engineer

process engineer

senior engineer

equipment engineer

developer ii

Samsung Electronics

My manager was great, but I have heard horror stories about other departments (long work hours, no training). The training in my department was so awesome, and I made great friends with all of my co-workers. I had no problem with my department, or my management. I rarely worked over time, but my friends in other departments were ALWAYS working extreme overtime to finish projects. This was mainly due to their managers and the way they ran their own department. Although my team was awesome, this is why I left the company after only six months:

When hired as an Entry Level CORP Engineer, I was impressed with their four week training system and how team oriented they were. However, they didn't tell any of us in which department we'd be placed, not even when offered the job. All process engineers (computer oriented job) in the department I was eventually placed in were required to stay in the FAB (clean suit), for 90-95% of the time, while all other departments' process engineers were allowed to be in the office the entire time. I was VERY physically uncomfortable with the clean suit and the job's physical requirements, and when I approached HR about the situation was told that I could switch departments only after six months. The end of six months came and no departments had any job openings for an Engineer 1, even though they were still hiring Entry Level CORP Engineers and placing them throughout the company. If the job wasn't listed in the system, I couldn't switch. I would have had to wait for a job to enter in to the system, but even then I'd have to wait another year (total of 1 1/2 years) before asking to switch departments because the six month mark would have already passed. Because of this, I left the company.

Some people don't mind the FAB, but I am not one of those people. Being in there for 1-3 hours at a time is okay, but for 12 hours shifts every day, they are almost unbearable. It is so loud in there, you're covered from head to toe with a clean suit (only your eyes showing), and you are not allowed to take in food or drinks. There is no music and no internet to even take small breaks, and the lights are a weird yellow color that is so bothersome. Going to the restroom was a challenge all in itself, which included walking about 150 yards to the exit, taking off the clean suit, putting it back on, and walking another 150 yards through the FAB. Had I been placed in a department that did not require as much FAB time, I would have stayed much longer. Make sure that you can handle the physical requirements (lifting 10-20 lb foups) if you are going to be placed in that environment! They never mentioned any of this to me during the interview, and I even asked when the HR rep called me to offer me the job. She couldn't even answer what department I'd be placed in, because she didn't know! Ask these questions during your interview to help your placement!! I am a mechanical engineer and got placed with chemical engineers. ???? At least my manager and TR were awesome and let me choose to be a process engineer instead of an equipment engineer (having to lift extremely heavy pieces). Being a 5'1" woman with three herniated discs, I would not have lasted one week as an equipment engineer.

You will only get to a higher position if you are friends with execs. That is why most people are not qualified off merit there and it shows in the work.  They spend a lot of money and don’t make a lot. Not as innovative as other big tech companies. They say salary and bonus compensation  is higher than other companies because they don’t have public stocks and this was true before the pandemic but they have fallen behind major with a competitive salary. No headcount so if you’re an intern or contractor goodluck. Don’t let them string you along, people do get converted but it’s one in a million. They don’t do major layoffs which is great but your bonus will be affected every year they are fiscally strong. If you have a sign on bonus just know it can very by engineer to engineer- again it’s based off how long they see you staying. If you’re young you’ll get 10k if you’re older and more experienced it can jump dramatically to 50-100k for a sign on. If they hired real qualified people instead of shipping people from SK to the US they would be in a better position. If someone isn’t doing their job to the standard they have the next person in line in SK gets sent over to fix the mess and then when they fail it’s just an repeated cycle. The one good thing I noticed recently is they are hiring a younger generation as well as a more diverse group. Before there was no diversity and most people were older in age. This changed after the pandemic. They do have a good learning and development team. They are also not as secretive and private and protected as they should be compared to other companies of their caliber. It feels like they only fix issues once something messes up badly instead of being proactive. Benefits are pretty good but not like they used to be pre pandemic. They do not change to the US culture they will always have the SK culture which is not as modern run like regular tech companies. Think of 90s business suit men on  a train home sleeping working 20 hours a day - the culture is closer to that. I think a good turn around would be higher more qualified people- let go of the ones who made it through the cracks that slack off all the time including the execs who only go their position by knowing someone. Spend less on extravagant events for executives and “visitors” and pay staff higher. Lastly, get with the times in the US. If you think everyone has to work 24/7 and be in office to be more productive and make more money than you hired the wrong people. The most successful companies have people working in different offices all around the world connecting on zoom, WebEx, teams and work just as efficiently because they hired people who they can trust and will know to get the job done. Also if you’re gonna get SK a family day once a month on the 21st you should treat the US team the same. If we have to be in office 5 days a week because that’s how SK does it then we should be offered the same time off - Korean holidays family day etc.. 

