Workplace reviews and discussion: KD_科定企業股份有限公司

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First, assess the company’s financial condition based on figures from the Market Observation Post System.

Comparison company: SHIKAN

2017 Q4 / Liabilities-to-assets ratio

KE: 63.94

SHIKAN: 38.19

SHIKAN wins!

Balance sheet items / Unit: thousand NTD

2017 Q4 / Cash

SHIKAN: 152,937

KE: 95,805

SHIKAN wins!

2017 Q4 / Inventory

SHIKAN: 464,741

KE: 989,846

SHIKAN keeps its inventory at a more appropriate level!

2017 Q4 / Liabilities

SHIKAN: 605,080

KE: 2,786,502

SHIKAN wins!

Capital:

SHIKAN: NT$440 million

KE: NT$603.9 million

SHIKAN has a smaller equity base,

so more of its profits are retained for the company and shareholders. (Using the concept of a pie, the fewer people who share the pie, the more each person can eat.)

Based on the above financial condition, joining SHIKAN appears to involve lower risk.

Starting with salary information available online,

the conditions offered by the company are indeed very attractive, but once you enter this environment,

you will find that many things are different from what you imagined.

1. You may be disciplined from time to time. (The company’s penalties are substantial.)

2. A small test every three months and a major test every six months; passing scores are assigned according to your position, and each test result determines whether you remain with the company.

(Naturally, disciplinary action follows if you fail the tests.)

3. The salary is high, but the deductions are even higher.

4. Regarding employee stock subscriptions, based on announcements issued through the Market Observation Post System, employees are asked to subscribe for shares from time to time. The annual dividend payout is also very low. (Based on a market price of NT$74, assuming employees buy at 80% of the price, they would need to pay NT$60 per share and receive only NT$0.8 in cash dividends.)

The company will of course paint an attractive picture of the future, but based on information about Taiwan’s housing market and government statistics collected online, one can conservatively infer the company’s future development potential and opportunities.

5. Returning to the company’s financial condition in light of point four: when the company’s financial condition is poor and its liabilities ratio is this high, it indicates that the company has continually been taking high-stakes gambles. It simply happened to bet correctly after getting on the housing-market boom train in its early stage!

From the perspective of company management,

the company has a system of rewards and penalties. (Personally, I think the basic concept is good: rewards for merit and penalties for wrongdoing.)

However, the senior managers who secured their positions early on have generally used certain tactics to get where they are.

I once encountered a situation in which a supervisor communicated poorly with their subordinate; the supervisor would nitpick and record disciplinary warnings against you, etc. (The deductions for disciplinary warnings at this company are severe.)

For example, failing to sign meeting minutes can result in disciplinary action, while picking up a piece of tissue at work and throwing it in the trash can can earn you a commendation. (The factors behind this will not be discussed here.)

Once you join the company, you will understand why it has so many negative reviews.

One of the company’s key figures responsible for preparing it to go public or be listed is the audit manager,

but because the company’s management system differs from those of typical companies,

it frequently requires not only overtime but also your holidays.

Although overtime pay is provided (which is a positive),

that is somewhat beside the point here.

Returning to the audit function,

whether the company can go public or become listed depends on this person,

but the company’s rules of the game make it difficult to retain talent in this position.

The main reason can be inferred for yourself.

Several senior managers who use English names are even the beginning of the company’s sources of disorder.

Besides indoctrinating new hires by telling them that the company’s future and vision are excellent,

they also tell you that you must not have independent thoughts.

Everything the company does is right,

and even if the company rules change at any time,

the changes are still considered correct.

From the perspective of several positions,

the company’s sales turnover rate is frighteningly high.

However, the company’s customers generally place orders with the company by phone,

so the purpose of hiring sales staff is merely to maintain customer relationships. From time to time, someone from KE appears in front of customers so they will remember the company. (Given the gross profit contributed by customers, frequently replacing salespeople to maintain those relationships is more than sufficient.)

The company has an unwritten rule:

an unstated elimination rate. (This can be inferred from PPTs and other relevant work-related information.)

From another perspective,

the company’s intention in continually using high salaries to bring recent graduates into the workplace

is presumably nothing more than to claim youth employment subsidies from the government.

(This point is hypothetical and speculative. For example, if the starting salary is NT$35,000, after the youth employment subsidy, the remaining salary expense is paid by the company. However, the company may deliberately make the conditions especially strict. After all, the longer you stay, if your productivity does not increase, the greater the cost to the company. Therefore, from this perspective, if a recent graduate’s employment cycle is six months, the company may actually be using relatively cheap labor to obtain highly educated technical employees. A high turnover rate may be advantageous to them.)

After analyzing my own painful experiences together with information collected online,

I offer this as a reference for those considering working there.