[wrong_variable]

I am not sure what Samsung being Asian has to do with anything :)

This is good news for node.js since what this means is more money gets poured into node.js development.

For example Microsoft pouring money into JS seems to have lead directly to Typescript.

[pkaye]

I have no personal experience working for Samsung but know quite a few who did work for their US team and most don't have a positive experience. I also know some who worked for other South Korean companies. Lets just say the Korean work culture is quite different than in a typical US company. Hopefully the Joyent guys will be shielded from all this.

[contingencies]

I worked with two project managers from their US team STA (Samsung Technologies America). One was OK. The other one was a fucking psychopath. I'm talking about needlessly and viciously backstabbing all in range. Totally unbelievable. Never seen anything like it, and god help me I hope I never see it again.

Later, I visited their HQ in Korea and met some of their Indian and Korean development teams. They were competent but the work culture was toxic. People were expected to attend 11PM daily review meetings where the issues list was painfully re-read pointlessly and nothing at all was achieved. Koreans were expected to live in numbered company compounds, catch a numbered company bus and ascend to a numbered floor in a numbered company skyscraper after an airport security style physical check. Smoking allowed strictly twice per day in a designated corner of the compound. All movement is tracked. Psychotic Confucian management style. I honestly thought to myself: if this is a vision of the future, I want no part of it.

[fatihdonmez]

Then you should see the japanese way of working, it's also quite fun! I believe this is common in most of asia. I have worked in China and it's not quite different at all from what you're saying.

[seanmcdirmid]

Working in China is way different from Japan/Korea, at least for the companies I've been exposed to. There is much more freedom in how you get things done, there is less hierarchy, there is more value placed on programmers (which is why Koreans, Japanese, Taiwanese seem to come here to work in spite of the pollution).

[fatihdonmez]

China is definitely way better than Japan. Maybe imitation of all western products year over year could help them to have more western way of working style and etc but still culture is workaholic, robot like obeying, not criticising at all.

[tluyben2]

My experience in Shanghai/Suzhou is very different fortunately. Not very long days if not needed, high salaries and quite a bit of freedom. Very Western feel while we work with Chinese companies with no Western employees.

[cjbprime]

Yeah, same experience at TSMC/CSMC.

[eloisant]

From what I understand Samsung is a huge conglomerate of divisions that have little to do with each other.

Samsung Semiconductor is happy to supply chips to Apple even though they're the biggest rival of Samsung Telecommunications the builds the Galaxy phones. Conversely Samsung Telecommunications may or may not pick Samsung chips for their Galaxy phones, it doesn't really matter.

So I guess it depends to what division they will be attached. If they're attached directly to the group, they may actually keep complete freedom and just have a different owner.

[seanmcdirmid]

Samsung does have a somewhat bad reputation in the valley; e.g.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Samsung-Research-America-R...

This could just be clashes between US and Korean management culture, or perhaps just some instability in a new research lab.

[wrong_variable]

Seems like the average complaints people have working at BigCo.

Compared to the kind of stuff that Microsoft, Apple have done in the past in the software world.

And I do not see how this is bad, maybe Samsung is trying to learn why 'Western' engineering is so much superior to 'Asian' engineering by this acquisition ?

[seanmcdirmid]

Some of the rumors going on say that management back home is very provincial and are rigidly Confucian (hierarchical), which they enforce on their satellite operations. Also, your basic big corp in tech are quite internationalized from the start even at home; e.g. IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Facebook, Apple already employ those from many different cultures even in their home offices.

I guess they are making efforts to work on this:

http://qz.com/288923/samsung-is-trying-to-improve-its-corpor...

> And I do not see how this is bad, maybe Samsung is trying to learn why 'Western' engineering is so much superior to 'Asian' engineering by this acquisition ?

It depends if you want to be part of their learning experience or not! Chinese companies have adapted pretty well to acquisitions and satellites, so it isn't an Asian thing. Japanese companies have been known to have similar problems in the past and even currently (though it really depends on the company, and many have had a lot of time to gain experience).

Actually, Japan is another country that is notorious for not being as great as they should be at software, maybe there is a common thing going on?

[746F7475]

Considering Samsung has been known to push for proprietary technology (they tried to create market of Android apps that would only work on Samsung's phones) I'm little worried there is going to be some sort of new node.js fork that's incompatible with current one and has some weird licensing stuff or something.

[smt88]

> Microsoft pouring money into JS

Microsoft is a software company. Samsung is not. If you think they are, then you probably haven't used one of their bloated, buggy phones that they stop updating way too soon.

[Annatar]

What it has to do with it being Asian is the culture of conformity and group think; this is in stark contrast to Bryan's statement that at Joyent everyone leads and is led by taking individual initiative.

[st3v3r]

I'd say it's terrible news, cause node.js development is going to be influenced heavily by Samsung. Remember Tizen?

[pmontra]

Don't know. There isn't even a word about Node in the statement from then CEO, but before today I didn't even know what the main business of Joyent is so I can't say how they and Samsung think it's important for them. Just figure, my first thought was "Samsung wants Node, but why?" :-) Anyway, it's not tightly bound with Joyent anymore so even a worst case scenario won't affect ot much.