There are a lot, so let's get started:
1. Communication: It is terrible. Teams are divided by department (Process, Equipment, Production, and Quality). All teams have different priorities, and when they conflict, managers will argue with each other about what to do, THROUGH the engineers. Manager performance is based on their KPI numbers. They will do whatever it takes to make it better for them, even if it is worse for the company as a whole, and they will use their employees as a proxy. Ends up with teams blaming each other constantly, with no one willing to take responsibility. Managers will mostly speak in Korean about anything important, and you will hear most information translated from other Korean employees at your level. They will talk about you in Korean, in front of you, even if they know English.
2. Work-Life Balance: Not great for most engineers. It is very much the Korean work culture where they want you to put work before anything else, but they will not/do not value their employees in any capacity. The red flag I should've noticed - during the interview, they said it was a 'Family Culture'. This translates to 'We want you to work tirelessly for minimum pay'.
3. Pay: Everyone gets around 60k whether you are an Undergraduate or hold a Master's Degree. There is not much transparency about pay raises and minimum communication
4. Growth: None for non-Koreans. The majority of management are Koreans sent from the main plant in JC, Korea. They hold absolute power over the majority of decisions. There is no room for advancement for people from any other background, and you are treated as less vital and all the important information goes to people who can communicate in Korean.
5. Culture: Touched on this before, but a lot of people get treated badly, including myself. I've seen 6 people leave in 3-4 months due to work culture and their managers. You are only reprimanded for making mistakes, and almost never appreciated for putting in extra work and creating some sort of improvement. Again, to management, only the numbers matter. Doesn't matter to them if you make an improvement or work on important documentation. They will yell at you, insult you, blame you, and get you fired for standing up for yourself. This is perhaps the greatest con. The Turnover rate at this firm is extremely high for this reason. There are separate cliques as well and even though the company is getting more diverse, there is no effort put in by people to mingle and involve the minorities at the company
6. Training: The training is only to show that they are doing it on paper. It is essentially non-existent. You have to try your hardest to learn on the job, and if your mentor is too busy, it is very difficult to learn since it is considered a low-priority task by the company.
7. HR and Conflict: HR has a lot of nice people from what I've seen, but they have people who will lie to you and their policy is not there to help the employee at all. HR also has no authority over Korean managers, and the managers can tell HR what to do. They have blatantly violated the safety policy and Employee Handbook, but HR must go along with what they want since they can contact upper management to get involved.
I know this is long and detailed, but I think it is important that if you have accepted an offer or are considering one, you should know what it is really like to work at the Dalton Plant. Here are some teams I would avoid working in due to management alone: 1. Process (Front-end and Back-end) 2. Production( Front-end and Back-end) 3. Equipment(Front-end)
