Why I have left Samsung • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I have left Samsung

#71

Post by superos » Fri, May 17, 2013, 12:50 PM UTC

ArekDymalski wrote: post #25

seivan wrote: post #10

It's not a question of scale, it's a question of management. Companies like Samsung, others and etc are managed by idiots. Pure and simple. Suit wearing, non-technical morons. Congratulations on your new job, exercise, fresh air and freshly picked berries and vegetables. Sounds pretty decent compared to sitting in front of a screen slaving for knock-off phones with shitty vendored junk. Seeing the company you work fo…

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…

At my workplace most (not all!) smart people wants to do the real sh*t. ie design, programming etc. They do not want to be a manager because that means there is no time to do what they love, and have to do management instead (meetings, more meetings, budgets, meet other managers (BORING!), attend management gatherings and conference (EVEN MORE BORING) etc).

Re: Why I have left Samsung

#72

Post by hkmurakami » Fri, May 17, 2013, 12:51 PM UTC

ArekDymalski wrote: post #61

k__ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

yup, let's replace "smart" with technically competent/proficient :)

Re: Why I have left Samsung

#73

Post by mikecane » Fri, May 17, 2013, 12:51 PM UTC

xtracto wrote: post #52

SandB0x wrote: post #46

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

And he will come back full circle after he starts his own company and realizes there's a bunch of bullshit and stuff that he needs to swallow. He yarns about how at least in his job at Samsung he had a good income and he understands that everyone, yes absolutely everyone has to start from the bottom and fight their way to the top positions/companies. Crap, with a foot already in Samsung, he could have stay 2 years an…

I tend to agree with you. Corporations will often test you out in what you consider to be a "crap" job. Why? It's not a test of skill, it's a test of initiative. Without slamming him -- it's his personal choice, after all, and good luck to him -- this is why some people don't advance. They see a position as being "beneath" them when actually they're being watched to see if they can -- on their own -- bring something new to it.

Re: Why I have left Samsung

#74

Post by raverbashing » Fri, May 17, 2013, 12:52 PM UTC

rplst8 wrote: post #55

cs02rm0 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It staggers me that there are people who, to this day, would defend Clearcase.

It's bulky and awful and became a monster of an application that would eat itself. But there were (are) some things that Clearcase does that other version control systems don't do.

There's also an awful load of (from important to trivial) stuff that most version systems do that CC ignores.

And most of the CC features can probably be replicated easily with some scripting.

But I'll give that CC feature of 'mounting a filesystem' is found in no other place (AFAIK).

Re: Why I have left Samsung

#75

Post by clearly » Fri, May 17, 2013, 12:52 PM UTC

seivan wrote: post #16

clearly wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Companies like Samsung, others and etc are managed by idiots Samsung shareholders may disagree with you there....

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.

So what the previous poster should have said is "managers and my (or our) interests and priorities do not align" rather than being condescending. I couldn't agree more that it's not ideal for a software engineer.

Re: Why I have left Samsung

#76

Post by redial » Fri, May 17, 2013, 12:55 PM UTC

ArekDymalski wrote: post #25

seivan wrote: post #10

It's not a question of scale, it's a question of management. Companies like Samsung, others and etc are managed by idiots. Pure and simple. Suit wearing, non-technical morons. Congratulations on your new job, exercise, fresh air and freshly picked berries and vegetables. Sounds pretty decent compared to sitting in front of a screen slaving for knock-off phones with shitty vendored junk. Seeing the company you work fo…

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…

Your sample is biased. I assume you read most of this rants here (as do I), and this is a place mainly for software engineers and designers, not managers. They complain about their bosses, as do all, and that means you get a lot of complains about stupid managers (because everybody thinks the boss is stupid).

I don't believe for a second that there are no good managers, or that they are not necessary. Apple and Google produce the kind of software that they do because they have good managers (for the most part). The thing is, no one complains about his/her awesome manager. (In an episode of the Debug podcast, Don Melton describes his life as a manager and gives a little more insight about what goes on on a big company).

This is not to say that you couldn't have a system in which the engineers managed themselves, as in Valve.

