After working in AMD for four long months, after I’ve finally settled down and made so many great friends, became proficient in my job and began to LOVE Penang so much…

It was suddenly time to leave. =(

Although we had been literally counting down every Friday since the very beginning (“ahh… after today seven weeks left! etc.), we weren’t really prepared for the final day to come.

And it came in the form of a rude revelation that we would no longer be working together in the same building, seeing each other, joking, playing games and slacking in the office everyday, anymore!

Looking back at my four months in AMD, the best part was, and has always been, the people.

It  was really a privilege to have found a working environment where we could work and learn as employees, but at the same time still behave like students – noisy, active and restless.

Sometimes I feel that the REAL employees who worked on our floor (although a majority of them work on the floor below us or in other buildings) must really hate us interns! =)

Although we generally do behave ourselves and do our work during normal working hours, but when the time approaches 5PM, or when a really exciting plan like our Genting trip is brewing among us, or when somebody is finishing and having his/her last day in AMD… Almighty chaos reigns.

Nobody cares about the fact that there’s a CCTV right behind us monitoring our behaviour. I guess the security dept. people were just shaking their heads wondering why weren’t we all fired yet.

And that’s because we were doing our job fine! We complete our jobs as told without delay and with minimum mistakes, and sometimes we even produce more! We had no problems contributing creative (and sometimes ridiculous) ideas that helped our supervisors solve real problems!

What’s more, we’re doing our job for a very humble pay (as compared to the permanent employees) for full time! =)

But we were not and will NEVER complain! AMD has given us a great and invaluable opportunity to learn and experience how being an Engineer is actually like! Plus in a fun and enriching way.

And I think none of us would exchange any of that for a fatter pay check.

Although people will say that we are biased because we’ve already worked here, but I would still say that none of us would have wished we had worked elsewhere, other than AMD!

Besides, even the management treats us interns pretty well!

On the final day we basically finished and packaged off all the works and projects that had been in our hands, and spent the rest of the day saying goodbye to the numerous levels of workers in AMD – managers, engineers, technicians, vendors and operators, all of whom we had formed a close bond working together in the silent, freezing production line.

I realized that some engineers and operators do not communicate well and generally say nothing more than work instructions and reports to each other.

We interns were something in the middle, and we were able to be good friends with both sides of the divide – and were naturally not deprived of a great deal of gossips and interesting stories that could only be exclusively revealed by either side.

After saying goodbyes and settling all our reports, paperwork and presentations, the only thing left was the exit interview that would be conducted by our manager regarding our experience in AMD.

Our manager was a charming, friendly gentleman who firmly believes in the power and genuine competitiveness of AMD microprocessors and graphic units. We chatted light-heartedly and he was delighted to hear that I was using ATI graphics in both my laptop and PC. He was eager to listen to my views about the good and bad sides of AMD and ATI products and how they could be improved. As our conversation progressed to the comparisons between us and Intel, I showed off a bit by injecting some technical knowledge about the internal architectures of microprocessors and fortunately he was impressed. (Luckily I had just took the subject ‘Advanced Microprocessors’ last semester in university and was loaded with technical stuff to bullshit at will LOL)

After the longest interview among all the interns, we were given our job completion letter! YAY! Industrial Training completed!

I’ve specially reserved this last portion to dedicate it to my dear supervisor – Mr. Jalil. (Although he’s insisted that I drop the ‘Mr.’ since the first day), who has been so kind and helpful, who has never once looked down on us because we were interns, but treated us with the friendliness of a true friend.

He may look unsmiling and scary in photos but he is really, really gentle and kind! We talked about everything from football to my Toastmasters club to ranting about which colleague he disliked and gossiping about which manager we both feared. He has even given me the password to his PC and printer!

I was Mr. Jalil’s only intern at that time and he was so patient and understanding when explaining long and tedious engineering stuff to me. Throughout the internship period he has given me a lot of freedom, to the degree that I only had to meet him once per day in the morning and later even this was not needed.

By doing this Mr. Jalil was neither lazy nor irresponsible, but he had chosen to not assign me with dull and repetitive ‘operator’ work as some other supervisors had been happily giving their trainees. Instead, he gave me real projects, real issues to ponder and solve, and then the freedom, authority and contacts to implement directly into the production line; After my design was approved, I was tasked to draw up guidelines and OPLs based on my design, and conduct official briefings to the operators on the new implementations. I was then required to follow up, evaluate, receive feedback, and if necessary improve on the implementations.

I consciously reminded myself to appreciate the freedom that was given to me and never take it for granted. In return I gave my best endeavour to produce the best results. Although I may slack in the office every now and then and do nonsense with the other interns, but I always made sure that the lost time was made up, deadlines met, and finally results produced.

My supervisor has tried his best to help me, to teach me; and I did my best to make him proud, to produce results for him so that he can produce more, for his superiors.

I can only hope that I have done enough. =) 

On the last day I was so touched when I found out that my supervisor wanted to buy me a farewell present, and he took me down to the AMD shop and got me this really nice AMD collar T-shirt and key chain. My friends joked that he wanted me as an walking AMD billboard, but I loved and treasured the two items as jewels.

Before we left my supervisor gave me a signed and company-stamped performance evaluation form, which was a mandatory document to be submitted to the university…

… I was the only one among interns to receive a full 20/20 overall evaluation score.

I am pretty sure nobody’s perfect and I for one am definitely not close to one, but I whole-heartedly appreciate and am humbled by the gesture of faith that my supervisor has shown me.

It was truly a sad day that we will no longer be working together – my supervisor, colleagues and friends – but hey, we’re all engineers right?

Maybe we’ll meet again some day in the industry. =)