Should a programmer go to Korea to work for Samsung (Part II)
It seemed to me that in the first part about the specifics of the life of Korea, I wrote too negatively. But then he gave an article to read to friends who lived or live in Korea, and they said that everything is ok ... They say it is still democratic.
Turning back and looking at my 2+ years in this Asian country, I generally consider them not the most productive. A lot of sad experience comes to mind, from terrible Korean nationalism to the impossibility of getting a normal task at work. But it is worth noting that I am a very active person in life and if everything was bad, I would leave there in a few months. So something kept me there.
I liked the Russian-speaking community in Korea. I think the Russians are not a particularly cohesive nation, but there it was not felt. Moreover, we communicated equally well with Ukrainians, Armenians and Belarusians. We sat at the same table, sometimes we went out into the countryside together. It was also very helpful that the Eastern Europeans communicate very directly, usually not trying to be tactful. And in Korea, the majority of the Russian-speaking population are engineers. This combination of frankness and mind helps to quickly understand Korean features and get practical advice on solving various problems.
Foreigners here too, it seems to me, are becoming more outspoken. Even Americans often spoke very directly about their problems with the Koreans, and how they solved them.
')
I have already noted in the first part that all English-speaking people greet each other on the street, so it’s usually not difficult to get acquainted with the two “Vecugins”. The only problem is education: if the Russian-speaking population here is mainly engineers, then the English-speaking one is the American military and English teachers. We usually have slightly different life principles and interests. Although learning English in a distant country is often just a side job for a young American or Canadian, as our students are a part time job as a waiter. Those. All this is beautiful and interesting if you do not stay up long in this area.
At the same time, I still have friends as American teachers of English and military. Well, when my friend accidentally dug out an American satellite engineer in a Korean gym, it turned out to be an amazing person. And now he has become one of my closest friends.
Of course, speaking of people, it is impossible not to mention the Koreans themselves. I must say, the problem of the majority of the population is limitation. Although, maybe this is true about any country in the world. But even Korean engineers are usually not particularly interested in the rest of the world.
This is largely due to their life - from school they study very hard - from 7 am to 11 pm. And, for example, the geography of the world is not the main subject. The main thing - the geography of Korea! As a result, almost no Korean knows which country is the largest in the world (“China? .. uh ... USA?”).
I was also killed by questions in the spirit of “is it true that Russia is a very cold country?”. Especially after I told you that this is the largest country in the world.
The pride of the Koreans that there are as many as 4 seasons a year in their country is also amusing.
But! When for the first time I told unfamiliar Koreans that I was from the Russian Federation, then in response, I never received the usual vodka and balalaika. Surprisingly, I constantly heard something like: “A ... Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tchaikovsky?” Ie something they are taught in school.
After school, the Koreans have an institute with a similar “study hard”. And from the second year the entire male population goes to serve in the army. It does not buy flat feet and there are no our military departments. As a result, they study to 26-27 years. And when they start working, they must give a part of their income to aging parents (the pensions are small here) and in parallel save for the wedding (this is a mega-expensive pleasure, especially considering that all colleagues are called to it).
The female population is often much more open and has a wider outlook, if only because they have 2 years to travel around the world when Korean boys are trained in the army.
Separately, I note the Koreans who had the opportunity to live abroad. Very often they are the exact opposite of the local population, much more open and often hate all this Korean ... And, as in the comments to my last part, Mixim333 noted the amazing speed of Koreans learning the Russian language, I also sometimes noticed how quickly and deeply they understood features of the culture of the country in which they live.
Of course, the apogee of all this for me will forever remain our stunning Viktor Tsoi !
In terms of leisure, I liked the accessibility of the sea in Korea. It is here from all sides except the North ...
Most Koreans prefer to swim in the East Sea (here no one knows what the name "Chinese" or "Japanese" means). There are equipped beaches with lifeguards and crowds of people:
Unfortunately, in addition to the excessive number of people in Korea in T-shirts in circles who do not have to swim, there is another problem: restrictions. It is impossible to swim behind the path, because there may be deeper than human growth and there is a danger of drowning. If the waves begin to reach 40 centimeters, all those who are bathing are urgently expelled.
