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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

#51

Post by dylan522p »

VHRanger wrote: post #40
httpz wrote: post #38

While Samsung's culture could be considered toxic, blaming their recent issues on culture would need more backing. Samsung has seen good growth and has been one of the top semiconductor companies for the past decade. It's not like their culture drastically changed in the recent years. It's the same "toxic" culture that got them here and blaming the culture for their recent hiccups just seem like a sensationalist writ…

Intel had toxic culture since Brian Krzanich took the lead in 2013, around the switch to 14nm. His mistakes weren't seen clearly until almost 2019, when it became obvious 10nm was a disaster, and 14nm++++++++ was their only workable product. We're still seeing it today as Intel has 250w TDP products competing with AMD 140w TDP products. Semiconductors is a space where mistakes take a while to bit you.

Most folks blame the culture shift on Paul actually. He was the cause of it all. Brian being a horrible symptom of what he created, and Brian definitely propagated it far.

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

#52

Post by krisoft »

jason-phillips wrote: post #13
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #7

It has been clear to us for years that Samsung has baaad internal communication issues. When you're at the forefront of technology, you're bound to trip up as bets and explorations don't pan out. Humans being humans, mistakes will happen, but they must be recognized to be corrected and prevented in the future. It's clear that Samsung culture prevents people from admitting mistakes, which of course only leads to more…

> 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…

> Communication issues? Not admitting mistakes? Please... enlighten me. Tell me how we worked.

I’m not sure if this is supposed to be a satire or not. The forcefull and quite frankly agressive way you denied ever having a problem with admiting mistakes makes me think that there might be something to this allegiation.

Every company I ever worked with had occasional issues with communication, and even rarer issues with admiting mistakes. Large companies are also very uneven. Maybe the parts you worked in were great while the parts these other folks talk about were not so great? Either way swearing and writing in an unprofessional way is not the right way to go if you want to convince people about what you are saying.

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

#53

Post by jason-phillips »

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…

I hear what you're saying and I totally get your frustration. Many of my co-workers also shared similar frustrations.

In a massive operation running 24/7 that never stops to catch its breath, it's chaotic. There are certain techniques I adopted that helped me be successful there, but I definitely understand your frustrations.

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

#54

Post by jason-phillips »

dylan522p wrote: post #48
jason-phillips wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a software engineer and did not work in LSI, so I cannot comment on that in a way which would be most informative, but I will try from a different perspective. An accurate answer would be incredibly complex, obviously. Samsung, from my perspective, mostly focuses on this year's production and developing next year's model. Yes, there is work done planning for new fabs and global supply chain systems, but 98% of…

Good thing the article even says Samsung is a well oiled machine in many areas outside of the ones with issues discussed in this article. Almost like large companies can have varrying success and culture.

Absolutely. It's a very complicated subject.

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

#55

Post by dylan522p »

mschuster91 wrote: post #4

Samsung losing out to Mediatek is pretty hilarious on its own, given that Mediatek was once known for ultra-cheap, piss poor performing crap [1] and copyright issues [2]. Back some years when I had one of the first CAT rugged phones, which was based on Mediatek, I happened to look at a kernel code dump from them on Github and had I known back then what I know today I could have easily netted me some decent payout for…

MediaTek is killing it. They hired a lot of people from TSMC's process development kit teams which vastly improved their capabilities in integrating IP. They were the first to develop AV1 decode, their modems are pretty decent. They even have leading teams in wifi.

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

#56

Post by userbinator »

kurthr wrote: post #28
jason-phillips wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Samsung culture is extremely top-down and overwork focused Allow me to add some context. The Samsung culture could be described as militaristic, with accompanying rank and ceremony, therefore I can see how you identified the top-down chain-of-command relationships. [edited]

This (top level story) is a reflection of _SAMSUNG_ (particularly SEC-SLSI) culture. There are certainly elements of Korean culture, but it is for example VERY different from LG culture. I don't understand why there's a reason to jump to 5000 years of history for criticism of a part of a company that's having problems... apparently with truthful internal communication. I think most people would accept that Intel has/…

but that doesn't directly reflect on 5000 years of western culture.

There hasn't even been 5000 years of western culture...

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

#57

Post by [deleted] »

jason-phillips wrote: post #32
lostlogin wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has shot right over my head, but as a google suggests the place is well regarded, I’m going to say ‘with’…

We worked hard and we worked well together. We did whatever it took to succeed. Sometimes that meant working 20 hours days on some global supply chain project. I worked with a lot of really great people and a lot of terrific engineers. Best users I've ever had.

[deleted]

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

#58

Post by astrange »

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…

> - tons of janky-ass software from S1, like "Simax", which is written in a proprietary Lisp-ish(?) that uses ActiveX to run in an IE9-10-11 window and that re-invents window management and basic form controls, was never fully localized into English (so you're clicking buttons with terse messages in Hangul that still don't make sense even if understanding the language is no problem), and times out and ends your session if you look away from it for 10 minutes

I've always been surprised when I see things like this, from websites with all the controls reinvented to MDI-based Windows apps. Where do they get the _time_ and designer resources to waste all their time doing this?

Maybe I just learned programming in a different way, since one of the first things I learned was "laziness is a virtue".

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

#59

Post by noirbot »

jason-phillips wrote: post #32
lostlogin wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has shot right over my head, but as a google suggests the place is well regarded, I’m going to say ‘with’…

We worked hard and we worked well together. We did whatever it took to succeed. Sometimes that meant working 20 hours days on some global supply chain project. I worked with a lot of really great people and a lot of terrific engineers. Best users I've ever had.

Given what I know about Samsung in Austin, I'm pretty sure you're not paying nearly enough to justify anything close to 20 hours a day. Just because you work with "great people" on "a global supply chain project" doesn't sound like anywhere I'd ever want to work, and it seems like the attrition numbers I've seen agree with that.

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

#60

Post by rhinoceraptor »

mwint wrote: post #39
rootusrootus wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Samsung fridge. It singlehandedly convinced me never to buy another Samsung appliance. The reputation is legit.

What kind of issues are you seeing? Naively, a fridge seems like such a simple device that I'm curious how they screwed it up so badly that it's developed an anti-following.

I have a samsung fridge, the ice maker does not work. I've tried a lot of things to get it to work, none of which worked. This is not an isolated issue, if you read online it's just accepted that the ice maker will at some point cease the function and will never work again.
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