Come to GSG to learn, but make sure to leave after 2 years - Global Strategist Samsung Global Strategy Group Employee Review

- Come to be part of a team and grow, but realize that almost only people who are in the leadership’s in-group are promoted. Current in-group is Korean, so if you are not of Korean descent, be ready to have a much harder time than those who are. If you are not from the in-group, see people from the in-group be promoted faster, then fail because they don’t meet the standards and have been promoted too fast, or leave the company because they did not really want the job, or abandon their teams mid-project because they are unprofessional. By contrast, people not in the in-group may not be given the chance to PL and will be pushed to transition, or even pushed out the door, if the affiliate sponsoring you does not like your background any more (even if they chose it 2 years ago) - Witness how certain people in positions of power are openly misogynistic, making inappropriate comments to their teams or touching females in ways that are, in my opinion, inappropriate and see how no one is telling them anything. Notice how women are sometimes reduced to sexual objects, as yellow fever exists across all levels of the organization. Complain to supervisors about this behavior and have them actually laugh in your face and tell you “this is normal” because they are used to it and don’t want to deal with it. See how females are ignored in meetings, not because they don’t speak loud enough, but because they are female. Then, when women then try to speak up more so men would listen, they are told they have an attitude problem. - Learn to grow a thicker skin by being deprioritized in staffing, for promotion and even in extra-curricular activities, because you don’t have a “protector” among supervisors who will go to war for you and fight for you in staffing, promotion and extra-curricular committees, so you usually don’t get a fair chance. Watch as protectors shamelessly push their own people, so that they can be promoted early, or given extra bonus, or get their preferred choices at projects. Hear about a supervisor recommending to HR to give special treatment to their favorite person because they threatened to quit. - Learn how to resist bullying as it comes from the highest levels of the organization - from HR using emotional blackmail to limit your vacation time, or ignoring / censoring negative upwards feedback they receive when it affects their friends (for instance feedback about these friends making misogynistic comments) while afterwards they retaliate against people who gave the upward feedback; to supervisors giving you strong negative feedback after a 14-week project, but not telling you anything during the project so you could not have improved, and then telling you that you cannot even be considered for PL role / promotion because you did not improve. Then see how more people become bullies, as GSGers and project leaders bully supervisors into changing their feedback grades because they complain feedback was “too mean” and supervisors and HR prefer to avoid conflict, so they ignore mistakes made during projects, change the grades, and pass these people as “above expectations” and eventually some of them even get promoted or given cushy transitions. - Learn to manage increasingly more work, without being rewarded for it, as project leaders and supervisors refuse to address work-life balance issues. Watch as certain GSGers refuse to do their work or continuously underdeliver, and instead of addressing the issue, PLs are pushing more work onto other GSGers on the project. These GSGers are told to go above and beyond to compensate, and then they are almost never rewarded for the extra work, as feedback is usually undifferentiated between GSGers. Notice the decreasing quality of project leaders, as both internal promotion and external recruiting efforts yield mostly sub-par PLs and second-year GSGers are given even more responsibilities, such as coaching new GSGers. Realize that key success factors at GSG are 1- to never complain and always say yes, 2- to never do more than the easiest 60% of your work to avoid mistakes, and 3- to stay late even if you don’t have work so you are perceived as hard working. - Learn how to manage unhappy clients, as the main consequence of having more work and fewer good PLs, is to see clients complain to Korean team members that GSG’s work is not meeting their expectations. Witness how supervisors often answer that it’s normal because clients don’t know what our work should look like, and express contempt towards clients working on “tactical issues”, while GSG does the “strategic” work. Notice the misalignment between both sides and how it may put in danger the ability of the team to deliver a good project. - Learn to manage conflict, as GSG stopped telling the truth to clients, in order to create “more harmonious client relationships”. (This was apparently the answer to the previous issue of the quality of GSG’s work not being good enough and clients complaining.) Watch as GSG moves away from its role of offering honest recommendations to clients (in my first project we told the client the opposite of what they expected, and after explaining why, the client understood our perspective and learned from us), and GSG is now following the new leadership’s direction to only say what the clients want to hear, or to change our recommendations when the client is unhappy with our previous version (which of course leads to so much more rework because some clients keep changing their minds). - Watch and learn how former external consultants are engaged as experienced hires and come to rest and make easy money at GSG, as they are paid way more than people recruited the usual way, and have zero incentive beyond work ethics to work hard. Notice how they rarely work a minute after 6pm or complain forever about it, and promise to help develop people, but usually don’t deliver anything beyond a 30-min coffee once every other month. Try to avoid working with them because you don’t learn anything and be told you are not a team player and be forced to work with them anyway