Workplace reviews and discussion: 陽程科技股份有限公司

Yang Cheng’s company introduction and news create wonderful expectations, so I’d like to share my experience as a design engineer who worked at this company for less than three years before resigning.

Pros:

1. Housing allowance: $3,500

(Managers repeatedly emphasize that the allowance will result in taxes being charged to the landlord, causing rental disputes; false!! This is purely because the managers believe it wastes company resources.)

2. Training

(For half a year, you are required to stay after work every Tuesday and Thursday to watch one to two hours of videos. The content consists of training courses that previous managers were required to take, based largely on past cases and information found through Google searches. New employees with no exposure to machinery or equipment design generally still do not understand the material after completing the courses. Of course, don’t expect any allowance for the training.)

3. Free lunch and dinner

4. People who did not major in mechanical engineering or have no work experience also have opportunities to develop here, because customized equipment allows you to learn a lot.

Cons:

1. Sixty percent of the employees here have more than ten years of experience and are waiting to retire, while as many as 30% have less than three years of experience, and they are constantly being replaced.

2. Bonuses and salary increases

(Under slogans such as “the company isn’t making money” and “the overall economy is poor,” you should be grateful if you receive a raise of a few hundred dollars a year.....)

3. Overtime pay

(At the interview: “Our company absolutely complies with the Labor Standards Act.”)

(After being hired: If there are no projects, you are not allowed to apply for overtime pay; if there is a project and you apply for overtime pay, that’s fine—but your performance rating will be reduced.)

(Many departments have no projects, yet employees still have to work until after 10 p.m. Monday through Friday and come in on Saturdays to pretend to accompany the manager.)

4. SOPs

(The design process is shown in the diagram below. Materials related to mold opening and design, such as introductions to pneumatic components, selection of linear components, and technical bulletins, are all dumped in the shared folder. When you ask a question, senior employees only tell you that the information is available online and that you should look it up yourself; when you make a mistake, they ask why you didn’t say anything if you didn’t know.)

5. Working hours

(You work almost every day from Monday through Saturday. It is normal to go several months without a day off when there are projects, and every day there are more tasks and drawings than you can finish.)

6. Year-end stock allocation

(Basically, everyone receives one month’s worth, but there is an unofficial rule: the department ranked last in performance receives nothing, and this is usually the new employees.)

If you genuinely want to pursue a career in design, you can try coming here to hone your skills for a few years. During that time, forget about family, a high salary, and a normal life. It is a sweatshop notorious for its harsh working conditions; senior management only knows how to paint grand visions and talk about the past, with militarized management.