“Apart from our two group leads, my complete group [of 30 people] simply utilized to SK Hynix,” Lee says, referring to a job posting the corporate printed in July. Lee, who has labored at Samsung for 3 years, even utilized for an entry-level place at its rival. A coworker, who has labored at Samsung for eight years, utilized for a similar one. They each bought rejected. However they’re hopeful that they’ll get a callback for a posting looking for a extra skilled engineer.
All workers at Samsung and SK Hynix that MIT Expertise Overview spoke with requested to be recognized by simply their final title or a pseudonym as a result of they feared retaliation from their employer. Samsung declined to remark, and SK Hynix didn’t reply to requests for remark.
After extended negotiations with its labor union, Samsung struck a deal in Could to pay out 10.5% of the semiconductor division’s working earnings to workers as bonuses yearly for 10 years, principally in firm inventory that vests over three years. The transfer got here after SK Hynix agreed final yr to pay out 10% of working earnings to workers, which interprets to $476,000 per worker this yr—principally in money.
However at Samsung, every division’s bonus is tied to its personal backside line. Chip employees in its reminiscence division, which can be reaping a windfall from making HBM chips, are getting paid a bonus of roughly $400,000 per worker this yr. However those that, like Lee, work in Samsung’s foundry division, which manufactures logic chips that firms like Tesla and Google design and has been working at a loss, are getting a bonus of roughly $135,000.
Staff advised MIT Expertise Overview that Samsung stated it may well’t give as many bonuses to divisions that aren’t performing properly. Lee, after watching the labor union wrestle with the corporate for months, says he has felt upset by what he ended up with: “Even when Samsung does properly sooner or later, I don’t suppose any of it’s going to trickle all the way down to me.”
The employees’ lagging bonuses are making SK Hynix out of the blue look interesting. In keeping with a survey by the Samsung labor union in June, 81.5% of workers within the firm’s foundry division, and almost half of workers within the semiconductor division as an entire, stated they wished to go to a different firm within the subsequent two years. In April, Samsung labor union chief Choi Seung-ho stated greater than 200 members of the union had left for SK Hynix over the previous 4 months. On Blind, an nameless office discussion board, a refrain of disgruntled engineers at Samsung confess that they wish to defect to SK Hynix for the larger bonuses.
For many years, SK Hynix lived in Samsung’s shadow. It was the smaller, scrappier reminiscence maker that elite engineering college students at universities appeared previous when making use of for jobs. However in 2019, Samsung downsized its HBM group, betting the market would keep area of interest, whereas SK Hynix doubled down on the know-how. Then the AI growth supercharged the demand for HBMs, which feed AI chips the large quantities of information they want at ultra-high pace, driving costs to unprecedented ranges. SK Hynix now leads the worldwide marketplace for HBMs, whereas Samsung is enjoying catch-up. Each firms topped $1 trillion in market worth in Could, and SK Hynix briefly dethroned Samsung as South Korea’s most precious firm in June.
