Should a programmer go to Korea to work at Samsung (part I)
It was the winter of 2009. I was 23 years old. The mobile division of the St. Petersburg branch of the Motorola company, where I then worked, fell under reduction. I had to go on various interviews. In the end, I got an offer from the Korean Samsung. And as many as two.
Interview in Samsung is still the most unusual in my life.
The most difficult thing was to make a presentation about yourself, and then all you had to do was put on a jacket, answer “Yes” to questions about working in overtime and be polite.
On the appointed day, I did just that, but in the St. Petersburg office, in addition to a couple of arriving Koreans, there was also a monitor for video conferences with several remote Koreans.
')
First, I successfully told a presentation about myself. But then the remote and direct communication was not particularly glued - the Koreans did not understand my Russian-English, and I, in turn, core-English. Only one technical question was dismantled: “What is Dalvik?” Fortunately, a year and a half of the development experience for Android helped me to cope with this issue, and in addition to a good report about myself, I felt that the offer to DMC (TN) in my hands. This is exactly the department that develops Galaxy smartphones.
What was my surprise when I also received an offer from the LSI division, which develops CPU + GPU + RAM sandwiches.
I remember that their remote group asked me a few questions about low-level development, and I honestly admitted that in this matter I have absolutely no knowledge or experience. Apparently, they liked my honesty.
The second revelation for me was that in this company my experience, knowledge and skills are evaluated in a very specific way: in years. Those. if I am a software engineer with 4 years of experience in the specialty, then in Samsung, regardless of the results of the interview, I get an engineer position (선임, sonim).
A week after the interview, e-mail was congratulated on a successful passage. Then they asked on the phone which unit I wanted to go to. Of course, I chose something I knew nothing about - I hoped to get a new experience. All the same, the salary is the same everywhere.
A couple of days later I received a form in the Anglo-Korean languages with a short description of the tasks and a couple of suggestions about who I can become in the distant future (to be the technical leader of some features). They also asked to confirm that this is exactly what I want to do, send a bunch of documents from work to diploma with translation into English and disappeared for a couple of weeks.
Then, finally, he got a job offer. However, among the heaps of the obscure Anglo-Korean text, it was clearly written “E3 사원” (savon), which means assistant engineer. I, who had read the well-known forum (russiankorea.com), understood the catch and tried to resist such injustice. To which the benevolent before Korean HR clearly marked the line:
I tried to write back an angry letter about the injustice of my new title and about the fact that the promised $ 2200 per month did not really exceed my Motorola salary at that time. But this is another country with other prices. And in general - I leave here family and friends.
As a result, I did not receive an answer to my angry letter, but only a call from Eycharshi with hints that there is no point in bargaining - we set conditions, and you either accept or not. Experience in parallel with the institute is not taken into account, since either I did not study well or worked poorly.
However, Samsung appreciates my diploma, equivalent to the international qualification of the master, so I am ready to count it for +2 years of experience. Total, taking into account 1.5 years after graduation from the institute, was gained 3.5 years, and 4 are needed for the synonym (E4). Also, the contract was for 2 years, and not for one, as I expected. I wanted to wind off such a period in an unfamiliar country where they also eat dogs with a St. Petersburg salary, but I was reassured that I could break the contract at any time, and the penalty would be only that I would have to buy a ticket to my homeland at my own expense.
I decided that even a couple of months to stay in a mysterious country (an hour from Seoul) would be interesting and hit the road!
I want to note one more thing about the offer: look not only at the net salary, but also at the bonuses. I initially did not believe in them, but in vain - they are paid fairly stably in Samsung (if, of course, the company itself shows normal results) and in total can be more than half of the total annual salary.
So, they settled me in the end in a dormitory and, as promised in the letter, it looked like a real apartment with 3 rooms, 2 toilets (one completely electronic)), a shower room and no neighbors. I did not know only one thing: the territory is fenced, the entrance is only for Samsung workers and only for men.
It turned out that living in such an environment is rather boring (especially at 23 years old) and even playing tennis in a local gymnasium did not bring much joy.
The first thing that really struck me in this hostel is the food. Worse, I did not eat in my life: most of the food has only the taste of red pepper, and the rest is either seaweed or tofu. But this issue was easily solved - I bought the usual products in the store and began to cook myself different soups. At prices, the food we are used to is not particularly standard for Koreans, but is present in large stores like Lotte at prices 1.5-2 times higher than in St. Petersburg.
