Pros
You are looked after materially. Good salary and benefits (new fully expensed BMW or Audi every 3yrs for example), generous staff discounts, generous expenses policy etc etc Some amazingly talented individuals. A good brand for the CV
Cons
- Your career will stagnate. Training and career progression paths are non-existent, and you are not allowed to make any real decisions, so it's not too long before you end up in a rut where you turn up, keep your head down, fudge the reports and take the cheque every month. - Reporting is the end game in this company. Reality doesn't matter, it's how good the reports look to the next level of management up that counts for everything. And because such a vast quantity of data is reported so ridiculously frequently, it simply isn't humanly possible for any of what you report to ever be checked or verified. Combine this with the fact that you start every project knowing the strategy will change, or the goalposts move long before anything ever gets delivered, and the fact that your department head will ultimately be someone with no understanding of what it is that you actually do, and you can pretty much get away with doing nothing. Just keep the reports coming, and work late occasionally to "show commitment". I did this for several of my four years and got very good appraisals and bonuses every time because I played the political game. It's farcical, it really is. - Promotions happen on length of service, how many hours a week you put in (turn up on Sundays and schmooze with the Koreans if you really want to look good) and whether your face fits, not your ability to do your job, or what your output is. No flexibility in terms of working from home or from other office locations, with a primary school style 'Bums on seats' mentality. Ultimately, Korean management has no trust or respect for Westerners. There isn't a single important decision made in this company that isn't ultimately signed off (and often reversed at the last minute) by a Korean. Even senior Westerners have to defer to Korean "superiors" who almost always are less experienced and knowledgeable than they are, but are in charge because they are Korean. The racism openly displayed in this company simply wouldn't be tolerated if Western and Korean roles were reversed, but as with most things, it's excused as "culture". - When you leave and go to a company with a 21st century management style of empowerment and trust, you actually find yourself struggling a little bit with simple decisions and freedoms because not once at Samsung will you ever have had any real autonomy. And when you're deprived of it, and then it's reinstated, it can be a almost uncomfortable at first. And in a nutshell that is the biggest problem. It is very easy to leave here a less relevant, and less employable individual than you were when you joined...
