12 ms·

As a Samsung employee, I've been continuously being disappointed by the company culture. Recently, the company introduced a new policy that prohibits phone usag

by throwaway201025 4y ago

As a Samsung employee, I've been continuously being disappointed by the company culture. Recently, the company introduced a new policy that prohibits phone usage while walking inside the company building, due to "safety concerns". Samsung employed ~20 safety guards to supervise and monitor phone usage throughout the campus and if you're caught by them, you will be warned. If you are caughted twice, your team lead will be notifed of the incident. If you are caught three times or more, you are required to watch an educational video and submit a written apology. I could not believe such a policy could emerge from the very company that makes smartphones. Samsung even had a TV commercial highlighting phone usage on the road! Under such a restrictive and top-down culture like this, I believe nothing interesting can emerge. I can only expect the downfall of the company. Nowadays I'm trying to work as little as possible and desperately searching for other jobs.

xattt 4y ago
> … submit a written apology. What the hell kind of mentality is this? I’ve been in a workplace that cracked down on phone use. Everyone was pissed. I considered carrying a small block of wood painted black in act of subversion.
- zinekeller 4y ago
  > What the hell kind of mentality is this? sighs Traditional Asian mentality. I, and definitely many others, hate it, but it's definitely not just Samsung.
- djmips 4y ago
  I had to do worse than that when I worked for a Japanese company (with a Korean-Japanese president). I was forced by him to apologize to the entire assembled staff for a 'big mistake that I had made'. Except it wasn't really my mistake it was a foundry change which caused a timing change that affected the code in a vendor's startup for a chip we were using. I was so burned out from crunching on the project (14 hour days) to reverse engineer and fix it fast enough for the president to be happy...
  - tough 4y ago
    I really won't be working in japan I think LOL
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ornornor 4y ago
I’ve worked at a company Samsung ended up buying. Exactly as you describe: humiliating, alienating, and infantilizing. Never ever again. And I won’t buy Samsung anything if I can help it because I saw how the software is made… it’s appalling in quality. No thanks.
- danieldisu 4y ago
  What makes you think that it is any different elsewhere?
  - pletnes 4y ago
    Using it? Samsung software (see e.g smart TV) is incredibly unreliable.
  - ornornor 4y ago
    I've worked elsewhere. Samsung is in the bottom tier for every dimension that matters to quality (of life and of products).
    - jiggawatts 4y ago
      As a data point: Sony, Panasonic, LG, etc… all try to have calibrated TVs that match the director’s intent. As in, the colours and contrast are defined in the standards, and they strive to show them accurately. They do cheat a little bit and have a “demo” mode the cranks up the saturation and brightness in store to compensate for the overhead lighting. Samsung takes that cheating to 11 and there is no way to turn it off. It’s not “store mode”. It’s permanently “enhanced” to the point of absurdity. They just don’t care enough to have two modes.
      - FrozenSynapse 4y ago
        You can definitely turn off the "enhance" on the Samsungs...
        4y ago
csours 4y ago
Stay off your damn phone while you're walking.
ookblah 4y ago
people getting a slight glimpse of korean work culture, top-down old school butts in the seat type stuff. it's changing but there's a long way to go.
- iforgotpassword 4y ago
  But they had to get to where they are now somehow. It's hard to believe this exact company culture could habe achieved anything more involved than cloning overseas electrical devices like toasters and microwaves. So was the culture different in the past in some way at least? Like, at least having more technically knowledgeable people in upper management, if not more creative freedom for engineers et al? I'd like to believe the process has to be at least a little bit similar to how agile, innovative and leading companies in the West can within a decade or two turn into stiff, burocratic slow moving behemoths that at best manage to buy any upcoming competition instead of innovating on its own.
  - ookblah 4y ago
    if you have a good leader at the helm then the top down approach can be beneficial because you can cut through a lot of the BS. IMO it's like how democracies aren't really about the best leadership but being able to remove a bad apple. i'd say that how SK was structured after the war allowed them to flourish, basically a dictator appointing diff people into diff industries and having a state-sponsored acceleration. add to that a drive to succeed and fight and you can somewhat see the building blocks of their success. how SK has progressed is a miracle story. now that they are seeing the fruits of their labor my guess is you have the "parasites" coming up trying to jockey for position. or with chaebols (these big family dynasties that own a lot of industry in SK) they have their kids/family members who may or may not be competent taking over. essentially what made something like samsung takes a lot to sustain into the next generation.
xadhominemx 4y ago
This is a rule in many manufacturing environments. Intel has had the same exact rule for a very long time.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway201025 4y ago
  Does Intel also enforce such a rule to office workers, like Samsung does? I can partly understand the desire to control accidents in manufacturing environments, but we're not exactly at such a place. Samsung's rule is applied to all workers regardless of campus, including the inside of a building consisting of mostly software engineers and office workers. It almost feels like the company wants social equality among employees or something.
  - monocasa 4y ago
    Intel's rule was against corporate espionage, so probably? They eventually allowed phones with the cameras drilled out.
    - xyzzy21 4y ago
      All Asian Fabs pretty much ban all smart phones - you have to leave them outside and/or you have to use a "dumb" phone. Laptops, USB drives, etc. are absolute verboten as a vendor or contractor and usually employees as well who have to smuggle them in to get work done. If you violate these bans as a contractor or vendor, YOUR ENTIRE COMPANY can be banned from doing business indefinitely.
antisinguIarity 4y ago
Drug dealers are equally strict about their employees getting high off the supply. Why are you so desperate to use your phone?
AdrianB1 4y ago
2 things here: 1. use a headphone, it is easier, it allows you to walk safer and with a better body posture and 2. my apology for such an incident is "it will not happen again, 'cause I am leaving". I understand and obey safety rules, but not random rules companies can pull any moment in time.
throwtemp 4y ago
A Samsung employee in one of the overseas research centers. I'm not sure about this at all. The most that is restricted is one cannot shoot pictures - either camera lens gets a cover (paper sticker) or the camera is blocked using MDM. This is practice in many companies and I hear at Apple it is even more restrictive at certain places. Not able to use phone I never heard or experienced. We regularly test out apps in phone, test out devices (non test ones), we test competition ones, etc. And when one can get on a Zoom or Team's call, what use is restricting phone usage.
- xyzzy21 4y ago
  Espionage is a very real and major risk in competitive businesses such as leading edge semiconductor or companies like Apple.
thr0w__4w4y 4y ago
I know this anecdotal and related but directly on-point, but here I go anyway... About 12 years ago, I consulted, on-site, for about a year with a Japanese company with a very very very untrusting corporate culture. (I was consulting on electronics and firmware.) Every USB port on every computer was super-glued shut (yes, I know...) And literally 100% of the internet traffic went over a T1 (for those of you just out of diapers, that is a 1.5 Mbps line) to Tokyo and back. Corporate saw every bit of internet activity. This company, when I talked with the VP of engineering, told me "we have flexible work hours; you can take lunch 12:00-12:30, or 12:30-1:00pm. As long as you're back at your desk within 5 minutes of lunch end, we will not be required to make note of it" Man that was a horrible gig. But I made enough $$$ to overcome the agony. I have so many consulting stories... my daughters keep telling me I need to write a book. "When Bill and Michelle ruined a conference room table" "When Jayanthi [no I'm not changing her name] had a meltdown and threw a sharp object at the head of a subordinate" "When Tom impregnated his secretary during his divorce, and was basically forced to marry her the day after his divorce was finalized" "When I put a choke hold on a corporate security guard who incorrectly identified a computer peripheral in my backpack as confidential company property" I think the 100 people who bought the book would really enjoy it
- terminal_d 4y ago
- tomtung 4y ago
  That would probably be a popular book given how well A.G. Martinez's Chaos Monkeys has sold.

