Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why I have left Samsung

dream-force.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 158 posts

Re: Why I have left Samsung

#61

Post by ArekDymalski »

k__ wrote: post #29
ArekDymalski wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time (~5/month) I hear the "managers are idiots" rant I start to wonder, how is it possible that all the smart people: 1. aren't managers. 2. aren't able to convince the "idiots". I'm also curious why smart people become idiots when they're promoted. Come on. Managing is hard and definitely looks different depending on your position. To make it even more "funny" I can tell you that "employees are idiots" is a f…

Most managers are good talkers. Most smart people aren't.

Being unable to give a good talk is quite unusual definition of smartness:) But I can see where are you coming from. Indeed that analytical type of smartness which is so useful for engineers often correlates with introversion. Which doesn't help when it comes to dealing with people, promoting self and building your position in the company.

Re: Why I have left Samsung

#62

Post by hga »

rubinelli wrote: post #18
_wojtek wrote: post #6

so he left corporation because it was, well, a corporation? welcome to the real world =,=

Most people don't realize Dilbert isn't an exaggeration until they join the workforce.

As I like to put it to those who don't know, Dilbert is Revealed Truth.

Re: Why I have left Samsung

#63

Post by hkmurakami »

PavlovsCat wrote: post #53
SandB0x wrote: post #46

Whining child damages his career prospects with unprofessional rant after just nine months of work.

Whining? Where? Or was that an attempt at irony? Child? I would call it "rather wise for that age". Have you ever worked on a farm, by the way? Unprofessional? Define "professional", then.

I suppose that I could argue that complaining about an incompetent former employer does literally no good for one's future career prospects. It can only hurt you, and that lack of foresight may be considered "unprofessional" by not considering your own best interests.

(some companies won't care about his rant against Samsung, but some other bigcos will. No company will actually give him bonus points for his public complaints, so overall the blog is purely a net negative for his future career transition prospects)

Re: Why I have left Samsung

#64

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway1979 wrote: post #45
kaolinite wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Dilbert Principle explains this ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dilbert_principle ). The Dilbert principle refers to a 1990s satirical observation by Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams stating that companies tend to systematically promote their least-competent employees to management (generally middle management), in order to limit the amount of damage they are capable of doing.

Another reasonable explanation I've come across is that employees keep getting promoted until they hit a job where they aren't competent. I always attributed that to the Dilbert comics but maybe I was mistaken.

[deleted]

Re: Why I have left Samsung

#65

Post by xtracto »

parennoob wrote: post #15
deanclatworthy wrote: post #3

This comes across to me as more of a rant, than a constructive exit description from a company. When hiring new candidates, and doing background checks alarm bells would go off if I saw people whining about their previous jobs in a blog post. Be professional, accept that some jobs are shit, and find a new one. This post will do you no favours in the future.

There has to be some sort of balance between criticism and "maintaining a professional attitude" (whatever that phrase means -- I have never understood it). A lot of times "be professional" is used to silence criticism of truly horrendous software development practices. Being forced to use a stack of horrible software including IE strikes me as a perfectly valid professional criticism. Possibly, this might be because…

Well, for starters, the bunch of emoticons makes it look as if the guy is trying hard to tell everyone that he is happy. Was it needed? ;-)

Re: Why I have left Samsung

#67

Post by mikecane »

I have a question as a user to devs: Do you consider fixing code a bad job, as he did? The Net is filled with complaints about things that require fixing in lots of software that's been around a while. Yet it never seems to get done. Is this more because dev hate to fix old code by someone else -- what in the book world would be termed an editor's function -- or is this the nature of the corporate beast, to just keep moving forward?

Re: Why I have left Samsung

#68

Post by xradionut »

anxx wrote: post #4

I interned at a big telcom and worked at a bank. Amount of crappy software that needs to be used is mindboggling. Amount of money that is spent to license that crapware is even more mind boggling. There is a real market for these beautiful b2c software products that can make their services store data on the bigco's servers (as opposed to their own - security is a concern) and write decent, mostly .NET interface to co…

But you'll quit once you figure out that banks and telcoms aren't the best clients... :(

Re: Why I have left Samsung

#69

Post by seivan »

_pmf_ wrote: post #34
seivan wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I am sure, and they are producing more wealth than I (probably) _EVER_ could. But doesn't mean it's a fun place for a designer and/or software engineer to be. It means it's great to be on the board, manager or shareholder. OP is a software engineer.

> But doesn't mean it's a fun place for a designer and/or software engineer to be. I bet it was wonderful to work at Apple under Steve Jobs. Just wonderful.

It sounds tough, but at least the thing you do isn't bullshit. I mean. C'mon iOS as an operating system is amazing, working with those engineers would be kick-ass for some people.

Re: Why I have left Samsung

#70

Post by hkmurakami »

w0utert wrote: post #56
ArekDymalski wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time (~5/month) I hear the "managers are idiots" rant I start to wonder, how is it possible that all the smart people: 1. aren't managers. 2. aren't able to convince the "idiots". I'm also curious why smart people become idiots when they're promoted. Come on. Managing is hard and definitely looks different depending on your position. To make it even more "funny" I can tell you that "employees are idiots" is a f…

>> Every time (~5/month) I hear the "managers are idiots" rant I start to wonder, how is it possible that all the smart people: 1. aren't managers. 2. aren't able to convince the "idiots". I guess you must have worked for completely different companies than I did, because in my experience it's not the smartest people who work their way up into management, just the loudest ones that don't have any specific skill that…

"Ability" isn't a uniform stat. There's many factors that comprise our competence. Once of them is technical excellence.

Others include sales, politicking (or "managing up"), managing a team, empathy, oratory, etc.

The best technical minds don't necessarily want to become suits (I'm going to avoid using the term "managers" since engineering managers are very different from "suits" imo). Even if they become one, they may not have the negotiation skills or willingness to smooch that is required for a suit to succeed.

>how is it possible that all the smart people: 1. aren't managers. 2. aren't able to convince the "idiots".

For #2, a good counterexample would be, "the best athletes aren't always the best coaches".

Post reply on HN