[hollywood_court]

I saw this kind of behavior when I worked for a Korean company here in the US.

They treated us like animals. I thought I had seen the worst working conditions possible during my time in Haiti.

But the two years I spent working for the Koreans showed me that I lacked a great deal of perspective regarding just how poorly employees can be treated.

And they treated their visiting interns even worse. Students would fly in from Korea and rotate in/out every six months. Those kids were put through the wringer.

[chaostheory]

One of my good friends is South Korean. When he worked for Samsung in Seoul as an engineer over a decade ago, he was forced to live in Samsung dormitories which were overseen by their managers. Apparently, it was a shock even for him to realize that he had to ask his manager just to go out on a date. If I remember correctly, he even had to give details of his female date to his manager. (It may or may not be official policy, but what are you going to do when they ask and you need permission to leave?)

Knowing what life was like here since he went to undergrad here, it was an easy choice for him to come back to the US.

[alephnerd]

Lots of Koreans move to Vietnam and Thailand for that reason. The pay is low in SK and the work culture horrid, so if your choice is earning $30-50k in Seoul or $20-40k in BKK or Saigon, plenty of people choose the latter.

[orwin]

And tbh, Korean work culture seems to be horrible for overall productivity. Disclaimer: my only second hand knowledge are a Norwegian oil rig engineer and a French sailor (working on oil rigs. Weird, I know, one is extended family, second is happenstance).

But from what I've heard, they have trouble adapting to new data (they _can_ do it in real emergency, but actively avoid taking initiative), hide issues and overall are very rigid and show almost no improvisation skills, all of which is a problem in high stress, fast-changing environment like oil rigs.

[StefanBatory]

Whenever Korean factories opened in Poland, that was the same conclusion. Workers were treated like shit.

[alephnerd]

Sadly, it's a common issue with recently developed country work culture.

For example, TSMC is facing similar hurdles trying to expand semicon manufacturing in the US [0].

Even though SK, JP, TW, and Israel are all developed countries now, the developing country mentality still persists because their transition was relatively recent (a generation or less ago), and a lot of labor management and regulations is stuck in the old school era.

At least in the EU, the recently developed (eg. Czechia) and developing countries (eg. Bulgaria) still have some labor frameworks to kinda follow and some kind of recourse - at least for white collar work.

[0] - https://www.eetimes.com/tsmcs-arizona-culture-clash/

[meindnoch]

Czechia is recently developed? :DDDD

[alephnerd]

If Spain is a developed country with a median wage around $1600/mo and an HDI of 0.905, then Czechia with a median wage of $1400/mo and an HDI of 0.895 is one.

[The_Colonel]

Could be they have problem with the word "recently".

Czech lands were pretty developed (relatively speaking) for many centuries, e. g. T the first German speaking university was established in Prague. Then the communist era spoiled it, World Bank recognized Czechia as "developed" 9nly in 2006.

[alephnerd]

The World Bank classification is for High-Income, not developed. Even Russia, Mexico, and Turkey all caught up to that definition at various points in time before regressing. Even China's GDP per Capita is closeish to that level yet median household incomes and HDI are still lower than Thailand and Serbia.

Czechia didn't catch up to Western Europe HDIs until the mid-2010s, and Median wages were significantly lower than much of Western Europe until recently (eg. The datapoint above), and GDP per Capita is still significantly behind much of Western Europe and the Asian Tigers.

Even South Korea didn't officially become developed until the mid-2010s, and they outpaced Czechia in HDI and GDP per Capita by the early 2000s.

Alternatively, if Czechia was a developed country in the mid-2000s, then Turkey and Hungary are now developed countries in the early 2020s as they have hit similar indicators as Czechia in the 2000s.

> Czech lands were pretty developed

Developed versus developing is a technical-ish term.

Czechia was absolutely a developing country until recently. Just having a medieval university or some industrial capacity in the early 20th isn't saying much, as Korea and Taiwan were in a similar boat as well under the otherwise brutal Japanese colonial rule.

And even today, water treatment in Czechia lags significantly behind much of the Western EU member states.

Saying otherwise is just Eurocentricism.

And it also ignores that fact that for most of it's history, it was CzechoSLOVAKIA and Slovakia is still lagging behind on developmental indicators to this day, despite having a similar linguistic and ethnic proximity to Czechs as Serbs are to Croats.

[hollywood_court]

These types of companies are fleeing to the Southern US because the conservative governments here offer no protections for the employees.

[macbook_amateur]

I remember a Korean car factory in Alabama got caught using child labor a couple years back: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-immi...

[hollywood_court]

My line supplied that plant. It's about 45 minutes down the road from where I worked. And the Alabama legislature is now making it easier for companies to hire child laborers. We're going to start seeing a lot more injuries in manufacturing and food processing. We are regressing.

[silverquiet]

What specifically did they do? I can say that I've been treated very badly by Private Equity and other employers myself, but it's easy to lack perspective and I don't really feel like trying to enter a victim contest. Hopefully I've learned enough to avoid that kind of employment in future.