The typical day is fueled by self motivation. As a team, we consisted of around 20 members including the team and regional manager. We did not work in a central location and most internal work was done from home, this includes emails, internal issues, daily conference calls, etc. In addition, there were regular training and product courses to do outside of "retail time".

Retail time refers to time we used to manage store accounts, visiting 5-8 accounts per day. This includes 50-80 retail stores depending on the territory assigned. In this role, we trained sales reps on selling techniques, helping customers, product features, as well as furthering knowledge and benefits of the Samsung product ecosystem. Aside from training many and managing multiple accounts, coordinating sales events and customer interaction events were things we did to help educate our customers as well as foster and build a good relationship between the store leadership and ourselves/company.

Every day varied to a high degree, from solving problems, holding sales events, hosting training events, spending time training store reps on top of handling internal issues and responsibilities. 

Management varied in degree from good to outstanding, The organizational setup was fractured to say the least, as part of the team was handled by Samsung direct and the other half handled by a contracted company. This means the managers for one team each work for separate companies. This left a lot of room for communication gaps, delays in fixing problems, getting issues resolved, etc. 

Culture was great, though we worked basically independently there was a strong community atmosphere where team member help was always available via electronic chat.

The hardest part of the job was work/life balance. Driving over 100 miles a day between 7 or 8 in store hours and coming home to do the other half of the job made it very difficult to keep stress low and find time for personal interests. For instance, 7 day weeks would be declared with little to no warning as well as compensation changes and other organizational modifications.

The most enjoyable part of this job was handling my own territory and seeing my clients succeed. Receiving multiple compliments and requests for my presence. I received a number of complementary messages from clients to my management which is at the top of the list. Watching the individuals I trained improve in their position and increase their sales numbers, seeing client sales improve, and building relationships that made me feel like I was part of the clients team itself -being invited to exclusive events and outside sales events- was very rewarding. Especially being preferred over numerous representatives in similar positions to mine from competitor companies.

Management is very poor.  It is a culture that is built on keeping your job, not doing what is profitable for the company.  The management is more interested in covering their butts and keeping their jobs and will throw you under the bus in a second to cover up for a poorly planned and/or executed promotion that makes them look bad.  Management is a "do as a say" culture, they do not empower you with the proper tools to do your job... I was responsible for roughly $120mm in annual revenue, but had to get approval from my Director of Sales for a $500 request for funding from one of my accounts.  They are very slow to make decisions and as a result the competitors who move quickly gain market share over Samsung. Samsung is very concerned with overall market share and meeting or exceeding forecast.   They are dependent on "economies of scale" because they build product based on forecasts. If the forecast is off, they will heavily discount the product in the market and make the dealer take very short margins.  It is a very poorly run company that has l lot of "ex-Sony" senior managers.  This culture tends to "take care of each other" and make decision based on "arrogance" 

Additionally,  it is widely know among the employee's that management regularly monitors your work hours by checking when you log on and off your computer daily.  They track your phone location.  Security makes working their very difficult.  Getting basic tasks done were very difficult due to all the security, passwords, and access restriction. For example, Samsung IT does not allow any employee to access YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media sites from their company issued phone or computer.  They don't allow you to download a document to a USB drive without gaining approval first.  Employee's must gain approval from IT to copy anything from a company computer to a USB drive and that approval lasts for 14 days and then needs to be approved again.  Your company phone is monitored and tracked so they know where you are at any moment  They are very worried about "company trade secrets" and will not allow anyone to make copies of company documents.  This high level of security actually decreased employee production.  It took me 30 min to log-on to my computer every morning due to all the levels of security and passwords that needed to be entered.  They are very paranoid about someone steeling their information it bogs down productivity.  I could go on and on about the backward managerial style of this company, but it would take me a long time.     Overall, I would rate my experience at Samsung to be just OK.

