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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

#81

Post by pm90 »

bob1029 wrote: post #26
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…

I used to work at SAS and can corroborate the "top down" nature of the organization. "We just need to copy Korea" is not a good narrative if you want to keep high-quality American engineers interested in a long term career path with you. I lasted barely 3 years before the lack of volition got to me. Went to contract for a video game developer afterwards (huge pay cut) just to clear my mind and reconnect with reality.

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

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

#82

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#83

Post by ineedasername »

userbinator wrote: post #56
kurthr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I believe the Classical Greek era is usually considered the roots of Western Civilization, so roughly 2500 years.

But if you go back to the Early Greek era of the Minoan civilizations then it is about 5000 years.

It's all slow, gradual accretion though, so you can draw the line in lots of places.

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

#85

Post by ineedasername »

spaniard89277 wrote: post #12
jitl wrote: post #10

Even in the Bay Area, the Samsung culture is extremely top-down and overwork focused. I’ve heard too many stories of whole departments needing to throw everything out and build something totally different at the very end of year-long projects because on an executive’s whims. On the other hand their cafeteria food is supposedly very good (especially if you like Korean and Japanese).

You work for a shitty boss but the cafetería is nice!

Yep, food is nice where I work too, but it's not what keeps me around. A great workplace except for bad/no food is worth brown bagging it, going off-site to a random franchise, ordering delivery, etc.

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

#86

Post by ineedasername »

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.

Semiconductors is a space where mistakes take a while to bit you.

Although as we've seen with AMD, it is possible to come back from them. With the right course correction, Samsung is diversified enough to tough things out. Didn't they have a massive turnaround sometime in the 80's too?

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

#87

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

astrange wrote: post #58
cxr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sessi…

I don't know the lineage of this particular system. But I have worked on janky systems in the past. In one instance, an intern built a language during a summer project. It was an expedient solution to a problem that a team was having, so they began using it. Then they put work into making it faster and integrating it to other systems. Eventually they wrapped a service interface around it and reexported it to other teams. But there were serious semantic problems with the language as a concept and with the technical implementation of the language. Once it had users who came to depend on its bugs, it became very hard to fix, and the whole mess became more convoluted as people tried to build sensible extensions on the rotten core.

It's finally gotten to the point where there is the action potential to fix it in my case, but for a lot of systems with a complex and expedient lineage like this, it never gets there. So garden well, I guess, is the takeaway.

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

#88

Post by e2e8 »

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?

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

#89

Post by [deleted] »

krisoft wrote: post #52
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…

> 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…

[deleted]

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

#90

Post by bob1029 »

pm90 wrote: post #81
bob1029 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work at SAS and can corroborate the "top down" nature of the organization. "We just need to copy Korea" is not a good narrative if you want to keep high-quality American engineers interested in a long term career path with you. I lasted barely 3 years before the lack of volition got to me. Went to contract for a video game developer afterwards (huge pay cut) just to clear my mind and reconnect with reality.

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 is like working inside a starship. Genuinely, it feels incredible to walk into that room and see billions of dollars of the most sophisticated hardware on earth all working together in relentless harmony. Simply sitting in the engineering offices and seeing the real-time logs scrolling gives you a sense for the monstrosity just a few firewalls over. The techniques & hardware are exotic by default everywhere. It almost never gets old.

But, just like all good things this experience fades with time. I wanted to build new amazing things and being one mere engineering pleb inside this gigantic organization makes that a difficult gambit. Perhaps if the organization was willing to explore more experimental / "internal startup" style work, I could be compelled to review future opportunities. There were plenty of problems to solve but getting a design meeting or a piece of IT infra to run something on were nearly impossible during my time there.

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