[alephnerd]

In IB/PE we have exit opps like VC or PM, and there is a reckoning in IB/PE leadership that the old school 60-100 hour analyst work culture is toxic.

In Korean companies, the work culture is still stuck in the 90s era IB mentality, as a lot of management are much older and started their careers when chauvanism, racism, functional alcoholism, power politics, overwork, etc was still the norm.

Tbf, SK was still a developing country until 10-15ish years ago.

[hollywood_court]

I didn't realize that South Korean was so behind the times until I read "Human Acts" by Han Kang. That book led me to perform quite a bit of research and further reading on Korea.

[alephnerd]

The US has plenty of issues, but a lot of Americans take for granted that most countries have even worse work cultures or compensation structures.

That said, it's good for us to keep striving to find an ideal balance between work and personal life.

[toomuchtodo]

This is why I love birth rates declining: makes labor scarce and forces the better treatment of those still in the labor force.

We won’t find better work life balance until workers organize and old folks in charge with old ideas and values die out.

[alephnerd]

> why I love birth rates declining: makes labor scarce and forces the better treatment of those still in the labor force

I'd like to have Social Security benefits in 30-40 years tbh, so not a fan of potentially declining birth rates. That said, immigration is absolutely our superpower, and something we need to support.

[silverquiet]

I'm assuming IB = investment banking, PE = private equity, VC = venture capital, and PM = public market. To be clear, I did not work for a private equity firm itself (I do not posses the psychopathic ambition required to do so), but for a company that ended up owned by a firm; that was the terrible experience.

[alephnerd]

By PM I meant Product Management. A lot of PMs with MBAs are burned out IB Analysts who did the MBA to escape the grind.

> for a company that ended up owned by a firm; that was the terrible experience.

That's a bit different. Depending on the type of PE, it may have been a PE of last resort.

You only sell to Thoma Bravo if your company is an absolute dumpster fire and has no roadmap forward, so it needs drastic restructuring.

Sucks for line level ICs ofc.

[silverquiet]

It was Apollo, but asking me to differentiate between them would be like the dentist asking me which drill I'd prefer; I really don't know the technical details, but they all seem very unpleasant.

[alephnerd]

PE is a broad industry, as it literally just means allocation of capital in the private market.

For example, VC is a subset of PE.

Apollo, KKR, Guggenheim, and Thoma Bravo are PE funds that have practices dedicated to acquiring non-performing assets (basically companies that are near the verge of collapse)

[hollywood_court]

For us regular US employees it was 6 days a week 12 hours per day. If you were more than 90 seconds late clocking in you were written up. 3 write ups and you're gone. 30 minute unpaid lunch break, but you weren't allowed to leave the site. To be honest, the strict stuff like that wasn't applicable to me because I was the only one there who could run the 5 axis CNC machines and edit the code. Everyone else was disposable.

One of the most memorable examples of not being treated like a human was when a coworker of mine wished to take one hour off in order to see his daughter graduate from high school. He had 4 kids at one time. But he lost one to cancer and two others to gang violence. He put in a time off request more than 5 months in advance so he could see his only remaining child graduate.

They denied his request. On the day of the graduation he clocked out and went to the graduation. He was gone maybe 35 minutes total. He saw his daughter walk across the stage and then he returned to work. They were waiting for him at the time clock and fired him.

When it comes to the interns, I saw a lot of yelling, grabbing by the arms while admonishing, and making them work without meals. All of the full time Korean employees had their lunch catered every day. The interns weren't allowed to eat with the full time employees and they weren't allowed to take any kind of meal breaks at all as for as I know.

I'm sure there was much more that went on behind closed doors, but seeing grown men grab 19 year old girls by their arms and shake them while yelling at them was pretty enlightening.

[silverquiet]

Thank you for the additional color. I will say that aside from the physical stuff, this doesn't sound all that different from the treatment that workers for Amazon or a call center would be subject to. I had my own wage-slave days and navigating this type of employment was an incredibly demoralizing way to start a working life. I certainly don't take for granted the cushy role that I have at a software company now, in spite of the fact that I work for a small company at a salary many here would find insulting.

[hollywood_court]

I too am a low paid developer. I spent the first 20 years of my life doing skilled trade work and following a blue collar lifestyle. I'm now in my first developer role where my title is "Lead Developer." However, I'm the only developer here and I'm paid poorly.

But it is far better than working in a manufacturing facility or anything else I ever did while working for someone else.

I don't want to be the type of person who says "well, I paid my dues, you should too." I want things to be better for everyone. Now one should have to go through the things I went through as a young man. No one should have to be forced to work 6 days per week 12 hours per day simply to be able to barely make ends meet.

[silverquiet]

Yes, for a lot of people, these blue-collar jobs will be terminal positions, and they are necessary; they should be afforded dignity.

[idunnoman1222]

What’s really appalling is the lack of solidarity.

[hollywood_court]

Solidarity is frowned upon here in Alabama. Our own governor has recently been doing her best to prevent any kind of worker solidarity.

[natsucks]

terrible.

[dh2022]

Can you name and shame the company? And the city / state where this took place?