floo

Inside Story of Samsung Research Institute's Vibe

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·3 hours ago

원본 (Korean)

Translation + Context

FT = ForbiddenTome — tap to see Korean slang explained

I work in semiconductor research at Samsung. Looking at the vibe these days, it feels like the company's going under. 1. Everyone in the department took vacation from 5/21 to 6/4. Literally everyone's taking a break lol 2. Everyone's doing bare minimum. Even managers are like "let's just wing it" in meetings, and when other departments email work requests, nobody replies. 3. When Hynix opens hiring, 50% of our department applies. It's like they're pulling 1-2 key people from each process. People are going to the US pretty regularly too. 4. They're avoiding foundry/LSI research, dropping everything related to it, and making it all confidential. They're erasing every single contact point so nobody gets dragged into non-memory work. 5. Today on the internal anonymous board, they're doing a relay of authenticated strike participation with real names. People are screenshotting their photos and department names and posting them. 6. People are changing their messenger status messages to "on strike." 7. People are openly talking about job hunting, trashing the company, and strike stuff right in front of managers and executives. Executives are avoiding the area and managers are cursing along with them. 8. Everyone thinks that even if negotiations happen somehow, management-labor relations can't be fixed. Will the company ever recover...? 10:25 PM. 2026.5.13.. 600k views

Thank you for your hard work on HBM development. - Team Lead

Lucky walnut

I'm the one who received that lucky walnut. When we first formed the HBM one-team, they said we'd be compensated if we worked hard. They said compensating with money was the easiest way. So we dropped the 64-hour work week policy and I lived like a dog for 2 years, but I got nothing. Only executives got stock compensation, employees got nothing. That's why everyone around me is joining union strikes and talking about reform. Yeah, the lucky walnut became a joke, but the team lead who gave it to me is actually a well-respected person—different from that executive who said monetary compensation was the easiest way.

Samsung researchers who developed HBM and saved the dying company from going under - Rewards: None. So desperate that the team leader was like "at least take these and hang in there" while passing around lucky walnuts (not that the company gave them out lol)

9 comments

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It's crazy that workers at Samsung are saying they'd rather work at Hynix or SK Hynix lmaooo

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What's wild is people calling out strikes like it's common sense. If you won't take care of them during record-breaking good times, it's obvious what happens when things get tough even a little.

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When things are going GREAT: 'Operating profit is high, but we're saving your bonuses for later' When things are bad: 'Profit is down because you screwed up, so no bonuses' — and both are real

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The worst part is execs get tens of billions in performance bonuses whether things are good or bad

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Classic Samsung energy

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Why not just give bonuses to key talent only?

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The real key talent already got paid, they're just keeping quiet about it

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Didn't Hynix have the same issue and got it resolved after striking to force Samsung to cough up cash? Curious how Samsung handles this lol

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If they were gonna spend that money they'd just poach Hynix's top people instead of the leftovers lol. There's talent overseas too. Watch those workers cry for mercy when they actually strike 😂

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wait samsung has a whole vibe institute?? i thought they just made phones lol

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Should we exclude Samsung from our portfolio?

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this is actually so cool, love seeing behind the scenes of tech companies 🔥 way more interesting than their ads

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not me expecting corporate boring stuff but this actually slaps, samsung's culture seems different