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

As a Samsung employee, I&#x27;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 &quot;safety concerns&quot;. Samsung employed ~20 safety guards to supervise and monitor phone usage throughout the campus and if you&#x27;re caught by them, you will be warned. If you are caughted twice, your team lead will be notifed of the incident. If you are caught three times or more, you are required to watch an educational video and submit a written apology. I could not believe such a policy could emerge from the very company that makes smartphones. Samsung even had a TV commercial highlighting phone usage on the road!<p>Under such a restrictive and top-down culture like this, I believe nothing interesting can emerge. I can only expect the downfall of the company. Nowadays I&#x27;m trying to work as little as possible and desperately searching for other jobs.

&gt;In other cases, Samsung LSI executives even seem to be blaming the change in Korean labor laws. Rather than hitting crunch time and having engineers do absurd hours, employees are supposed to be limited to 52 hours a week, maximum. While we hear this is not being adhered to fully, it has cut down on the overworking of many Samsung engineers. The pushback from Samsung is so strong that there is even legislation being pushed to to relax these labor laws.<p>Aah yes. The sign of entirely level-headed and well-managed companies is when they blame the fact that they can&#x27;t 996 their skilled workers.

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”.<p>The legislation aspect is really concerning but not surprising as chaebols have an iron grip on the Korean economy.<p>Tough times for Samsung, but in a lot of ways, you yield (pun intended) what you sow.

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).

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 local root exploits.<p>I don&#x27;t really know what&#x27;s more absurd, that Samsung managed to fall behind <i>these guys</i> or that MediaTek actually managed to get a grip on quality well enough to rival and surpass Samsung, a multi billion dollar conglomerate.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bunniestudios.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;?tag=mediatek" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bunniestudios.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;?tag=mediatek</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=9225691" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=9225691</a>

While Samsung&#x27;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&#x27;s not like their culture drastically changed in the recent years. It&#x27;s the same &quot;toxic&quot; culture that got them here and blaming the culture for their recent hiccups just seem like a sensationalist writing.

It has been clear to us for years that Samsung has baaad internal communication issues. When you&#x27;re at the forefront of technology, you&#x27;re bound to trip up as bets and explorations don&#x27;t pan out. Humans being humans, mistakes <i>will</i> happen, but they must be recognized to be corrected and prevented in the future.<p>It&#x27;s clear that Samsung culture prevents people from admitting mistakes, which of course only leads to more of them as stress builds up.<p>I remember the Samsung Galaxy Note battery problems, and how apparently it was clear to people outside Samsung what the problem was (too tight a clearance a the corners in the case for the batteries, causing bending of the internal electrodes, leading to short-circuits) before Samsung themselves recognized it.<p>You can&#x27;t always be at the top, a sign of good culture is what happens when you slip.<p>Samsung keeps slipping.

I have written something similar on Semiwiki in 2016 arguing against Daniel how Samsung had problems. And my bet in ~2018 that Samsung wont be able to compete against TSMC turns out to be completely right. It wasn&#x27;t because I had any technical or insider information. It was only because I knew Samsung, the company, its character and its culture far too well. Unfortunately Google and the internal search function doesn&#x27;t show up and I can&#x27;t quote myself back.<p>But the problem isn&#x27;t internal communication though. It was Samsung Foundry&#x27;s &quot;<i>sales</i> and <i>marketing</i>&quot; over promise and under deliver. To give them credit they were throwing insane amount of money trying to compete with TSMC. People on HN &#x2F; Reddit &#x2F; SemiWiki or whatever forum keep asking why TSMC isn&#x27;t raising price. Well you should thank Samsung for that. ( But they are also the ones who HN &#x2F; Reddit &#x2F; Internet accuse them of NAND &#x2F; DRAM cartel, guess where those profits went? ).<p>I also think the DRAM and NAND concern are overblown. It has been well known Samsung took the bet to move forward with EUV earlier than other industry vendors aka SK Hynix and Micron. It is not like Micron is going to go straight to EUV and enjoy the advantage over Samsung. Samsung are also not moving forward with EUV on their NAND product. The only concern would be if Micron decided to increase their capacity and build new Fabs. Otherwise, just like any other commodities ( Corn, Steel, Lumber, whatever ), they are Supply and Demand limited. So from a technical perspective they may be losing, from a business perspective things are still within control. In case anyone wants to compare this to Intel&#x27;s 14nm, the two are extremely different and their market operate in a completely different manner. Hence why TSMC&#x27;s founder and ex-CEO Morris Cheung famously said he will <i>never</i> enter NAND and DRAM market.

