(Source: Pexels. Coworkers Talking About an Award in the Office · Free Stock Photo)
People often say “Good Korea vs. Bad Korea” to mean South vs. North.
You don’t need me to tell you which side the English-speaking West considers “good” — though Russians might disagree.
But zoom in from country to individual, and the picture gets messy. Good and bad people exist in every corner.
I’ve been critical of my home country, but Korea isn’t full of bad people. I complain about under-qualified, low-motivation, overly selfish employees — but you’ll find them in every country. Only a few people truly work hard and tie their own success to producing high-quality results for the company. The AT&T CEO’s blunt comment about the death of loyalty didn’t surprise me. Morale can be improved, but there’s always a ceiling — and that ceiling varies by person and by culture.
Two cases stand out for me as proof that truly motivated, high-standard professionals exist in any country.
First, a developer from a Middle Eastern country who genuinely enjoys solving problems on Gordon Institute’s websites. His excitement when finding errors — and even more when delivering the fix — is unmistakable. I share my screen when I pull his commit from Git, and when it finally applies to the site, for a minute or so, I can sense he’s ready to shout, “I did it!”
Second, our Korean branch of the Gordon Institute, which runs The Economy Korea with around 10 people working remotely. Their motivation, sense of responsibility, and perfectionism in their work are exceptional. They deliver consistently without micromanagement, and I have a deep respect for the standard they keep.
Back to the hiring market overall — the reason I have negative, if not skeptical, views on Korea is largely shaped by the employees I have interviewed and hired in the past. I have not been lucky enough to meet passionate people like that Middle Eastern dev or my current Economy Korea team. In fact, I’ve always wondered if I should replace “lucky” in that sentence with “prepared.” Many Koreans say they only want to work in large conglomerates or the public sector, rather than a rising startup with a high-credential boss. My company wasn’t like Samsung or LG, so I may have only been able to interview disqualified talents without self-motivation — but out there, in large companies, there must be a hefty number of “Good Koreans.”
Truth is, even back in my days at Deutsche Bank’s investment banking division — probably one of the most prestigious jobs one could find in Korea in the late 2000s — I didn’t particularly like a co-worker. She was known as a “bxxch” among all i-banking friends in Korea and Hong Kong. The HK team used a lot of f-words and s-words over midnight phone calls when that female co-worker did the bare minimum on shared tasks. Unlike other i-bankers, she went home at 10pm sharp — the earliest time the company paid for full taxi fare. So, after 10pm, whatever urgent tasks were left, we had to go into her folders, fix them, and re-deliver to the HK office. I hardly remember going home before 4am. Often, at 6am, after working through the night, I’d decide whether to go home for a quick shower and fresh clothes or sleep for an hour at the sauna across the street.
Let’s just say, we were busy cleaning her mess.
I left for grad school after taking on double the workload for a full year, and sometimes I wonder — if my bosses had fired her before all the analysts left the firm, would I have stayed one or two more years?
Indeed so. One rotten apple spoils the barrel. That I learned from my own start-up experience in Korea, and here at Gordon Institute.
Back then, I was busy firing as much as hiring. If I could go back in time and correct my mistakes, I would probably not have hired anybody at all. In fact, if one can’t hire “Good Koreans,” then what’s the point of doing business in Korea? The same logic applies everywhere.
At the Gordon Institute, one thing I like the most is that we almost never hire. We try to do things ourselves and avoid outsourcing whenever possible. All of us know that a rotten apple can kill the entire institution’s dream. Being extremely risk-averse in hiring is something I’ve learned from this team, and instead of complaining “loyalty is gone,” I agree with my team that it’s better to just wait for the right person.
At least we can save energy, resources, and money. The opportunity cost of that decision is just time.