Comment by skissane
10 days ago
I spent a week of my life at a major insurance company in Seoul once, and the military style security, the obsession with corporate espionage, when all they were working on was an internal corporate portal for an insurance company… The developers had to use machines with no Internet access, I wasn’t allowed to bring my laptop with me lest I use it to steal their precious code. A South Korean colleague told me it was this way because South Korean corporate management is stuffed full of ex-military officers who take the attitudes they get from defending against the North with them into the corporate world; no wonder the project was having so many technical problems-but I couldn’t really solve them, because ultimately the problems weren’t really technical
For those unaware, all "able-bodied" South Korean men are required to do about two years of military service. This sentence doesn't do much for me. Also, please remember that Germany also had required military service until quite recently. That means anyone "old" (over 40) and doing corp mgmt was probably also a military officer.
The way it was explained to me was different... yes, all able-bodied males do national service. But there's a different phenomenon in which someone serves some years active duty (so this is not their mandatory national service, this is voluntary active duty service), in some relatively prestigious position, and then jumps ship to the corporate world, and they get hired as an executive by their ex-comrades/ex-superiors... so there ends up being a pipeline from more senior volunteer active duty military ranks into corporate executive ranks (especially at large and prestigious firms), and of course that produces a certain culture, which then tends to flow downhill
Did you happen to notice interesting phenomenon like “the role becomes a rank”?
Also Israel - and their tech echo system is tier 1.
As somebody that has also done work in Korea (with on of their banks), my observation was that almost all decision making was top-down, and people were forced to do a ton of monotonous work based on the whims of upper management, and people below could not talk back. I literally stood and watched a director walk in after racking a bunch of equipment and commented that the disk arrays should be higher up. When I asked why (they were at the bottom for weight and centre of gravity reasons), he looked shocked that I even asked and tersely said that the blinking lights of the disks at eye level show the value of the purchase better.
I can't imagine writing software in that kind of environment. It'd be almost impossible to do clean work, and even if you did it'd get interfered with. On top of that nobody could go home before the boss.
I did enjoy the fact that the younger Koreans we were working with asked me and my colleague how old we were, because my colleague was 10 years older than me and they were flabbergasted that I was not deferring to him in every conversation, even though we were both equals professionally.
This was circa 2010, so maybe things are better, but oh my god I'm glad it was business trips and I was happy to be flying home each time (though my mouth still waters at the marinaded beef at the bbq restaurants I went to...).
Military culture in SK (especially amongst the older generation who served before democratization in the late 1990s) is extremely hierarchical.
> That means anyone "old" (over 40) and doing corp mgmt was probably also a military officer.
Absolutely not. It was very common in Germany to deny military service and instead do a year of civil service as a replacement. Also, there were several exceptions from the """mandatory""" military service. I have two brothers who had served, so all I did was tick a checkbox and I was done with the topic of military service.
Depends on if these were commissioned officers or NCOs. Basically everyone reaches NCO by the end of service (used to be automatic, now there are tests that are primarily based around fitness), but when people specifically call out officers they tend to be talking about ones with a commission. You are not becoming a commissioned officer through compulsory service.
The difference is that South Korea is currently technically still at war with North Korea.
This - you and half of the smart people here in the comments clearly have no idea what it's like to live across the border from a country that wants you eradicated.
All able bodied men don't become officers.
I've done some work for a large SK company and the security was manageable. Certainly higher than anything I've seen before or after and with security theater aspects, but ultimately it didn't seriously get in the way of getting work done.
I think it makes sense that although this is a widespread problem in South Korea, some places have it worse than others; you obviously worked at a place where the problem was more moderate. And I went there over a decade ago, and maybe even the place I was at has lightened up a bit since.
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