Why Korean companies are forcing their workers to go by English names - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/why-korean-companies-are-forcing-their-workers-to-go-by-english-names/2017/05/12/6a9298fc-3590-11e7-b412-62beef8121f7_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_skorea-1pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.910055cd40c5 <comment><USER2> >Companies in English education, tourism, trade or other globally focused industries typically have English nickname policies. They want to accommodate foreign business partners who can't decipher between Lee Ji-yeong and Lee Ji- yeon. "They're thoughtful people," Hong said. "It's to be kind to foreign people."

I lived in Korea for about a year and a half and Korean names were near impossible for me to remember en mass. That's because all Koreans have 3 syllable names, and they all use the same few syllables. To make it worse, many of these syllables sound alike!!!

When you have to remember the names of 20 or more people and they're like

"Kim-Yeon Lee" "Kim-Yeung Ye" "Kim-Hyun Ji"

I don't know how a non-Korean can keep up with that for any length of time when it involves a large number of Koreans. Many Koreans who speak English have English names they choose for interacting with foreigners and none of them seem to mind. It is very considerate of them because having to remember their Korean names can be painful for non-Koreans. I imagine it's also because my difficulty with Korean names was not something unique. It's probably something they noticed among many foreigners and compensated for.

<comment><USER3> I feel like this will be an issue in the US in the future with the popularity of names like Aiden, Brayden, Jayden etc. over the last few years.

<comment><USER4> You forgot Okayden

<comment><USER5> And Fayden, get fayded yo

<comment><USER6> Mayden China

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> First, not all western names are "English", come on.

Things are complicated:

\- A good chunk of Koreans are Christians (either Catholics or American style Protestants), and get a biblical name at baptism.

\- Many employees at those high-profile companies have studied or even lived abroad, and might have used another first name there. Some dual-citizens (which is a fairly new thing in Korea) even have different first names on their respective passports.

\- There are many reasons behind using nicknames for correspondence with foreigners, it's not necessarily to make your company look more global than it really is (even though yes, that's also one reason). It isn't specific to Korean, but a lot of "first names" (typically the middle and last character) are not clearly associated to a gender, especially to foreign ears. Also, the romanization of Korean is a pretty confusing mess overall, unlike with Japanese for instance. There have been several systems in use, and names show the biggest inconsistencies (for example Lee, I, Yi, Ri, Rhee are all the same family name). Does "Yuna" mean Yeona like the skater or Yoona like the K-pop singer? You cannot know.

Now back to the policy discussed, I left Korea before it got introduced at my company, but I always found stupid to _force_ people to pick another name. Lots of Koreans really don't want to. I called my VP by his real first name and he was fine with it.

<comment><USER8> >First, not all western names are "English", come on.

Indeed. But the thing that raised by hackles was:

>"Using an English name even though you are not American is a little bit strange. Your name is from your own mother and father."

America is not where English comes from. I mean I understand that America's influence on South Korea probably can't be overstated.

But that sentence just pushed a button I wasn't aware I had, not least because while I'm British, I'm not English.

<comment><USER9> Apologies but I'm trying to learn the hierarchy so I stop insulting my British colleagues.

Being British but not English would make you... Welsh or Irish?

Edit: no! Welsh or Scottish. Ireland is part of the British Isles but but Great Britain.

<comment><USER10> > Being British but not English would make you...

Or an ethnic minority, for example Mo Farah or Archie Panjabi. As far as I can make out, minorities preferred "British-x" (e.g. British-Asian) as a label rather than English even if they were born in England, although there have been calls for that to change [1].

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jun/23/englis...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jun/23/english- british-national-identity-ethnic-minorities)

<comment><USER9> Interesting. I never even considered those as ethnicities. Just places you live and what your demonym is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's an interesting discussion by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers of how Korean culture of this type may have caused the crash of Korean Air Flight 801.

>Korean Air had more plane crashes than almost any other airline in the world for a period at the end of the 1990s. When we think of airline crashes, we think, Oh, they must have had old planes. They must have had badly trained pilots. No. What they were struggling with was a cultural legacy, that Korean culture is hierarchical. You are obliged to be deferential toward your elders and superiors in a way that would be unimaginable in the U.S.

>But Boeing and Airbus design modern, complex airplanes to be flown by two equals. That works beautifully in low-power-distance cultures [like the U.S., where hierarchies aren't as relevant]. But in cultures that have high power distance, it's very difficult.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/07/malcolm...](https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/07/malcolm- gladwells-cockpit-culture-theory-everywhere-after-asiana-crash/313442/)

<comment><USER12> The Western aviation culture also had to learn the lesson the hard way. The lessening of (perceived or actual) power differentials and the ability to raise concerns at any time are a part of the new communication paradigm developed in the 70s and 80s after a few disastrous accidents, now commonly known as Crew resource management [1]. Captain Haynes had the following to say after the United Airlines Flight 232 accident: [2]

 _...the preparation that paid off for the crew was something ... called Cockpit Resource Management.... Up until 1980, we kind of worked on the concept that the captain was THE authority on the aircraft. What he said, goes. And we lost a few airplanes because of that. Sometimes the captain isn 't as smart as we thought he was. And we would listen to him, and do what he said, and we wouldn't know what he's talking about._

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232)

<comment><USER13> As an aside, I find that while many (all, I'd hope!) professional pilots recognise their own limits and the necessity of modern CRM, many non-pilots still like to hold on to a romantic notion that on a flight, the captain is as god, even ascribing the captain powers well beyond the job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is _one_ Korean company that does it.</comment>


Microsoft disabled Dropbox integration in Office 365 - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.technet.com/b/office_online_support_blog/archive/2015/12/16/office-online-allow-people-to-use-third-party-hosted-storage-devices.aspx <comment><AUTHOR> I don't really understand their bug description but the result is:

Current Status: The Office Apps team has temporarily disabled Dropbox integration in the service.