And here I tried to fight the system - I climbed to swim. Soon, however, I was forcibly dragged by local rescuers on a boat. Then I tried for a long time to explain that I have a level in swimming and in general I am a free man and have every right to swim with the current calm. In response, it was politely explained that they were glad for me, but the danger was that Koreans who could not swim would come after me and they would drown. After my bewilderment about what we are no longer children, and why I should be responsible for some crazy people, my gallant rescue opponent finally broke up: “I was also abroad and I understand that something is wrong here. But what to do, this is such a strange country ****. I understood it and did not climb any more.
But I am glad that there is also the West Sea (the Southern is also good, but far away), in which Koreans do not really bathe (they go there more for a BBQ). Of course, it is worse suited for swimming, but there are places without people at all, where you can safely stay with tents.
The nature there is beautiful too:
There are no restrictions and no tracks, however, as well as lifeguards. But you need to know the place, as often the sea is too small off the coast:
Through the forum I have already noted, we sometimes gathered and drove in a giant crowd to the West Sea. Sometimes it turned out that even in popular places for Koreans Russian-speaking holidaymakers turned out to be more than local.
Sometimes they went to the local lakes, which are quite a few near Suwon. The only frustration was that it was officially forbidden to swim there (patrols on the boats immediately arrive). This is because the depth in the lakes is greater than human growth and it is dangerous - you can drown.
So we usually swam closer to sunset.
We were also going to engage in various sports - from football to snowboard. By the way, ski resorts in mountainous Korea are very common and many of them resemble the Alps in their infrastructure. Only lower several times, mostly artificial snow is used and there is no freeride. But at lunchtime all the tracks are closed and are passed by a grader. Riding twice a day on a fresh track is an unprecedented luxury that I have never seen anywhere in the world!
Also I liked a lot of shops for renting ski equipment at the entrance to the resorts. As a result, sometimes it was possible to negotiate the rent of a snowboard with boots for $ 10-15 per day.
In general, the phrase "Kaka dzhusayo" (give a discount) very often works well in Korea, especially when pronounced by a foreigner with a pleading tone.
Mountains in the country of morning freshness are really many and hiking is very popular. It was often striking that even the barely moving old women still purposefully wander into the mountains. Perhaps this is one of the factors of Korean longevity.
The most popular direction of hiking, by right, is Seoraksan :
The weather in Korea is more stable than in Petersburg. In winter it is usually cold (strong cold winds bothered the most), but rarely the temperature drops below -9. Summer may well be +30. Spring and autumn are pretty pleasant.
I am very pleased that Samsung is fully engaged in the selection and payment of apartments (now, it seems, even my division of LSI does not accommodate foreigners in dormitories). It’s pretty hard to do it yourself, because usually in Korea there are very large deposits, comparable to the cost of the apartments themselves. Unfortunately, such money is hard to find, and then taking it away from the Koreans is not the most pleasant thing ... Now, more and more, Koreans take less than half of the cost of housing as collateral, but at the same time you pay monthly rent (volse) as well. There are also options without it (Chons), but then often they are asked to pay almost 80% of the market value of the apartments.
When I lived in a hostel, I had enough for everything about everything $ 700 a month. Having moved to the apartment, they added electricity bills ($ 140 +), gasoline per car to get to work (now it has fallen in price and costs about $ 1.5 per liter). There are, however, corporate buses, but I already wrote about the temperature there.
Now my friend so painted his wife and expenses for living in Korea:
- rent in summer: $ 200, from November to March $ 600 (moved to a large, but unsuccessful apartment - it is very cold, so often you have to drown around the clock);
- Internet at home + contracts with a connection for 2 phones is $ 220;
- car insurance, tax - $ 70;
- gasoline $ 250;
- Doctors $ 50 (medical insurance from Samsung - this is a free clinic for workers in the territory + small discounts at other clinics);
- products $ 1000;
- plus cafe / sport / entertainment / shopping.
It turns out about $ 2000 + entertainment. But many of my colleagues live more economically.
The real tax that is deducted from wages in Korea is one of the lowest in the world. About 17%. As a result, being a senior engineer (E5 - ě±…ěž„ (chegim)), you can get more than $ 6,000 net per month (including mandatory bonuses). Which is one of the biggest net programmer salaries in the world (of course, not taking into account Silicon Valley)).
