The 벨기에 of corporations
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An interesting read:
Nintendo’s alleged nationalism and “awful” working conditions killed Wii game
Management "would not listen to the other team members who were not Japanese."
Working conditions were described as "awful," with management decisions
constantly overridden by the Japanese headquarters. "Many of us knew how
to make a fun game, but the Japanese would not see what we were talking
about," the developers said, "they would not listen to the other team
members who were not Japanese."The first thing to come to my mind is Samsung. It has the exact same awful working conditions, from the managerial point of view:
- Koreans have the final word in everything.
- There are no discussions - what a Korean worker creates, it stays that way.
- Koreans are not subject to code review.
- The communication between different teams and even team members is limited, because they don't want to talk with us.
- If you upset a Korean worker (by eg. saying that he made a mistake), he will instantly stop any communication with you. Literally - you will be ignored forever.
- Given the above, there's an official rule to never say to any Korean person that he made a mistake or could be wrong in anything.
- English language is the official corporate language, but that doesn't stop most things being written in Korean.
And managers wonder why Tizen is such a
failureSamsung success.
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I do get the impression you have an axe to grind with said corporation. Typical amalgalm of racist microagressions here.
All your assumptions are based on the premise that Koreans are racist. That's because of your innate racism you project on others. Maybe if you could adopt a more laid-back perspective, you'd see it's just a different culture. We all know how cultural differences can lead to miscommunication. Not trying to offend you here, just wanting to help. Maybe if you could stick to the process for a bit, you'd be better received?
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I don't think you can use the word Asian anymore.
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Yeah, we wouldn't want to offend those fish now, would we.
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This is not a surprise, Japanese game developers have been going downhill for years now.
I remember reading an article a couple years back about how extremely insular they'd become-- where this guy talked to a ton of developers from a major Japanese studio (working on one of the later Final Fantasy games IIRC) and literally nobody he talked to had ever played famous western video games, like Starcraft.
Meanwhile, American and European studios are playing every game they can get their hands on, and adopting all the good ideas from them. And nurturing developers with a large and very healthy indie and crowdfunding scene which, by and large, simply does not exist in Japan.
I will say though that since I read that, Dark Souls and Bloodborne have come out and kind of redeemed the concept of innovative Japanese games. They aren't my cup of tea and they have a lot of bad design decisions (like lack of a pause in singleplayer), but I can't argue that they're pretty innovative.
In other news, when told many Splatoon players had already hit the level cap, the developers basically said, "get a life, nerds."
All your assumptions are based on the premise that Koreans are racist.
It is interesting. It's not institutional racism like in Japan where (for example) non-Japanese people can't even rent an apartment without a Japanese person vouching for them. But culturally it seems similar.
But is that Korean culture, or Samsung culture?
Since I've never heard/read much about racism in Korea, I'm wagering this is a Samsung corporate culture thing.
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All your assumptions are based on the premise that Koreans are racist.
More likely they are nationalists.
Would have to find an American "Korean", with an obvious American accent, and see how they react, to know for sure.
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Actually reminded me of the MASH episode with the Japanese-looking (but American since birth) doctor who the North Korean tried to murder, saying he invaded his country.
In a lot of Asian countries (and some European countries), they haven't caught on to the whole "race != nationality" we got going in the US for generations now. If you look Japanese, you're Japanese.
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But is that Korean culture, or Samsung culture?
As far as I know, Samsung culture is derived from Korean culture, where they have some sort of social ladder. Depending on who you are and where you're from, you are at some level on the ladder, and everyone above is by definition better and always right. That's how Samsung operates - Koreans are above other nationalities, and we just have to live with that. Of course the result is the worst kind of software development you can imagine.
The sad part is that they don't see it as a problem. They don't even understand that this can be a problem. They are so accustomed to it, they think everything should be like that. In my team there's a famous quote from one of Korean higher-ups: "we know you're right, but do it our way". Take some time to let it sink in, with all implications.
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As far as I know, Samsung culture is derived from Korean culture, where they have some sort of social ladder. Depending on who you are and where you're from, you are at some level on the ladder, and everyone above is by definition better and always right.
That jives with what I've seen in the past, for example a couple high-profile airline crashes that occurred as a result of lower-ranking co-pilots refusing to correct an obviously-wrong pilot.
