Workplace reviews and discussion: 曜越科技股份有限公司

1. The salary for sales roles is okay, but you need to negotiate. I’ve heard that some sales staff started with very low salaries.

2. The workplace is pretty good. It’s in the same building as FOX, which looks quite nice. It’s convenient to buy breakfast at the exit of Xihu MRT Station, and there are quite a few upscale restaurants nearby.

3. Every quarter, the company rents out a theater at Miramar for a movie. The movie is selected by vote, but due to budget constraints, it may not often be a blockbuster. If you want to watch a blockbuster, you usually have to add a meal package, which means there will be no movie quota for the next quarter because the package costs more.

4. The work of overseas sales includes updating quotations, becoming familiar with products and introducing them to customers, asking the order-management team to help place orders, collecting local competitor prices, regularly updating performance reports for supervisors to track, following up on payments, and asking the design department to customize posters and promotional flyers. These are the main areas of responsibility, though there are also some miscellaneous administrative tasks. Sometimes you need to prepare PPT presentations for senior management on performance and progress. Internal responsibilities are fairly clearly divided.

1. The department most frequently criticized at this company is Sales, followed by PMs. You have to have your performance and new products reviewed almost every day. If a PM is not sufficiently prepared, they should also expect to be publicly criticized by the chairman during meetings.

2. The entire responsibility for stocking inventory has fallen on Sales. Apart from products specifically monitored by the chairman and bestsellers, the company’s materials-control team generally will not stock products unless you ask them to. It is understandable that the company cannot afford to carry excessive inventory, but the materials-control team here also does not take responsibility for consolidating the needs of all sales staff; they only go through the motions at sales and production meetings. Sometimes the lead time for certain power supplies is too long and the delivery date is too late, so you may lose the order. Later, I simply stopped including products that were too difficult to sell in my quotations, to avoid customers placing orders when there was no stock.

3. This company really likes PPT presentations. Although PPT presentations are a basic skill nowadays, the rush to produce reports for senior management often cuts into the time available for replying to emails and gathering competitor information.

4. The design department’s aesthetic sense needs improvement. Because many of the company’s products are black, the design department also often uses black backgrounds, which completely fails to highlight their visual appeal. The results look very basic, and when you ask the design team to revise them, they cannot come up with anything new.

5. Many senior employees and returning employees occupy the higher positions, making promotion somewhat difficult.

6. Because the sales work is relatively simple, it is difficult to build up skills quickly, and there are very few capable managers who can provide leadership. If you are looking for a job where you can coast toward retirement, consider applying for purchasing or order management (sales administration specialist) positions; people in those roles are HAPPY every day.