Investing in R & D and full remote. Samsung's Ukrainian office-about the current work and future of the electronics and chip markets

The Ukrainian Office of Samsung told DOU about the current work of the company, as well as the future of the electronics and semiconductor market. They also informed about their contribution to Ukraine's victory in the war and upcoming new rounds of investment in R&D.

Recently, as reported, Samsung R & D Institute Ukraine has stepped up hiring IT specialists in Ukraine.

"We have restored the functionality that was partially disrupted as a result of a large — scale invasion and returned to the implementation of plans that were started at the end of last year or the beginning of this year: the launch of new projects, the completion of team building in existing projects," Andrey Fisunenko explained to us.

The Ukrainian office of Samsung Electronics in the first days of the war appealed to the headquarters to join the general logic of sanctions against the aggressor country. Accordingly, including taking into account calls from Samsung Ukrainians, the company's headquarters in the first days of a large-scale invasion stopped the supply of any products and components to Russia.

"Estimates of the scale of Global Impact are still ahead. This is a general restructuring of the global landscape of both consumer electronics and semiconductor markets, and it will affect all players. In the long run, of course, this will also affect research and development. But crises are always a drive of innovation and seeds for the future for those who know how to use them," Fisunenko said.

According to him, Samsung Electronics made a charitable contribution to support humanitarian missions in Ukraine in the amount of 6 6 million through the Red Cross; provided accommodation in Poland for family members of employees who are allowed to travel abroad during martial law. Colleagues from the Polish Samsung R&D also provided significant assistance and continue to provide it.

In addition, in the first days, all employees were paid one-time monetary support for evacuation and, in addition to the salary for February, salaries for March were accrued in advance. At the same time, the company, as assured there, fully adhered to the standard schedule of annual salary increases in March.

"As for the R & D Wing: several employees were mobilized — this is a very significant impact in every sense and dimension," the company stated.

As Fisunenko noted, the challenge for the company was to switch to a completely remote mode of operation. However, they succeeded and now there are no plans to open new physical offices in the near future.

"On February 8, we created a separate legal entity in order to meet the conditions of residence of Diya City and were in the middle of formal procedures. So this added some complexity. It is also no secret that the situation has crippled the psychological state of colleagues. R&D activities are creative in essence, and the ability to create new things is very sensitive to the psychological state," he stressed.

According to him, normalization, which included the help of professional partner psychologists, and the restructuring of communication habits in some teams took some time, and this work is still ongoing.

The company'S service station said that it has full confidence in the victory of Ukraine, and the Kiev team is one of the strongest in the R&D infrastructure of Samsung Electronics.

"I would like to draw your attention to such a common thing for everyone that it is worth communicating to partners outside, and to ourselves — the value for business of teams that are able to work in a crisis of such an unprecedented nature and scale. This is an" off — scale" level of consistency and quality, " Fisunenko said.

Now the Kiev representative office is doing everything necessary to prepare the next periods of R&D investment in Ukraine.

Recall that the Samsung Development Center in Kiev was one of the first to officially receive the status of a resident of the special legal and tax regime of Diya City.

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