The question is, is there a racial component to it? Or would the high-ranked pilot be just as respected by the co-pilot if he were Lebanese?
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The question is, is there a racial component to it? Or would the high-ranked pilot be just as respected by the co-pilot if he were Lebanese?
From what I can see here, the answer is both obvious and sad.
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Additionally, there's another absurd situation. All employees have a numerical level (called S-band or smth), which eases the whole ladder thing. For reasons unknown to me, the levels in my country are lowered by 1 (or 2, can't remember), relatively to other countries. That means my official title can be the same as some guy's title, but I'll be one level lower than him. Seems like Koreans don't like us very much.
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You know that Carton Hetzer or whatever his name is guy is gonna get you fired if he comes back here.
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I actually don't post anything that's NDA'd (hell, most of it you can google yourself), so everything is all right. People deserve to know the truth; how things look there. People deserve to know what crap Tizen is (especially us - developers). And if by some miracle, things in our favorite Korean corporation get better because of the things I write, the world will be a better place.
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He'd have to figure out who this @NeighborhoodButcher guy is first.
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They don't even understand that this can be a problem.
Listening to your subordinate is a weakness.
They will not respect your leadership.Why we hire subordinates?
We don't really know.
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@NeighborhoodButcher said:
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we know you're right, butdo it our way"Don't all managers say that?
Only if you do that. Most don't include the first bit.
And
by xaade.
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because every villain has to have minions
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What saddens me is that Tizen is not just Samsung crap, but it's also strongly pushed by the Linux Foundation.
I guess it's to be expected. They make a decent kernel, but any higher level project they touch is a total failure.
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What saddens me is that Tizen is not just Samsung crap, but it's also strongly pushed by the Linux Foundation.
I claim (unofficial) bullshit on this one. Tizen = Samsung; nobody else wants to poke that corpse. It didn't use to be this way, but it was Samsung'd.
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No.
Because they usually aren't aware that we're right.Touché.
I feel the need to take it one step further, even: they don't really appreciate the concept of "right" as in correct.
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I'm just judging from the fact that they have some training courses on their website ( http://training.linuxfoundation.org/linux-courses/tizen-training ) and what Wikipedia says.
Either case, you gotta admit that it's fucking embarrassing that all these Linux mobile OSs have miserably failed to gain any traction, one after another.
...and then Google comes along and just makes it happen like it's nothing. I guess that's just what Google does
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And what if they simply exempt themselves from the rules they place on others?
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Because they usually aren't aware that we're right.
Reading things like this makes me realize how fortunate I am to work in a high-tech industry, rather than just doing a high-tech job in a non-tech company. Every manager I've ever had since college, IIRC, has been an engineer before being promoted into management, and most often has still been doing as much hands-on engineering as his management responsibilities allowed. Usually, this has extended at least a few levels up the management chain. As dysfunctional as my most recent employer was, the CEO had a Ph.D. in Physics; he was a bad manager, but he knew his technical shit.
IME, managers have either understood the reasons behind technical decisions, or deferred to the subordinates who did. Sometimes managers have to choose sub-optimal technical solutions for business reasons, but IME they have understood the technical ramifications of doing so. However, like I said, I work in an industry where the technology is the core of the business; sometimes senior management comes from finance/marketing/whatever, but I've never seen one of them try to micromanage the technical organizations; obviously, some of you doing IT in finance, transportation or whatever companies aren't so lucky.
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And you still work there, because...?
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And what if they simply exempt themselves from the rules they place on others?
Read it again. It's simple underneath, once you ignore the racist blather. Depending on the stage of enlightenment you've reached, the rules change. You can't just hold everybody by the same rules.
From what I see, the original poster hasn't even reached the first stage wherein he would have understood this on a deeper level. I guess he's not accepting it due to preconceived ideas of cultural superiority. Sadly, we can't help him there, it's his own struggle with himself.
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Also, dude, chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American, please.
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Asian-American, please.
That would be tremendously insulting to someone who was ethnically Han and who had Chinese citizenship.
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That would be tremendously insulting to someone who was ethnically Han and who had Chinese citizenship.
Are we getting back to the "African-Americans" discussion?:
http://www.amwicked.com.au/files/bbwkptdtzx/tempx_aborigines_freeman1_g.jpg
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Well fuck that guy... he peed on the Dude's rug.
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has been an engineer before being promoted into management
That's doesn't guarantee good management.
