While the culture at Samsung is generally toxic, it varies by departments. Not trying to play the race card here but departments with majority Koreans are generally more toxic. If your direct boss is Korean, good luck. Each department is helmed by a Korean BM. The reason why it’s called “Korean BM” is because the position is only reserved for Koreans. It’s no secret that Koreans are favoured in this company and career progression is limited if you’re non-Korean. They’re also exclusive and tend to speak in Korean amongst themselves. Working here is like living in a Korean drama every day. The culture here is extremely hierarchical, bosses love to micromanage and do not give two hoots about their subordinates' opinions. People here tend to groupthink since in Korean culture, having a different opinion is frowned upon. It's no wonder Samsung is falling behind Apple in terms of innovation. Also, senior management tend to throw their weight around and are verbally abusive (seeing the management yell at their subordinates, slamming things, etc is a very common sight).
Samsung’s management leads by fear and not by example. Machiavelli's "better to be feared than loved" philosophy describes their management style and they’re truly an epitome of Machiavellian style leadership. This can be seen from Samsung's implementation of a clock-in system whereby notifications are sent out to the department heads even if an employee is just a few minutes late. Notifications are also sent out if one under-clocks by a mere few minutes. E.g. if you start work at 9am, something urgent cropped up, and you leave at 5:58 rather than 6pm, the system would send a notification to your boss and you would then have to submit a valid reason in the system on why you under-clocked, for your boss's approval. Employees at Managerial level and above are also not allowed to carry any unused annual leave forward. Work from home is not permitted as well so staying late to OT is a must. In view of COVID-19, the company has allowed quarantined employees to work from home. Even then, activity and hours clocked on their laptops are tracked. Company has plenty of other rigid systems in place, such as mandatory use of their outdated in-house email portals. You also have to submit tedious approval requests for every single thing and the red tape in this company contributes to inefficiency at work.
P.S. It seems like the average ratings here are pulled up by retail staff/promoters. If you look at ratings from corporate staff, they're mostly negative.
