The Year of 1988: A Stranger in a Familiar Land 1988 was my first year at Samsung. I still remember sitting blankly at my desk, feeling like an island. Having studied public administration, I was suddenly submerged in a sea of trade documents, foreign contracts, and complex business jargon. Doing nothing was more exhausting than being busy; the silence itself felt like a form of professional hazing.
The Errand: An Invitation, Not a Chore Then came the errands—sending faxes, making photocopies. In the late 80s, these were physical tasks that required long walks to distant copy rooms. To my seniors, it was a time-saver. To me, those errands felt like a small invitation into the real world of the department.
Before hitting ‘send’ or ‘print,’ I read. I studied the names on the accounts, the flow of negotiations, and the anatomy of a deal. The copy room became my classroom. When I began asking questions based on those documents, my seniors—perhaps impressed by my initiative—answered with unexpected kindness.
The “Two-Step” Rule of Mentorship A senior colleague once told me:
“If a junior takes one step toward you, take one step toward them. If they take two steps, give them two in return. That is the proper reward for a genuine seeker.”
This philosophy of “reciprocal growth” stayed with me for nearly four decades.
AI: The Modern Senior Colleague Today, as I navigate the digital world, I find that working with AI feels strangely nostalgic. It reminds me of those senior managers in 1988.
AI does not volunteer wisdom. If you sit passively, it remains a silent black box. But when you approach it with specific curiosity and a “prepared mind,” it opens up. Just as my seniors responded to my initiative, AI responds to the quality of the prompt.
The copy room at Samsung and the modern Large Language Model (LLM) are fundamentally the same: Knowledge only reveals itself to those who actively seek it.
Closing Thoughts Samsung’s true legacy isn’t just hardware; it was a culture that transformed passive employees into active inquisitors. Technology changes at lightning speed, but the principle of the “active seeker” remains the only constant in the age of AI.