xattt 4y ago

> … submit a written apology. What the hell kind of mentality is this? I’ve been in a workplace that cracked down on phone use. Everyone was pissed. I considered carrying a small block of wood painted black in act of subversion.

zinekeller 4y ago
> What the hell kind of mentality is this? sighs Traditional Asian mentality. I, and definitely many others, hate it, but it's definitely not just Samsung.
djmips 4y ago
I had to do worse than that when I worked for a Japanese company (with a Korean-Japanese president). I was forced by him to apologize to the entire assembled staff for a 'big mistake that I had made'. Except it wasn't really my mistake it was a foundry change which caused a timing change that affected the code in a vendor's startup for a chip we were using. I was so burned out from crunching on the project (14 hour days) to reverse engineer and fix it fast enough for the president to be happy...
- tough 4y ago
  I really won't be working in japan I think LOL
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ornornor 4y ago

I’ve worked at a company Samsung ended up buying. Exactly as you describe: humiliating, alienating, and infantilizing. Never ever again. And I won’t buy Samsung anything if I can help it because I saw how the software is made… it’s appalling in quality. No thanks.

danieldisu 4y ago
What makes you think that it is any different elsewhere?
- pletnes 4y ago
  Using it? Samsung software (see e.g smart TV) is incredibly unreliable.
- ornornor 4y ago
  I've worked elsewhere. Samsung is in the bottom tier for every dimension that matters to quality (of life and of products).
  - jiggawatts 4y ago
    As a data point: Sony, Panasonic, LG, etc… all try to have calibrated TVs that match the director’s intent. As in, the colours and contrast are defined in the standards, and they strive to show them accurately. They do cheat a little bit and have a “demo” mode the cranks up the saturation and brightness in store to compensate for the overhead lighting. Samsung takes that cheating to 11 and there is no way to turn it off. It’s not “store mode”. It’s permanently “enhanced” to the point of absurdity. They just don’t care enough to have two modes.
    - FrozenSynapse 4y ago
      You can definitely turn off the "enhance" on the Samsungs...
      - 4y ago

csours 4y ago

Stay off your damn phone while you're walking.

