Live data from Hacker News

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

semianalysis.substack.com

181–190 of 239 posts

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

#181

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…

I’ve worked at a company Samsung ended up buying. Exactly as you describe: humiliating, alienating, and infantilizing. Never ever again. And I won’t buy Samsung anything if I can help it because I saw how the software is made… it’s appalling in quality. No thanks.

After giving up on Nokia and friends complaining about Moto and Pixel, its brothers in stock Android, I switched to Samsung and felt it was a massive improvement. If I'm refusing to buy Chinese brands and iPhone and stuck to models available in India, what are my choices?

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

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve worked at a company Samsung ended up buying. Exactly as you describe: humiliating, alienating, and infantilizing. Never ever again. And I won’t buy Samsung anything if I can help it because I saw how the software is made… it’s appalling in quality. No thanks.

After giving up on Nokia and friends complaining about Moto and Pixel, its brothers in stock Android, I switched to Samsung and felt it was a massive improvement. If I'm refusing to buy Chinese brands and iPhone and stuck to models available in India, what are my choices?

If any apps work on the Samsung phone, it's because of the app developers' sweat, tears and cursing when they work around the phone-specific bugs that seem to be different for each model. Even Huawei and Xiaomi are better than that.

Source: I work an audio-related mobile app. The audio engine code is littered with comments that read like "On phone X, Y happens and we do Z to work around it". In about 75% of the cases X is some Samsung model. And before you ask, X is the phone it was discovered on so there's no guarantee that the same issues don't occur on other phones but somehow Samsung is the name that always pops up.

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

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very off-topic, but it's one of the most shameful episodes in Western, British, and Australian history. Almost 200 years of racism, persecution, forced assimilation, kidnapping children and putting them into religious institutions, and a lot more - and it was only in 2008 that the Australian govt cared to apologize. Incredible cultures, incredible wealth of lifestyles, ideas, beliefs - almost destroyed in the name of…

Quoted post unavailable.

No post body was provided.

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

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very off-topic, but it's one of the most shameful episodes in Western, British, and Australian history. Almost 200 years of racism, persecution, forced assimilation, kidnapping children and putting them into religious institutions, and a lot more - and it was only in 2008 that the Australian govt cared to apologize. Incredible cultures, incredible wealth of lifestyles, ideas, beliefs - almost destroyed in the name of…

Quoted post unavailable.

> It might be useful to explore the less savoury aspects of Aboriginal culture

Could you please share some links? What I read did not justify the genocide and centuries of abuse, but that's probably because my sources are biased, right?

On another note: it's hard to believe people can just swing by and start throwing insults and making degrading assumptions about others that they have never met and only know from 2 paragraphs of text, but... here we are.

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

#185

I’m sure toxic culture is one of the reasons for Samsung falling behind. But I don’t think that can be a sufficient cause. If toxic culture is the reason for the recent slip up, how has Samsung grown before the slip up when it was arguably even more toxic?

I recently ran into political science term "pockets of efficiency", which is used to explain why some part of a large corrupt organization (originally state, but I don't see why a giant corporation would be different) can work efficiently. I suspect Samsung used to have a lot of these, because they have manufactured a lot of terrible consumer products but still somehow they have had financial success and their components can be found in decent products too.

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

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Dude, your argument is “yeah, but what if the Aboriginal Australians actually deserved to be ground into dust”?? The hell?

My argument is that few people are aware of how barbaric many aspects of Aboriginal culture were. This was not some flawless society to be fawned over and emulated, as modern woke scholars might have you believe, this was a culture rife with violence, rape, torture and cannibalism.

Only last week I read a primary account from a settler describing an Aboriginal practice where a stick would be tipped with a various makeshift hooks, attached with sap and string. A young girl from the tribe would be selected and restrained, and the stick used to penetrate her and render injuries to the point of sterilisation. She would then be used by the tribe's men at will, notably in ceremonies where she would be gang-raped, with the subsequent blood and semen collected to be consumed by the frail and weak to boost their vitality.

And so I put the question to you: If you had the means and will to rescue a child from this fate, by taking her away to be homed and schooled in a facility for this purpose, would you still - in all your cultured wisdom - instead choose to sit idly by and "let nature take its course"?

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

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 enterp…

> 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. A fixed product identity for something that materially changes would best be described as a form of fraud, and it is unfortunate that sort of deception is business as usual in too many places.

> A fixed product identity for something that materially changes

For the most part, these changes are not "material" in the sense of having a significant impact on the overall performance of the product or its suitability for the intended use cases.

It's mostly the tech enthusiast audience that cares about these changes. That audience is highly susceptible to fixating on "objective" criteria or benchmarks that aren't actually relevant to any of their real-world usage. If you exclude the differences that only show up in synthetic benchmarks specifically crafted to reveal subtle differences in SSD performance, the scope of this issue and the potential instances of fraud are vastly smaller.

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

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wa…

I had the same problem with my Samsung fridge and while trying to fix it I stumbled upon the world of third party "samsung defroster clip" that you can find on online stores. Which suggests that the problem is so widespread to spin up a whole new industry for a 5 bucks piece of metal.

And shows that Samsung, despite hearing about this defect from every po’d owner, doesn’t care to change its manufacturing process to resolve the issue. Nope, they just keep on producing defective fridges.

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

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a data point: Sony, Panasonic, LG, etc… all try to have calibrated TVs that match the director’s intent. As in, the colours and contrast are defined in the standards, and they strive to show them accurately. They do cheat a little bit and have a “demo” mode the cranks up the saturation and brightness in store to compensate for the overhead lighting. Samsung takes that cheating to 11 and there is no way to turn it…

You can definitely turn off the "enhance" on the Samsungs...

If the feature is there, it's better hidden than others. Some time ago when I was shopping for a TV, it looked like every brand's demo mode hurt my eyes (Samsung was the worst but not only one). On Sony I was able to find the "Cinema Pro" mode that looks quite nice under a minute. And no, I couldn't figure out how to disable microphone or SambaTV so the Sony will never be connected to Internet.

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

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve worked at a company Samsung ended up buying. Exactly as you describe: humiliating, alienating, and infantilizing. Never ever again. And I won’t buy Samsung anything if I can help it because I saw how the software is made… it’s appalling in quality. No thanks.

After giving up on Nokia and friends complaining about Moto and Pixel, its brothers in stock Android, I switched to Samsung and felt it was a massive improvement. If I'm refusing to buy Chinese brands and iPhone and stuck to models available in India, what are my choices?

Have you heard of Purism or Fairphone? Not sure if they work in India though. Maybe this is an angle for India to enter the market.
Post reply on HN