This is the flagship R&D lab of Samsung Electronics America. For wireless communications, this is a very innovative lab with a huge impact on Samsung's world-renowned flagship devices. They have some of the smartest researchers in the industry, and it is an absolute pleasure to work with most of them. BUT, all of this comes at the cost of chaos (on a day-to-day basis), increased emphasis on commercialization support, and understaffing. 
1. Day-to-day chaos: Patents are a huge part of the yearly evaluation, and publications are highly encouraged (one of the few labs in the industry that does this). But, a single person is often assigned to multiple projects, due to chronic under-staffing. So, the fast-paced nature of the projects, and weekly meetings with HQ in South Korea means that you must balance a bunch of conflicting requirements: (a) keep up with HQ's unpredictable requests, (b) find time to write patent documents (probably the biggest metric of your productivity, when it comes to pay raise and promotions), and (c) do (a) and (b) for multiple projects. Further, due the flip-flopping of HQ's technical members (as a result of the tension with their management), some projects get canned overnight, new use-cases appear out of thin air, often with very short turn-around times to report on feasibility. THIS IS A RECIPE FOR BURNOUT.

2. Increased emphasis on commercialization support: Commercializing an idea is a beast. Over the last 2-3 years, the lab's emphasis has shifted towards commercialization support, and away from research. This often results in employees having to compromise long-term understanding of a problem or technology, in favor of reporting quick updates (frequency results from daily updates to updates every week). To make matters worse, the timezone differences with HQ make this problem worse for staff members working on commercialization projects, especially during the 6 months preceding a major product release. 

3. Understaffing: Despite requests to increase headcount, HQ often does not budge. As a result, a single person can sometimes be working on multiple projects at the same time. In case of multiple conflicting deadlines, the managers are accommodating to the best of their ability. But there is only so much they can do when their higher-ups are fundamentally uncooperative when it comes to staffing. 

You will learn more about the industry than at most other fabs that I've been to, but it will surely cost you. One of the first things I realized was just how undermanned we seemed to be and the amount of work required. While I have no problem working hard, sometimes you just have to sit back and say enough is enough....Get me some help!! I could have realisticly had another tech on shift, and still not accomplished everything that mgmt seemed to expect. As an Equipment tech, I was monitoring 50+ chambers, wafer based PMs(atleast 1 per shift w/the volume of tools),Corrective PMs, PROCESS quals, Failure Analysis Reports(assigned automaticly for certain equipment faults), and preparing more charts, graphs, spreadsheets, and powerpoint presentations for passdown than anyplace on earth...This place wants a powerpoint presentation for EVERYTHING by the way!!

Management seemed a little out of touch with what's actually required to keep the tools running which was very clear with the amount of "Monday morning quarterbacks". I still wonder if they ever even read the 20 page passdowns they had me spend 2 hours to prepare...Then again, I got paid by the hour so if they like it, I love it. Speaking of mgmt, these guys actually called me at the hospital the DAY my daughter was born to see if I could come in the next day!...I can't even make this stuff up. These guys are a bunch of characters. The cliff notes version of what I want to make clear follows:
-You will work your fingers to the bone at Samsung.
-You will be perform the work of at very least one other person while getting paid $2-$5 per hour less than your counterparts throughout the industry.
-You will have to get to work 15 minutes prior to clock in time to "get your mind right" before dealing with the insanity that will follow during your shift.(Many people that I worked with had to do the same)
-You will be the most important part of your group UNTIL it's time to get a raise.

My friends & relatives thought it was cool that I was working for a global giant such as Samsung and that's part of what draws people to this company....Brand name. I would often tell people that working for Samsung is like having a beautiful wife that cheats. I personally would rather have a less attractive one that recognizes my worth and respects me accordingly.

- came to work at 9am in the morning, went home at 6pm in the afternoon every day, while beside lunch time (for rest, I personally don't consider it working hour), every minutes spent their is enjoyable, productive and cherished. 
- Had never really writen any python code before the intern, I learned python programming during the intern 10 weeks, as well as finished quite a few small projects including a GUI interface for testing, a detailed logging module pack for MSTK suite, and a test suite completion and integration into mentor's STEL python test automation framework. The most impressive problem-solving skill learned is to always trace logs as guidience when felt loss and trouble shot a problem. 
- Started emacs IPython IDE configuration on my own during the summer after having used emacs for programming for almost one year when projects required an efficient programming environment/IDE to run/execute python code. Together with some basic testing case developements for MSTK test suite which I was not as intested compared with others. 
- Due to big company management and company culture, the team provided best intern practice environment. 
- There were technical challenges. Almost left the first challenge to my mention which needed an os.path() statement where module located when referring to a module, but by allowing for some more hours of searching, I figured it out on my own. Felt challenged while still very excited, and started to figure out, handle challenges on my own. For me, I feel like as a not so experienced new graduates, some help is needed when necessary. But I have to learn necessary knowledges and practice how to solve problems on my own on the long run. Compared with technical, inter-personally communications is actually the harest part of job. With a great mentor, everything works just perfect, while with some other mentor, work may just freezed there. 
- The most enjoyable part of job is most of the minutes my mind is clear; and every day turned out to be a happy/enjoyable as well as productive working/learning day.

