Samsung’s chip workers are jumping ship to rival SK Hynix
Samsung’s chip workers are jumping ship to rival SK Hynix
三星芯片员工纷纷跳槽至竞争对手 SK 海力士
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Lee, an engineer at Samsung’s semiconductor division, clocks out when his shift ends. He used to work longer hours, going the extra mile to excel at his projects. But lately, he’s been coming straight home to work on his job application for the chipmaker’s South Korean rival SK Hynix, sharing tips with his coworkers on how to draft a stellar personal statement. 三星半导体部门的工程师李先生（化名）在下班时准时打卡。他过去常常加班，为了出色完成项目而付出额外努力。但最近，他下班后直接回家，忙着为韩国竞争对手 SK 海力士（SK Hynix）撰写求职申请，并与同事分享如何写出一份出色的个人陈述。
Even his boss encourages him to make the move. “My team lead tells us all to jump ship to SK Hynix,” says Lee. He and his coworkers are feeling demoralized by the $476,000 bonus that SK Hynix is set to pay its employees, flush with record profits from making the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips that power Nvidia’s AI accelerators. The figure dwarfs what chip workers at Samsung are set to receive and is sparking an exodus. 甚至他的上司也鼓励他跳槽。“我的团队主管告诉我们所有人，都去跳槽到 SK 海力士吧，”李先生说。他和同事们对 SK 海力士即将发放的 47.6 万美元奖金感到士气低落。得益于为英伟达（Nvidia）AI 加速器提供动力的超高带宽内存（HBM）芯片，SK 海力士获得了创纪录的利润。这一数字远超三星芯片员工的预期，并引发了一波离职潮。
As the AI boom heats up, the semiconductor titans are waging a fierce talent war with flashy bonuses, aggressive recruiting, and even a courtroom injunction. Who wins could tilt the race to dominate the next generation of the HBM chips at the heart of the AI boom. 随着人工智能热潮的升温，半导体巨头们正通过丰厚的奖金、激进的招聘，甚至法院禁令，展开一场激烈的人才争夺战。谁能胜出，可能会左右下一代 HBM 芯片的竞争格局，而这种芯片正是 AI 热潮的核心。
“Except for our two team leads, my entire team [of 30 people] just applied to SK Hynix,” Lee says, referring to a job posting the company published in July. Lee, who has worked at Samsung for three years, even applied for an entry-level position at its rival. A coworker, who has worked at Samsung for eight years, applied for the same one. They both got rejected. But they’re hopeful that they’ll get a callback for a posting seeking a more experienced engineer. “除了我们的两位团队主管外，我的整个团队（30 人）都申请了 SK 海力士的职位，”李先生提到该公司 7 月份发布的一则招聘启事时说道。在三星工作了三年的李先生甚至申请了竞争对手的入门级职位。一位在三星工作了八年的同事也申请了同样的职位。他们都被拒绝了。但他们仍希望在招聘更有经验的工程师的岗位上获得面试机会。
All employees at Samsung and SK Hynix that MIT Technology Review spoke with asked to be identified by just their last name or a pseudonym because they feared retaliation from their employer. Samsung declined to comment, and SK Hynix did not respond to requests for comment. 所有接受《麻省理工科技评论》采访的三星和 SK 海力士员工都要求仅以姓氏或化名身份出现，因为他们担心遭到雇主的报复。三星拒绝置评，SK 海力士未回应置评请求。
After prolonged negotiations with its labor union, Samsung struck a deal in May to pay out 10.5% of the semiconductor division’s operating profits to employees as bonuses annually for 10 years, mostly in company stock that vests over three years. The move came after SK Hynix agreed last year to pay out 10% of operating profits to employees, which translates to $476,000 per employee this year—mostly in cash. 在与工会进行长期谈判后，三星于 5 月达成协议，承诺在未来 10 年内每年将半导体部门营业利润的 10.5% 作为奖金发放给员工，主要以三年内归属的公司股票形式支付。此前，SK 海力士去年同意将营业利润的 10% 发放给员工，这意味着今年每位员工可获得 47.6 万美元的奖金，且大部分为现金。
But at Samsung, each division’s bonus is tied to its own bottom line. Chip workers in its memory division, which is also reaping a windfall from making HBM chips, are getting paid a bonus of roughly $400,000 per employee this year. But those who, like Lee, work in Samsung’s foundry division, which manufactures logic chips that companies like Tesla and Google design and has been operating at a loss, are getting a bonus of roughly $135,000. 但在三星，每个部门的奖金与其自身的盈亏挂钩。其内存部门的芯片员工因制造 HBM 芯片获得了意外之财，今年每人可获得约 40 万美元的奖金。但像李先生这样在三星代工部门（Foundry）工作的员工，由于该部门负责制造特斯拉和谷歌等公司设计的逻辑芯片，且一直处于亏损状态，奖金仅为约 13.5 万美元。
Employees told MIT Technology Review that Samsung said it can’t give as many bonuses to divisions that aren’t performing well. Lee, after watching the labor union wrestle with the company for months, says he has felt disappointed by what he ended up with: “Even if Samsung does well in the future, I don’t think any of it will trickle down to me.” 员工们告诉《麻省理工科技评论》，三星表示无法为业绩不佳的部门发放同等数额的奖金。在目睹工会与公司博弈数月后，李先生对最终的结果感到失望：“即使三星未来表现良好，我认为这些收益也不会惠及到我。”
