
Why I have left Samsung - wsieroci
http://dream-force.com/post/27437342468/i-left-samsung
======
seivan
It's not a question of scale, it's a question of management. Companies like
Samsung, _others_ and etc are managed by idiots. Pure and simple. Suit
wearing, non-technical morons.

Congratulations on your new job, exercise, fresh air and freshly picked
berries and vegetables. Sounds pretty decent compared to sitting in front of a
screen slaving for knock-off phones with shitty vendored junk.

Seeing the company you work for doing commercials like
[http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2013/04/29/a-terrible-
idea-...](http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2013/04/29/a-terrible-idea-
samsungs-reworks-gangnam-style-to-promote-the-galaxy-s4-at-a-launch-event-in-
india/) (even if it was by a third party PR company) is kinda.. weak.

~~~
ArekDymalski
Every time (~5/month) I hear the "managers are idiots" rant I start to wonder,
how is it possible that all the smart people: 1\. aren't managers. 2\. aren't
able to convince the "idiots".

I'm also curious why smart people become idiots when they're promoted.

Come on. Managing is hard and definitely looks different depending on your
position. To make it even more "funny" I can tell you that "employees are
idiots" is a frequent manager's rant too.

~~~
w0utert
>> _Every time (~5/month) I hear the "managers are idiots" rant I start to
wonder, how is it possible that all the smart people: 1. aren't managers. 2.
aren't able to convince the "idiots"._

I guess you must have worked for completely different companies than I did,
because in my experience it's not the smartest people who work their way up
into management, just the loudest ones that don't have any specific skill that
would make them hard to replace elsewhere.

IMO the smartest people I know at my workplace are the engineers who manage
themselves into a position where they can work on interesting projects without
getting dicked around by managers distracting from the real work all the time,
and make a good living doing it.

~~~
hkmurakami
"Ability" isn't a uniform stat. There's many factors that comprise our
competence. Once of them is technical excellence.

Others include sales, politicking (or "managing up"), managing a team,
empathy, oratory, etc.

The best technical minds don't necessarily want to become suits (I'm going to
avoid using the term "managers" since engineering managers are very different
from "suits" imo). Even if they become one, they may not have the negotiation
skills or willingness to smooch that is required for a suit to succeed.

> _how is it possible that all the smart people: 1. aren't managers. 2. aren't
> able to convince the "idiots"._

For #2, a good counterexample would be, "the best athletes aren't always the
best coaches".

~~~
ArekDymalski
Your point about different skill-sets (as well as the one below about
replacing "smart" with "technically competent") is a great one. These are
things missing from my post. Regarding > "the best athletes aren't always the
best coaches" i think that's a very good illustration to whole this
discussion. If the most talented athlete benefits from the help of a coach.
However the critical part comes when the coach makes a mistake. Should athlete
just put whole responsibility on his coach? Just lean back and say "my coach
is an idiot and all I can do is to rant about it"? I believe it's a mutual
responsibility for both sides to address the issues. If the athlete can't
properly express his needs/doubts it's something what he should improve
because waiting for the coach to "get smarter" may be a recipe for disaster.
Of course the same works the other way too. Now if we replace coach/athlete
with manager/employee it's clear where so many problems come from.

------
deanclatworthy
This comes across to me as more of a rant, than a constructive exit
description from a company. When hiring new candidates, and doing background
checks alarm bells would go off if I saw people whining about their previous
jobs in a blog post. Be professional, accept that some jobs are shit, and find
a new one. This post will do you no favours in the future.

~~~
mrkipling
This is exactly what I was going to say. Writing a blog post riddled with
grammatical errors (and emoticons!) slagging off your former employer is not a
good look as far as future employers are concerned.

~~~
heidar
Are we honestly that concerned with formality in this industry? I'd be more
concerned with the contents and less with how formal they are. And what is
wrong with using emoteicons in personal blog posts?

I don't necessarily agree with slagging off your former employer but his
criticisms are still valid. The only thing that I didn't like was: "First of
all I did this because this job was terrible boring for me (fixing code of
other people is not especially exciting)." - That's not perhaps the best thing
to write since he was a junior and this will make some people think he is lazy
and does not want to take on the less fun jobs that we all have to do from
time to time.

And like someone pointed out, English is not his first language. I'm sure you
just didn't notice that though. :)

~~~
mrkipling
> And like someone pointed out, English is not his first language.

I didn't register that part, no. In that case his use of English is fine. The
emoticons, not so much for a blog post.

I still don't agree that writing this sort of post is professional or will do
him any favours.

------
SandB0x
Whining child damages his career prospects with unprofessional rant after just
nine months of work.

