A cultural change will never happen without the likes of a Chairman Lee Kun-hee to lead, and lead, and slash, and lead, and slash, and lead. He truly did lead Samsung from the stone age to modernity by relentlessly demanding the desired behaviour (Quality, Not Quantity) from his underlings and by punishing back-sliders. His shoes are now empty.
Recently I was employed by one of their companies, Samsung Engineering Co., Ltd, and the culture of rewarding ineptitude and of accepting rigid self-serving idiots as leaders was staggering.
Samsung Group will survive because of its size and because the Korean government won't let it perish. But its 15 minutes of fame are over, as are the sunny days of fame and fortune in all of Korea.
My prediction is that all earlier profits will be lost and the company will be a stagnant third-tier player within 18 months.
Ha! I now live in Australia. It has become clear to me that any field construction work here suffers from the fact that there is nil supervisory capability, and the whole industry can't organize its way out of a wet paper bag.
In virtually all US and Canadian installations, the hot water tank is nothing more than the equivalent to a well-insulated bulge in the pipe, heated either by an electric coil or by the chimney from a small gas or oil flame. The UK system of holding and pressure tanks and so on is based on abysmal flow rates from ancient municipal pipelines. Hot water in North America is typically more germ free than cold water in the UK and Europe.
This is not news. Read "The Selfish Gene", especially the 30th anniversary edition. Then you will realise that OF COURSE Natural Selection (the true meaning of which is much different than what your Grade 5 teacher told you) can act on Human Culture, just like it acts on anything else involving life and living organisms.
I am surprised that thiw has not been brought up by any of the previous posters, or at least none that I noticed.
Please wake up. The science is proven. Computer models of the earth's atmosphere correspond extremely well with what is happening in real life. They prove the devastating effects of CO2 emissions. The denial of extremely strong proof might be macho cool, but it shows only a politician's understanding of the world. This is not alarmist crap.
I strongly recommend a reading of "The Weather Makers" by Tim Flannery. Please read it. Please weigh the evidence provided. Then see if your opinion remains as-is, or if you find the argument inescapable, as I did.
OK, so who let the morons out of the bag? The benefit of geothermal energy is not to reduce the amount of heat energy rejected into the envronment. ALL of the energy we use ends up there anyway. Thermodynamics and such, I won't bore you with the details.
But every ton of CO2 released into the atmoshere has a devastating effect on our lives. Not that CO2 is poisonous, but if significantly effects the absorption of solar energy. Why do you think there are record floods in South Asia, the polar ice cap is melting and huricane season is no longer simply interesting. It is because the condition of our atmosphere is changing.
Power produced by geothermal energy does end up producing heat. But it has an almost unnoticeable effect on our environment, and when it is shut off, its effects are shut off. This is absolutely not the case with fossil fuels, especially coal.
So get to know the science, and be afraid. Be very afraid.
I, too, am an English Quebecois and all I have to say is that historically the English of Canada have screwed the French of Canada over left, front and sideways. Innumerable agreements broken, people murdered (yes, true fact), land and wealth stolen. Even the dreaded language police in full force cannot possibly tip the scales in the other direction. I bought the story that was handed down (like RC church being in control, etc.) until I found the real facts.
I have not read all of the above postings, but most of the ones I did read have missed the point entirely:
If the company is dissolving/dying/exploding, because of clueless management,then it has no right to continue its existance. You ask whether or not you should jump. Of course you should. But not for the kind of reasons you think.
If we can accept your statement that your position and skills really are pivotal in keeping the company alive so far, then all you are doing is delaying your friends' chances of getting a job in a successful company.
Plus, for all you know, many of your friends are sticking around out of a sense of loyalty to you!
You are not being selfish by sticking around, you are being cowardly. Stop being afraid of going to a new (successful?) company where you will no longer be the only potential saviour, and you have to compete with and cooperate with equally skilled and perhaps better skilled co-workers.
My daughters go to Trinity College School (a boarding school)in Port Hope, Ontario and they are expected to have laptops in Grade 8. The school is very well networked, (eg 2 connections per dorm room, many connections in each classroom, etc.) but I am a bit disappointed in how well the school makes use of the potential. No tutorials for review of teachers' lectures, no possibility of extra courses taken as "distance learning" during study periods.
My gess is that most schools miss the same boat, and students learn that their notebooks are nothing but anchors to be toted from class to class.
Be advised:... "Throwing away" many computer components puts some really bad actors into the environment, so re-deployment is helping the environment as well as helping the recipient. Sorry, no links available to sites with in-depth explanations.
