think will be a whole other learning experience, but at the same time is how everything works.
This experience taught me so much, without me even realizing it. I am so thankful for everyone involved in organizing this trip, all of the companies who presented to us, UEF for hosting us, and most importantly all of the people that I met on this trip.
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