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Samsung Electronics cultural issues causing disasters in foundry, LSI, DRAM

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Re: Samsung Electronics cultural issues causing disasters in foundry, LSI, DRAM

#121

Post by ksec »

I have written something similar on Semiwiki in 2016 arguing against Daniel how Samsung had problems. And my bet in ~2018 that Samsung wont be able to compete against TSMC turns out to be completely right. It wasn't because I had any technical or insider information. It was only because I knew Samsung, the company, its character and its culture far too well. Unfortunately Google and the internal search function doesn't show up and I can't quote myself back.

But the problem isn't internal communication though. It was Samsung Foundry's "sales and marketing" over promise and under deliver. To give them credit they were throwing insane amount of money trying to compete with TSMC. People on HN / Reddit / SemiWiki or whatever forum keep asking why TSMC isn't raising price. Well you should thank Samsung for that. ( But they are also the ones who HN / Reddit / Internet accuse them of NAND / DRAM cartel, guess where those profits went? ).

I also think the DRAM and NAND concern are overblown. It has been well known Samsung took the bet to move forward with EUV earlier than other industry vendors aka SK Hynix and Micron. It is not like Micron is going to go straight to EUV and enjoy the advantage over Samsung. Samsung are also not moving forward with EUV on their NAND product. The only concern would be if Micron decided to increase their capacity and build new Fabs. Otherwise, just like any other commodities ( Corn, Steel, Lumber, whatever ), they are Supply and Demand limited. So from a technical perspective they may be losing, from a business perspective things are still within control. In case anyone wants to compare this to Intel's 14nm, the two are extremely different and their market operate in a completely different manner. Hence why TSMC's founder and ex-CEO Morris Cheung famously said he will never enter NAND and DRAM market.

Re: Samsung Electronics cultural issues causing disasters in foundry, LSI, DRAM

#122

Post by moistly »

lizardactivist wrote: post #29
chevman wrote: post #5

There is a Facebook group with 100k+ members dedicated solely to the poor engineering, design, and fabrication of their refrigerators - [SAMSUNG REFRIGERATOR RECALL U.S.A. NOW] - https://www.facebook.com/groups/1520337151601316/

99% of which most likely don't even own one, and also partake in the other peculiar groups spreading the notion that dirty, foreign brands are dangerous and unreliable.

I own Samsung kitchen appliances. I will never make that mistake again.

Fridge: the coils in the fridge compartment freeze up, which is expected because, hey, thermodynamic laws. Hence the heater coil to melt the ice. Which would be fine, except that the little metal tab that is supposed to conduct heat into the drainpipe is too short, so the ice doesn’t melt, thus leaving the drain all plugged up, causing the ice water to overflow, eventually spilling out the fridge door and destroying your cork floor.

Dishwasher: fffuuuuuu… P.o.S. Piss-poor job of cleaning. Does a shit job of filtering food particles out, so they end up in the rinse water, and so end up crudding-up any contact points between dishes. I end up washing “clean” dishes by hand Every. GD. Time.

Oven: self-clean feature cooks the convection fan to death. Should be called self-destructive, not self-cleaning. Thankfully, the induction stovetop continues to work… for the time being.

I will never, ever purchase a Samsung product again.

Re: Samsung Electronics cultural issues causing disasters in foundry, LSI, DRAM

#123

Post by grumpyprole »

pm90 wrote: post #80
pixelatedindex wrote: post #9

The work culture at Samsung being toxic is something I have some familiarity with, as I used to know some folks who were working there. It’s a very top down company and the lower tier folks aren’t necessarily encouraged to question things, but more of a “do as I say”. The legislation aspect is really concerning but not surprising as chaebols have an iron grip on the Korean economy. Tough times for Samsung, but in a l…

> It’s a very top down company and the lower tier folks aren’t necessarily encouraged to question things, but more of a “do as I say”. Asking as someone who has 0 experience with either, but this is how I’ve heard Apple works too? If so, why is Apple doing well while Samsung is not?

Apple has had significant hardware missteps too, such as the butterfly keyboard. Presumably some executive ordered "make it thinner" and did not accept any pushback!

Re: Samsung Electronics cultural issues causing disasters in foundry, LSI, DRAM

#124

Post by seb1204 »

PolygonSheep wrote: post #77
lizardactivist wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99% of which most likely don't even own one, and also partake in the other peculiar groups spreading the notion that dirty, foreign brands are dangerous and unreliable.

How can you tell if they own one or not and, if so, what their motives are? Genuinely curious here how you were not only able to verify Samsung refrigerator ownership status for 100K people on Facebook but also that 99% of them were slandering Samsung's good name purely for racist/nationalist reasons.

With all the fake reviews and flame wars of a few in current times I see this point as very valid and would at least take everything stated or claimed on such forum with a big grain of salt. Small vocal and organised groups are able to give the impression of a minor issue to be major. In top of that are many people who jump onto such topics. A good example is the recent vote for a vaccination mandate in Germany. Representative polls show a clean pro law attitude in the population yet the politicians have been flooded by anti vaccination 'activists' on all channels.

Re: Samsung Electronics cultural issues causing disasters in foundry, LSI, DRAM

#125

Post by moistly »

edgyquant wrote: post #91
userbinator wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but that doesn't directly reflect on 5000 years of western culture. There hasn't even been 5000 years of western culture...

There hasn’t been 5000 years of any culture tbh

Australian aborigines have over 50000 years of culture behind them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Indigenous_Australi...