~~~
PavlovsCat
Whining? Where? Or was that an attempt at irony?

Child? I would call it "rather wise for that age". Have you ever worked on a
farm, by the way?

Unprofessional? Define "professional", then.

~~~
hkmurakami
I suppose that I could argue that complaining about an incompetent former
employer does literally no good for one's future career prospects. It can
_only_ hurt you, and that lack of foresight may be considered "unprofessional"
by not considering your own best interests.

(some companies won't care about his rant against Samsung, but some other
bigcos will. No company will actually give him bonus points for his public
complaints, so overall the blog is purely a net negative for his future career
transition prospects)

~~~
PavlovsCat
He didn't say they're incompetent, to the contrary, just that he didn't like
it, and that being directly involved in something that makes more sense to him
is more fulfilling to him in the meantime. So yes, he won't be hired by people
without reading comprehension who snoop around on blogs, but what makes you
think those are particularly productive anyway? And how is this relevant for
someone looking to start his own business? And even if that wasn't the case,
how are only "bigcos" viable employers, and how can you equate them with "all
companies" on top of that?

~~~
Dystopian
Bigcos aren't the only ones who would be turned off by this post - I do due
diligence daily on new employees at a small dev shop, we work startup hours
and get dirty when it comes to the work we do (I do mindless crap daily that
feels like I should have an intern that does it for me).

The op's post wreaks of entitlement and puts doubt in my mind that he'd be
able to sit for 5 hours and setup staging servers, or batch review and comment
code so new employees can follow quickly, or do one of the 100 other small,
time-consuming, mundane tasks that we all get stuck doing sometimes at ANY
size company level.

~~~
ardit33
Then he wouldn't be a fit for you company, just as you probably wouldn't be a
good employer for him.

It goes both ways. If a person takes a stand like that (basically stating not
liking dysopian work environments, bad tools and major bureaucracy), he might
make himself not available to such environments, but yet open doors to other
ones.

The other thing you forget is that this guy is pretty young and still maturing
up. Almost no level headed manager will read too much into it few years down
the road.

As a co-worker, I like this type. They are more likely to reject
bureaucracies, and seeking efficiency. These types tend to be more motivated
on getting things done, and taking joy in their productive work, and not
useless work.

Having seen myself how Samsung engineers work (mostly Korean teams), long
hours culture, sleeping in their desks (shows you are working hard!),
producing buggy code at night, then fixing their own crap in the morning
(inefficient tail chasing), I would never work for that company either. *

*(Unless they pay me a 7 figure salary, I have a price after all)

------
ozim
What have you been expecting as Junior Developer? Especially in large company,
there are lots of smarter people there, you are just starting. Sometimes
people need to be a little more humble, than thinking that on start they will
be doing new android features right away. I've worked for similar big cos as
junior, did not like it also and runned away. But someone has to do the
dishes...

~~~
coldcode
Any technology company that still uses Active-X for anything should be
avoided, no matter what.

~~~
ozim
Believe me there are far worse things in big co than Active-X. You would be
surprised how Excel can be abused...

------
anxx
I interned at a big telcom and worked at a bank. Amount of crappy software
that needs to be used is mindboggling. Amount of money that is spent to
license that crapware is even more mind boggling.

There is a real market for these beautiful b2c software products that can make
their services store data on the bigco's servers (as opposed to their own -
security is a concern) and write decent, mostly .NET interface to communicate
with the company dabatabases.

~~~
mbesto
_There is a real market for these beautiful b2c software products_

Careful. "Beautiful" software isn't necessarily a large addressable market in
B2C...right now. Not saying you're wrong, but bigco's software packages value
security, safety, and supportability over beauty, usability, and time-to-
build. It's sad but it's true.

~~~
denzil_correa
> bigco's software packages value security, safety, and supportability over
> beauty, usability, and time-to-build.

Why does it have to be either/or? I mean you can have secure/safe and
supportable software which is beautiful and usable. It eventually helps in the
long-run.

~~~
mbesto
I agree, hence _"...right now"_ ;)

------
raverbashing
The only reason I'll never work for a "big" company again: Clearcase

If the job involves this tool, I won't even apply.

(Yes, there are some other bad tools as well)

~~~
Drakim
My personal hate-passion is Lotus Notes.

~~~
aurelianito
My personal hate is Crystal Reports.