ookblah 4y ago

people getting a slight glimpse of korean work culture, top-down old school butts in the seat type stuff. it's changing but there's a long way to go.

iforgotpassword 4y ago
But they had to get to where they are now somehow. It's hard to believe this exact company culture could habe achieved anything more involved than cloning overseas electrical devices like toasters and microwaves. So was the culture different in the past in some way at least? Like, at least having more technically knowledgeable people in upper management, if not more creative freedom for engineers et al? I'd like to believe the process has to be at least a little bit similar to how agile, innovative and leading companies in the West can within a decade or two turn into stiff, burocratic slow moving behemoths that at best manage to buy any upcoming competition instead of innovating on its own.
- ookblah 4y ago
  if you have a good leader at the helm then the top down approach can be beneficial because you can cut through a lot of the BS. IMO it's like how democracies aren't really about the best leadership but being able to remove a bad apple. i'd say that how SK was structured after the war allowed them to flourish, basically a dictator appointing diff people into diff industries and having a state-sponsored acceleration. add to that a drive to succeed and fight and you can somewhat see the building blocks of their success. how SK has progressed is a miracle story. now that they are seeing the fruits of their labor my guess is you have the "parasites" coming up trying to jockey for position. or with chaebols (these big family dynasties that own a lot of industry in SK) they have their kids/family members who may or may not be competent taking over. essentially what made something like samsung takes a lot to sustain into the next generation.

xadhominemx 4y ago

This is a rule in many manufacturing environments. Intel has had the same exact rule for a very long time.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
throwaway201025 4y ago
Does Intel also enforce such a rule to office workers, like Samsung does? I can partly understand the desire to control accidents in manufacturing environments, but we're not exactly at such a place. Samsung's rule is applied to all workers regardless of campus, including the inside of a building consisting of mostly software engineers and office workers. It almost feels like the company wants social equality among employees or something.
- monocasa 4y ago
  Intel's rule was against corporate espionage, so probably? They eventually allowed phones with the cameras drilled out.
  - xyzzy21 4y ago
    All Asian Fabs pretty much ban all smart phones - you have to leave them outside and/or you have to use a "dumb" phone. Laptops, USB drives, etc. are absolute verboten as a vendor or contractor and usually employees as well who have to smuggle them in to get work done. If you violate these bans as a contractor or vendor, YOUR ENTIRE COMPANY can be banned from doing business indefinitely.

antisinguIarity 4y ago

Drug dealers are equally strict about their employees getting high off the supply. Why are you so desperate to use your phone?

AdrianB1 4y ago

2 things here: 1. use a headphone, it is easier, it allows you to walk safer and with a better body posture and 2. my apology for such an incident is "it will not happen again, 'cause I am leaving". I understand and obey safety rules, but not random rules companies can pull any moment in time.

throwtemp 4y ago

A Samsung employee in one of the overseas research centers. I'm not sure about this at all. The most that is restricted is one cannot shoot pictures - either camera lens gets a cover (paper sticker) or the camera is blocked using MDM. This is practice in many companies and I hear at Apple it is even more restrictive at certain places. Not able to use phone I never heard or experienced. We regularly test out apps in phone, test out devices (non test ones), we test competition ones, etc. And when one can get on a Zoom or Team's call, what use is restricting phone usage.

xyzzy21 4y ago
Espionage is a very real and major risk in competitive businesses such as leading edge semiconductor or companies like Apple.

thr0w__4w4y 4y ago

I know this anecdotal and related but directly on-point, but here I go anyway... About 12 years ago, I consulted, on-site, for about a year with a Japanese company with a very very very untrusting corporate culture. (I was consulting on electronics and firmware.) Every USB port on every computer was super-glued shut (yes, I know...) And literally 100% of the internet traffic went over a T1 (for those of you just out of diapers, that is a 1.5 Mbps line) to Tokyo and back. Corporate saw every bit of internet activity. This company, when I talked with the VP of engineering, told me "we have flexible work hours; you can take lunch 12:00-12:30, or 12:30-1:00pm. As long as you're back at your desk within 5 minutes of lunch end, we will not be required to make note of it" Man that was a horrible gig. But I made enough $$$ to overcome the agony. I have so many consulting stories... my daughters keep telling me I need to write a book. "When Bill and Michelle ruined a conference room table" "When Jayanthi [no I'm not changing her name] had a meltdown and threw a sharp object at the head of a subordinate" "When Tom impregnated his secretary during his divorce, and was basically forced to marry her the day after his divorce was finalized" "When I put a choke hold on a corporate security guard who incorrectly identified a computer peripheral in my backpack as confidential company property" I think the 100 people who bought the book would really enjoy it

terminal_d 4y ago
tomtung 4y ago
That would probably be a popular book given how well A.G. Martinez's Chaos Monkeys has sold.