Re: Samsung Electronics cultural issues causing disasters in foundry, LSI, DRAM

#126

Post by wtallis »

e2e8 wrote: post #88
RachelF wrote: post #79

Avoid their SSD's now too. With the the 980 PRO, Samsung has just changed the components but kept the same model number. Samsung have removed the Elpis controller from the 980 PRO SSD and replaced it with an unknown one. Take a look here for what's changed on the 980 PRO: https://i.imgur.com/YJShyLR.jpg

Several (most?) brands do this. Do you know of a brand that definitely does not?

It's an almost universal practice now for consumer SSDs. Intel's consumer SSD product line was the last one where I was pretty sure they weren't doing this.

Companies want to build product identities that can last for more than a year, but also want to be able to react to changes in the supply chain. Fixed BOM guarantees really aren't viable in this product segment, but you can often get such assurances in the enterprise, industrial or client OEM SSD markets.

Most of the time, swapping in a newer generation of NAND flash memory is a net improvement for a drive's performance and power efficiency, but when the newer generation increases the capacity per die there will almost always be a downside in some corner-case benchmark. Those swaps aren't worth worrying about, unless you're trying to abuse a consumer SSD for the kind of workloads enterprise SSDs are designed for.

Likewise, controller swaps are usually nothing to worry about—aside from some instances where performance downgrades stemming from NAND downgrades have been misattributed to a controller change, the most harmful examples in recent years have been when the amount of DRAM is reduced from the usual 1GB per 1TB ratio down to something more like 256MB per 1TB. The consequences of such a change are easy to demonstrate with synthetic benchmarks, but almost impossible to measure let alone notice for real-world usage patterns. Other times, a controller "downgrade" simply swaps in a cheaper controller that is still more than fast enough for the NAND to be the bottleneck.

It would be nice if we could universally get more detailed spec sheets and a guarantee of a new consumer-visible model number when the major components change, but the consumer SSD market has proven too price-sensitive and the technology and supply chain too dynamic for that to be a competitive business strategy. For the most part, you do get what you pay for, except that a few of the top brands also command an undeserved price premium.

Re: Samsung Electronics cultural issues causing disasters in foundry, LSI, DRAM

#127

Post by patrickk »

cxr wrote: post #34
jason-phillips wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has been clear to us for years that Samsung has baaad internal communication issues... It's clear that Samsung culture prevents people from admitting mistakes... Jesus H. Christ on a fucking hockey stick. I doubt I've ever read such a breathless hit piece with so many unsupported assertions summarily presented as fact. I worked for Samsung Semiconductor for ten years and left as a software engineering manager. N…

NB: Jason is referring to "S2" aka Samsung Austin Semiconductor. I'm familiar with Jason's previous comments in threads about Samsung, but outside of that I don't know him (even, say, by name). This makes sense, given the separation between the work of an SE manager and the actual day-to-day operations that are involved with getting wafers fabbed and shipped. I worked at SAS in lots of different areas—Metro, Photo, a…

Your experience closely matches what I’ve seen in another Korean company, in a different industry. Tedious manual reports (for cover your ass reasons), PowerPoint used for everything, crap internal tools because of a strong ‘not invented here’ culture, mid 40s to 50s guys of mediocre talent but often inflated egos, and so on. Thanks for typing it up.

Re: Samsung Electronics cultural issues causing disasters in foundry, LSI, DRAM

#128

Post by mijamo »

creakingstairs wrote: post #103
kmeisthax wrote: post #8

>In other cases, Samsung LSI executives even seem to be blaming the change in Korean labor laws. Rather than hitting crunch time and having engineers do absurd hours, employees are supposed to be limited to 52 hours a week, maximum. While we hear this is not being adhered to fully, it has cut down on the overworking of many Samsung engineers. The pushback from Samsung is so strong that there is even legislation being…

This is a bit of a hot topic in Korea. I don’t agree with abolishing the 52 hour law but what the opposition is proposing is being able to crunch for a period and take the days off later which is more reasonable than 996 all the times.

For me 52 hours already sound like a crunch. Regular schedule should be more like 35-40.

Re: Samsung Electronics cultural issues causing disasters in foundry, LSI, DRAM

#129

Post by throwaway201025 »

As a Samsung employee, I've been continuously being disappointed by the company culture. Recently, the company introduced a new policy that prohibits phone usage while walking inside the company building, due to "safety concerns". Samsung employed ~20 safety guards to supervise and monitor phone usage throughout the campus and if you're caught by them, you will be warned. If you are caughted twice, your team lead will be notifed of the incident. If you are caught three times or more, you are required to watch an educational video and submit a written apology. I could not believe such a policy could emerge from the very company that makes smartphones. Samsung even had a TV commercial highlighting phone usage on the road!

Under such a restrictive and top-down culture like this, I believe nothing interesting can emerge. I can only expect the downfall of the company. Nowadays I'm trying to work as little as possible and desperately searching for other jobs.

Re: Samsung Electronics cultural issues causing disasters in foundry, LSI, DRAM

#130

Post by xattt »

throwaway201025 wrote: post #129

As a Samsung employee, I've been continuously being disappointed by the company culture. Recently, the company introduced a new policy that prohibits phone usage while walking inside the company building, due to "safety concerns". Samsung employed ~20 safety guards to supervise and monitor phone usage throughout the campus and if you're caught by them, you will be warned. If you are caughted twice, your team lead wil…

> … submit a written apology.

What the hell kind of mentality is this?

I’ve been in a workplace that cracked down on phone use. Everyone was pissed. I considered carrying a small block of wood painted black in act of subversion.

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