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Comment by logicchains | Hacker News Reader

>I recently heard they are now considering to move their code base from svn to git, and write some test code to stabilize the firmware that goes into the ssd products.

>I don't think I can explain in short how a mediocre developer who never actually coded something into reality got a degree, and got a job in allegedly the biggest company in south korea... All I can say it is a complex korean thing that requires some cultural understanding of our society.

Are you sure it's a Korean thing, and not just a hardware-company thing? Even in the west, hardware companies are notorious for having terrible software development practices / UX. Perhaps the sole exception is Apple, and this has allowed them to dominate (compare iOS to the crapware OEMs like Samsung bundle with phones).

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It's Korean (probably also Japanese) thing. My friend attended their interview, said there were little to no technical questions, but he has been asked to create "self-presentation". He was hired. Samsung produces tons of software quite far from near-hardware level, for example Java and C++ applications for their own version of Android.

I think the jury is still out whether asking technical questions (Is that code for whiteboard interviews?) is really a good idea. Seems Samsungs interview process is just different (probably also bad. All interviewing seems to be bad).

Do apple hire CS majors who never did a project in any language? Probably not..

Intel sure does - and they're more of a hardware company than Apple is...

However, probably their candidates have to show some projects with electronics and FPGA. Again, Intel has lots of "pure software" development, for example their own compiler, profiler, debugger and rest of similar tools, bundled into IDE.

Are you saying that in Korea one can be a CS major and have never done a single SW project in any language? Sorry, I find that hard to believe.

In a mediocre university you learn how to run a VMware virtual machine in OS class and that's it.

One of my friend didn't submit his project for Operating System course, still got an A-. He doesn't know anything about seg fault handling or process scheduling. How did he get an A-? Because companies are looking for good GPAs rather than what actually the candidate knows. Students complain if they get low grades because it may screw up his career. Since universities are competing for hire rate after graduation (unemployment is serious in south korea) they press professors to give them good grades as possible.

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