[HN Gopher] Samsung Electronics Cultural Issues Causing Disaster...
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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.
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