Workplace reviews and discussion: 一零一多媒體科技事業股份有限公司

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A work experience from a few years ago. Fortunately, I wasn't successfully brainwashed.

The boss's title was COO, and the chairman was his father.

The boss's office was directly behind the employees' seats. He loved watching employees' every move through the glass and smoking in the office.

Yes, that's right—smoking indoors. “I'm the boss, so why can't I smoke indoors?”

The father and son loved requiring employees to run the company as if it were their own, and often used Ma Yun quotes from the internet to motivate employees.

They often said that the company wasn't a cram school: the company hired employees to solve problems, and employees had to figure everything out for themselves.

They often used the year-round, never-closing news website to encourage employees to get moving.

Each editor had to publish 20 articles every workday, 15 articles each weekend day, plus handle client projects.

There were no dispatched reporters or photographers; the articles and photos were simply taken from the internet.

Online news has a high risk of being misinterpreted—the “spectacular scene that caused a sensation on PTT” was a case in point.

In addition to producing content for the website,

we also had to write advertorials, create Knowledge+ content, manage the company's and clients' fan pages, and, despite having a design department, make graphics for the editors ourselves.

When a client held a press conference, everyone had to turn out to set up, inspect, and dismantle the venue, and act as receptionists to guide guests to their seats.

Every employee had to post articles daily to 20 Taiwanese forums and 10 mainland Chinese forums, redirecting traffic through links and taking screenshots.

The assistant manager required us to use our own phones' mobile data when posting, to avoid the company's IP being blocked, and we were not allowed to do it during work hours.

We often received urgent assignments just before the end of the workday. Usually, upper management delayed things until the deadline, then required junior employees to finish them before leaving.

If you were called in to work overtime at short notice on a holiday, refusing would get you harassed.

There was no overtime pay. There was a deduction system, with the money put into a “public fund” for afternoon tea.

Not turning off the air conditioning: 200. Not turning off the lights: 200. Not bringing your access card: 200. Losing your access card: 500. Afternoon tea, haha.

There was a compensatory leave system. Work started at 9 a.m., but I had seen senior employees arrive as late as 11.

It turned out that compensatory leave was a “blessing” granted only after working overtime past midnight the previous day.

Leaving on time would draw scrutiny.

When the boss saw you packing up, he would start asking questions and discussing things—meaning various delay tactics.

Meetings were not scheduled during work hours, supposedly because they didn't want to delay everyone's progress.

It was no big deal for meetings to run past 8 p.m. Had you made personal plans after work? “What does that have to do with me?”

Messages on LINE had to be answered within 30 minutes, and phone calls had to be returned within 30 minutes. Everyone was required to change their LINE nickname to their real name, so no one would be unsure who was who.

There were gift boxes at the three major festivals and performance bonuses. How was performance calculated? According to the sales staff, every boss had their own yardstick.

Each month, 0.x% of our pay was deducted as a welfare fund.

Only the cheap snacks that had been offered at the first and fifteenth of the lunar month were available to eat. Don't ask what people of other faiths were supposed to do; no one forced you to offer incense, and if you didn't eat, so what?

Occasionally, they would buy extra potato chips and then take credit, saying they were worried employees might be hungry and had kindly bought everyone some snacks.

They claimed that there were no companies outside with such broad capacity, and expected everyone to treat the company like home and give it their all.

The job listing said “salary negotiable.”

Actual pay: 2yk+1k≦25k; the 1k was available only with perfect attendance and no lateness.

The base salary was (2y)k−1k8, with 1k8 as a meal allowance.

Each month, you could be late by 10 minutes. After that, 10 was deducted for every minute.

Accounts were settled at the end of the month, and salaries were paid on the 10th; if it fell on a holiday, payment was delayed.

Oh, right—the thing they were most proud of was that salaries had never been paid late.