And for this you do not need to pass the interview brilliantly. Just Master + 7 years of professional experience. It’s very difficult to get a non-Koreans rank higher (especially if you do not have Japanese or American citizenship).
So, the first working day. Introductory lecture for foreigners from a fairly high-ranking person in local HR of American origin. I remember 2 statements of this interesting person:
1. I have been working in Korea for a long time, I tried to change them, but this is impossible. I also advise you not to bathe. If earlier in your countries you worked a lot and received little, then here you will pay well, but it will not be easy to get a worthy task. The main thing is not to worry, do not argue, and enjoy life.
2. Most likely you will find a lot wrong in this unusual country. But think, if you think everything that is different from the accepted norms in your particular mentality is wrong, are you right?
I will immediately say - I believed in both these phrases and both of them worked for me for 2 years.
Even with the salary, everything turned out to be better than I expected, because there are mandatory bonuses 3 times a year in Samsung.
After several months, I realized that my boss not only did not give me new tasks, but was also not happy that I couldn’t think of a task for myself. He told me right at one of our face-to-face meetings that the engineer differs from a simple programmer in that he is able to invent valuable tasks for the company to himself.
But the reality for everyone is my own and I know people who received interesting assignments in Samsung. However, for this to happen, you must either have a story with the team, or you must be truly proactive and try, no matter what.
I had no luck, no desire to try. In general, I was then poorly versed in proactivity, my official title was an assistant engineer, and there was no particular desire to prove to this strange Korean. Probably, it was also the fact that by that time the local HR did not act ugly with me.
I forgot to say that every day I went to work through the metal detector and also went out through it with the obligatory inspection of the phone and bag. The cameras on the phone were stuck at the entrance and checked at the exit, and if any of the stickers turned out to be removed, then all personal photos could be viewed, plus a complaint about me reached VP. It was allowed to print only on special paper, which could not be taken out, and therefore it was detected by the metal detector at the exit. All usb outputs were blocked on the computer and there was a bunch of Korean security software that was constantly buggy. At the same time, I, as a developer for Android, had access to a usb linux machine not burdened with their security software. So all their security looked like a farce, considering the possibilities of adb.
Local colleagues with me tried to avoid communication, afraid to speak in English.
Most Koreans worked from 7 am to 9 pm. On Saturdays, 60 percent came, on Sundays - 30. At the same time, I often noticed that they did not work all the time, and sometimes sleep in the toilets (leaving characteristic circles on rolls of paper on their foreheads) or even on keyboards. However, without receiving responsible assignments (for 2+ years, not a single line of my code was included in the official release), as a foreigner, at least I had no problems with processing - I just left, after serving 8 hours - that's all.
I felt nationalism here even in nightclubs, when there was only one club in all of Suvona (population 1.2 million) that was allowed to enter foreigners. In the rest, security without a shadow of a doubt told me at the entrance: "Only for Koreans."
In general, this whole Korean woman quickly got me and after a couple of months I began to get home ...
But then, as I already wrote, I met various interesting people. They explained to me that I really can relax, enjoy life and almost do nothing. Because Samsung for the entire history fired only one person before the expiration of the contract, and even then they apologized to him for a long time and paid in advance all the money laid down by the contract. I also managed to gather colleagues for football games in the middle of the lunch break, spring came and life slowly became more fun!
Sometimes the chief's attempts to get out of the rut still come up with some task for me, like “analyze, please render the latest version of WebKit and prepare an analysis of how to speed it up”. At that time, open-source developers from all over the world, as well as companies like Google and Apple, were engaged in this task. I didn’t believe so much in my abilities as an assistant engineer to dare to take this task seriously. But the presentation was prepared and even tried to bring some idea.
In a word, the work for me was relegated to the 10th plan, and I was interested in communication, mma, football, snowboarding, swimming pool, swimming in the sea, traveling and other interesting things.
Recycling was not in vain. I note that my boss three times in 2 years got into an institution similar to our psycho-hospital, so I tried to bother him less and be seen. The Koreans did not use their vacations either, on average, spending 2 days a year out of the permitted 3 weeks on vacation. To my naive inquiries of the first days, the head answered something like: we need to keep in reserve - suddenly the child will be ill. But even in this case, they did not take time off, while they themselves were ill right at work.
