Very free; you can go smoke at any time (an employee benefit exclusively for smokers; smokers who smoke together more often with certain managers are especially favored).
As long as the client pays and nobody curses at anyone in the group chat, no one will care what quality of work you actually deliver to the client.
There is no system to speak of. As long as you can finish the work assigned to you (some people are very idle while others are overwhelmed), you can be as lax in your attitude as you like.
Snacks are replenished once a month, but they are usually completely eaten within about five days.
Colleagues are generally easy to talk to (and enjoy chatting).
If you have absolutely no experience but are someone who knows how to find resources and learn on your own, you can give it a try. Once you join, you can use clients’ money to run advertisements and gain experience.
The company environment is extremely poor. The building has an endless rat infestation; even after months of setting traps, there has been no improvement. In the middle of the night, rats will even climb onto your workstation and rummage through everything. The kitchen floor is cracked and collapsing, with no apparent intention of repairing it. No one is hired to clean the common areas; colleagues take turns cleaning, so the place is actually very dirty. I once saw three different species of cockroaches in one night. Any area that is not frequently used has animal droppings left behind. Every day before starting work, you have to disinfect your seat with alcohol before you dare begin. Stationery is also severely lacking—scissors, utility knives, and calculators are treated like prized possessions.
The entire company has more than 80 people (and may have even more because of the extensive outsourcing). Finance, administration, accounting, and human resources are all handled independently by one person. That person is not given clearly defined authority, responsibilities, or appropriate compensation, seriously affecting the schedules of related operations, the timing of various salary payments, and every matter involving finances.
The company is growing rapidly, but its systems and management decisions have not kept up. Communication between upper and lower levels is severely inadequate, and information is unequally distributed. A complete SOP has not been established, causing the same problems to recur repeatedly without being resolved or improved. The company also does not provide enough time or manpower to improve the quality of deliverables. Clients often spend more time communicating about revisions to visual designs than on the actual informational content, consuming a great deal of time and manpower. Professional roles are also unclear. Some colleagues have no professional background or training, so their output is naturally difficult to use to persuade clients. It is common to spend twice as much time going back and forth on revisions before completing the work.
The managers also have no intention of solving these issues. They spend a great deal of time in meetings every week, taking turns talking without doing any actual work. They are constantly trying to find new ways to generate cash flow, but never attempt to improve existing problems.
Before bringing clients back, the sales team does not confirm the feasibility of the project content with the execution team, making subsequent execution difficult. It feels as though they care only about meeting their own sales targets and earning bonuses, completely ignoring the difficulties of subsequent execution. At the first meeting with a client for a signed project, the consultant often does not provide a list of attendees or clearly confirm the meeting topics with both sides. As a result, neither side often has prepared materials upon arrival, creating confusion in both the meeting and the information, which causes subsequent project execution to go poorly and increases communication costs.
They are also completely unfamiliar with the company’s expertise and the clients, and have even presented business cases from other companies to clients while claiming they were ours. They also often agree to a series of unreasonable client requests. In the same week that a contract is received, they often demand to see the finished product immediately. Skipping the preliminary communication results in more time being spent on repeated revisions. Once the contract is obtained, they frequently wash their hands of it and do not proactively follow up on the project’s progress or show concern for the client. Usually, they only call when the contract is about to expire or when the final payment has not been received.
The boss only cares about the sales department and is almost completely indifferent to matters and people in other departments. Although new employees are told that they are welcome to approach him at any time about anything, in reality, out of consideration for other managers and to avoid bypassing the chain of command, many matters are not brought directly to the boss. As a result, the boss is usually unaware and does not take an interest. The boss places great trust in the senior manager (a slick-haired confidant), but based on what can currently be seen in the office, the senior manager focuses only on managing a small group with a special organizational arrangement. That group holds closed-door meetings every day, all day, every week, and the manager does not simultaneously handle other company affairs. In my opinion, this trusted manager also failed to properly manage and supervise the operation of the various departments or fully hand over company information and work content to the newly appointed subordinate department heads. This caused many issues and tasks to be delayed and stalled, ultimately leaving the company in its current state.
Communication between departments has been poor for a long time. Problems reported to department heads also disappear without a trace. The departments do not understand one another’s work or perspectives, seriously affecting the quality of project deliverables. Communication between the senior manager and department heads is also highly problematic. It feels as though they spend their time on politics and power struggles (in reality, they merely sulk, refuse to speak or communicate with each other, and act like elementary school students). During my more than a year at the company, I have never seen a single practical problem properly resolved.
