Today I ran a full-day B2B customer service training for new FSEs at Lam Research Korea, a semiconductor equipment maker in Yongin. It had been a while since my last visit, and the campus was buzzing. People filled everything from the lobby to the meeting rooms, and the line at the cafeteria was long. The mood of the semiconductor industry these days was right there in the air. You could feel the energy that AI, HBM, and advanced packaging demand are creating, even inside the building.
An FSE is more than an engineer who works on equipment. They are the face of Lam at the customer’s fab, and they meet the customer more often and more deeply than the sales rep does. Keeping a tool running reliably matters, but the relationship you build with the customer along the way is what ultimately leads to the next tool order. The new hires I met today had great energy. They asked lots of questions and joined the case discussions with enthusiasm. I’m cheering on the great careers ahead for Lam Research Korea’s new FSEs. It also brought back vivid memories of my own days covering TSMC in Taiwan 20 years ago ^^
20 May 2026
[ Instructor: John Kim ]