Workplace reviews and discussion: 艾普拉斯數位顧問股份有限公司

Colleagues of similar rank and age are very kind

The office is conveniently located in Zhongxiao Dunhua

The office is spacious and comfortable

First, let me explain how this company is structured.

Several shareholders formed the company as partners, and it is then divided into the management department (shareholders + shareholders’ close friends), sales department (shareholders + shareholders’ close friends), PM, planning, design, and development (front-end + back-end) departments.

It is a project-based company that uses waterfall development—extremely waterfall-oriented, with PMs being pressured to desperately push clients to sign confirmation forms before proceeding to the next step.

If the client does not sign off according to the schedule and the schedule is delayed, the PM will still be scolded by the management department for not leading the team properly and for the team members’ poor efficiency and slow speed, with absolutely no room for flexibility.

If you proceed according to the schedule before the client has signed off, just wait for the client to request changes afterward, after which the management department will scold you for not following the process. The changes then have to cut in line ahead of other projects, and you will be asked whether you know how to manage a project.

But honestly, PMs here have very little to do: manage contracts, manage schedules, manage invoicing, urge the people below them to get things done, and then hand everything over to the next department.

If your project happens to belong to the senior PM (a shareholder’s friend), congratulations—you have to go through the requirements with the client yourself, while the PM will only forward the client’s revision emails to you. Not only that, congratulations, you also get the opportunity to develop your documentation-writing skills.

In short, although this senior PM holds a management title, they basically just talk, file petty reports behind people’s backs, and—relying on their title—interfere in many matters they do not understand. They disappear from the office all day, then return after six and say they want to hold a department meeting (our scheduled end time is 6:30 p.m.). Even if you refuse, you will still be dragged into attending.

The planning, design, and IT departments do not really need much explanation. They are almost the same as those at other project-based companies: they say there are flexible working hours, but if you arrive too late, you will be questioned. If things are unreasonable, you work overtime to finish them, and the next day they just smile and say, “Thanks for your hard work.” If these three departments are acceptable to you, you could settle in here until retirement.

Also, an experienced PM joined last year. They did not give this person any major projects. Seeing that the person had a lot of other experience and could do things they could not, they also refused to offer a particularly high salary—indeed, it was well below the market rate. They used things the company knew as leverage, saying the person did not know UX or the processes for large projects, and that they should join to learn. After the person joined, they desperately asked them to teach them many things and share the SOPs, proposal presentations, quotations, and other materials they had previously used, relentlessly extracting whatever knowledge they had. They still paid them a low salary, so naturally the person left for better pay. But every time an employee leaves, they believe it is the employee’s problem.

That is all. You can go for an interview, but after talking with them, remember to carefully consider whether you really want to join.