Having said that, the quality of Samsung's software has not impressed anyone, so I kind of believe that they have a management problem.

Re: Why I have left Samsung

#77

Post by mikecane » Fri, May 17, 2013, 12:55 PM UTC

RivieraKid wrote: post #59

seivan wrote: post #10

It's not a question of scale, it's a question of management. Companies like Samsung, others and etc are managed by idiots. Pure and simple. Suit wearing, non-technical morons. Congratulations on your new job, exercise, fresh air and freshly picked berries and vegetables. Sounds pretty decent compared to sitting in front of a screen slaving for knock-off phones with shitty vendored junk. Seeing the company you work fo…

Yes, it really seems that at least some of them are idiots, otherwise their Android customization (TouchWiz) wouldn't be as tasteless and shitty. With their resources, they could do so many amazing things, but they seem to completely lack creativity.

>>>With their resources, they could do so many amazing things, but they seem to completely lack creativity.

They brought Multi-View to Android. I wish Android had that baked in.

Re: Why I have left Samsung

#78

Post by kamaal » Fri, May 17, 2013, 12:55 PM UTC

ArekDymalski wrote: post #25

seivan wrote: post #10

It's not a question of scale, it's a question of management. Companies like Samsung, others and etc are managed by idiots. Pure and simple. Suit wearing, non-technical morons. Congratulations on your new job, exercise, fresh air and freshly picked berries and vegetables. Sounds pretty decent compared to sitting in front of a screen slaving for knock-off phones with shitty vendored junk. Seeing the company you work fo…

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…

You don't have to be smart to be a manager. I mean in our(developer circles) definition of smart is some one who gets the job done. I mean the real job. Something that is of value. Most people managers don't do that.

In most corporates management really is book keeping. Managing vacations, leaves, holidays. Filling up appraisal sheets, expense documents, coordinating with HR, forwarding Information, arranging meetings and all these kind of assorted chores. This classifies under what you can call as 'running the affairs' as they are.

This has nothing to do building something awesome. That is a different territory. What managers in most companies do ideally is enforce sanity by bringing in mediocrity. Much of their work is in bringing in a process so that their life gets easier. They need numbers, so they have to deal and force people to do things like fill in time sheets, constantly update some system to keep the their managers alerted. You get the point?

Situation only gets worse because, sooner or later all managers realize- they hit a career dead end unless they are politically well connected within an organization to get that next promotion or a travel opportunity. In many ways they are forced to, their position encourages them to. Imagine having no coding skills, no ideas, no ways to show that you got something real done in years. Over time your own value in the market will fall down to point you know you can't really get any real work done any where. This is the story of many middle managers in big corporates.

Most managers are really cost and work accountants.

Re: Why I have left Samsung

#79

Post by heidar » Fri, May 17, 2013, 12:55 PM UTC

mrkipling wrote: post #38

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.

This is exactly what I was going to say. Writing a blog post riddled with grammatical errors (and emoticons!) slagging off your former employer is not a good look as far as future employers are concerned.

Are we honestly that concerned with formality in this industry? I'd be more concerned with the contents and less with how formal they are. And what is wrong with using emoteicons in personal blog posts?

I don't necessarily agree with slagging off your former employer but his criticisms are still valid. The only thing that I didn't like was: "First of all I did this because this job was terrible boring for me (fixing code of other people is not especially exciting)." - That's not perhaps the best thing to write since he was a junior and this will make some people think he is lazy and does not want to take on the less fun jobs that we all have to do from time to time.

And like someone pointed out, English is not his first language. I'm sure you just didn't notice that though. :)

Re: Why I have left Samsung

#80

Post by k__ » Fri, May 17, 2013, 12:56 PM UTC

ArekDymalski wrote: post #61

k__ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Probably.

There are many smart people who are good talkers. But I only know them from the Internet.

The top scientists and engineers of our time. The leaders of the biggest companies are often engineers themself.

But they don't make the mass of smart people.

It seems like many managers have a network of mighty people, which just lets them float over the real world. They get fired here and a new job (as good paid manager!!) somewhere else in no time.