Samsung Austin Semiconductor Reviews in Austin, TX Area

Pros

The benefits are great and some of, if not, the best in the industry. The work schedule is also great.

Cons

It is a Korean company and as such it is managed differently and takes a while to adjust to it.

Advice to Senior Management

Overall management does a satisfactory job.

Pros

Stability, plenty of work for the forseeable future
Fast Paced and changing
Room to grow if willing to work for it

Cons

Lots of politics to get wrapped up in
Can be stressful at times
A mix of employees with bad attitudes
Poor communication

Advice to Senior Management

Communicate to your employees and get rid of the dead weight. Don't judge a group by one or two of it's workers. Stand up for your team and have their backs.

Pros

SAS provides a good learning environment. It is one of the most technologically advanced companies in the world and offers opportunities like no other.

Cons

Being an American branch of a Korean company offers several issues. The cultures clash severely. Americans have an attitude of work smart not hard, work efficiently and get it done faster, and if something is a miss or does not make sense, question it and try to find a better solution. Koreans work oppositely. They work long hours but are known to take naps and long breaks and they never question a command given from a senior. At SAS they try to blend these two cultures but as polar opposites they do not blend well. The workplace is filled with Great Work Place initiatives to try and make work better but as Americans working a 14 hour day all we tend to care about is getting home in the evening to spend time with our families, not the lunch hour once a quarter where we get to play video games in 105 degree heat but we miss out on anyway because we are too busy to take a lunch.

Advice to Senior Management

Leadership, Leadership, Leadership. The Korean culture of SAS breeds an environment where the cutthroat go-getters who will throw anyone under the bus to get ahead thrive. This leaves the company severely lacking in leadership. The leaders of SAS do not inspire, they do not motivate, they simply lead with fear.

Pros

There is definitely the opportunity to do a lot of highly technical work, however, that work will be micromanaged and twisted around until it is effectively worthless.

Cons

Management refuses to acknowledge differences between how business can be conducted in the USA versus Korea. This leads to a lot of difficulties and failed business goals.

Advice to Senior Management

Please, realize that holding American workers to impossible goals and making comparisons to Korean metrics that make no sense only disenchants workers.

Pros

Benefits are good, health insurance is really good, jobs are available for engineering technicians that work in semiconductors here when not many other such opportunities are available around Austin TX

Cons

If you come through the door as an entry level engineering technician count on it taking more than 4 years to get to your first promotion. Even with good performance reviews, pay rate will advance very slowly. Some supervisors can be extremely unprofessional towards technicians.

Pros

Benefit is good, Salary is competitive , Clean Environment, good people (most of them).

Cons

Long hours (I mean long hours), Terrible work/life balance. Might have to work weekends.
Employee has no sayings in this company. Burn out quickly, already thinking about switching job to oil&gas. Seriously, FMC, Schlumberger, Shell, Chevron. They all work 8 hr days.... And look at their reviews..... Big difference.
Samsung starts at 6:45am and ends at 7 or 8pm..No wonder people leave this place in a few years. Who can handle it? No Christmas, No Thanksgiving, every ramp up is around the holidays... What the crap.

Advice to Senior Management

Give your employees some time off per day... Move the passdown to 7:30 - 8am. Even less pay but more balanced work/life schedule will keep your employees here.... Or Samsung you will spend all that money wasted to train new people every few months.

Pros

Dr Han is obviously trying to make it a better place to work -- all managers feel the pressure. Asking the employees (GWP survey) once per quarter is an improvement -- especially since it will make clearer whose people hate them.
Pay and benefits are hard to beat...but GlobalFoundries is trying.

Cons

Trust has been broken! And it cannot be fixed overnight. The previous president's legacy affects how people see every company policy and makes people suspicious. No one trusts HR, his preferred hatchet men.
Many major problem directors -- people trust their TR and PL but rarely their director (because they know that they cannot be trusted to tell the truth, only the party line, even in private). We are getting back to a situation where only the most bland director can survive.

Advice to Senior Management

Senior dispatchers (up to VP!) are a big problem for us, Dr Han! They are not yielding power in LSI. I've never seen Koreans so opposed to the president's initiative but they are undercutting US-based "autonomy". Incompetent US-based directors made the situation worse by sending less-than-our-best people to LSI at first. Thanks for fixing that. They are driving Korean-Americans away too. Change out the dispatchers faster and bring fewer senior managers to curb their power.
If you want engineers to believe that HQ cares about us, IT systems improvement is needed.

Pros

For Austin the pay is good.

Cons

CONS: Literally everything else here is BAD.

The way this company runs is like the Survivor TV show. Only one person can win or at least that is how the Directors and Senior Managers like it here and that is the way the place runs.

 Incompetent management, deceit, lies and a general feeling of no one trust anyone here. If you work in semiconductors for more than a year you will know the TERRIBLE reputation this company has for the way it treats its people. Stay Away.

Advice to Senior Management

none you do not really care about us

Pros

benefits, salary, location, PTO, travel opportunities

Cons

growth rate means company is getting overrun by young Engineers with little mentoring

Pros

One of world best company in semiconductor business field

Cons

For administrating as a dispatcher from HQ

Advice to Senior Management

Need to improve overall ability for managing both memory and LSI