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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

#211

Post by xyzzy21 »

throwtemp wrote: post #199
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…

A Samsung employee in one of the overseas research centers. I'm not sure about this at all. The most that is restricted is one cannot shoot pictures - either camera lens gets a cover (paper sticker) or the camera is blocked using MDM. This is practice in many companies and I hear at Apple it is even more restrictive at certain places. Not able to use phone I never heard or experienced. We regularly test out apps in p…

Espionage is a very real and major risk in competitive businesses such as leading edge semiconductor or companies like Apple.

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

#212

Post by xyzzy21 »

A non-trivial factor in this:

• Samsung: conglomerate Chaebol that includes of 50% revenue from shipping and ship-building, and then insurance, finance, travel, consume appliances, and finally smart phones and semiconductors which are minority revenue source

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

https://www.slashgear.com/831286/10-rare-samsung-products-yo...

• TSMC: single product company - foundry only

• Apple: "single product" company (compared to Samsung)

There is the Asian cultural side of it even for TSMC so it has many of the same top-down management issues. But the key difference is focus.

Taiwanese businesses are pretty much never Chaebol/Kieretsu-like - it's far more atomized, independent and interdependent, and focused on a narrow(er) market. There's also more "bottom-up" in terms of origins and this remains to some extent in many of them

(I work for a Taiwanese firm that bought my most recent company - and we work with direct competitors when it makes sense market-wise - that pretty much never happens with between Chaebols/Kieretsus. We also have a pretty selective market niche).

Compare this to Japanese kieretsu companies such as NEC - which is similarly broad but you also don't think of them anymore when it comes to semiconductor and especially DRAM.

Chaebols and Kieretsus are very similar in that they are conglomerates so they are broad with many unrelated businesses and not very agile especially since decision making is top-down. A key difference is Kieretsus are more likely to be top-down BEFORE and AFTER bottom-up consensus cycle - though that's a predilection based on organizational structure.

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

The example the article gives of Hynix proves that it's possible to be a Chaebol yet give enough free rein to business units to make good decisions. But it can work against as well.

Another factor with Samsung: their shipping business has taken major hits in the last 5-7 years. Which given that is 50% of their revenue, probably still diverts proper executive attentions away from semiconductor and cell phones resulting is fiat decisions not based on good data.

https://thediplomat.com/2016/06/south-koreas-shipbuilding-cr...

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

#213

Post by xyzzy21 »

bob1029 wrote: post #90
pm90 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you wrote about your experience, I (at least) would certainly read it.

Honestly, the overall experience wasn't that bad. I did get a lot out of those 3 years. To put things into perspective, not many people ever get to set foot inside of a leading-edge fab. I've been inside multiple , both in America & Korea. I've been able to sit in meetings with engineers across the entire spectrum and participate in multi-national system upgrade efforts. The best way to describe the whole experience…

This is where being a vendor (at a distance) tends to be as close as you want to get to some customers and their culture. Being a vendor is probably the best way to achieve that kind of "influence/innovation" in a company like Samsung.

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

#214

Post by PolygonSheep »

seb1204 wrote: post #124
PolygonSheep wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Repr…

Samsung makes enough refrigerators that if you told me 100,000+ people were pissed off enough about theirs to complain on Facebook I really wouldn't doubt it. Also what would you gain from complaining on Facebook? Are these people being paid by LG to trash Samsung products? Does Samsung pay people to trash LG refrigerators on Facebook in return?

Unless there's some kind of evidence to the contrary, I would just assume these people are unhappy with the refrigerator they bought.

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

#215

Post by selimthegrim »

BlueMatter5 wrote: post #196
moistly wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell me you know nothing of colonization without telling me you know nothing about colonization. Massive massacres of unarmed people across the entire expanse of the empire, raping of children ‘round the world, deliberately slow torture as punishment before death, the whole gamut of sick and depraved actions, every bit as cruel and barbaric as anything you can claim against the aborigine, carried out by your “rescuin…

Quoted post unavailable.

White is a ethnicity now?

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

#216

Post by creakingstairs »

oriolid wrote: post #185
creakingstairs wrote: post #104

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 compon…

Interesting. I’ll look that up! My theory is that toxic culture worked when Samsung was mostly playing catch up (before 2010 ish) to existing products/ technologies. But now they need to innovate, and toxicity is crushing and driving away creative people.

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

#217

Post by creakingstairs »

mijamo wrote: post #128
creakingstairs wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree I do around 35… and can’t imagine doing 52 every week. This is probably why young Koreans call their country hell,“Hell-Choseon”.

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

#218

Post by thr0w__4w4y »

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…

I know this anecdotal and related but directly on-point, but here I go anyway...

About 12 years ago, I consulted, on-site, for about a year with a Japanese company with a very very very untrusting corporate culture. (I was consulting on electronics and firmware.)

Every USB port on every computer was super-glued shut (yes, I know...) And literally 100% of the internet traffic went over a T1 (for those of you just out of diapers, that is a 1.5 Mbps line) to Tokyo and back. Corporate saw every bit of internet activity.

This company, when I talked with the VP of engineering, told me "we have flexible work hours; you can take lunch 12:00-12:30, or 12:30-1:00pm. As long as you're back at your desk within 5 minutes of lunch end, we will not be required to make note of it"

Man that was a horrible gig. But I made enough $$$ to overcome the agony. I have so many consulting stories... my daughters keep telling me I need to write a book.

"When Bill and Michelle ruined a conference room table"

"When Jayanthi [no I'm not changing her name] had a meltdown and threw a sharp object at the head of a subordinate"

"When Tom impregnated his secretary during his divorce, and was basically forced to marry her the day after his divorce was finalized"

"When I put a choke hold on a corporate security guard who incorrectly identified a computer peripheral in my backpack as confidential company property"

I think the 100 people who bought the book would really enjoy it

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

#219

Post by tomtung »

thr0w__4w4y wrote: post #218
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…

I know this anecdotal and related but directly on-point, but here I go anyway... About 12 years ago, I consulted, on-site, for about a year with a Japanese company with a very very very untrusting corporate culture. (I was consulting on electronics and firmware.) Every USB port on every computer was super-glued shut (yes, I know...) And literally 100% of the internet traffic went over a T1 (for those of you just out…

That would probably be a popular book given how well A.G. Martinez's Chaos Monkeys has sold.

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

#220

Post by oriolid »

creakingstairs wrote: post #216
oriolid wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 compon…

Interesting. I’ll look that up! My theory is that toxic culture worked when Samsung was mostly playing catch up (before 2010 ish) to existing products/ technologies. But now they need to innovate, and toxicity is crushing and driving away creative people.

Now that you mentioned early 2000s, at the time I was shopping for a LCD display. At the time Eizo was the go-to brand for good screens, and they used Samsung panels. As a poor just graduated programmer I bought the Samsung with the same VA panel that Eizo used, and it was awful in ways I would never expect a display could be.
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