After gliding into the office on his electric bicycle, Jeremy Pedersen finds a quiet conference room at Alibaba Cloud’s main office to prepare for the day’s training session.

The cloud computing specialist from Delaware has come a long way since landing seven years ago in Beijing without knowing a word of Chinese.

Today, Jeremy calls the country home. He is the son-in-law of a Northern Chinese family and gives training on Alibaba Cloud products in both English and Mandarin.

How did he get here?

In this video, Jeremy shares his five-year experience working at Alibaba, what excites him the most at his work and how he navigates cultural differences.

Key Quotes:

“The thing I liked the most about the training team role is that you really are expected to know what all the products do and how to use them. Giving the training and hearing the feedback is usually a wonderful experience. It’s the reason that I keep doing it.”

“Sometimes the working culture can be different. People will tell you what is wrong rather than what they want (to be) done about it. You’re responsible for reverse engineering what should be done.”

“The one skill that I’ve benefited from the most having spent so much time at Alibaba is learning that done is better than perfect.”