[HN Gopher] Samsung Electronics Cultural Issues Causing Disaster... ___________________________________________________________________ Samsung Electronics Cultural Issues Causing Disasters in Foundry, LSI, & DRAM Author : craigjb Score : 86 points Date : 2022-04-17 20:19 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (semianalysis.substack.com) (TXT) w3m dump (semianalysis.substack.com) | AceJohnny2 wrote: | 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 of them as stress | builds up. | | 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. | | You can't always be at the top, a sign of good culture is what | happens when you slip. | | Samsung keeps slipping. | jason-phillips wrote: | > 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. None of these assertions and | accusations in the comments here or below leveled at the people | with whom I used to work ring true from my perspective. | | Communication issues? Not admitting mistakes? Please... | enlighten me. Tell me how we worked. | iron2disulfide wrote: | I've worked with Samsung Semiconductor as a partner/customer | and it did seem to me from the outside that there was a | culture of not admitting mistakes/failings, and poor | communication between different parts of the company (i.e. | foundry to silicon engineering). Granted, you could say the | same thing re: communication about many large companies -- | I'm sure the same phenomenon occurs at Intel or IBM (back | before they went fabless). Things may have been different on | software teams vs. silicon/hardware teams. | lostlogin wrote: | Could you tell us how you worked? | jason-phillips wrote: | Just to clarify, is this with or without Aaron Franklin | brisket for lunch? | lostlogin wrote: | This has shot right over my head, but as a google | suggests the place is well regarded, I'm going to say | 'with'... | jason-phillips wrote: | We worked hard. 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. | mardifoufs wrote: | I agree that the article is very lacking in substance and as | you said, a hit piece. Yet there really seem to be a problem | with Samsung's chips, especially their SoCs. They have | underperformed for years now, and have always been inferior | even in the high end (except maybe for the galaxy s6). That's | despite repeated performance promises and a complete control | over the entire production process (from design to fab to | assembly). So what gives? I'd be very interested to hear your | thoughts on that especially since it's hard to find any | legitimate information beyond rumors. | glowingly wrote: | In many ways this is still true of Intel today. Like | Samsung, their chips draw more power (even with "Intel 7" | supposedly drawing parity to TSMC 7N) and are often slower | than their competition's chips. | | Maybe it's an IDM mindset issue? It seems the market has | moved on to pure play foundries. For example, Nvidia's | first fab partner was STMicro, an IDM, and Nvidia noted | STMicro was unable to focus on being a fab partner. After | that, Nvidia moved onto TSMC, also working with IBM, UMC, | and Samsung at later points in time. | jason-phillips wrote: | 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 cycles are spent on this year's | production and designing next year's model. | | Samsung accounts for a huge percentage of South Korea's | GDP, about 20%. Therefore, Samsung needs to favor stability | over taking risks associated with living at the bleeding- | edge of innovation. Samsung always did play the safe game | when I worked there (and for good reason when you're baby- | sitting a $20 billion factory with $100 million of product | that could be scrapped at any time). | | Again, I wasn't in LSI but this is my perception overall | having worked there, traveling to Korea and learning Korean | culture. | MikusR wrote: | >too tight a clearance a the corners in the case for the | batteries, causing bending of the internal electrodes, leading | to short-circuits | | That turned out not to be the cause. | https://news.samsung.com/global/infographic-galaxy-note7-wha... | e44858 wrote: | The page you linked says this: | | > The negative electrode was deflected within the upper-right | corner of the battery | | Maybe better clearance would have prevented that from causing | a short? | kmeisthax wrote: | >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. | | Aah yes. The sign of entirely level-headed and well-managed | companies is when they blame the fact that they can't 996 their | skilled workers. | pixelatedindex wrote: | 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 lot of ways, you yield (pun | intended) what you sow. | bob1029 wrote: | 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. | jitl wrote: | 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). | jason-phillips wrote: | > 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] | formerly_proven wrote: | Of course as American employees of the American branch office | you might draw comparisons between the work culture there and | other, similar tech companies in America and factor this into | your valuation of the employer in question. | hasmolo wrote: | i feel like you've made a point here that, if you phrased a | little differently, would've been an interesting addition to | the conversation. | kurthr wrote: | 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/had similar | problems based in financial optimization, but that doesn't | directly reflect on 5000 years of western culture. | spaniard89277 wrote: | You work for a shitty boss but the cafeteria is nice! | ethbr0 wrote: | Why do foundry insider articles always hurt my brain? It's like | good writing and proximity to the industry are antithetical. | andrewxdiamond wrote: | 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. | ethbr0 wrote: | There also seems a propensity for packing the maximum amount | of information into every sentence. | | Which leads to the narrative equivalent of a PowerPoint | presentation where every slide is just plastered with numbers | from corner to corner. | lizardactivist wrote: | Disasters in foundry, LSI, and DRAM? Is the writer sponsored by | the U.S. chip manufacturing sector or other pro-American | interests? | | 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. | mboto wrote: | 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. | | [0] https://www.hofstede-insights.com/fi/product/compare- | countri... | [deleted] | mschuster91 wrote: | 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. | | I don't really know what's more absurd, that Samsung managed to | fall behind _these guys_ or that MediaTek actually managed to get | a grip on quality well enough to rival and surpass Samsung, a | multi billion dollar conglomerate. | | [1] https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?tag=mediatek | | [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9225691 | glowingly wrote: | Didn't Mediatek also hire open source developers (or at least | one very notable one) to work on their wifi drivers in the | mainline kernel? | | In [2], I'm seeing sensors (not made by Mediatek), GPU drivers | (Mali, ask arm on that one), and RF (usually regulatory; | legalism?), and whatever else is in that textdump. Is there | anything that actually does an analysis? Even the blog source | eventually just said they didn't know. | chevman wrote: | 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] - | https://www.facebook.com/groups/1520337151601316/ | lizardactivist wrote: | 99% of which most likely don't even own one, and also partake | in the other peculiar groups spreading the notion that dirty, | foreign brands are dangerous and unreliable. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-04-17 23:00 UTC)