The workers’ lagging bonuses are making SK Hynix suddenly look appealing. According to a survey by the Samsung labor union in June, 81.5% of employees in the company’s foundry division, and nearly half of employees in the semiconductor division as a whole, said they wanted to go to another company in the next two years. In April, Samsung labor union chief Choi Seung-ho said more than 200 members of the union had left for SK Hynix over the past four months. 员工奖金的滞后使得 SK 海力士突然变得极具吸引力。根据三星工会 6 月份的一项调查，该公司代工部门 81.5% 的员工，以及整个半导体部门近一半的员工表示，他们希望在未来两年内跳槽到其他公司。4 月份，三星工会负责人崔承浩（Choi Seung-ho）表示，过去四个月里，已有超过 200 名工会成员跳槽至 SK 海力士。
On Blind, an anonymous workplace forum, a chorus of disgruntled engineers at Samsung confess that they want to defect to SK Hynix for the bigger bonuses. For decades, SK Hynix lived in Samsung’s shadow. It was the smaller, scrappier memory maker that elite engineering students at universities looked past when applying for jobs. 在匿名职场论坛 Blind 上，三星的一群不满的工程师纷纷坦言，他们想为了更高的奖金投奔 SK 海力士。几十年来，SK 海力士一直生活在三星的阴影下。它曾是一家规模较小、更具拼劲的内存制造商，大学里的精英工程系学生在求职时往往会忽略它。
But in 2019, Samsung downsized its HBM team, betting the market would stay niche, while SK Hynix doubled down on the technology. Then the AI boom supercharged the demand for HBMs, which feed AI chips the enormous amounts of data they need at ultra-high speed, driving prices to unprecedented levels. SK Hynix now leads the global market for HBMs, while Samsung is playing catch-up. 但在 2019 年，三星缩减了其 HBM 团队，押注该市场将保持小众，而 SK 海力士则加倍投入该技术。随后，AI 热潮极大地刺激了对 HBM 的需求，这种芯片能以超高速为 AI 芯片提供所需的海量数据，从而将价格推向了前所未有的水平。SK 海力士目前在 HBM 全球市场处于领先地位，而三星则在奋力追赶。
Both companies topped $1 trillion in market value in May, and SK Hynix briefly dethroned Samsung as South Korea’s most valuable company in June. Predicting that demand for memory chips will continue to surge, the semiconductor titans are making aggressive investments to expand their business. 两家公司的市值在 5 月份均突破了 1 万亿美元，SK 海力士在 6 月份曾短暂取代三星，成为韩国市值最高的公司。由于预测内存芯片需求将持续激增，这些半导体巨头正在进行激进的投资以扩大业务。
Last month, the companies unveiled plans to invest more than $2 trillion by 2040, including a semiconductor “mega-cluster” in Yongin, a city south of Seoul. To staff the expansion, SK Hynix added 2,152 employees in the first half of 2026 alone and aims to double its manufacturing capacity in five years. Samsung plans to hire 60,000 employees over the next five years, especially for its semiconductor division. 上个月，这些公司公布了到 2040 年投资超过 2 万亿美元的计划，其中包括在首尔以南的龙仁市建立一个半导体“超级集群”。为了满足扩张需求，SK 海力士仅在 2026 年上半年就增加了 2,152 名员工，并计划在五年内将其制造能力翻一番。三星计划在未来五年内招聘 6 万名员工，重点是其半导体部门。
Even so, the pipeline will fall short: South Korea’s semiconductor industry will need about 304,000 workers by 2031 and faces a shortage of roughly 54,000, according to the Korea Semiconductor Industry Association. Now the longtime rivals are showering workers with big bonuses to keep—and poach—talent. 即便如此，人才储备仍将不足：据韩国半导体产业协会称，到 2031 年，韩国半导体行业将需要约 30.4 万名员工，面临约 5.4 万人的缺口。现在，这两家长期竞争对手正通过发放巨额奖金来留住并挖走人才。
“[SK Hynix] seems to target Samsung engineers when hiring because it’s a rival,” says Baek, a manager at SK Hynix. “From what I heard internally, the big performance bonuses we got were aimed at luring away talent from our competitor.” “（SK 海力士）在招聘时似乎专门针对三星的工程师，因为它是竞争对手，”SK 海力士的一位经理白先生（化名）说。“据我内部了解，我们获得的巨额绩效奖金旨在从竞争对手那里挖走人才。”
Courts are starting to weigh in. In July, Samsung won an injunction barring two former chip workers from working at SK Hynix for 18 months, on the grounds that chips are a national core technology deserving protection. “With competition in the semiconductor industry fierce, it’s necessary to establish a fair market order,” the court ruled. 法院也开始介入。7 月，三星赢得了一项禁令，禁止两名前芯片员工在 18 个月内入职 SK 海力士，理由是芯片属于国家核心技术，理应受到保护。法院裁定：“在半导体行业竞争激烈的情况下，有必要建立公平的市场秩序。”
The talent exodus threatens a crucial advantage that Samsung still holds in the HBM race. “Samsung is the only memory maker in the world that owns a foundry business,” says Park Jun-young, a semiconductor expert at the Indus… 人才流失威胁到了三星在 HBM 竞赛中仍然拥有的关键优势。“三星是世界上唯一拥有代工业务的内存制造商，”工业领域的半导体专家朴俊英（Park Jun-young）表示……