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Samsung is facing a massive internal crisis that could see its core engineering talent walk out the door. According to a new survey conducted by the United Enterprise Labor Union—Samsung’s largest labor group—an overwhelming 81.5% of the 8,297 respondents within the company’s Foundry division openly intend to leave their jobs over the next two years.
The widespread anger stems directly from a heavily skewed performance bonus formula introduced back in May. The agreement allocates 10.5% of annual operating profits to employee incentives. However, it disproportionately favors the booming memory chip division over every other team. Samsung is projected to bring in roughly 300 trillion won in operating profit this year. The memory division workers are on track to pocket a staggering 600 million won ($400,000) each.
Meanwhile, engineers in the Foundry and System LSI divisions are expected to receive less than half that amount, combining for 210 million won. The situation is even worse for the smartphone, TV, and home appliance teams in the Device eXperience division. Mobile workers are looking at a modest 6 million won ($4,000) payout. This creates a hundredfold gap that has completely tanked company morale.
Protests and collapsing morale
‘The extreme wealth gap inside the tech giant has turned different business units against each other. Internally, employees are calling the situation a class divide. Before the foundry survey dropped, frustration had already spilled over into the consumer side. Desperate to send a clear message to management, Samsung Mobile employees reportedly showed up to work dressed entirely in all-black funeral mourning attire to protest their diminished compensation.
The union’s data highlights that this resentment is breaking records across the entire semiconductor business. Beyond the 81.5% turnover threat in the foundry branch, 75.4% of workers in the System LSI chip design unit want out, alongside 60.6% of staff at the Semiconductor R&D Center. Across the entire semiconductor group, nearly one in two employees is actively considering a career change, compared to a mere 32.7% in the highly pampered memory sector.
A threat to South Korea’s national goals
This internal chaos is a major roadblock for Samsung’s future growth strategy. The company has spent years trying to catch up to TSMC in the advanced contract chipmaking market. However, losing four out of five foundry engineers will inevitably delay vital research and development timelines.
The talent drain could also derail South Korea’s broader national semiconductor goals. The domestic government is currently pushing an ambitious multi-billion-dollar initiative to double the country’s memory production capacity by 2030. It counts on Samsung to build massive new fabrication facilities in the southwestern region. Union chief Choi Seung-ho has urged management to take the survey seriously and introduce effective retention countermeasures ahead of the 2027 wage negotiations before the exodus permanently damages corporate competitiveness.
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