Respect the strong and experienced while bullying rookies and the weak. It really feels like a mercenary unit.

As a business reporter under the Want Want China Times Media Group, NT$15,000 is deducted from your monthly salary upfront. They say it’s to cover advances in case your clients default, but in reality, they simply delay paying you for as long as possible. If a client’s advertising payment bounces, you have to pay the money back; I know someone who paid back more than a million, effectively returning to the company everything they earned during their time working there.

As soon as you join, the boss asks whether you trade stocks. Later, you discover that the business reporters all trade stocks based on their own electronics-company clients, using first-hand news (news they wrote themselves, of course, haha).

Would you still use this financial news to trade stocks? I wouldn’t.