Super Micro Computer, Inc. (Supermicro) Reviews

At Supermicro (SMC), you can experience the worst that Taiwan has to offer without getting your passport stamped. SMC’s headquarters (located in San Jose, CA) is a predominantly Taiwanese enclave where the English language is seldom spoken and almost never understood. This is a major problem for native English speakers that want to succeed at SMC, but it pales in comparison to the culture gap that is rigorously enforced by upper management (all of whom are Taiwanese/Chinese). The Chinese social concepts of face and guanxi are the two critical elements that determine success (including financial) or failure at SMC. You can study sociology and intercultural communication, but what the textbooks don’t say is that you, as a foreigner, essentially have no face. You can give face to others, but they will not respond in kind. Essentially, you are little more than a token used to interact with non-Chinese customers while making the company appear to be culturally diverse. This means that there is no chance for meaningful advancement or financial gain outside of the sales “organization”, but even there you will never have any real authority. With a market cap that has approached $2 billion (USD), SMC is still in most ways run like a family business. Everything has to be done manually by means of dozens of separate intranet services, and there is no proper infrastructure in place for remote employees to access them. Despite having staff capable of fixing this, SMC’s management clings to this obsolete and inefficient approach. There is no unifying company culture (unless you include steamed pork buns, mandatory groupthink sessions, and dinner boxes), but many employees are united to some extent by the pervasive atmosphere of despair. Unfortunately, shared hardship is not enough to secure lasting cooperation between departments. As a result, the crab mentality has taken over. Some of the restrooms (and office areas) have water damage, and neglected patches of drywall molder while management continues to line their pockets and look the other way. Employees are told several times a week in mandatory meetings that the level of growth is “not good enough” and that we need to “make more money.” If you take a break from these meetings to use the restroom, you are liable to find signs instructing employees not to stand on the toilet while defecating; apparently, these warnings are often ignored. Concrete floors, paper-thin carpeting, and flickering fluorescent lights are common elements in SMC’s office environment. Cheap, tasteless, and uncomfortable furniture and fixtures are also prevalent. Air conditioning systems fail constantly, and it often smells terrible. Other than this general squalor, there is little consistency between the buildings on SMC’s large campus. Constant shouting matches in Mandarin, downtrodden employees wandering around wearing medical masks, and the sounds of people spitting in their waste bins give the office environment the ambiance of a street market. This cacophony makes it nearly impossible to speak to customers from your desk, so you will find yourself desperately searching for a vacant conference room. The HR department at SMC is truly the bottom of the barrel (or crab bucket), so they can do nothing to enforce policies that would result in the professional office environment one would expect at an American technology company (e.g. SMC). There is no leadership at SMC—everyone (including department heads) is primarily concerned with predicting the CEO’s behavior. Unfortunately, most of them are in way over their head in regard to modern engineering, collaboration, business etiquette, and the constantly evolving technical aspects of the x86 server industry. Despite this, management stubbornly refuses to empower those that have proven themselves capable—a vast majority of department heads and product managers are “lifers” that are stumbling head first towards their own obsolescence.

Pretty much everything you have read negative about this company in previous posts is accurate. There is no such thing as a bad hire at Supermicro as it is the feng shui of an office that causes people to go bad. No joke. This is a common belief. The HR department in Building 8 had an office at the end of a row of offices in the AP/AR area where people wouldn't last more than a few months. After 5 people resigned within 2 years that were in that office, a feng shui specialist came in to redo the office. Turnover stayed the same, so the office became storage for about a year. Nobody ever thought for one minute that it was the ineptitude of management that caused employees to run from the company. Nope. When good people resign from Supermicro, it is blamed on bad feng shui, not mismanagement. This is how this company is run. Some buildings, #5 & #6 especially, are like dungeons. Medieval. Meter long cobwebs hang from ceiling tiles and sway in the breeze, at least where there are ceiling tiles. Hallways have flickering lights and all concrete, looking like the set from the movie Saw. There really are signs in the restrooms telling people not to stand/squat on the toilets, yet they still do. Especially in Building 5 as toilet seats need to get replaced periodically, and sometimes they don't get replaced at all. Physical altercations do happen. The Fremont location is kind of a lone wolf. Only the most basic of English is spoken there and it is predominately a mix of Chinese and Vietnamese speaking workers, and they don't speak to each other because they can't. Vietnamese workers often appeal to HR as they feel abused, but nothing is done as the HR department is primarily 100% Chinese as well. Translators are often needed to deal with situations. When things spiral out of control, manufacturing/warehouse workers will fight in the parking lot near the dumpsters. HR is aware of this and it's been happening for years. If you are white and working at Supermicro, chances are you're in sales. Just like in China and Taiwan, white people (laowai for foreigners) are hired and used as the face of the organization to create a sense of importance and seriousness. Supermicro runs on the concept of face, and unless you are of Chinese descent, preferably Han Chinese, you will not have face. Period. Speaking Mandarin won't help you one bit. Not Chinese, no face. Though on American soil, if you are not Chinese, you are a foreigner and treated as such. Nepotism is rampant. If you've been with Supermicro for a long time and are Chinese, chances are your aunt, uncle, cousin, sibling, is at some level of authority in the company and is keeping you there. The incompetence is staggering. For a tech company, computer hardware for office use is outdated. Even after Windows stopped supporting XP, Windows XP is still being used in many areas. Monitors stand on reams of copy paper on people's desks as monitor stands are not standard issue and are near impossible to get unless you pay for your own (you will not be reimbursed). Sometimes the copiers run out of paper and there is no paper supply available, so you have to refill with the paper from your monitor stand and hope purchasing will order more paper. Furniture is old and falling apart. Management doesn't care about setting up workspaces for new hires, so if you do get a job at Supermicro, prepare to spend your first day cleaning crumbs from your keyboard and throwing old snacks and other personal things in the drawers from the previous employee away. It's pretty sad. HR isn't interested in properly on-boarding anybody and neither is management. Wage & Hour laws are hugely ignored. Exempt employees spend much of their time pushing paper and doing administrative tasks that thoroughly erodes their exempt status, while working 60 - 70 hours per week. Non-exempt employees find themselves doing the work of exempt directors and managers due to management's incompetence.