The reason was in the tradition. From conversations with young people, I realized that this was not a voluntary desire, but remnants of the recent military dictatorship. And although the posters “Work Smart” were everywhere, the recent “Work Hard” was also hidden under them.
And the Koreans worked hard. So they worked, that sometimes they died without leaving home. No kidding, when they got a job in the DMC department, my acquaintances were shown “Samsung widows shops”. They belonged to wives whose husbands died at work. A new feature of Korean culture once again shook me and I was even more firmly convinced that there was no need to strain myself.
And yet, in my opinion, there are cases when it is worth going to Korea:
1. I would like not to bathe, but calmly get good money, relaxing in body and soul. On this subject, my colleague from Peter, who has been working in the android division of Samsung for 4 years, never ceases to amaze me, and at the same time does not know and is not interested in such a thing as programming in general and android in particular. He simply redirects assignments to Samsung's third-party contractors, goes to weekly snacks (team-building dinners with compulsory alcohol) with his Korean colleagues and enjoys life.
I remember that after a year of work he suddenly had a fear that the Koreans would learn that he could not program ... But soon the fears were in vain.
2. Purposeful and proactive person (proactive in the sense of Stephen Covey 's book “7 skills of highly effective people” ).
I know many examples when Russian-speaking engineers in Samsung achieved both responsibility and interesting tasks. The only thing that seems to me is if all this proactivity was applied somewhere in the USA or even some good CIS company, it would have been more successful than in Samsung.
3. Engineer with an unusual specialization. Such people as R & D Engineer at the Semiconductor, for example, sometimes find it difficult to find a job with a decent salary and interesting projects in the CIS. In Samsung, there are so many diverse research projects of truly world level and importance.
Accordingly, if you want to build your IT career, and proving to others that you are an intelligent and capable person is not the most interesting part of your dream job, then, in my opinion, Samsung is not for you.
But, for example, it may not be at all bad under the curtain of a career to go to this safe country, have a decent salary and perhaps even eventually get a residence permit (F5 visa, by the way, this is quite realistic ).
Finally, I want to give a link to a short note that I wrote on the same forum 3 years ago on the last day of my work in Korea: “Korea. 25 months. 80 Why?
Turning back and looking at my 2+ years in this Asian country, I generally consider them not the most productive. A lot of sad experience comes to mind, from terrible Korean nationalism to the impossibility of getting a normal task at work. But it is worth noting that I am a very active person in life and if everything was bad, I would leave there in a few months. So something kept me there.
People
I liked the Russian-speaking community in Korea. I think the Russians are not a particularly cohesive nation, but there it was not felt. Moreover, we communicated equally well with Ukrainians, Armenians and Belarusians. We sat at the same table, sometimes we went out into the countryside together. It was also very helpful that the Eastern Europeans communicate very directly, usually not trying to be tactful. And in Korea, the majority of the Russian-speaking population are engineers. This combination of frankness and mind helps to quickly understand Korean features and get practical advice on solving various problems.
Foreigners here too, it seems to me, are becoming more outspoken. Even Americans often spoke very directly about their problems with the Koreans, and how they solved them.
')
I have already noted in the first part that all English-speaking people greet each other on the street, so it’s usually not difficult to get acquainted with the two “Vecugins”. The only problem is education: if the Russian-speaking population here is mainly engineers, then the English-speaking one is the American military and English teachers. We usually have slightly different life principles and interests. Although learning English in a distant country is often just a side job for a young American or Canadian, as our students are a part time job as a waiter. Those. All this is beautiful and interesting if you do not stay up long in this area.
At the same time, I still have friends as American teachers of English and military. Well, when my friend accidentally dug out an American satellite engineer in a Korean gym, it turned out to be an amazing person. And now he has become one of my closest friends.
Of course, speaking of people, it is impossible not to mention the Koreans themselves. I must say, the problem of the majority of the population is limitation. Although, maybe this is true about any country in the world. But even Korean engineers are usually not particularly interested in the rest of the world.
This is largely due to their life - from school they study very hard - from 7 am to 11 pm. And, for example, the geography of the world is not the main subject. The main thing - the geography of Korea! As a result, almost no Korean knows which country is the largest in the world (“China? .. uh ... USA?”).
