The Wound on the Back of My Head - Carina & Dominic Cho

The Wound on the Back of My Head corporate reflection

When S.LSI Ended Without Warning

My time at S.LSI ended suddenly—leaving what I now think of as The Wound on the Back of My Head.
I remembered something one of my English academy teachers used to say:

“If fate is a rock flying toward your face, destiny is the rock thrown at the back of your head.”

For me, getting transferred from LSI to Memory was destiny.
Something predetermined — something I had zero power to change.
Destiny didn’t care about my will. It hit me in the back of the head and walked away.

Looking back now, I’m more grateful than resentful.
The company gave employees on the transfer list about a month to transition — time to wrap up existing work at LSI and take a short break before joining Memory.
A considerate gesture, if you look at it objectively.

But at the time?
I felt nothing but resentment.
Instead of learning about the new division, all I wanted to know was:

Where did The Wound on the Back of My Head come from, and why me?

So I met people I hadn’t seen because of work — grabbing coffee, piecing together bits of company gossip, trying to understand what was happening.

Piecing Together the Rumors

Because I was one of the employees involved in a large-scale transfer — somewhere around tens to hundreds of people — people were curious and willing to talk.

They shared whatever puzzle pieces they had:

other teams had collected volunteers months earlier
the real reason was the division’s deficit
every business unit had its own politics
others had already crossed over to Memory

Only then did I understand: just working hard wasn’t enough.
Even if I performed perfectly, if another department failed and dragged us down, my results would collapse too.

Building one Exynos chip was essentially a massive group project of tens of thousands of people.

I Wanted That Group Project

That’s why I applied to S.LSI — not memory, but fabless chip design, the field Korea needed to excel in.
It was difficult, but worth the challenge.
I believed a tiny dot like me could help build something huge.

And then I was crushed.
Two intense years, and my reward was basically:

“Sir, don’t do that here. Please go somewhere else.”

Maybe I’d been drunk on that dream for too long.
Actually, maybe I never woke up from it at all.

That destiny — the thing that twisted the direction of my life — made me question everything I believed:

Hard work does not guarantee reward.
Effort and results are not proportional.
The world is not fair.

Because if it were, I never should’ve been selected.
Among my peers, I worked the hardest.
I was already pulling my weight and helping others.

If fairness existed:

only my group wouldn’t have been chosen
they wouldn’t have picked mostly junior employees
academic background wouldn’t mean nothing
they wouldn’t have decided everything without discussing it
they wouldn’t send someone who wanted to stay and keep someone who wanted to leave
they wouldn’t swap out people like replaceable machine parts

I Was Blind With Dreams

I didn’t know something so simple until I got hit:

A company moves in the most efficient way — lowest cost, highest return.

Fairness isn’t an efficient value.

To cut losses and boost profits:

Memory needed manpower
LSI could spare some
Send junior people — cheaper impact
No need to consider opinions
Just follow minimum procedures so it isn’t illegal

And that was that.

From Dream to Resentment

Naturally, resentment grew inside me.
I treated the company like a dream.
The company treated me like a number.

Cruel, but true — and I avoided facing it.

That was my problem.

I had a habit of expecting value the other side could never provide.
And the result was always disappointment — self-inflicted.

I let that resentment poison what was ahead of me.
Anger at the company turned into vague hostility.
I was sabotaging my own future.

Also my problem.

If You Resent Everyone, There’s No One to Blame

After finishing my time at the company, I thought about that rock that hit me — and I regretted how I responded.

It was inevitable.
If I wanted to resent someone, I would have needed to resent everyone.
Which means there was no one to resent.

It was unfair — but that made it something to be grateful for.

My father endured 30-plus years of unfairness at work.
My mother endured another kind of unfairness to raise me for 30 years.
My sister endures worse.

Unfairness is everywhere, and people endure it quietly.
All you can do is face it with humility — and gratitude.