Samsung Semiconductor Inc (US) reviews

Too much oversight by Korea HQ teams - why hire top talent in Silicon Valley if you are going to have them work with, and possibly take direction from, less experienced people in Korea? Lack of communication - there is virtually no meaningful communication about the vision and long-term strategy being shared with the groups, just "fluff" emails from some leader in Korea the teams have not met. Need real storytellers here in SV to engage and motivate the teams! Starting compensation is usually competitive however, year over year increases are minimal and eventually lead to less-than-market-competitive salaries especially since there is no stock offering. Samsung uses internal systems (designed in Korea) for everything. Little to no input is taken from the local entity so you end up with a system that gives Korea what they want but creates a mountain of work (and frustration) for local users. The Values are just a set of words on a poster hanging on the wall. Few people truly understand them so they aren't modeled. Employee survey is a joke - the questions are poorly worded and little to nothing is done following release of the results. Too much emphasis on understanding and adapting to the Korean culture but Samsung wants to be a key player in the Valley. So HQ should seek better understanding, and acceptance, for the Silicon Valley culture. Otherwise, hire a bunch of traditional Koreans who will blindly take orders and continue doing things the way they have been done for years. No appreciation for process improvement. Too many changes in leadership - it is not uncommon to have a President of a group every year. This is done to "develop" leaders in Korea but it creates a lot of unrest for the local teams. Yes, change is a constant but some stability in leadership is necessary, especially in a development team. The infighting between HR teams over the past few years is disgraceful. HR is supposed to model the desired values and culture but the leaders have set a very poor example.

The US offices are mere units for providing services to Korea, which is where most of the core IP is kept. This means that employee development and growth in the US is not a serious concern. Add to this, favoritism, abuse of immigrant engineers like those on visas - they are not given decent raises and are kept on the hook about their greencard processing - you slowly get a toxic environment of a mental hospital run by mad doctors.