Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

semianalysis.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 239 posts

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

#91

Post by edgyquant »

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...

There hasn’t been 5000 years of any culture tbh

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

#92

Post by jason-phillips »

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…

> frankly agressive way you denied ever having a problem with admiting mistakes...

Respectfully, that is a straw man. I never made that claim.

I am saying that GGP's claim is unsupported and therefore baseless. Knowing myself exactly how things really work there, I read it as ignorant hyperbole.

To answer your questions, are there problems in Samsung? Samsung has the same problems with communication and admitting mistakes as other companies for whom I've worked of similar size. I've actually seen much worse at small companies, i.e. startups.

I personally never had issues at Samsung. I could directly communicate with anyone in the company and did so, often. When necessary, we coordinated work ahead of time, even after hours. It wasn't a problem.

I don't want to make it sound like working at Samsung was a walk in the park, because it wasn't. Samsung was by far the hardest job I've ever had. But working there taught me that with the right team and good teamwork, you can accomplish anything. We did some amazing things there.

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

#93

Post by ethbr0 »

cxr wrote: post #62
jason-phillips wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> In a massive operation running 24/7 that never stops to catch its breath, it's going to be chaotic. No, it isn't. Describing it like this is needless apologetics. The "chaos" is not even necessarily the worst part of the problem. It's these kinds of just-so dismissals that have the effect of framing the chaos as somehow unavoidable—the response that goes, roughly, you'll learn; this a natural consequence of what we…

I liked your framing of version control requiring a culture of encouraging admission of failure.

I'd never looked at it that way, and it succinctly describes why the least devops-mature organizations I've worked with have been those that heavily penalize any admission of failure. And vice versus.

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

#94

Post by ethbr0 »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #87
astrange wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - 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 te…

Almost every instance of this I've come across can be described by repeated localized, short-term optimization.

No one ever sat down and said "How can I design a terrible system that's a pain in the ass to work with and unable to be extended?"

Everyone sat down and said "How can I make that one thing that's actually my job faster?"

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

#95

Post by seanp2k2 »

ethbr0 wrote: post #94
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 te…

Almost every instance of this I've come across can be described by repeated localized, short-term optimization. No one ever sat down and said "How can I design a terrible system that's a pain in the ass to work with and unable to be extended?" Everyone sat down and said "How can I make that one thing that's actually my job faster?"

sometimes people also sit down and ask "how can I build a platform to do this kind of thing so expanding and maintaining that platform can be my new job here?"

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

#96

Post by creakingstairs »

I was hoping to get some insider scoop on the Samsungs culture problem. But looks like it’s just a round up of Samsungs bad results rather than specific tales of toxicity or culture issues. I don’t doubt it for one second that there are toxicity issues but I also found some of the sources don’t support what they are alledging.

> These various units are allegedly playing the blame game with each other. Samsung LSI (design) is blaming Samsung Foundry, while Samsung Mobile is blaming S.LSI.

The link in this paragraph doesn’t actually have anything about them blaming each other.

> that the foundry is even allegedly lying about the yields

The link here also doesn’t say anything about “lying”. It says they will do a diagnosis/audit around the low yield problem.

I didn’t bother clicking on all the links. But some links are right but kinda erodes the trust in the article when this is happening.

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

#97

Post by geodel »

ineedasername wrote: post #86
VHRanger wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's interesting. I read about how Samsung learned and followed a lot of processes from Boeing and lately Boeing has been faltering quite a bit and Samsung seems to be following suit.

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

#98

Post by pm90 »

ethbr0 wrote: post #93
cxr wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In a massive operation running 24/7 that never stops to catch its breath, it's going to be chaotic. No, it isn't. Describing it like this is needless apologetics. The "chaos" is not even necessarily the worst part of the problem. It's these kinds of just-so dismissals that have the effect of framing the chaos as somehow unavoidable—the response that goes, roughly, you'll learn; this a natural consequence of what we…

I liked your framing of version control requiring a culture of encouraging admission of failure. I'd never looked at it that way, and it succinctly describes why the least devops-mature organizations I've worked with have been those that heavily penalize any admission of failure. And vice versus.

Cultures where failure is punished are just the worst. It’s not just the vain pursuit of something unachievable (systems will break) but all the effort involved in covering up rather than simply admitting the problem and then coming up with solutions to fix it/not repeat it. It’s a lost opportunity to improve the system.

Unfortunately, without active checks and balances, orgs will tend to the blame game. Avoiding it requires an org-wide commitment to openness around failures.

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

#99

Post by [deleted] »

creakingstairs wrote: post #96

I was hoping to get some insider scoop on the Samsungs culture problem. But looks like it’s just a round up of Samsungs bad results rather than specific tales of toxicity or culture issues. I don’t doubt it for one second that there are toxicity issues but I also found some of the sources don’t support what they are alledging. > These various units are allegedly playing the blame game with each other. Samsung LSI (de…

[deleted]

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

#100

Post by sanxiyn »

andrewxdiamond wrote: post #6
ethbr0 wrote: post #2

Why do foundry insider articles always hurt my brain? It's like good writing and proximity to the industry are antithetical.

Guessing, but possibly because almost all foundries are run by people who don’t speak English, at least not natively. You have a longer chain of communication between you and them, so things get muddied. I imagine that foundry news written in Chinese/Korean/Cantonese is much more well written and in depth.

I confirm semiconductor writings in Chinese/Korean are much better than those in English. (Not Cantonese: Cantonese is pretty weak as a written language.)

Somewhat surprisingly, best writings, at least at popular level, come from Japan. Japan is the highest literacy society on Earth (if you look at OECD PIAAC, there's just no comparison with anyone else) and Japanese publishing industry is extremely strong, such that real experts can write somewhat technical books on semiconductor industry and you can expect it to sell if it's any good.

Post reply on HN