Workplace reviews and discussion: 欣興電子股份有限公司

First, I’m not HR or a manager. I’m simply a survivor who escaped from the gorillas.

I saw someone claiming to be a fellow employee of Unimicron share their thoughts, so I’ll also offer my two cents.

Let me give you the conclusion first: it’s absolutely terrible!

My background: bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from national universities.

When I had just graduated in 2011, there were many things I didn’t understand, so after posting my résumé on 104, I applied everywhere at random.

Luckily, I got into N. At the time, they offered me NT$50,000/month (IC design had not yet undergone structural salary adjustments).

Since I was unsettled at the time and wanted to see more, I thought working at a chip-design house was boring,

so I resigned after working there for only a short while, haha.

Because my family lives in Taoyuan, I thought I’d look for a company closer to home!

I opened 104 and saw that the company claiming to be the world’s number-one PCB manufacturer—the gorillas! I figured I’d submit my résumé and see what happened~

Little did I know that this was the beginning of my nightmare...

First! With the same educational background, N could offer NT$50,000, while you gorillas could only offer NT$40,000. The starting salary for new hires was already NT$10,000 lower = =

N’s monthly salary structure was NT$48,200 base salary + NT$1,800 meal allowance = NT$50,000.

The gorillas’ monthly salary structure was NT$32,200 base salary + NT$1,800 meal allowance + NT$6,000 bonus = NT$40,000.

At the time, I thought it was strange: this NT$6,000 bonus was paid every month!

Why not just make it NT$38,200 base salary + NT$1,800 meal allowance = NT$40,000?

Later I learned that it was because their labor-insurance and retirement contributions were calculated based on NT$32,200...

Next, regarding the supposed guarantee of 14 months’ pay:

I don’t know whether the operators on the production floor really have the two options mentioned in the previous article.

But engineers definitely are not guaranteed 14 months’ pay!

At year-end, you “might” receive up to two months of year-end bonuses. Of course, “might” means it isn’t guaranteed = =

And they don’t give you the two months all at once at Lunar New Year!!

They pay one portion around New Year, and delay the other until April...

Supposedly, this is to prevent a bunch of people from resigning after the New Year! But I think the effect is extremely limited.

Of course, the bonus base is still calculated using NT$32,200....

Don’t fantasize about having it calculated using your full salary. Otherwise, why would they bother labeling NT$6,000 as a “bonus”?

When I was at the gorillas, I received NT$32,200 in the payment made around New Year, and only NT$25,000 in the April payment.

Does this system meet what ordinary people define as 14 months’ pay?

If you think these figures are fine, have you really worked at other companies?

The three holiday bonuses are just NT$1,000 gift vouchers; recently, they’ve evolved into bread vouchers...

As for profit sharing, you have to stay for three years before becoming eligible.

And if you want to receive profit sharing, you first have to give up the NT$6,000 monthly bonus!

That means your monthly salary must first be reduced by NT$6,000.

I’ve honestly never heard of a system like this at any other company.... Too incredible.

Next, let’s talk about working hours.

I stayed at the gorillas for a little over a year, and I found the level of suffering comparable to military service.

Every day, I didn’t get off work until after 10 p.m. to eat dinner. There were endless customer complaints and emails to handle, as well as never-ending meetings.

Want to claim overtime pay? Don’t even dream about it, okay? We didn’t even have a five-day workweek, okay!

When I interviewed, I thought a five-day workweek and 14 months’ guaranteed pay were common sense in the tech industry.

It turned out I was simply too naive...

That’s how I worked more than 12 hours every day. The extra hours were simply accumulated as unseen virtue.

If you want to report overtime, just wait to be torn apart.

My friend’s older brother worked as a process engineer at the gorillas. His supervisor told him that when 6 p.m. arrived, he should clock out first, then come back and keep working...

During my time at the gorillas, I thought more than once that leaving N on impulse had been an idiotic decision...

Leaving N for the gorillas was like breaking up with Tofu Girl and then dating Ferrari Girl...

I found that most managers and senior colleagues who had stayed at the gorillas for a long time had made it their first job.

So they had never compared it with outside companies and didn’t know what good or bad compensation was like.

Or perhaps their education and work experience were not competitive, or they had reached a certain age and couldn’t leave, so they had no choice but to stay at the gorillas and comfort themselves.

When I submitted my resignation, my supervisor asked me why.

I told him that I had attended a class reunion and discovered that my annual salary was the lowest—only about NT$550,000.

The second-lowest annual salary was NT$700,000.

Working until 10 p.m. every day while earning only NT$550,000 a year—I thought it was ridiculous.

(Actually, I made up the class reunion. The NT$700,000 figure was roughly calculated by multiplying N’s monthly salary by 14.)

My immediate supervisor asked me, “Why do your classmates earn such high annual salaries?” (My inner voice: WTF....)

I said, “Because we graduated from electrical engineering, and most of them work in IC design. Compensation in IC design is naturally better than in factories.”

Damn, do you know what he said to me?

He looked very displeased and said:

“Oh, then let me tell you: that’s all they’ll amount to in the future!”

At that moment, all I could do was remain speechless = =

If you’re too old to jump to another job, is sarcasm all you have left?

My senior manager had a better temper. He said to me very kindly:

“number89757, stay here and work hard. In the future, you’ll also earn NT$700,000 a year.”

Me: “......”

For crying out loud... That wording does sound like an attempt to encourage a subordinate, but aren’t the numbers a little strange?

Since when can an annual salary of NT$700,000 be used as an unrealistic carrot = =

After hearing that, I was truly certain that my decision to resign was correct...

I’ve now moved to an IC design company. I leave at 5:30 a.m. every day. The work isn’t merely relaxed—it’s so easy I’m practically catching a cold from it,

but my annual salary is twice what it was at the gorillas.

To the colleague who generously shared in the previous post:

Thank you for sharing what you saw. I’ll share what I saw as well.

There’s absolutely a reason a company ends up being condemned so harshly on a tech-industry forum.

People aren’t just bored and looking for a company to attack for no reason.

There have already been news reports online about Unimicron being short-staffed.

Here is an excerpt:

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Unimicron Chairman Tzeng Tzu-chang frankly stated that, under the influence of declining birthrates, “having orders but still being unable to recruit workers” will become the industry norm. This is especially true because PCB-industry standards and manufacturing schedules vary, and automation requires further customization to match process equipment. Unimicron has established a project team to address the challenge.

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When have you ever seen a similar news report whose subject was Chairman MediaTek’s Ming-Kai Tsai or Chairman Morris Chang?

Why don’t those companies have labor shortages, with countless people practically crawling to get in, while only you gorillas are short-staffed?

If you think you should be satisfied as long as the company pays your monthly salary on time, then I think this forum might as well be shut down.