Samsung Austin Semiconductor Reviews

This is my honest story: I sarted in 2011 as a new grad electrical engineer, I was hired on in the Metrology department. My first 3 years were pretty good, I worked a lot, came in to work all hours, but I got above average performance reviews and a promotion. Year four I received an average performance review when I thought I was going to get another good review. Year five I got a below average review and was completely shocked (I honestly thought I was going to get above average). I had to formally contest my review, HR did an investigation and changed my review to average. The person writing my reviews was demoted and his superior told me that he wanted me to fill that role. Six weeks later I was terminated by the same person who told me he wanted to promote me, his only reason was "we were expecting some improvement." To this very day I have no idea why I was let go, the stress of being fired with absolutely no warning led to some serious medical conditions for which I now have to take medications for the rest of my life. This is absolutely not an exaggeration, this place almost killed me. I still speak with my friends who are still there and I know of 5 engineers that have left in the last 4 months, nobody in upper management seems to care or doesn't see the trend. I am not writing this review as a bitter ex-employee, getting fired from Samsung has been the best thing to happen to me in a long time, I have a much better job now and my quality of life has improved ten fold.

General Samsung Cons: Parking is hard, not enough spaces and too many people. Can feel Korean bureaucracy and culture embedded in nearly everything (not a con if you are able to accept/adapt to it). Very little transparency from management in terms of who will go to Taylor or stay at SAS. Being okay with lots of ambiguity and being flexible with your life is expected. Samsung systems are not industry standard, and employees are expected to deal with inconvenient “quirks” that plague the dozens of systems used for daily tasks. Your productivity is based off the perception of how many hours you’re physically present on-site. This place does not support remote work, and hybrid WFH access is limited. You might need to use the provided mental health benefits with the damage this place may inflict on you :’) General CORP Cons: The starting salary for college grads who start through CORP hasn’t been adjusted in over 5 years. Inflation who? Never heard of her. In this economy, I hope they fix this soon. Sign on bonus contingent of you staying for two years. Red flag in my opinion, if a company already was a healthy place to work, people wouldn’t need an incentive to stay for 2+ years. If you go to UT Austin, good luck getting a relocation stipend. I have not heard of a single UT grad who got a stipend for moving even though it still costs money to move out from West/North campus. CORP Review: To preface this review, many people are happy at SAS, and I do not want to detract from their positive experiences; my experience is not all-inclusive and does not speak for all employees. My goal is to give as much information I can on my own experience to whoever reads this because I wish I knew all of this before I started working here. A. CORP Rotations During the CORP rotations, grads spend up to ONE WEEK per department. There are four weeks of rotations. You hardly get to see the actual work the employees do. The rotations consist of lots of PowerPoints which go on for hours, as well as some tours around the fab and facilities which are alright if not redundant. You don’t get to see all the departments, and you can get placed in a department you didn’t even visit. Grads get little to no say in which department they get placed into. HR claims it’s based off what you said in your interview and your college major. In my opinion, Samsung’s retention rates would be better if they gave new grads a say in their final department placements. You can request to switch departments after one year (good luck with that). Here’s a quick TLDR of (most of) the departments (majority of CORP end up in 3 or 4): 1. Manufacturing – Want things to move through the fab as fast as possible. Don’t personally know anyone here so I don’t have much insight on this department. Quality and Reliability – heard it’s pretty chill here, haven’t personally heard anything negative. Innovation – Don’t personally know anyone here so I don’t have much insight on this department. To my knowledge, CORP usually don’t end up here. 2. Infratechnology – Consists of facilities and IT. Don’t personally know anyone here so I don’t have much insight on this department. Know of a couple of CORP who ended up doing construction at the new Taylor site. 3. Fab Engineering – consists of the different unit parts: metrology, photolithography, etch, CVD, CMP, cleans, diffusion, implant, etc. TLDR: photo and etch are departments you usually DO NOT WANT to end up in (unless you are personally interested in the work they do; I respect the people in these two departments immensely because they do so much for the company. Management in these two departments can be rather… unsavory), the rest I’ve heard aren’t too bad and are likely hit or miss. As CORP, many people will start off as a shift engineer, so there’s a chance you will get placed on night shift in a unit part (there is a pay premium for night shift, and generally night shift culture is more lax since management isn’t staring people down). You can become a process engineer or equipment engineer (some unit parts let you choose, most don’t). 4. Yield Enhancement – the figurative “bourgeoisie” of SAS. The rotation in this department also gives insight to what the day-to-day work looks like. Most CORP want to end up here. They tend to get the green light for remote access for hybrid WFH the fastest and with the least resistance, and from what I can tell, they get more clout with less effort (the people at SAS all work very hard so my intention is not to say working in this department is easy, there just may be a better work-life balance than other departments like fab engineering or manufacturing). Allegedly, faster promotions in this department compared to others is not uncommon. B. Personal Department Experience Everyone will have a different experience dependent on team and department. Here are some of things I experienced/heard during my time at SAS and my opinions of them: Most colleagues were very willing to help and support me to learn and get the job done correctly. Many people here are very smart and team-oriented from my experience. Most if not all colleagues I worked with were relatively nice to work with and I have nothing bad to say. Management is a different story; some were close-minded and rather rude. Picking favorites was not uncommon. “Perception is everything” and “We have eyes everywhere.” – literally such boomer thinking and not very indicative of a healthy work environment. It’s giving… micromanagement. “This job is very specialized, so after a while, it’s really hard if not impossible to get out or switch careers to something else” – good if you are interested in the work and want a career in the field, otherwise could be iffy as a new grad who’s still figuring their career out. “You should feel so lucky to work here” and “This is the best place to work” – multiple people, including management, who have never worked anywhere else but SAS in their (couple years to decades long) careers have told me something along the lines of this; how would you know that if you’ve never experienced anywhere else? Suspicious. “If you can survive working here, you’ll be able to do well in most other places.” – Probably not a big deal if you’re a workaholic and love working or came from another company that works their employees ragged. But if you’re looking for a healthy workplace culture with a good work-life balance, this could be a red flag to you. C. For the Women For CORP who are women of color – I recommend for you to discuss offers each other. HR did not let CORP negotiate salary because everyone was getting the same salary since everyone was starting out at the same position, but upon talking to other CORP members, there was one LatinX girl in my rotation that was offered a lower starting salary for no evident reason. That’s unacceptable of Samsung to do; they have enough resources to start everyone off the same especially if that was the whole excuse why they didn’t let people negotiate their offers. There is very little female leadership at this company. In every department rotation where they would show the org charts, I was disappointed to see little to no representation of women in high leadership positions. There is an ERG for women (and another for LGBTQIA+) on site, but little to no policy implementation or systemic change being done to uplift marginalized groups at this company to my knowledge. Conclusion At the end of the day, I hope this review helps at least one person. These are all things I wish I knew earlier, so I hope this can be a resource for anyone who is applying or joining Samsung through the CORP program, or anyone for that matter. Thanks for reading 😊