There is a Facebook group with 100k+ members dedicated solely to the poor engineering, design, and fabrication of their refrigerators - [SAMSUNG REFRIGERATOR RECALL U.S.A. NOW] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;groups&#x2F;1520337151601316&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;groups&#x2F;1520337151601316&#x2F;</a>

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.<p>&gt; 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.<p>The link in this paragraph doesn’t actually have anything about them blaming each other.<p>&gt; that the foundry is even allegedly lying about the yields<p>The link here also doesn’t say anything about “lying”. It says they will do a diagnosis&#x2F;audit around the low yield problem.<p>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.

Why do foundry insider articles always hurt my brain? It&#x27;s like good writing and proximity to the industry are antithetical.

Disasters in foundry, LSI, and DRAM? Is the writer sponsored by the U.S. chip manufacturing sector or other pro-American interests?<p>What a weird hit-piece filled with assertions that could never be reliably backed up by other than Samsung themselves conducting a massive internal investigation.

Avoid their SSD&#x27;s now too. With the the 980 PRO, Samsung has just changed the components but kept the same model number.<p>Samsung have removed the Elpis controller from the 980 PRO SSD and replaced it with an unknown one.<p>Take a look here for what&#x27;s changed on the 980 PRO: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;YJShyLR.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;YJShyLR.jpg</a>

<i>Clients and employees of SemiAnalysis may hold positions in companies referenced in this article.</i><p>This article lacks the evidence to warrant the boldness of its arguments. And after reading through the paragraphs of poorly based assertions, I see this at the bottom of the article. Why am I not surprised?

Interestingly South Korea is much more accepting of a greater power distance than say the UK [0]. In such situations having a clear line of communication from the bottom to the top on actionable items can be difficult.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hofstede-insights.com&#x2F;fi&#x2F;product&#x2F;compare-countries&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hofstede-insights.com&#x2F;fi&#x2F;product&#x2F;compare-countri...</a>

After reading this lengthy article, was anyone able to comprehend, what exactly are the &quot;cultural issues&quot;?

Does anyone know some good reading material regarding the evolution of microchip design and fabrication? I found the article quite interesting, however many of the more technical terms flew over my head.

For Samsung semi process part, it&#x27;s just only TSMC is too good, isn&#x27;t it? Intel, Samsung, and others can&#x27;t catch up now.

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?

&gt; Samsung also had a GPU team that they canned.<p>That feels… counterintuitive, if true.

A non-trivial factor in this:<p>• 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<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Chaebol" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Chaebol</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.slashgear.com&#x2F;831286&#x2F;10-rare-samsung-products-you-probably-didnt-know-existed&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.slashgear.com&#x2F;831286&#x2F;10-rare-samsung-products-yo...</a><p>• TSMC: single product company - foundry only<p>• Apple: &quot;single product&quot; company (compared to Samsung)<p>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.<p>Taiwanese businesses are pretty much never Chaebol&#x2F;Kieretsu-like - it&#x27;s far more atomized, independent and interdependent, and focused on a narrow(er) market. There&#x27;s also more &quot;bottom-up&quot; in terms of origins and this remains to some extent in many of them<p>(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&#x2F;Kieretsus. We also have a pretty selective market niche).<p>Compare this to Japanese kieretsu companies such as NEC - which is similarly broad but you also don&#x27;t think of them anymore when it comes to semiconductor and especially DRAM.<p>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&#x27;s a predilection based on organizational structure.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Keiretsu" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Keiretsu</a><p>The example the article gives of Hynix proves that it&#x27;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.<p>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.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thediplomat.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;06&#x2F;south-koreas-shipbuilding-crisis&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thediplomat.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;06&#x2F;south-koreas-shipbuilding-cr...</a>