Workplace reviews and discussion: 玉言堂整合行銷股份有限公司

The interview atmosphere is relaxed. The supervisor gets to know you through casual conversation, giving the impression that it is a lively company.

If you happen to meet the boss, he will enthusiastically promote his ideals, goals, future plans, and so on (an expert at making grand promises).

The coworkers are all young. Everyone helps one another and eats together, with harmonious relationships and a pleasant atmosphere. It is a rare workplace where you can make friends.

There is a water dispenser and a sink in the office, and the restrooms are shared by the floor and cleaned by someone. There are small animals.

Because management is lax, working hours are very flexible. If you are not being singled out, being one or two hours late is not a problem. Occasionally, taking up to half a day of sick leave does not even require submitting a request (if there is no record, your pay will not be deducted).

There is no fixed break time, so you can go out to eat whenever you want. In principle, lunch is one hour, but usually nothing happens if you go over a little. (However, when urgent work comes in, everyone may end up starving until three o’clock.)

The work environment is very relaxed. There is no uniform, and casual clothing is fine. Internally, there is no need to hold very formal meetings or prepare formal reports.

Men are often required to handle outside errands, such as transporting goods, purchasing supplies, and running errands. You can slack off a little while you are out.

The starting salary for people without experience is around NT$26,000, which is not low for an internal position requiring no special skills (but unlimited overtime is expected; after passing probation, you get a NT$2,000 raise and then never see another raise).

﹝制度面﹞

They are extremely careless about recruitment and do not even remember when they scheduled which candidate, so it is common to leave job applicants waiting for more than an hour. They throw applicants’ résumés around carelessly or use the backs as scrap paper, seriously compromising personal data. Between “experienced, highly capable + high salary expectations” and “fresh graduate with zero experience + salary according to company policy,” they will definitely choose the latter because it is cheaper, and they treat employees as disposable, working them as hard as possible because they will leave soon anyway. Turnover is extremely high: only a handful of people stay for a full year. Usually, anyone who has lasted three months is considered a veteran, and anyone who has stayed over six months is already an old-timer.

The management system is haphazard, and personal and sick leave are handled casually. If you forget to request leave and the supervisor does not notice, it is simply ignored. But if they do not like you, you will be singled out; only people who are picked on have money deducted.

There is no officially registered employee welfare committee, but a welfare fee is deducted every month. It is used for offerings on the second and sixteenth days of the lunar month (split equally between the welfare fund and the company), employee birthday bonuses (also split equally), and company dinners. Most importantly, there is no income-and-expense statement, so no one knows where the money actually goes.

Birthday bonuses are sometimes forgotten, and unused annual leave is not converted into pay.

﹝營運面﹞

They are extremely greedy and only want to win more and more tenders, without considering whether they have enough staff to prepare proposals and carry them out, which leads to many problems. It is almost impossible for one person to complete a project from beginning to end. Either someone is pulled in midway to clean up a mess, or someone proposes Project A and is then reassigned to execute Project B (and then someone else is found to execute Project A???). It is perfectly normal for a project to have three or more different teams from proposal → execution → completion, because people are reassigned or resign.

They only want to increase the number of proposals submitted. Once they actually win a project, they do not invest the resources needed to do it well. They are constantly dealing with problems and figuring out how to clean them up, or waiting until the last second to rush the work while pressuring vendors (and still delivering late). Angering clients is routine. They have virtually no repeat customers, which is why they keep doing government tenders.

The supervisors think everything is very simple and estimate very short working times. I have heard a supervisor say that a proposal PPT can be completed in “one day,” which clearly shows that quality is not a major concern. (And the process will be interrupted countless times by last-minute tasks—how is it supposed to be completed on schedule?)

They have absolutely no respect for professional expertise. They want to save money by doing everything themselves, but they are complete outsiders; as long as they bluff and cobble something together that looks plausible, that is good enough.

﹝工作經驗﹞

Being extremely busy is not even the main issue. Some people may think they can gain experience, but there is very little to learn at this company. Almost every skill is something you have to Google yourself after encountering a problem. Former employees leave in such a hurry that there is no time for a proper handover, and the boss’s wife withholds information. She gives you none of the resources, contacts, or files, forcing you to spend half a day figuring things out, only to discover that a predecessor may already have prepared what you were looking for. It is an enormous waste of time, and after doing this for a long time, you feel increasingly resentful—like you work as a beast of burden but are still treated as an outsider.

Every day, inexplicable urgent tasks appear in front of your scheduled plans. By the time you finish dealing with them, it may already be dark. What about your own work? Save it for overtime and keep doing it. Official hours are 9:00–18:00, but there is no clocking in or out and overtime is daily: sometimes one or two hours, sometimes five or six. When there are many projects, working until midnight is not unusual.

﹝奇葩事蹟﹞

The company’s only rule is “choose the cheapest option,” whether it is vendors, supplies, or employees.

They will require meetings after working hours (after 6 p.m.).

Employees privately complain about the supervisors and discuss when they will resign.

After probation, they will not proactively give you a raise unless you ask for one. Even if you get one this time, you will never see the next one.

Proposal bonuses are pitifully low and take an extremely long time to arrive; there are no bonuses for execution.

They occasionally delay payments to vendors. Be careful if you are the person answering the phone on their behalf—you may get an earful from the caller.

﹝一句話勸退﹞

Even as a rookie, you have other options that are more worthwhile. Treasure your fresh liver and stay away from Yuyan Tang.