I worked for a similar company, but the result was that every manager had a coding style that broke every modern high level language. They made decisions about technology at whim because they didn't bother to keep up on the wisdom provided by the rest of the field.
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That's doesn't guarantee good management.
No, of course not. Certainly not all engineers have the people skills to make good managers (I know I don't), although I've been fortunate that nearly all of mine have been at least ok, and a couple have been very good. But good engineers like the technology, and want to keep up-to-date, even if they don't get to actually use it. If they are not keeping up-to-date on the technology being used by the people they're managing, at least at an overview, I'd say they're not good engineers. If they're forcing out-of-date practices on subordinates because they don't understand the technology, they're not good managers, either.
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Are we getting back to the "African-Americans" discussion?:
I like to point out the white guy I know who's a South African emigre and calls himself African-American.
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I like to point out the white guy I know who's a South African emigre and calls himself African-American.
Why not? It's correct.
I'm a Native American. I used to take great pleasure in marking that down until they changed the phrasing on all the Government forms to something like, "indigenous native or tribal member" or whatever, which is a group I can't not claim membership in.
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Why not? It's correct.
Yes, but it causes essentially the exact same cognitive dissonance as calling a black European an African-American.
I'm a Native American. I used to take great pleasure
That's the other half of the reason that guy did it: it's funny, and/because it causes people to hiccup mentally.
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Yes, but it causes essentially the exact same cognitive dissonance as calling a black European an African-American.
That's the person with the jellified brain's problem not mine.
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America, the country that's claimed citizenship of blacks everywhere.
Question, if you have a white person in South African.... are they "African-European"?
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Question, if you have a white person in South African.... are they "African-European"?
No, they're just "white".
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Or.... Caucasian.... whatever that means....
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Or.... Caucasian...
Not in this case. I've worked with a few South Africans, and the usual term for them is definitely “white” when you're not being more precise. Different parts of the world have different ways of expressing the various sensitivities centred around past and current discrimination.
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Or.... Caucasian.... whatever that means....
If you study the history of the Proto Indo European language, presuming the current research on the origin of the language and that its speakers traveled along with the spread of the language, the term Caucasian actually makes sense.
Of course the problem is that Caucasian has since been used racists of every description.
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It's ok, I get a pass, I'm partially Native American.
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No. This whole concept is idiotic. Either the rules apply across the board, or you're making exceptions for special people. In this case, the special people are Korean.
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Special enlightened people. Why are you bringing race/nationality into this again? As long as you let superficial differences cloud your perception you won't be able to accept their wisdom.
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Special enlightened people. Why are you bringing race/nationality into this again? As long as you let superficial differences cloud your perception you won't be able to accept their wisdom.
Poe's Law; not sure if serious or trolling. Either way, you've made it onto my "idjits to ignore" list.
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It's ok, I get a pass, I'm partially Native American.
Maybe if you look it... you can tell everything about a person's advantages in life by looking at them, surely.
hmmm... if you're partially European and partial Native American... are you a victim whose ancestors were all but wiped out or do you share in the original sin of that genocide? Both? Can you be privileged and disadvantaged at the same time?! I think I'm freaking out! AAAAAAAAAA!
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Speaking of Asia superior penis #1
I had a japanese customer bitching that our product which was an smbus/i2c slave was clocking their communication at 1MHz and shit wasn't work!!! The big WTF is that the clock speed is determined by the fucking master and not the slave. The slave literally sits there and takes the clock like a bitch, it can't alter it in any form.
What was happening is the bus capacitance of a newer version of our product was just slightly higher than the older one and for some reason their i2c master went ape shit ballistic and increased clock speed. (which was some fpga crap they probably copy pasted).
Mind you they are completely at fault.
Did they ever admit its their fault or try to fix it?
Nope
Asian penis #1
We had to make a hardware change instead. After spending 2 months of trying to fucking explain them how a basic communication protocol fucking worked.
This was fucking a division of a big brand japanese company that starts with a T that works on higher end expensive equipment.
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I will say though that since I read that, Dark Souls and Bloodborne have come out and kind of redeemed the concept of innovative Japanese games. They aren't my cup of tea and they have a lot of bad design decisions (like lack of a pause in singleplayer), but I can't argue that they're pretty innovative.
"The FROM Software game, for there is only one." --Yahtzee Croshaw
