Reversing the Perspective
“Turning Opportunity Into a Crisis” was written from my point of view—as someone transferred into the Memory Division.
In Draining the Pus, I want to flip that perspective and look at the situation from the other side: the Memory team that suddenly had to take in LSI engineers like me.
There’s a saying in Korean: “It takes two hands clapping to make a sound.”
To understand the sharp reactions to my rushed words and careless behavior, let’s redraw the picture from their point of view. This chapter is about draining the pus that had built up between us.
Returning to the Sauce and Pasta Analogy
Let’s start again with the sauce company vs. pasta restaurant analogy.
On the surface, making sauce at a pasta restaurant and producing sauce at a sauce company might look similar—but in reality, they’re completely different jobs.
A pasta restaurant makes many kinds of sauce in small batches, day by day:
- pomodoro
- carbonara
- aglio e olio
It’s high-mix, low-volume production.
A sauce company, on the other hand, works more like low-mix, high-volume production—producing just a few broad categories at scale.
That’s why sauce companies rely on automation and specialized roles to maximize productivity.
But bringing that same automation into a pasta restaurant would be inefficient. The cost would outweigh the benefit. It’s often better to hire one more cook than to introduce machines or hyper-specialized labor.
Where Digital Design Actually Stands
Now think about the role of digital circuit design—the “sauce”—inside a memory product—the “pasta.”
It’s ambiguous.
Good sauce matters, but pasta is ultimately about the noodles. Sometimes the identity comes from shrimp or clams, not the sauce. At best, the sauce is a strong supporting role—not the lead.
The same applies here.
In memory products, the core is Flash or DRAM—the memory itself.
In Exynos, which is closer to a sauce product, the core is digital circuit design. CPU and GPU performance—the design itself—is everything. Memory supports it.
Written out, this difference feels obvious.
But I didn’t understand it back then—and that misunderstanding is exactly why draining the pus was unavoidable.
Why My Words Created Infection
Before I said things like “You do all this by hand?”, one Memory team member once told me:
“We work kind of like a small family workshop here.”
Later, I learned this team had once belonged to LSI before being moved into the Memory Division. They already knew how LSI worked. They understood the differences. But there were reasons things worked the way they did.
I scratched at a place that didn’t need scratching—and turned it into a sore.
Yes, automated scripts could make design work faster.
But automation also requires:
- people to build and maintain scripts
- licenses that cost real money
- extra overhead
Sometimes, manual work—even if inconvenient—is more efficient in the bigger picture.
Only after I adapted to the new workflow did I realize I’d been acting like someone bragging about a convenience they had, to people who couldn’t realistically use it. That realization was the beginning of draining the pus—painful, but necessary.
Efficiency Over Comfort
What’s the point of working fast and comfortably if the business doesn’t make money?
Cutting license costs and using that budget to:
- improve incentives
- upgrade equipment
- improve the work environment
can be the smarter choice.
One thing I noticed immediately in Memory was how true “abundance creates generosity” really is.
Unlike my previous team, where even office supplies were rationed, here there were:
- flawless large monitors
- meeting rooms with extra keyboards and mice
- cabinets stocked with supplies
Reducing licenses worth hundreds of millions of won and redirecting that money into the environment may have been far more efficient overall.
How I Must Have Looked to Them
From their perspective, this probably made sense.
LSI downsized for cost reasons.
And then this leftover guy—me—shows up, clueless, saying:
“Well, in LSI, we did it differently…”
Annoying, at best.
Honestly, if I were them, I might’ve snapped back with:
- “What, you don’t know because LSI didn’t do it this way?”
- “You’re the reason work isn’t moving.”
But the real problem was that I didn’t even know I was the problem.
And when someone doesn’t realize that, draining the pus takes time.
Why They Still Tried
To their credit, large companies tend to give even struggling members multiple chances.
As one person said:
“Just like you didn’t choose to come here, we didn’t choose to receive you.”
Still, work had to get done.
If this clueless guy could at least do one person’s worth, things would get easier for everyone.
So they tried—to fix me, to make me usable.
Knowing When to Step Away
I was grateful—but not shameless.
Once I understood what was happening, I also realized it was time to leave.
If I had no other options, I might’ve stayed for years, fumbling until I finally became useful. But I’d always wanted to live in Sweden. And after being hit that hard, I didn’t want to drag everyone through more pain.
My dream was elsewhere.
And sometimes, draining the pus doesn’t mean fixing the wound—it means letting it close on its own.
If you would like to see the original post in korean click here
An Engineer’s Memoir in Another World is prequel of Forgetting Arc
