Great opportunity ruined by incompetent management and dysfunctional relationship with HQ
Pros
modern campus, competitive compensation, subsidized food, on-campus gym
Cons
On the surface, SRA appears to have everything needed to make it a world-class research center; however its terrible management and unhealthy corporate culture have turned the place into a Kafkian nightmare to be avoided by anyone who cares about their carrier. SRA's biggest problem is its extremely incompetent senior management, which does not understand science or technology and does not appear to have any idea about people or project management. Here is one of many examples: months after the arrival of the new SRA president in 2016, literally all SRA's senior researchers left the company because they were not able to work with him, and either were not replaced at all or were replaced by people without any technical skills, effectively leaving the lab without technical leadership. Another chronic problem at SRA is its complete lack of strategy or vision. SRA's strategic direction is defined by the Korean HQ and keeps changing every 6 months. This is not an exaggeration. Every six months existing projects are abandoned because they don't fit in the new direction, teams are dismissed and engineers either laid off or transferred to other projects, which typically don't match their skill set. This creates enormous turnover (I estimate that only ~10% of people stay at SRA for more than two years). On top of all this, Samsung has an extremely archaic and unhealthy corporate culture: management does not seek or hear feedback from engineers (other than "yes, sir"), communication and collaboration between teams is discouraged (other teams are viewed as competition), engineers are seen as completely interchangeable (people are being routinely transferred to projects that do not match their expertise). SRA management does not seem to understand or value its reputation as an employer. They lie during interviews, arbitrarily change people's responsibilities, set meaningless and infeasible goals, demand results without providing the resources needed to achieve those results, etc. As a result, SRA's reputation within both research and engineering communities has been completely ruined, making it impossible for the company to attract good people. The situation is unlikely to change any time soon: I am sure that Samsung's top management is well aware of all this, but apparently considers this to be a healthy and productive work environment.