I was also killed by questions in the spirit of “is it true that Russia is a very cold country?”. Especially after I told you that this is the largest country in the world.
The pride of the Koreans that there are as many as 4 seasons a year in their country is also amusing.
But! When for the first time I told unfamiliar Koreans that I was from the Russian Federation, then in response, I never received the usual vodka and balalaika. Surprisingly, I constantly heard something like: “A ... Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tchaikovsky?” Ie something they are taught in school.
After school, the Koreans have an institute with a similar “study hard”. And from the second year the entire male population goes to serve in the army. It does not buy flat feet and there are no our military departments. As a result, they study to 26-27 years. And when they start working, they must give a part of their income to aging parents (the pensions are small here) and in parallel save for the wedding (this is a mega-expensive pleasure, especially considering that all colleagues are called to it).
The female population is often much more open and has a wider outlook, if only because they have 2 years to travel around the world when Korean boys are trained in the army.
Separately, I note the Koreans who had the opportunity to live abroad. Very often they are the exact opposite of the local population, much more open and often hate all this Korean ... And, as in the comments to my last part, Mixim333 noted the amazing speed of Koreans learning the Russian language, I also sometimes noticed how quickly and deeply they understood features of the culture of the country in which they live.
Of course, the apogee of all this for me will forever remain our stunning Viktor Tsoi !
Leisure
In terms of leisure, I liked the accessibility of the sea in Korea. It is here from all sides except the North ...
Most Koreans prefer to swim in the East Sea (here no one knows what the name "Chinese" or "Japanese" means). There are equipped beaches with lifeguards and crowds of people:
Unfortunately, in addition to the excessive number of people in Korea in T-shirts in circles who do not have to swim, there is another problem: restrictions. It is impossible to swim behind the path, because there may be deeper than human growth and there is a danger of drowning. If the waves begin to reach 40 centimeters, all those who are bathing are urgently expelled.
And here I tried to fight the system - I climbed to swim. Soon, however, I was forcibly dragged by local rescuers on a boat. Then I tried for a long time to explain that I have a level in swimming and in general I am a free man and have every right to swim with the current calm. In response, it was politely explained that they were glad for me, but the danger was that Koreans who could not swim would come after me and they would drown. After my bewilderment about what we are no longer children, and why I should be responsible for some crazy people, my gallant rescue opponent finally broke up: “I was also abroad and I understand that something is wrong here. But what to do, this is such a strange country ****. I understood it and did not climb any more.
But I am glad that there is also the West Sea (the Southern is also good, but far away), in which Koreans do not really bathe (they go there more for a BBQ). Of course, it is worse suited for swimming, but there are places without people at all, where you can safely stay with tents.
The nature there is beautiful too:
There are no restrictions and no tracks, however, as well as lifeguards. But you need to know the place, as often the sea is too small off the coast:
Through the forum I have already noted, we sometimes gathered and drove in a giant crowd to the West Sea. Sometimes it turned out that even in popular places for Koreans Russian-speaking holidaymakers turned out to be more than local.
Sometimes they went to the local lakes, which are quite a few near Suwon. The only frustration was that it was officially forbidden to swim there (patrols on the boats immediately arrive). This is because the depth in the lakes is greater than human growth and it is dangerous - you can drown.
So we usually swam closer to sunset.
We were also going to engage in various sports - from football to snowboard. By the way, ski resorts in mountainous Korea are very common and many of them resemble the Alps in their infrastructure. Only lower several times, mostly artificial snow is used and there is no freeride. But at lunchtime all the tracks are closed and are passed by a grader. Riding twice a day on a fresh track is an unprecedented luxury that I have never seen anywhere in the world!
Also I liked a lot of shops for renting ski equipment at the entrance to the resorts. As a result, sometimes it was possible to negotiate the rent of a snowboard with boots for $ 10-15 per day.
In general, the phrase "Kaka dzhusayo" (give a discount) very often works well in Korea, especially when pronounced by a foreigner with a pleading tone.
Mountains in the country of morning freshness are really many and hiking is very popular. It was often striking that even the barely moving old women still purposefully wander into the mountains. Perhaps this is one of the factors of Korean longevity.