~~~
xtracto
Wow I did not know CR was still around! I used that back when I was doing my
BS about 10 years ago. A lot of people used it with Visual Basic.

I remember learning to interface VB with Microsoft's Word libraries in order
to create reports in DOC to avoid using Crystal Reports (this mainly just for
college projects). I also remember one real-life project (for a restaurant I
did during college) where we proposed the client to have DOC reports and he
was _amazed_ that it could be done.

OTOH, I ted to think that those things like CR, JIRA, Lotus Notes and others
are a necessary evil. The mere fact that they continue existing is because
they solve some kind of problem (otherwise people won't use them, right?). I
guess the main problem of these platforms is that once they grow so big
(trying to accomplish a lot of things) they become difficult to manage or use.

------
kyllo
_(for example you have to use IE to work because much of their sofware works
only as ActiveX controls)_

This is a problem endemic to South Korea. They actually passed legislation in
the late 90s mandating the use of ActiveX for security. Now that ActiveX is an
orphaned technology, that isn't working out so well for them. They are trapped
on an old version of IE.

~~~
bobdvb
Former colleagues told me that Samsung is also known to put two teams on a
task, tell neither that another team is working on said same problem, then
whoever succeeds is a rockstar and whoever fails is 'restructured'.

Korean companies aren't the easiest to work for, I should know I also just
left a large one, but the Koreans work harder than any other group I know.
Just a shame they work harder not smarter because they waste so much time.

~~~
kyllo
Yeah. "Militaristic" is the adjective I would choose to describe Korean
corporations in general.

------
Syssiphus
I love this post. It just screams: Follow your heart.

~~~
wsieroci
Nice to hear this:)

------
angerman
I cannot comment on the inner working of Samsung or a similar corporation of
that size. But having grown up on a farm I can very much sympathize with the
joy and, can we call it freedom, farming has to offer.

I often wonder if we, who code and spend quite a bit of our lifetime in front
of computer displays have distanced ourselves from the nature around us a bit
too much from time to time.

------
santu11
Hey wsieroci, all the best on your new endeavour. You have trying a lot of
stuff and asking a lot of stuff on HN. :)

You will surely do awesome.

~~~
wsieroci
Thanks :)

------
praptak
Warsaw software developers' job market has gotten really interesting since
Google opened an engineering center here some umpteen months ago. There is
just no reason to stick to crappy jobs at this time.

Edit: OTOH, this is no reason to go with a bang - releasing some pressure is
just not worth it.

~~~
michaelochurch
_Warsaw software developers' job market has gotten really interesting since
Google opened an engineering center here some umpteen months ago. There is
just no reason to stick to crappy jobs at this time._

What makes you think Google is better?

Google pays decently, but the work isn't interesting unless you have social
access. Being in an Eastern European satellite office, you're not going to get
the machine learning work. You're going to get the stuff that California,
Seattle and New York don't want to do.

I'm sure there are Polish companies that offer real work; OP would do better
at one of those than in some multinational's branch office. The problem is
that most corporations are still pretty colonial and you don't get high-
quality work unless you're in the main office.

~~~
praptak
> What makes you think Google is better?

Statements from friends who work there plus knowledge from seminars they
sometimes organize with Warsaw University. Example (Polish language warning
:-) ): <http://students.mimuw.edu.pl/SR/rok12-13/Google.html>

Short translation of the above link: cluster management, availability
management, load balancing. OS-level things, definitely not maintenance of a
legacy ticketing system for "real" devs in California.

~~~
michaelochurch
You could be right, but my experience at Google is that even on the projects
that seem interesting, the microallocation comes down to rank. For example, on
my team of ~15 people there were plenty of individuals doing interesting
stuff, but if you were SWE 2-3 you were fucked. Your boss could take advantage
of the fact that SWE 3's are pretty much considered to be parasites not worthy
of consideration as humans. You'd never get to work on a green field and
actually have an opportunity to prove yourself.

The only thing that matters at Google is your rank and your "calibration
score". That, and nothing else, determines what projects are available to you.
If you're willing to spend 5+ years playing politics and trading favors in
order to get promo story you need, then you can get something passably
interesting.

~~~
praptak
Not to contradict your experience, I just find it unlikely to translate to
this particular office we're talking about. Who knows, maybe I'll find out
first hand.