The company has no clear promotion system or comprehensive talent-development plan, which severely limits individual career planning. Since the parachuted-in department head took office, no training has ever been conducted. Department heads often recruit people who either have no experience at all or whose experience does not meet the job requirements. As a result, employees underneath them have to spend additional time teaching new hires many basic concepts and procedures, increasing manpower costs. Over the long term, it is also difficult to grow because the company does not hire people with relevant experience and practical expertise to carry out the work. It believes its services only require people who can be hired for basic wages and used as disposable labor.
Company information is not preserved, and experience is not passed down, resulting in a great deal of rework. Whenever someone encounters a new type of project, they redo the same work from scratch. Because there is no sense of cohesion and the company has no culture, everyone thinks only of their own interests and generally does not proactively share resources. All work experience and materials leave with the people who possess them, without leaving any trace.
The incentive system that the senior manager proactively promised during interviews was never fulfilled (proposal bonuses, renewal bonuses, and salary adjustments after certification assessments). The presentation said these would be paid every month, but in fact none were paid. It was not until February of this year that renewal bonuses were paid (with no proposal bonus, only the renewal bonus). The calculation method and the projects included are unclear and nontransparent, and they also clearly differ from the calculation method described in the training. Furthermore, a renewal bonus should reward the person who executed the previous contract, not the person who executes the renewal. Reporting this to the department head was completely ineffective. One year after being parachuted in, the department head has demonstrated incompetence, frequently making empty promises. The year-end evaluation said there would be raises, but they were not fully implemented. When faced with problems, this department head with the distinctive surname never provides a formal or appropriate response. Instead, they often respond with a flippant attitude they consider humorous, saying things that should not be said. They cannot even send a formal email explaining what to do in similar situations, the progress of handling them, or subsequent measures and improvements.
The company often requires PMs to write proposals in less than two days. The proposals must also include market analysis, even though the company has no professional tools for conducting analysis or providing verifiable data; employees must search for online information and interpret it themselves. After consultants submit proposals, they rarely proactively provide client feedback. Moreover, when they relay client requirements to us through the department head, it often prevents us from correctly understanding the client’s thoughts and actual needs, or even sends us in the wrong direction. Consultants and managers, who are on the front line externally, also do not proactively ask clients to provide materials that would help the execution team better understand them. Often, after a proposal is written or a contract is completed, there is no review at all, so subsequent projects cannot be improved.
We repeatedly requested the use of third-party tools, which were expected to save substantial manpower costs in posting, data analysis, data collection, and monthly report preparation, but these requests failed for unclear reasons. (The department head does not want to think or do any work, fantasizing that everything can be assigned to junior employees while he only has to talk for things to get done.) He wants junior employees to do a large amount of managerial work and often asks them for answers. When they offer suggestions, he takes no action; if asked whether he has any ideas, he directly says he does not have any—despite these being responsibilities of his position. The company also cannot provide equivalent compensation. This department head clearly distinguishes between people he likes and dislikes and enjoys dividing people into insiders and outsiders. Once he targets someone, he will do everything possible to nitpick, while applying double standards. He is obviously particularly biased toward employees he brought in himself, has falsely claimed that such an employee had work abilities they did not possess, and has even asked others to take the blame. He also maliciously laid off another colleague before the year-end bonus, even though that colleague was clearly more efficient and capable.
Last year, the company was missing one month of labor-pension contributions in its records. When assistants or interns become full-time employees, their labor and health insurance grades are not proactively adjusted. Labor-management meetings have never been held. To provide an explanation to government agencies, the company fabricated records and required the entire company to sign them. (The boss said nothing to employees and provided no explanation, instead leaving the unfortunate HR employee to handle it alone. Everyone in the company also obediently signed because of the deeply ingrained submissiveness fostered by education in Chinese society.)
Colleagues spend a great deal of time improving their abilities, but information is not exchanged among them. Their abilities vary considerably, yet capable and less capable colleagues receive the same treatment. In the best case, this means the capable do more; in the worst case, capable employees begin slacking off, while colleagues with insufficient ability or low efficiency do not improve.
The company’s financial situation is currently also very worrying. Its systems are incomplete and provide no security, and there are no managers worthy of trust (at least none I have encountered). I recommend that everyone think carefully.