The most popular direction of hiking, by right, is Seoraksan :
The weather in Korea is more stable than in Petersburg. In winter it is usually cold (strong cold winds bothered the most), but rarely the temperature drops below -9. Summer may well be +30. Spring and autumn are pretty pleasant.
Costs
I am very pleased that Samsung is fully engaged in the selection and payment of apartments (now, it seems, even my division of LSI does not accommodate foreigners in dormitories). It’s pretty hard to do it yourself, because usually in Korea there are very large deposits, comparable to the cost of the apartments themselves. Unfortunately, such money is hard to find, and then taking it away from the Koreans is not the most pleasant thing ... Now, more and more, Koreans take less than half of the cost of housing as collateral, but at the same time you pay monthly rent (volse) as well. There are also options without it (Chons), but then often they are asked to pay almost 80% of the market value of the apartments.
When I lived in a hostel, I had enough for everything about everything $ 700 a month. Having moved to the apartment, they added electricity bills ($ 140 +), gasoline per car to get to work (now it has fallen in price and costs about $ 1.5 per liter). There are, however, corporate buses, but I already wrote about the temperature there.
Now my friend so painted his wife and expenses for living in Korea:
- rent in summer: $ 200, from November to March $ 600 (moved to a large, but unsuccessful apartment - it is very cold, so often you have to drown around the clock);
- Internet at home + contracts with a connection for 2 phones is $ 220;
- car insurance, tax - $ 70;
- gasoline $ 250;
- Doctors $ 50 (medical insurance from Samsung - this is a free clinic for workers in the territory + small discounts at other clinics);
- products $ 1000;
- plus cafe / sport / entertainment / shopping.
It turns out about $ 2000 + entertainment. But many of my colleagues live more economically.
The real tax that is deducted from wages in Korea is one of the lowest in the world. About 17%. As a result, being a senior engineer (E5 - ě±…ěž„ (chegim)), you can get more than $ 6,000 net per month (including mandatory bonuses). Which is one of the biggest net programmer salaries in the world (of course, not taking into account Silicon Valley)).
And for this you do not need to pass the interview brilliantly. Just Master + 7 years of professional experience. It’s very difficult to get a non-Koreans rank higher (especially if you do not have Japanese or American citizenship).
Job
So, the first working day. Introductory lecture for foreigners from a fairly high-ranking person in local HR of American origin. I remember 2 statements of this interesting person:
1. I have been working in Korea for a long time, I tried to change them, but this is impossible. I also advise you not to bathe. If earlier in your countries you worked a lot and received little, then here you will pay well, but it will not be easy to get a worthy task. The main thing is not to worry, do not argue, and enjoy life.
2. Most likely you will find a lot wrong in this unusual country. But think, if you think everything that is different from the accepted norms in your particular mentality is wrong, are you right?
I will immediately say - I believed in both these phrases and both of them worked for me for 2 years.
Even with the salary, everything turned out to be better than I expected, because there are mandatory bonuses 3 times a year in Samsung.
After several months, I realized that my boss not only did not give me new tasks, but was also not happy that I couldn’t think of a task for myself. He told me right at one of our face-to-face meetings that the engineer differs from a simple programmer in that he is able to invent valuable tasks for the company to himself.
But the reality for everyone is my own and I know people who received interesting assignments in Samsung. However, for this to happen, you must either have a story with the team, or you must be truly proactive and try, no matter what.
I had no luck, no desire to try. In general, I was then poorly versed in proactivity, my official title was an assistant engineer, and there was no particular desire to prove to this strange Korean. Probably, it was also the fact that by that time the local HR did not act ugly with me.
I forgot to say that every day I went to work through the metal detector and also went out through it with the obligatory inspection of the phone and bag. The cameras on the phone were stuck at the entrance and checked at the exit, and if any of the stickers turned out to be removed, then all personal photos could be viewed, plus a complaint about me reached VP. It was allowed to print only on special paper, which could not be taken out, and therefore it was detected by the metal detector at the exit. All usb outputs were blocked on the computer and there was a bunch of Korean security software that was constantly buggy. At the same time, I, as a developer for Android, had access to a usb linux machine not burdened with their security software. So all their security looked like a farce, considering the possibilities of adb.
Local colleagues with me tried to avoid communication, afraid to speak in English.
