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Samsung Electronics America

Is this your company?

Save your soul while you can! Don't do it!!! - Director Samsung Electronics America Employee Review

1.0
Jan 17, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Gaining experience in one the leading global technology companies is good for anyone wanting a longer-term career in consumer electronics/hi-tech, pretty good health benefits, decent product-purchase benefits (with free products periodically)....and that's about it.

Cons

To start, it's a sweat shop. Employees are expected to put the company in front of their personal lives with long working hours being the norm. Time off is frowned upon and flexibility is not really tolerated, despite some cosmetic efforts by HR to institute "flexible working hours." There is very little recognition for hard work or a job well done. Most efforts revolve around serving the demands and needs of top management (almost all of whom are Korean) - deferring to authority and following orders. It's a "Just do it and don't ask questions" culture. It is a fairly formal and very top-down environment with the overriding principle being that the higher age/title is always right. There is little room for dissent, creativity, or autonomy. Work is often taken from the worker bees and presented by their bosses with little to no recognition of who actually did the work. Seasoned local professionals are often treated like children. Employees generally seem demoralized and beaten down - this is immediately apparent to almost anyone who walks through the dismal office. The overriding issue at SEA is one of Korean domination. Decisions are made almost solely by Koreans in secretive backroom meetings in Korean. Local employees are just expected to follow orders from Koreans. There seem to be parallel HR policy systems - one for Korean executives providing certain budgets/travel policies and the other for everyone else. There is a de facto segregation between Koreans and locals, even at lunch. You're either a part of the Korean HQ contingent, in which case you'll get perks/responsibility/opportunities, or you're not, in which case you're just expected to obey orders. Communication of a vision, objectives, etc. is horrible. Information hoarding is also common. Local employees should not expect career progression, movements throughout/up the organization, or many chances of promotion. If those things do happen, it's after a very long period of paying dues and implicitly pledging loyalty to the Samsung way of working. Maybe Samsung will one day truly globalize and open-up, offering equal opportunities to everyone and treating people fairly and like human beings, but that day does not appear to be anywhere in the near future. Don't do it, unless you're 1) Korean with a strong orientation to a highly-structured command-and-control environment, or 2) really desperate for employment!!!

Explore other reviews about Samsung Electronics America

5.0
Jul 10, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Flexible, Fun, Creative, and many benefits

Cons

A little unorganized and hard to communicate

2.0
Jul 9, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Met very smart, talented colleagues - enjoyed working with some of the people on the team, and learned many applicable, valuable technical skills. Some projects provide opportunities to learn new skills and can launch interesting products. The food is good.

Cons

All the previous reviews about the culture are 100% accurate. Overall very poor management and direction from the upper level, which trickles down into the team. Office politics and conflicting direction from HQ, too many meetings just to prove the work is being done, resulting in little to no trust in the US team - constant surveillance, questioning, and general misalignment of objectives. Company culture and team morale is overall quite low, and little recognition and appreciation from management for hardworking teams on the working levels. Also, it doesn’t seem like there is much room to grow, just more work added with little promotional opportunities. ALSO: RTO 5 days in office was unreasonable, had no justification, with no productivity data to show reasoning - seemed to be a rash decision from the HQ side as a form of control and to push people into soft layoffs (Their "Q&A" sessions are just beating around the bush about this specific reasoning).

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