Looks like they really messed something up and now have huge problems fixing it.

</comment><comment><USER2> Do I hear "OneDrive"? Or was that "DR-DOS"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't mix up OneDrive and OneDrive for Business, those are two completely different products that don't have anything in common ;-P</comment></comment>


Reality Show Fame Is More Lucrative Than an Oxford or Cambridge Education - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-26/love-island-fame-is-more-lucrative-than-an-oxbridge-education <comment><AUTHOR> I know: "Winning in a lottery is more lucrative than an education."

But we are not feeding the next generation around the clock the illusion that they can realistically win the lottery, like with the reality shows.

</comment><comment><USER2> But there is a lot less of people on "Love Island" (72 people total in 4 years) than Oxford or Cambridge graduates; so its not particularly a viable route to success.

There are probably > 208 lottery winners in the same period; no one would suggest that as a lucrative approach to life.

> Frontier also calculated how contestants can best extend their stays: being > part of the "original crew" increases your chances of staying for the > duration over those who join the cast later.

Also being on 44 episodes of one of the country's most popular TV shows; you'd hope would bring some measure of success...

</comment><comment><USER3> What I've realized over the past couple years while working on my own projects is that I always could use a 'platform'. I wrote a new article? Would be nice to get it to an audience. A social media campaign? Would be nice to get followers. An app? Would be great to have users. And for all the negativity you can aim at reality show celebs, that's what they have to offer. An audience.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think one of the issues with Best In Class education is that students peak too early.

What happens to the top students? They get sucked up by the biggest firms that need smart people to figure out answers to problems.

They make 100k-250k out of college... and thats it.

At those wages, why bother inventing an app/business, you are already working 60 hours a week at your well compensated job.

<comment><USER5> Do we need another app or another disruption to a market without alternatives, driving more disdain for tech and liberalism in America? Not everyone needs to be an entrepreneur. The best that come out of school and get high paying jobs will also continue to get raises and make more money just like everyone else. No industry starts you off at your end game salary at 25. Engineering, business, finance/accoubtibg, law etc will all have people making more and more money throughout their career as they gain experience, specialize, and change positions and ranks.

<comment><USER4> If you are describing it as 'another app', you are right, those people are better off as quarter mil earners.

I would guess these types are more ambitious as that. Those that make a serious difference in the world cant do it as a quarter mil a year earner.

Fair point on later career experience, but I feel like either situation will teach you immense knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the conclusion is clear. We need to create a large framework of state- sponsored reality shows where every person has a chance at better life.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think it needs to be to lure more and more participants in it, no ?

</comment><comment><USER8> This article doesn't qualify as news.

</comment><comment><USER9> This trash is not worth hacker news.

What about Kim Kardashian?

"Sucking Black Rapper's Dick Is More Lucrative Than an Oxford or Cambridge Education"</comment>


Ask HN: How do you maintain versioning of your resume? - <AUTHOR> How do you maintain old copies of your resume and new copies? I have SO many files called "resume (date)" on my computer, and everytime I need to send it out, I have to remove the date so that the file looks good and then these just pile up. HELP! <comment><USER2> I'm not even sure why you'd bother versioning.

In fairness, I do too, but I keep a dated set in a subfolder (`archived` if it matters) and when I edit I start with `current.doc` (unfortunately Word is still the preferred format outside of... anyone with any sense), save it as a dated version.

This way I only ever care about `current.doc` (and its exports into real formats) but can still reference stuff later.

That said, I've also experimented with simple resume data formats (primarily JSON and annotated Markdown) that got transformed into doc and real formats, and kept that in a normal repo. It was better, but since it was a homegrown format, annoying in the long run. I'll be revisiting it.

The nice thing about transforming a custom resume is that I was able to (more or less) automatically re-target it depending on the type of position I was submitting it for. That was only semi-automated, but spoke of some promising ideas.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point - I'm not really sure why I save previous versions as I'll probably never need them again, but I feel comfortable when I do for some reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Curious - why would you need to keep old copies of your resume around? Are you sending different versions to different employers?

If that's the case, create a base resume, then save a copy with the name of the targeted company and the date.

Why would FooCorp be bothered if your resume was filenamed "kreeWall-FooCorp- June2018.pdf"? It actually shows you took time to craft a document for them and aren't just spraying out resumes to every company that's receiving them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, different employers, or targeted for different jobs/situations. That's a solid point though - they probably won't care that it's named after them.

<comment><USER3> Just be diligent about checking names and dates before sending out files.

I used to also put things like that in the PDF metadata, then had a few copies go out with other employers' names. Nobody caught on, but you never know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I got sufficiently annoyed with this to create a tool that will render my resume as HTML based on a few JSON files, and another tool that will print the HTML into a print-friendly PDF. Then I just keep the JSON in a separate Git repository. Problem solved.</comment>