Most Koreans worked from 7 am to 9 pm. On Saturdays, 60 percent came, on Sundays - 30. At the same time, I often noticed that they did not work all the time, and sometimes sleep in the toilets (leaving characteristic circles on rolls of paper on their foreheads) or even on keyboards. However, without receiving responsible assignments (for 2+ years, not a single line of my code was included in the official release), as a foreigner, at least I had no problems with processing - I just left, after serving 8 hours - that's all.
I felt nationalism here even in nightclubs, when there was only one club in all of Suvona (population 1.2 million) that was allowed to enter foreigners. In the rest, security without a shadow of a doubt told me at the entrance: "Only for Koreans."
In general, this whole Korean woman quickly got me and after a couple of months I began to get home ...
But then, as I already wrote, I met various interesting people. They explained to me that I really can relax, enjoy life and almost do nothing. Because Samsung for the entire history fired only one person before the expiration of the contract, and even then they apologized to him for a long time and paid in advance all the money laid down by the contract. I also managed to gather colleagues for football games in the middle of the lunch break, spring came and life slowly became more fun!
Sometimes the chief's attempts to get out of the rut still come up with some task for me, like “analyze, please render the latest version of WebKit and prepare an analysis of how to speed it up”. At that time, open-source developers from all over the world, as well as companies like Google and Apple, were engaged in this task. I didn’t believe so much in my abilities as an assistant engineer to dare to take this task seriously. But the presentation was prepared and even tried to bring some idea.
In a word, the work for me was relegated to the 10th plan, and I was interested in communication, mma, football, snowboarding, swimming pool, swimming in the sea, traveling and other interesting things.
Recycling was not in vain. I note that my boss three times in 2 years got into an institution similar to our psycho-hospital, so I tried to bother him less and be seen. The Koreans did not use their vacations either, on average, spending 2 days a year out of the permitted 3 weeks on vacation. To my naive inquiries of the first days, the head answered something like: we need to keep in reserve - suddenly the child will be ill. But even in this case, they did not take time off, while they themselves were ill right at work.
The reason was in the tradition. From conversations with young people, I realized that this was not a voluntary desire, but remnants of the recent military dictatorship. And although the posters “Work Smart” were everywhere, the recent “Work Hard” was also hidden under them.
And the Koreans worked hard. So they worked, that sometimes they died without leaving home. No kidding, when they got a job in the DMC department, my acquaintances were shown “Samsung widows shops”. They belonged to wives whose husbands died at work. A new feature of Korean culture once again shook me and I was even more firmly convinced that there was no need to strain myself.
findings
And yet, in my opinion, there are cases when it is worth going to Korea:
1. I would like not to bathe, but calmly get good money, relaxing in body and soul. On this subject, my colleague from Peter, who has been working in the android division of Samsung for 4 years, never ceases to amaze me, and at the same time does not know and is not interested in such a thing as programming in general and android in particular. He simply redirects assignments to Samsung's third-party contractors, goes to weekly snacks (team-building dinners with compulsory alcohol) with his Korean colleagues and enjoys life.
I remember that after a year of work he suddenly had a fear that the Koreans would learn that he could not program ... But soon the fears were in vain.
2. Purposeful and proactive person (proactive in the sense of Stephen Covey 's book “7 skills of highly effective people” ).
I know many examples when Russian-speaking engineers in Samsung achieved both responsibility and interesting tasks. The only thing that seems to me is if all this proactivity was applied somewhere in the USA or even some good CIS company, it would have been more successful than in Samsung.
3. Engineer with an unusual specialization. Such people as R & D Engineer at the Semiconductor, for example, sometimes find it difficult to find a job with a decent salary and interesting projects in the CIS. In Samsung, there are so many diverse research projects of truly world level and importance.
Accordingly, if you want to build your IT career, and proving to others that you are an intelligent and capable person is not the most interesting part of your dream job, then, in my opinion, Samsung is not for you.
But, for example, it may not be at all bad under the curtain of a career to go to this safe country, have a decent salary and perhaps even eventually get a residence permit (F5 visa, by the way, this is quite realistic ).
Finally, I want to give a link to a short note that I wrote on the same forum 3 years ago on the last day of my work in Korea: “Korea. 25 months. 80 Why?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/290024/
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