At work, the food was a bit more decent (especially if you rinse the red pepper in a glass of water).
I’d say right away that Samsung soon for the first (and far from the last) time broke the promises given to me when I was still in Russia - and hooked up two neighbors. All my indignations and references to the agreements I had in writing did not lead to anything - Korea is a collective country and it’s not customary to argue with the company there. I was just firmly told that they now have a shortage of places for new employees and I must understand this. So you have to be prepared for the fact that for some small things Samsung may not follow the letter of the contract very scrupulously. I didn’t have such a salary, but I heard, for example, that recently Russian engineers in Korea were given new contracts for signing without specifying specific salaries. In the end, no one was deceived, but for our mentality it is a bit indecent.
At that time, I was young, active, and for the whole first year I was struggling with a soulless large object in the form of a local HR, wrote letters to various levels, and finally, by the second year, I was transferred to separate apartments. In Russian it is an apartment in a high-rise (20-25 floors) with 3 rooms (I was single and therefore they were all very small - the whole area was about 50 meters). For family people and also in accordance with their position are given large areas. But everything was completely furnished. Also there was a lot of equipment: a completely new music center, a TV, a vacuum cleaner, a refrigerator, a microwave, a stove (no oven at all), a rice cooker, an air conditioner, and a washing machine. There was dishes, a bed, an Internet connection (for which I, however, did not pay - I had enough for all the fast Korean 3G). There is even a balcony, but since Korea is a country of security (more on this later), then, unfortunately, its glazing was covered with a grill, especially in those places where windows were opened. High-rises are usually combined into large apartment complexes, where there is always parking, trash places (here is a distributed system, which adds a bit of inconvenience) and a small indoor park for walking with young children.
In general, if you don’t worry about the fact that most of the apartment complexes are monotonously monotonous, outwardly they look just like big gray boxes and there is no creativity, then Korea is an ideal place to stay, either alone or with children. I was especially struck by safety: I often walked at night and went to the most hot places, but even there I felt safer than evening in a residential area of St. Petersburg.
In general, they are trying to improve everything. Sometimes, they even build unusual facades, and in modern Korean buildings, people and cars are completely isolated: parking is only underground, and above it is a beautiful small park.
The main thing I encountered was the difficulty of living without knowing Korean. In principle, for those who wish, Samsung provides courses to study it, but I didn’t like them, and there wasn’t much incentive to teach it, because from the very first day I realized that I wouldn’t live in this country for long.
The language barrier was also present in communication with colleagues - many of them were literally afraid to speak English, constantly hanging on trying to find the perfect English word for this context. The corporate site was also transferred only in places and all the bonuses such as cheap tickets to the local water park (one of the largest in the world) were difficult to buy without the help of Koreans.
Most of all, meetings were killed, to which foreign workers of our group were invited, which did not prevent the Koreans from quietly broadcasting for several hours in their native and great ones.
Even on the streets, I felt a language barrier when people almost jumped away from me when I tried to ask them something in English. It happened that the Koreans asked to change places on the plane, seeing that a foreigner was sitting next to them.
Of course, the stories were different, but in general, Korea reminded me every day that I am a white monkey here. But it was very nice to notice that all foreigners here seem to be from one country (in Korean, we are all called Vikugin), and even greet people on the streets at the sight of each other.
The next problem for me was the inability of Koreans to treat colds. It looks like this: you come to the doctor, speak up the symptoms, he finds them in the excel table and writes you an antibiotic indicated in the same place. No one is soared by analyzes. Plus, there are no sick rooms there, because everyone goes to work sick, eating antibiotics, viruses mutate and it is no longer possible to recover from them by other means. In general, I was sick in Korea very often. Although at the end I discovered that in this country quite a good alternative medicine. And they even cured me with some secret herbs from the next terrible cold virus.
Unfortunately, the inability of Koreans to use air conditioners adds fuel to the fire. It looks as if they were just invented there and they are very proud of this outlandish thing. Therefore, in summer, buses always have a temperature of +18, in restaurants also, however, it is usually a little warmer at work.
Unfortunately, there is no peace in the winter either - the buses also proudly show the numbers +30.
Interestingly, in private cars, most Koreans also exhibit extremely extreme temperatures.
In the next part, I write about leisure in Korea, the Russian-speaking community, the features of the work itself in Samsung and, finally, summarize, explaining under what circumstances it is still worth going to work for Samsung, and when it can be a rather sad experience.