I hope your claimed lack of preparedness is ironic. Otherwise it is moronic. It is all well and good to know your subject matter thoroughly, but to expect to be able to carry the show by answering questons is a BIG mistake. Without preparation and a good start to your talk, you will not generate enough enthusiasm in the audience for them to ask any questions worth answering.
There is still time. Do it!. Write it out verbatim if you have to. At least WRITE down all the points you want to cover, and the order you want to cover them in. Otherwise you will die, even in front of a small audience.
Good luck!
It's too bad that the story is almost semi-believable. You Americans have left yourselves only a difficult choice Tweedle Dum(b) or Tweedle Dee. Good luck to all.
If the in-house programmers are up to snuff, there would be no reason for the MBAs to look at outsourcing. Maybe the in-house folks aren't performing as expected?
The outsourcing of code is no different than outsourcing, say, steel fabrication. Companies do that when they think they will get a better deal from outside because the inside people don't produce because they are too busy having lunch, or sometimes because the costs of using in-house people has bloated because of internal bookkeeping problems or because the shop is filled with primadonnas that can't do the gruntwork.
So go ahead. Outsource, but just recognize the management efforts still required to get a good product.
Perhaps you should suggest outsourcing the accountng department, project management or senior management of the company. That's where *real* gains could be made.
Or move off-shore, get some local hotshots working for you, and make a killing.
Every one of the comments I have read (skipped quite a few) seem to get caught in the job vs degree whirlpool.
Go to school, be it a university or technical college, for the fun of it. Stay there as long as you can. Don't consider it a necessary stepping stone to a well paying job, but don't consider it a stumbling block either.
Get a job that you like, and you will do it well. Get as much pleasure from doing a good job as you can. You will be spending a lot of your life doing it.
But don't forget to have a life. Life is NOT a job. Neither is it a piece of parchment on the wall.
Actually, you shouldn't even be asking this question. Somewhere inside you know what the right answer is **for you, at this time**. Just do what you want.
Follow through on your decision with both feet.
If you believe that it took the Holocaust to get the Nazis to Nuremburg, you are forgetting an important point. Sure, they deserved to be brought to trial at Nurmemburg because of the Holocaust. But their loss of the war was the reason it happened.
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A cultural change will never happen without the likes of a Chairman Lee Kun-hee to lead, and lead, and slash, and lead, and slash, and lead. He truly did lead Samsung from the stone age to modernity by relentlessly demanding the desired behaviour (Quality, Not Quantity) from his underlings and by punishing back-sliders. His shoes are now empty.
Recently I was employed by one of their companies, Samsung Engineering Co., Ltd, and the culture of rewarding ineptitude and of accepting rigid self-serving idiots as leaders was staggering.
Samsung Group will survive because of its size and because the Korean government won't let it perish. But its 15 minutes of fame are over, as are the sunny days of fame and fortune in all of Korea.
My prediction is that all earlier profits will be lost and the company will be a stagnant third-tier player within 18 months.
Ha!
I now live in Australia. It has become clear to me that any field construction work here suffers from the fact that there is nil supervisory capability, and the whole industry can't organize its way out of a wet paper bag.
And then I woke up.
In virtually all US and Canadian installations, the hot water tank is nothing more than the equivalent to a well-insulated bulge in the pipe, heated either by an electric coil or by the chimney from a small gas or oil flame. The UK system of holding and pressure tanks and so on is based on abysmal flow rates from ancient municipal pipelines. Hot water in North America is typically more germ free than cold water in the UK and Europe.
This is not news. Read "The Selfish Gene", especially the 30th anniversary edition. Then you will realise that OF COURSE Natural Selection (the true meaning of which is much different than what your Grade 5 teacher told you) can act on Human Culture, just like it acts on anything else involving life and living organisms.
I am surprised that thiw has not been brought up by any of the previous posters, or at least none that I noticed.
You have articulated very well the thoughts that have been slowly forming in my mind. Well done.
Please wake up. The science is proven. Computer models of the earth's atmosphere correspond extremely well with what is happening in real life. They prove the devastating effects of CO2 emissions. The denial of extremely strong proof might be macho cool, but it shows only a politician's understanding of the world. This is not alarmist crap.
I strongly recommend a reading of "The Weather Makers" by Tim Flannery. Please read it. Please weigh the evidence provided. Then see if your opinion remains as-is, or if you find the argument inescapable, as I did.
OK, so who let the morons out of the bag? The benefit of geothermal energy is not to reduce the amount of heat energy rejected into the envronment. ALL of the energy we use ends up there anyway. Thermodynamics and such, I won't bore you with the details.
