Goodbye, Samsung.

So, my last day working for Samsung was Friday, January 4th. To my credit, I did not cry when people left work on Friday and I saw them for the last time: it helped that I was busy working on something, too. I had lunch with my teammates on the Thursday before for the last time. After lunch, we went to a photo studio to have a group picture taken as a gift from my team to me. The posing that we had to do and rearranging of people had me laughing non-stop.


They aren’t all that white – they were photoshopped to match my pasty skin tone. I wanted to wear bunny ears, but the guy said that were for babies :( I have a small head…they would’ve fit.

I absolutely adore all of my teammates and the ones that we left behind when our team split the week before, especially Yoon. Yoon was my one teammate that had been with me my entire four years at Samsung. I think it’s good timing that I left Samsung when everything was rearranged.

There are good and bad things about every company. Most of the problems that I personally had with Samsung involved being a Westerner working for a very large, very Korean company at their HQ in Korea. Communication, culture, procedures…I never felt like I truly knew what was happening around me. While that allowed me to avoid nearly all of the politics that were going on around me, I only knew what people felt I needed to know, which wasn’t much.

My colleagues, foreign and Korean, were accepting, though, and made efforts to get to know me. But, I know that I was thought of as the “weird American” on my team…maybe in the whole division even – who knows.

Everything must come to an end, though, and it was just time for me to leave Samsung (and Korea). I think I had learned all that I could there and I felt stagnant in my job. I wasn’t growing anymore, I didn’t feel like I was contributing much anymore, and I was getting bored frankly. Now, most of that more than likely has to do with an uninvolved manager. I leave Samsung happy with my team, happy with myself, and happy with the contributions I was able to make. I would like to think that during my time with the Printing Division/IT Solutions that I helped improve the English quality and overall usability of the projects that I worked on. I wish nothing but the best for the future for my former teammates and other colleagues. I will always cherish the time that I spent with them.