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Military Style Management and Too Much Politics

Senior Software Engineer
Former Employee
Worked at Samsung for 4 years
March 22, 2014
San Jose, California
2.0
Doesn't RecommendDoesn't Approve of CEO
Pros

Samsung is famous. You may have a chance to get free Android devices.

Although their base salary is relatively low compared to mainstream American companies, their compensation is not bad, and their base salary is still higher than many Asian companies, such as Foxconn, Huawei, Supermicro, or ASUS, etc.

Cons

The base salary is relatively low. The management and company culture are notoriously bad. They exploit employees to contribute patents to the company. This counts into your half-year assessment, which is the reference for your bonus. As I have mentioned, their base salary is low, but their bonus may not be bad. Their manager controls a substantial portion of your yearly income, and that serves as great leverage for the manager to exploit the employee.

Another thing is that their company IT is notoriously poor. For example, my current American company outsources the IT architecture to a professional IT service vendor (such as Citrix). When you get some trouble on your PC, all you need to do is make a phone call to the help desk, and you quickly get professional IT service to fix your computer.

Nonetheless, in Samsung, fixing your own PC is part of your skill in your work. You have to fix your own PC or you will be treated as incompetent. The group I worked for in Samsung did have a Korean IT guy. However, he acted like your boss. You have to beg him to fix your PC, or you may have to wait a long time, and you may not finish your job because of that.

Your manager won't listen to your "excuse" saying that you could not finish your work on time because your PC has some issue. Blah blah blah...

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Samsung Interview Experiences