Interview
Interview in Samsung is still the most unusual in my life.
The most difficult thing was to make a presentation about yourself, and then all you had to do was put on a jacket, answer “Yes” to questions about working in overtime and be polite.
On the appointed day, I did just that, but in the St. Petersburg office, in addition to a couple of arriving Koreans, there was also a monitor for video conferences with several remote Koreans.
')
First, I successfully told a presentation about myself. But then the remote and direct communication was not particularly glued - the Koreans did not understand my Russian-English, and I, in turn, core-English. Only one technical question was dismantled: “What is Dalvik?” Fortunately, a year and a half of the development experience for Android helped me to cope with this issue, and in addition to a good report about myself, I felt that the offer to DMC (TN) in my hands. This is exactly the department that develops Galaxy smartphones.
What was my surprise when I also received an offer from the LSI division, which develops CPU + GPU + RAM sandwiches.
I remember that their remote group asked me a few questions about low-level development, and I honestly admitted that in this matter I have absolutely no knowledge or experience. Apparently, they liked my honesty.
Features of the offer
The second revelation for me was that in this company my experience, knowledge and skills are evaluated in a very specific way: in years. Those. if I am a software engineer with 4 years of experience in the specialty, then in Samsung, regardless of the results of the interview, I get an engineer position (선임, sonim).
A week after the interview, e-mail was congratulated on a successful passage. Then they asked on the phone which unit I wanted to go to. Of course, I chose something I knew nothing about - I hoped to get a new experience. All the same, the salary is the same everywhere.
A couple of days later I received a form in the Anglo-Korean languages with a short description of the tasks and a couple of suggestions about who I can become in the distant future (to be the technical leader of some features). They also asked to confirm that this is exactly what I want to do, send a bunch of documents from work to diploma with translation into English and disappeared for a couple of weeks.
Then, finally, he got a job offer. However, among the heaps of the obscure Anglo-Korean text, it was clearly written “E3 사원” (savon), which means assistant engineer. I, who had read the well-known forum (russiankorea.com), understood the catch and tried to resist such injustice. To which the benevolent before Korean HR clearly marked the line:
“If you’ve been your engineer, you’ve been If you join in 2010, you will be promoted to E4 in 2011.3.1. ”
I tried to write back an angry letter about the injustice of my new title and about the fact that the promised $ 2200 per month did not really exceed my Motorola salary at that time. But this is another country with other prices. And in general - I leave here family and friends.
As a result, I did not receive an answer to my angry letter, but only a call from Eycharshi with hints that there is no point in bargaining - we set conditions, and you either accept or not. Experience in parallel with the institute is not taken into account, since either I did not study well or worked poorly.
However, Samsung appreciates my diploma, equivalent to the international qualification of the master, so I am ready to count it for +2 years of experience. Total, taking into account 1.5 years after graduation from the institute, was gained 3.5 years, and 4 are needed for the synonym (E4). Also, the contract was for 2 years, and not for one, as I expected. I wanted to wind off such a period in an unfamiliar country where they also eat dogs with a St. Petersburg salary, but I was reassured that I could break the contract at any time, and the penalty would be only that I would have to buy a ticket to my homeland at my own expense.
I decided that even a couple of months to stay in a mysterious country (an hour from Seoul) would be interesting and hit the road!
I want to note one more thing about the offer: look not only at the net salary, but also at the bonuses. I initially did not believe in them, but in vain - they are paid fairly stably in Samsung (if, of course, the company itself shows normal results) and in total can be more than half of the total annual salary.
Accommodation, food
So, they settled me in the end in a dormitory and, as promised in the letter, it looked like a real apartment with 3 rooms, 2 toilets (one completely electronic)), a shower room and no neighbors. I did not know only one thing: the territory is fenced, the entrance is only for Samsung workers and only for men.
It turned out that living in such an environment is rather boring (especially at 23 years old) and even playing tennis in a local gymnasium did not bring much joy.
The first thing that really struck me in this hostel is the food. Worse, I did not eat in my life: most of the food has only the taste of red pepper, and the rest is either seaweed or tofu. But this issue was easily solved - I bought the usual products in the store and began to cook myself different soups. At prices, the food we are used to is not particularly standard for Koreans, but is present in large stores like Lotte at prices 1.5-2 times higher than in St. Petersburg.
At work, the food was a bit more decent (especially if you rinse the red pepper in a glass of water).
