Workplace reviews and discussion: 橋椿金屬股份有限公司

When you can leave work on time

Business Assistant – Product R&D

Nature of the work:

The work is project-oriented. The quality issues that arise for each part number and the information that needs to be tracked with the factory are handled separately (managed in separate Outlook folders).

Because the factory is located in mainland China, there is basically no opportunity to see the products in person (apart from model images in the product catalog and representative zinc samples on the section manager’s desk).

The section manager will guide you through the entire workflow. Since the section manager also has a very heavy workload, it is recommended that you be prepared to receive a large amount of information each time and remember everything after hearing it just once.

Every morning, there is a fixed email review meeting (with the assistant manager, or with everyone gathered in a conference room, reporting the contents of their emails to the vice president).

Company policy requires all emails to be printed on paper (whether received or outgoing emails, including attachments—for example, even a 50-page Excel file must be printed in full). Before sending an email, you have to wait for the section manager and assistant manager to revise it and return it before clicking Send. If they are not there, you can only wait for the email to be returned before leaving work.

At first glance, the email content will absolutely look like a foreign language to someone unfamiliar with the field, with many English abbreviations. At the beginning, you will be encouraged to ask as many questions as possible, and it is recommended that you ask whenever you can (although the section manager is still busy), so you may feel unsure where to begin. Emails sent to the factory follow an extremely complicated established format (part number, font, size, color, and tone). If anything is incorrect, you will revise the email back and forth until it is approved. This trains everyone’s observational skills to a considerable degree.

The environment:

It is true that the people around you are all women, but there is normally no free time to chat. Eventually, you often find yourself interacting only with the computer and the section manager.

Future prospects:

After doing the job for a long time, you can become familiar with the wording used in emails. However, because the work deals exclusively with internal business matters, you never get to see the products, and you cannot clearly understand what is happening at the factory (many people at the factory have quite an attitude), it is questionable whether this communication can help you build professional expertise.

You cannot help but think: if you were to change companies, would what you take with you really be worthwhile?

If you think you can handle all of the above with ease, I wish you the best of luck in getting the job.