Samsung: Exynos problems are due to "too short" 52-hour working week in Korea

The Samsung Galaxy S25 will be equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite worldwide instead of the Exynos 2500, which indicates that Samsung's next-generation flagship chip is once again unable to keep up with Qualcomm. As Korean newspaper The Chosun Daily recently learned from sources in the industry, Samsung views workers' rights in South Korea as a central part of the problem.

This is because employees in South Korea can "only" work a maximum of 52 hours per week, including twelve hours of overtime. As a result, employees often have to leave work and go home even when important tasks have not yet been completed. For this reason, key employees of the Exynos team are reported to have worked unpaid overtime more and more frequently over the past few years, with the extra hours going unrecorded.

Samsung's management is said to have entered into talks with legislators to discuss "the effectiveness of the 52-hour workweek" and to possibly obtain an exemption. However, Samsung employees have remarked to The Chosun Daily that more working hours would not automatically lead to more innovation and technological breakthroughs.

Similar laws to protect workers also exist in countries where Samsung's largest competitors are based. TSMC in Taiwan, for example, is subject to a limit of 40 hours plus 36 hours of overtime per month, i.e., an average of around 48 hours per week. The USA, however, has no comparable limits, meaning that Qualcomm and Apple can demand more working hours from their employees, although the chip development teams of these two companies are also significantly larger, according to The Chosun Daily.