[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.