【Article by the Master's Program in Global Communication and Innovation Technology】
What is it like to work in an international big tech company and professionally travel worldwide? Andy Hsu, current head of Export, Tech, Education, and Travel at Google Taiwan, gave a speech on December 12, 2022, about his career journey, Google's working culture, and his role at Google Taiwan. This event is part of the professional advising activity series of the Master's Program in Global Communication and Innovation Technology (GCIT), and Hsu is one of the many professional advisors here at GCIT.

Hsu began his career journey in Canada as a healthcare analyst, but described it as “too boring.” This led him on a journey working in many Asian countries in different capacities, but eventually, he settled on working for Google in Taiwan, one reason being family, but also because of Google's unique work culture. Hsu explained that at Google employees are given the freedom to explore what they find interesting, the flexibility to work all over the world, and respect. He also mentioned that Google's organizational structure is relatively flat; people of all rankings in the company can freely associate with each other. Another of the major takeaways from Google as a company is its “Think 10x” mentality. Google aspires to tackle problems in radical ground-breaking ways that not just incrementally improve issues but also revolutionize them. Google also allows employees to explore areas outside their core jobs in their spare time; they call this concept 20% of projects. An example of a successful 20% project is Gmail; one employee wasn't satisfied with Google's existing mail system, and with his spare time, he designed his own. This is a service with which almost everyone in the world is now familiar. 

Hsu went on to talk about what Google does as a company. As most will know, Google has an impressive number of services available, such as Gmail, Android OS, Maps, translate, and the list. Even with these services, Google's primary revenue is still advertisement-based, or as he said, helping brands communicate with Google's users. Google can collect and analyze impressive amounts of data from its services, which in turn help the companies market their targets.  

Within Google, Hsu's job is primarily to coach local Taiwanese companies and brands to better market their products; this can be done in innumerable ways, but he focuses mainly on export. Hsu explained that Taiwan's market isn't necessarily growing, so companies that want to grow can find great export success. Some companies might think the prospect of expanding to the international market might seem daunting, but he and his team can make the process easier with their professional coaching.

Hsu made Google sound like a very dynamic and interesting place to work. He finished off the speech by taking questions from the interested students. Some wanted to know what are some of the differences between working in one of Google's many different international offices, others wanted to know how Google competes with other tech companies. Hsu answered all questions enthusiastically, inspiring the many students intending to move into the marketing field after graduation. 

（Article credit: Charles Cook）