Workplace reviews and discussion: Advantech_研華股份有限公司

Position: PM

Salary: With 6–8 years of experience, if you join as a senior engineer, you can negotiate a salary of around NT$60,000.

As an assistant manager, it will be a little higher (really, just a little). There is a guaranteed 13 months of salary.

A little over 15 months’ salary per year.

Benefits: Basically none. They are completely unrelated to the company’s reputation and stock price.

Location: Linkou. Basically, there is nothing around it. It is extremely desolate. If you drive to work, there will be traffic jams both going to and leaving work.

It is very inconvenient. Although there is an MRT station, it takes more than 20 minutes to walk there.

Promotion: Don’t even think about it. Those who joined before IoT became popular have already been promoted. There is not much opportunity if you join now. If you are also a graduate of one of Taiwan’s top four universities, you may find upon joining that most people with slightly more seniority than you are graduates of five-year junior colleges or vocational schools. You may need to spend extra time adapting to the culture.

Boss: A typical Taiwanese boss—spend as little as possible. Extremely stingy about what should be provided to employees.

Impression: Basically, it is a company for coasting toward retirement. The cushy positions are occupied by long-timers. Most of the PMs are women with families; male PMs are a minority. However, you can tell that people work with a “just earning a living” attitude. They do not demand much in terms of benefits or salary. Management is lax, and working hours are fairly flexible. You can go out for lunch at noon and come back at one or two o’clock, and no one will really care. In any case, project cycles are relatively long, and the pressure is nothing compared with that at a typical systems company. Young people who join are essentially crippling their own careers. You will definitely regret choosing Advantech as your first job. If you are young, you should go out and take risks. Others earn in one year what you earn in three or four years, so do not make the mistake of choosing this company.

If you already have good experience, such as at a foreign company, this is not a bad place to coast toward retirement. There are quite a few parachuted-in management positions here.

I am not very optimistic about Advantech’s growth. After all, everyone is now entering the IPC business. The company is relying almost entirely on M&A to drive growth. Think twice before joining.

For a PM with around six to seven years of experience, the salary is approximately