The Financial Times (FT) reported on July 14 that morale among Samsung Electronics employees has dropped, with some engineers considering a move to competitor SK Hynix. In an article titled “Samsung’s ‘chip crisis’: AI ambitions hit by unprecedented worker unrest,” FT explained the situation in detail.
Despite Samsung’s leadership change in its semiconductor division in May, an anonymous Samsung semiconductor engineer told FT that they “didn’t see many changes even after [their] chief was replaced.”
The engineer claimed that “the internal atmosphere is gloomy,” as the company lags behind SK Hynix in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and is unable to catch up with Taiwan’s TSMC in the foundry business. They added that employees are generally unhappy with their pay, feeling they are treated worse than those at SK Hynix. “Many people are thinking of leaving the company to join our competitors.”
FT pointed out that employee dissatisfaction became evident through an unprecedented strike. According to an anonymous researcher in Samsung’s smartphone division, “Workers’ morale is low, discouraged by reduced financial rewards,” adding that workers “feel helpless because management seems directionless.” Another home appliance sales employee remarked, “I have been accustomed to sales growth throughout my career, but this is the first time I’ve seen falling growth,” noting that their team feels a sense of crisis.
Analysts suggested that the indefinite strike by the National Samsung Electronics Union is expected to make it harder to close the HBM gap with SK Hynix. According to a Samsung investor, the company and SK Hynix are “locked in fierce competition for a limited supply of Korean engineering talent,” FT reported.
FT also noted that Myron Xie, an analyst at chip consultancy SemiAnalysis, described it as “extremely concerning” that Samsung is trailing SK Hynix and Micron in HBM development and has yet to pass the qualification test to supply HBM to Nvidia. The U.K. news outlet pointed out that despite hopes that major customers would reduce their reliance on TSMC due to heightened geopolitical risks, Samsung has “failed to make a dent in TSMC’s dominance of the global foundry business.”
This article was originally published on July 14, 2024.
