Workplace reviews and discussion: 竹鋒有限公司

The coworkers are easy to get along with, but the company is about to go under (?)

After all, the point of working is to earn money. Even if the coworkers are nice, everyone still has to face reality.

It’s a new company. Through connections, it became a contractor (cleaning contractor) at AUO’s Houli plant, doing very simple tasks: oiling, wiping down machines, and wiping away some worn-off powder. The most technical task is probably the CV process in the photolithography area. But at present, as far as I can see, the only person who can work independently is the supervisor.

Things are more or less the same for those assigned to Central Taiwan Science Park. Anyway, it’s a new company, so it has to rely on the PM to enter the market and secure projects. But then another problem arises.

The boss hires mostly fresh graduates. The only people capable of handling projects are the supervisors—currently two of them. The others can probably do little more than help measure dimensions.

Recently, the boss’s younger brother also signed a contract with Corning Glass for five fixed workers. Going there basically means being treated like cheap labor.

You have to climb stairs every day. And you know how high the ceilings are in a large factory building... You’ll be exhausted from climbing.

You can’t even eat normally. You clock in at 12:00, but can’t eat until 12:30, and then you have to go upstairs and clock in again before 1:00 (which means climbing the stairs).

That means you have to rest first before you can eat. Alternatively, there’s a shop on the first floor where you can buy bread, instant noodles, or frozen food to microwave.

But you still have to go upstairs early enough to clock in before 1:00.

I joined the company in April last year and received only a little over NT$3,000 as my year-end bonus. The boss said it was because the company was unstable and that things would get better in the future (?)

Then Corning Glass suddenly appeared halfway through. The environment is so much worse, yet they transferred people who had originally been working in a cleanroom there. Who could put up with that?

They did give us a raise as promised, but it is based on the “number of working days.” I didn’t know that a raise could be calculated by days worked—it’s unbelievably stingy.

The boss himself has also worked at Corning before, so he knows how harsh the environment is: hot and dusty. And pay attention—if you work with glass, what do you think the dust is?

It’s hot, dirty, and you have to climb stairs. Even after working a full year, my salary still hasn’t been adjusted. I don’t even dare imagine how much of a year-end bonus we’ll receive.

I saw that it is currently listed as 0.5 months. If we actually get that, we’ll be laughing with joy, because the company is still unstable and people keep leaving.

You don’t learn anything either. It’s just manual labor; for all I know, the cleaning ladies might earn more than we do.

The company was pretty good at first, and the supervisor taught us things. Later, the boss’s younger brother recklessly took on the Corning contract, and the company went into a cliff-like decline.

If you’re thinking about joining... it’s not that I’m telling you not to, but you can come and broaden your horizons and see what “a small company with big-company thinking” is like.

The basic salary and systems aren’t even properly established. The company hasn’t laid a stable foundation, yet it keeps looking toward some distant, enormous payoff.