The company is fairly sizable. Its recent strategies—production-line automation and relocating and expanding its facilities—show that senior management is determined to move the system integrator toward automated production. Some assembly lines can already produce high-quality products with a small workforce. For these automatically manufactured products, both cost control and product standards can be considered first-rate.
The distribution of the company’s product lines also reflects strategic considerations. They are broadly distributed across various types of non-consumer electronics equipment, such as smart meters, automotive radar, automotive chips, the M2M series, APs, and so on. Smart meters, in particular, have benefited from the recent smart-home trend, with very good sales and profitability. Overall, the company has deliberately tried to avoid making growth overly dependent on certain customers, but given market trends, this may not be as simple as senior management thinks.
Employee turnover is relatively low. Many employees have very low employee ID numbers, and there are many people with more than 10 years of tenure. However, in recent years, there has been a relatively small proportion of employees with mid-level tenure, while turnover among new hires has been relatively high. Compensation is considered good for a system integrator. For favored employees, performance bonuses plus the year-end bonus can amount to more than 16 months of salary for the year, and compensation packages in the BUs are even better. If you are interviewing for a manufacturing-related department, you might consider asking HR about openings in a BU, because they may not necessarily be more tiring, but they are certainly more favored and better paid.
The prevalence of employees with low ID numbers naturally means there are entrenched old-timers, many of whom came from the former Acer Group. Many people at the company may not be relatives or well-connected insiders, but they are certainly old friends or former colleagues, making many matters complicated and preventing issues from being addressed objectively.
After the factory moved to Lixing 6th Road in 2016, many absurd things happened, mainly minor nuisances such as renovation odors and small fires, which left employees badly shaken!? But this absolutely must not be disclosed to outsiders, lest it disrupt the harmony within the city walls.
The management ranks are enormous, often making you feel that there are several times as many managers as engineers, and the company is becoming increasingly bureaucratic. The main levels can be summarized as follows: chairman, general manager, BU heads of the business divisions, heads of each BU, Support Team directors, general plant manager, plant manager, center supervisors, assistant managers, technical assistant managers, engineers, team leaders, all-rounders, and operators. In my personal observation, the current problem of having more officials than soldiers creates serious obstacles. In addition, the company has recently favored bringing in parachuted managers from outside, and their numbers are gradually increasing.
The BU has an independent quality department that can pick and choose which products and customers to work on. They do not accept projects that are not favored, so you need to be accustomed to cleaning up other people’s messes while watching them bask in success. They like to go to the production line on orders from above and cause trouble, and despite knowing nothing about production details, they can point out many unreasonable tasks that people dare not challenge but have to carry out.
It is said that the plant manager privately told employees things such as: “You can apply for overtime pay, but it will be deducted from your performance evaluation and profit sharing,” and similar remarks. Since this content seriously violates labor laws, this section has been muted. Production-line employees have previously reported issues such as incorrect overtime pay, causing the company to come under the scrutiny of the authorities and leaving HR exhausted for several days.
Every company has its good and bad sides. The shortcomings mentioned above are merely the aspects I have observed; they do not mean that this company has no future or financial prospects, nor that you should resign. A more balanced approach is to ask whether you can accept these shortcomings, then either change them, accept them, or leave.