I’d say right away that Samsung soon for the first (and far from the last) time broke the promises given to me when I was still in Russia - and hooked up two neighbors. All my indignations and references to the agreements I had in writing did not lead to anything - Korea is a collective country and it’s not customary to argue with the company there. I was just firmly told that they now have a shortage of places for new employees and I must understand this. So you have to be prepared for the fact that for some small things Samsung may not follow the letter of the contract very scrupulously. I didn’t have such a salary, but I heard, for example, that recently Russian engineers in Korea were given new contracts for signing without specifying specific salaries. In the end, no one was deceived, but for our mentality it is a bit indecent.
Apartments
At that time, I was young, active, and for the whole first year I was struggling with a soulless large object in the form of a local HR, wrote letters to various levels, and finally, by the second year, I was transferred to separate apartments. In Russian it is an apartment in a high-rise (20-25 floors) with 3 rooms (I was single and therefore they were all very small - the whole area was about 50 meters). For family people and also in accordance with their position are given large areas. But everything was completely furnished. Also there was a lot of equipment: a completely new music center, a TV, a vacuum cleaner, a refrigerator, a microwave, a stove (no oven at all), a rice cooker, an air conditioner, and a washing machine. There was dishes, a bed, an Internet connection (for which I, however, did not pay - I had enough for all the fast Korean 3G). There is even a balcony, but since Korea is a country of security (more on this later), then, unfortunately, its glazing was covered with a grill, especially in those places where windows were opened. High-rises are usually combined into large apartment complexes, where there is always parking, trash places (here is a distributed system, which adds a bit of inconvenience) and a small indoor park for walking with young children.
In general, if you don’t worry about the fact that most of the apartment complexes are monotonously monotonous, outwardly they look just like big gray boxes and there is no creativity, then Korea is an ideal place to stay, either alone or with children. I was especially struck by safety: I often walked at night and went to the most hot places, but even there I felt safer than evening in a residential area of St. Petersburg.
In general, they are trying to improve everything. Sometimes, they even build unusual facades, and in modern Korean buildings, people and cars are completely isolated: parking is only underground, and above it is a beautiful small park.
Main problems
The main thing I encountered was the difficulty of living without knowing Korean. In principle, for those who wish, Samsung provides courses to study it, but I didn’t like them, and there wasn’t much incentive to teach it, because from the very first day I realized that I wouldn’t live in this country for long.
The language barrier was also present in communication with colleagues - many of them were literally afraid to speak English, constantly hanging on trying to find the perfect English word for this context. The corporate site was also transferred only in places and all the bonuses such as cheap tickets to the local water park (one of the largest in the world) were difficult to buy without the help of Koreans.
Most of all, meetings were killed, to which foreign workers of our group were invited, which did not prevent the Koreans from quietly broadcasting for several hours in their native and great ones.
Even on the streets, I felt a language barrier when people almost jumped away from me when I tried to ask them something in English. It happened that the Koreans asked to change places on the plane, seeing that a foreigner was sitting next to them.
Of course, the stories were different, but in general, Korea reminded me every day that I am a white monkey here. But it was very nice to notice that all foreigners here seem to be from one country (in Korean, we are all called Vikugin), and even greet people on the streets at the sight of each other.
The next problem for me was the inability of Koreans to treat colds. It looks like this: you come to the doctor, speak up the symptoms, he finds them in the excel table and writes you an antibiotic indicated in the same place. No one is soared by analyzes. Plus, there are no sick rooms there, because everyone goes to work sick, eating antibiotics, viruses mutate and it is no longer possible to recover from them by other means. In general, I was sick in Korea very often. Although at the end I discovered that in this country quite a good alternative medicine. And they even cured me with some secret herbs from the next terrible cold virus.
Unfortunately, the inability of Koreans to use air conditioners adds fuel to the fire. It looks as if they were just invented there and they are very proud of this outlandish thing. Therefore, in summer, buses always have a temperature of +18, in restaurants also, however, it is usually a little warmer at work.
Unfortunately, there is no peace in the winter either - the buses also proudly show the numbers +30.
Interestingly, in private cars, most Koreans also exhibit extremely extreme temperatures.
In the next part, I write about leisure in Korea, the Russian-speaking community, the features of the work itself in Samsung and, finally, summarize, explaining under what circumstances it is still worth going to work for Samsung, and when it can be a rather sad experience.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/289986/
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