But every ton of CO2 released into the atmoshere has a devastating effect on our lives. Not that CO2 is poisonous, but if significantly effects the absorption of solar energy. Why do you think there are record floods in South Asia, the polar ice cap is melting and huricane season is no longer simply interesting. It is because the condition of our atmosphere is changing.
Power produced by geothermal energy does end up producing heat. But it has an almost unnoticeable effect on our environment, and when it is shut off, its effects are shut off. This is absolutely not the case with fossil fuels, especially coal.
So get to know the science, and be afraid. Be very afraid.
I, too, am an English Quebecois and all I have to say is that historically the English of Canada have screwed the French of Canada over left, front and sideways. Innumerable agreements broken, people murdered (yes, true fact), land and wealth stolen. Even the dreaded language police in full force cannot possibly tip the scales in the other direction.
I bought the story that was handed down (like RC church being in control, etc.) until I found the real facts.
Beigh and english man. Did you say beign? as in doughnt?
I have not read all of the above postings, but most of the ones I did read have missed the point entirely:
If the company is dissolving/dying/exploding, because of clueless management,then it has no right to continue its existance. You ask whether or not you should jump. Of course you should. But not for the kind of reasons you think.
If we can accept your statement that your position and skills really are pivotal in keeping the company alive so far, then all you are doing is delaying your friends' chances of getting a job in a successful company.
Plus, for all you know, many of your friends are sticking around out of a sense of loyalty to you!
You are not being selfish by sticking around, you are being cowardly. Stop being afraid of going to a new (successful?) company where you will no longer be the only potential saviour, and you have to compete with and cooperate with equally skilled and perhaps better skilled co-workers.
Be more, not less.
Perhaps "whatever TLA or TLI you can name" would have been more correct ;>)
My daughters go to Trinity College School (a boarding school)in Port Hope, Ontario and they are expected to have laptops in Grade 8. The school is very well networked, (eg 2 connections per dorm room, many connections in each classroom, etc.) but I am a bit disappointed in how well the school makes use of the potential. No tutorials for review of teachers' lectures, no possibility of extra courses taken as "distance learning" during study periods. My gess is that most schools miss the same boat, and students learn that their notebooks are nothing but anchors to be toted from class to class.
Too true, and not just in the IT Indistry. It is what happenes in ALL industries.
Be advised: ... "Throwing away" many computer components puts some really bad actors into the environment, so re-deployment is helping the environment as well as helping the recipient. Sorry, no links available to sites with in-depth explanations.
I hope your claimed lack of preparedness is ironic. Otherwise it is moronic. It is all well and good to know your subject matter thoroughly, but to expect to be able to carry the show by answering questons is a BIG mistake. Without preparation and a good start to your talk, you will not generate enough enthusiasm in the audience for them to ask any questions worth answering. There is still time. Do it!. Write it out verbatim if you have to. At least WRITE down all the points you want to cover, and the order you want to cover them in. Otherwise you will die, even in front of a small audience. Good luck!
It's too bad that the story is almost semi-believable. You Americans have left yourselves only a difficult choice Tweedle Dum(b) or Tweedle Dee. Good luck to all.
On many Canadian flights you have power available, at least in Business Class. You guys gotta get with it!
If the in-house programmers are up to snuff, there would be no reason for the MBAs to look at outsourcing. Maybe the in-house folks aren't performing as expected? The outsourcing of code is no different than outsourcing, say, steel fabrication. Companies do that when they think they will get a better deal from outside because the inside people don't produce because they are too busy having lunch, or sometimes because the costs of using in-house people has bloated because of internal bookkeeping problems or because the shop is filled with primadonnas that can't do the gruntwork. So go ahead. Outsource, but just recognize the management efforts still required to get a good product. Perhaps you should suggest outsourcing the accountng department, project management or senior management of the company. That's where *real* gains could be made. Or move off-shore, get some local hotshots working for you, and make a killing.
Every one of the comments I have read (skipped quite a few) seem to get caught in the job vs degree whirlpool. Go to school, be it a university or technical college, for the fun of it. Stay there as long as you can. Don't consider it a necessary stepping stone to a well paying job, but don't consider it a stumbling block either. Get a job that you like, and you will do it well. Get as much pleasure from doing a good job as you can. You will be spending a lot of your life doing it. But don't forget to have a life. Life is NOT a job. Neither is it a piece of parchment on the wall. Actually, you shouldn't even be asking this question. Somewhere inside you know what the right answer is **for you, at this time**. Just do what you want. Follow through on your decision with both feet.
If you believe that it took the Holocaust to get the Nazis to Nuremburg, you are forgetting an important point. Sure, they deserved to be brought to trial at Nurmemburg because of the Holocaust. But their loss of the war was the reason it happened.