Base Salary was good but as a sales professional the Samsung Electronics America (SEA) sales leadership would consistently change comp plan mid quarter/mid year to reduce competition and reduce exceleraters of their top sales people. Most good sales people get into this career field to hit exceleraters. Thats what drives talented sales professionals. SEA would do anything to reduce payments to their top people by moving the goal post and my best guess is probably was NA leadership at SEA (Sales Management) was never in sales so they don't have a clue how to run a sales organization 🤷. Go figure..sales leadership never in sales, so they spend 99% of the time talking internally and no time engaging customers or other industry leaders. The short term Bottom line "$" the most important thing even if it's at the expense of the customer experience (Very sad- and will cost the organization their reputation and future growth). On average 30-50% of the time reporting that takes away from facetime with customers (excessive reporting- less time selling). Their were some positives. SEA does have great technology and great benefits. If SEA would change leadership to focus on the customer and take care of the talent the sky is the limit for this organization, but honestly I don't see that happening based on past experience and current leadership (many of us waited and waited for change, but change never happened which was mind boggling. Last few years huge turnover, especially with most talented people due to poor leadership. This tends to kill moral and has become a real problem as top sales performers are running for the exits. Message to Korean leadership..you have a great company, with innovative products, but you have the wrong people managing the NA group, especially in the sales organization. Change is desperately needed asap or reputation of SEA to customers and potential industry talent will suffer greatly. 

The job is ever changing, it is a political  nightmare, if you disagree  with a decision  be prepared to be black listed forever, think of the good old boys club and that is  how it operates. Executive management changes policies when it feels necessary,  such as not allowing  PTO which is placed 8 months in advance due to the needs of the business only to allow other people to have it during the same time period.  You are always on, there  is no work life balance whatsoever, I had 320 hours of accrued PTO , however Samsung will only pay out 200 hours  then a 3 to 1 upon separation.  If you do use PTO you will still  be working. Bonus structure  changes at a whim, 8 days before the 1/4 ended, we were  advised of what the goals were! Policy is you have to be in your position 1 full year before applying  for a new role, that is unless you are buddy  buddy with your manager, promotions are not based upon skill and exceeding sales targets, rather  who you are friends  with. Be prepared for constant schedule  changes and being in fear of your job due to NO JOB SECURITY. HR is not there to protect the employees rather to protect the company. The constant stress level lack of true identity,  trustworthy leadership and no commitment  to employee mental health are all concerns which need to be addressed Very limited lateral movement between divisions and it is an each man for himself mentality.  Management  forced employees  to score higher Samsung Survey Index scores by advising lower scores mean you will not have a job, even after  record scores month later a reduction of sales force was implemented.


My time working with the test team was an incredibly rewarding and enriching experience. From the very first day, I felt welcomed, supported, and encouraged to learn and grow. The environment was not only professional but also collaborative and friendly, which made every task feel smooth and manageable. I truly enjoyed working there, and I can honestly say that it was one of the best experiences in my professional journey so far.

One of the things I valued most was the opportunity to gain so much knowledge during my time with the team. Every day brought new challenges, but with those challenges came learning opportunities. Whether it was improving my technical skills, understanding testing processes more deeply, or learning how to work efficiently in a team setting, I walked away each day having gained something valuable. The team’s willingness to share knowledge and provide guidance was remarkable, and it created a culture of continuous learning that I greatly benefited from.

The work itself was engaging, and I felt that my contributions were both valued and impactful. Tasks were clearly structured, and communication within the team was smooth, which made collaboration seamless. Everyone was approachable, and it was easy to ask questions or share ideas without hesitation. This openness made the workflow efficient and helped us achieve our goals together without unnecessary stress.

Overall, everything about my experience felt very smooth and positive. It wasn’t just about the technical knowledge I acquired but also about the soft skills I developed, such as teamwork, communication, and adaptability. Looking back, I am genuinely grateful for the time I spent there. It gave me not only professional growth but also personal fulfillment, and I would gladly welcome the opportunity to work with such a wonderful team again in the future.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Engineer 21 salaries reported	$90,178 per year
Process engineer 13 salaries reported	$92,138 per year
Senior engineer 5 salaries reported	$141,300 per year
Equipment engineer 7 salaries reported	$91,643 per year
Developer ii 4 salaries reported	$100,419 per year

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