Workplace reviews and discussion: 樂購蝦皮有限公司

1. A generous 18 days of paid leave

2. An endlessly replenished snack cabinet

3. Orange Day

4. The salary is much higher than at outside companies. As long as you dare to ask, the company dares to offer it. Note that both annual- and monthly-salary arrangements are negotiated, so remember to confirm clearly with your manager or headhunter.

5. The employees are all very young and get along well. There are lots of people inviting others to activities when taking leave or after work.

6. Massages

7. The year-end party is wild; almost more than 90% of attendees dress up.

Here’s an explanation of the company organization and its main departments:

Marketing — I’m not familiar with it, but I often see some people leaving at 11 or 12.

Sales team — No bonuses.

Category Management (CM) — Hard to explain; see my introduction below.

Customer Service (CS) — Very miserable, with an extremely high turnover rate. Experienced customer-service staff are needed, but HR likes to invite inexperienced people to interviews, and many leave after working for only one or two months.

Warehouse — An independent entity that is difficult to interact with in daily work.

BI — Engineers.

Operations Department — Almost all back-office units belong here. Logistics, the disputes team, and CS are also under this department.

HR — Since Regional HR holds most of the power, Taiwan HR has little decision-making authority. Also, because Shopee does not have a general-affairs department, HR handles general affairs as well.

* Sales and CM now seem to be collectively called the Commercial Team. It actually includes many units, but I’ve forgotten them all XD

** The organization changes extremely quickly. On average, there is a new policy every month, and the company is reorganized every few months, depending on the current assignment given by the boss.

*** Finance and Legal are not listed above because Shopee shares Garena’s Finance and Legal departments with Garena.

I worked in the CM department, which, like those of other competitors, is divided into lines such as H&B, Fashion, and so on. The first thing you need to do when joining the company is learn to survive well on your own and know what you want (the company name, money, or whatever); only then might you be able to survive here. The second thing is getting used to a pile of English abbreviations. E.g., H&B = Health & Beauty, TBC = To Be Checked... When I first joined, I once heard a colleague put four English abbreviations into a single sentence. It nearly made my head spin.

Almost all of the company’s senior executives come from McKinsey, and many managers at the mid-level and above have studied abroad, so communicating in English is completely commonplace. The Taiwan CEO seems to oversee other regions as well (I’m not entirely sure about this) and comes to Taiwan once every few weeks.

The following are the most unfriendly aspects of the work, based on my experience:

1. Information does not circulate.

2. Extremely high employee turnover.

Discussing points 1 and 2 together: There were approximately 300 employees last August, compared with approximately 1,300–1,500 this August (I’m not sure how many have left). The organization is developing rapidly, but its organizational rules and procedures have not kept up. There is no organizational chart, no group mailing list, and no documented company-process SOPs. There are no documents to consult for financial reimbursement or work-order application procedures. HR says the announcements were made by email. Hello, but did you know I joined after those emails were sent?? A lot of time is spent finding the right person.

The company is so large, yet it loves using email to solve everything. People are constantly told to check their email, but HR itself has records of people being left off emails...

Besides HR, other departments also use email to announce things, which is perfectly normal. Remember how I said there was no group mailing list? So people often have to confirm one by one with the department being notified whether a new employee has joined and whether the position needs to be notified. Worse, sometimes the email is sent without asking anyone at all. I didn’t receive the notification and therefore didn’t tell the vendor about it; only afterward did they review the matter and ask why no one had notified me. (This happens extremely often. I told Logistics to notify me, and next time Marketing failed to notify me. After telling Marketing, there were still countless other departments—CS, Sales... I might as well spend my entire life dealing with this.)

The most annoying part is that because new employees are constantly joining, the notification email gets a “Reply All” from a new employee’s manager, who adds new recipients and reminds people to add those employees later. If one line’s CM replies once, that email can receive more than ten replies, all of them just adding people...

As a result, information is asymmetric in many matters. The company often announces an XX policy, but many people say they did not receive it or were not notified, so department managers still have to confirm it with everyone individually. Couldn’t they just notify everyone from the beginning?

I once asked why they didn’t create a group mailing list. HR did not give a direct answer. I only vaguely heard that the boss dislikes such groups and is afraid recipient information could be stolen from outside, so now every department has its own recipient list.

3. The same job can involve different responsibilities.

Because I was in the CM department, this mainly refers to CM. Within CM, there are Leads, people responsible for campaigns, people responsible for the marketplace, people responsible for C2C, and further divisions based on title. I’ve talked with people on my own line and on different lines, except those responsible for the marketplace, and found that everyone’s work differs to some extent. That’s when I learned that “managerial assignments” make up a large part of the job. I’ve encountered one line where people could pull reports and numbers themselves, while on another line everything was handed to BI to pull.

On the positive side, depending on what you want from your work and career development, discussing it with your manager—and, depending on their authority, seeing how far they can help you—can still yield a lot. An extreme example is ending up with a manager who treats you like an assistant and orders you around. There are quite a few managers like this at Shopee, so be careful. (Some managers seem to have communication issues; the first thing out of their mouths is apparently to curse people XD)

4. Interpersonal relationships are very important.

5. There are no public promotion channels or standards.

Discussing points 4 and 5 together: Interpersonal relationships are important everywhere, but here they are directly and highly related to transfers between departments and promotions. In the past, your career development at the company was determined by your manager’s impression of you—whether they liked you or not. Internal openings were not publicly posted; the manager of the new opening would privately look for someone. This also made other people who wanted to transfer dissatisfied, wondering why the opening or recruitment criteria were not made public so everyone could apply. So having the right manager is very important!

Most of the company’s managers are parachuted in from outside, and people at the entry level cannot move up. This company is really suitable for staying a few years, getting what you want, and then leaving.

Other small things that aren’t exactly complaints:

- There are factions in the company. Some people seem not to do anything all day, yet they are very conspicuous about having fun.

- All work documents use shared Google Sheets. One drawback is that if too many people are viewing the same sheet, it cannot be opened. It is common to see the person responsible asking everyone in the group to close the sheet...

- Shopee Mall guarantees authentic products, but one of my vendors once saw counterfeit products on the marketplace. Be careful when buying things and compare more:P

- My sincere advice to anyone who wants to join: don’t apply on your own; ask a headhunter to help. They will negotiate a much better salary. The salary from applying on your own is really GG.