------
_wojtek
so he left corporation because it was, well, a corporation? welcome to the
real world =,=

~~~
rubinelli
Most people don't realize Dilbert isn't an exaggeration until they join the
workforce.

~~~
santu11
You are so right!! You do not realize it until it hits you.

When I was in my last job, reading Dilbert almost felt like it was happening
to me. Dark sarcasm..

~~~
qompiler
I think we can all start a Dilbert style comic to highlight weekly (if not
daily) bizarre happenings @ the office.

~~~
santu11
I guess some of us are no longer that (un)lucky. We have already started(up).
:)

------
hawat
As I know, (from my own sources inside) Samsung Poland is - as for Corporation
- nice place to work. There are many, many worse employers here in Poland.
Most big players treat polish workforce as second grade (better than those in
3rd world, worse than in "better world"). It`s funny to hear not that someone
who spend 9 months in Korean origin corporation don`t know that in Korea
ActiveX is some kind of "standard" for webapps (long and painful story,
someone with grater knowledge in this topic should write some word about it -
is interesting how they tied themselves in closed and problematic ecosystem)

------
mikecane
I have a question as a user to devs: Do you consider fixing code a bad job, as
he did? The Net is filled with complaints about things that require fixing in
lots of software that's been around a while. Yet it never seems to get done.
Is this more because dev hate to fix old code by someone else -- what in the
book world would be termed an editor's function -- or is this the nature of
the corporate beast, to just keep moving forward?

~~~
xtracto
I am a dev, and I am sure my comment won't be liked here but there it goes:

Nobody likes bug-fixing: not their bugs and of course not other people's bugs.
You can see this clearly in open-source software (mainly because the
communication channels such as Bugzilla, forums, mailing list are all open).

It is like writing documentation: programmers don't like to do it. However,
fixing bugs is worse, because there is really no payoff in doing that: if you
create a feature or write a program then you are doing something _new_...
whereas when you fix a bunch of bugs, then it mens at the end you get a piece
of software which is working _the way it was supposed to work on the first
place_... so for any external observer (client, manager, user, etc) there was
no value added.

~~~
mikecane
>>>so for any external observer (client, manager, user, etc) there was no
value added.

Wouldn't it be reflected in a drop-off of calls to Support/CS?

------
alcuadrado
A junior developer quits his job to found a tech company? Really? Unless he
has other non-mentioned skills he probably made a very bad decision

~~~
webjunkie
What do you think most silicon valley tech entrepreneurs are? Senior
developers with years of experience?

~~~
alcuadrado
Why do you assume that because many people does something it's correct to do
it? I think you should reformulate your question like "what do you think most
_successful_ silicon valley...".

I don't mean that technical skill is everything in a tech company, but it's a
very important part of it.

------
willvarfar
This was 10 months ago. So how has it worked out?

~~~
wsieroci
I am doing startup, but actually I do not want to describe it here now, maybe
I will do it later :)

~~~
willvarfar
You don't have to describe the new startup, you only have to describe how you
organise your life with particular respect to the points you raised in the
article.

And what do you miss from your enterprisy days?

~~~
wsieroci
I work MUCH harder than in Samsung, but this work really matters to me. And
what I miss? Hm.. I miss constant stream of salary on my bank account.

------
jzs
I'm not very surprised by being forced using IE and all kinds of active X
plugins at samsung.

Consider the fact that south korea sold their soul to Microsoft and IE years
ago by making it mandatory that all online purcases etc. require ActiveX
plugins for IE.

Poor technology choices forced upon the population by governments are
inherently bad.

------
ArekDymalski
Well the grass is always greener on the other side. Did you already have this
awkward moment of missing the corporation?

~~~
wsieroci
Never

~~~
ArekDymalski
Congratulations and good luck with keeping it this way then.

~~~
wsieroci
Thank you

------
moubarak
i hope OP comes up with a farming related app and enjoys the best of two
worlds.
[http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2013/04/29/f-farming...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2013/04/29/f-farming-
apps-mobile-technology.html)

------
tled
I love doing technical job. But man, I wish I had a farm like you.

------
arcosdev
this kid is my hero

------
Dirlewanger
Is this a fucking joke?

Then again, not surprised garbage like this being upvoted on here.

~~~
michaelochurch
English isn't his first language.

The writing is poor (by native speaker standards; again, I think it's safe to
chalk that up to not being a native speaker of English) but he's intelligent
and way more _honest_ (corporate jobs truly suck, and idiots are far too often
in charge) than 99.99% of white-collar workers have the courage to be.

