27 Samsung and SK veterans move to China’s CMXT for “double the salary”; only one remains, the other 26 have all quit

[Financial News] Amid continuing concerns about the outflow of South Korea’s semiconductor talent overseas, 27 senior technical professionals who had worked at Samsung Electronics and SK hynix for an average of at least 15 years moved en masse to Chinese memory maker ChangXin Memory (CMXT). Twenty-six of them have already left the company.

On the 6th, according to the office of Choi Su-jin, a People Power Party lawmaker on the National Assembly’s Science, ICT, Broadcasting and Communications Committee, a comprehensive review of LinkedIn and other sources found that 27 senior technical professionals from Samsung Electronics and SK hynix had moved to CMXT.
Twenty-three had worked at Samsung Electronics and eight at SK hynix. Some had worked at both companies.
Their average tenure per person was 15.4 years. The group also included six senior- and executive-level professionals who had worked in semiconductor mass production for at least 20 years.
Circuit design was the largest field, with eight people, followed by process integration with seven, unit processes and equipment with four, yield and defect analysis with four, and advanced packaging with two.
The survey found that more recently, CMXT had also recruited people specializing in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) design and advanced packaging, beyond conventional DRAM.
Fifteen of the 27 did not join CXMT immediately after leaving their jobs; instead, they joined after working at equipment and materials companies, foreign firms, universities and other organizations. Choi’s office raised the possibility that these “stepping-stone job changes” were intended to circumvent non-compete agreements, which typically last one to two years.

The headhunter offers obtained by the lawmaker’s office reportedly included salary increases ranging from 60% to double the previous annual salary, guaranteed employment for 3–5 years, and support for rental housing and children’s education costs.
CMXT’s research and development workforce grew about 2.9-fold, from 2,606 at the end of 2022 to 7,491 this June.
By contrast, the 27 who moved to CMXT had an average tenure there of just 2.9 years. Only one person remains at CMXT.
Seven of those who left were found to have moved again to other Chinese semiconductor companies, including Huawei’s Hong Kong Research Institute and HiSilicon.
Choi’s office said CXMT may have drawn on the experience of Korean engineers while building its factories and stabilizing its manufacturing processes.
Earlier, a Bank of Korea survey last year of about 2,700 domestic and overseas researchers with master’s or doctoral degrees found that 42.9% of personnel residing in South Korea were considering moving abroad within three years. The most commonly cited reason was “financial factors such as salary” (66.7%).
Choi said, “Semiconductor technology is not just a set of blueprints; it is the very experience and know-how people have built up over 20 to 30 years.” She added, “We need to establish a national tracking system to identify and manage the movement of key personnel, and provide exceptional compensation and incentives for reemployment so talented people can put their abilities to use in South Korea.”

[email protected] Seong Min-seo Reporter