Workplace reviews and discussion: 阿福股份有限公司

The colleagues all come from impressive backgrounds. In addition to having clear, logical thinking, they are also very capable of taking action to solve problems. The company provides free lunch three days a week. Although it is not particularly tasty, it does indeed help employees save quite a bit of money. Some people stay for a very long time, but that is because they have accumulated enough power and resources. If you are an engineer, you can live quite comfortably here. No one will put too much pressure on you.

Afu is a technology-oriented company. It always has been. Although UX and product teams have been created one after another, the value of these two teams is not reflected in the company. The product team once tried to run Scrum properly and use a more structured approach to determine development priorities and architecture. But ultimately, Afu is still a company where the owner and CTO have the final say, so experienced PMs with principles cannot stay here. The expertise of a PM lead with more than ten or twenty years of experience is also not valued at this company. The UX team has essentially always been treated as a nice-to-have. The manager has worked very hard to change the company culture, but UX is indeed dispensable in terms of its position within the company. Even if you conduct research and validation, you have no influence over other things that management has decided to do.

Although the manager works hard, she is not someone who knows how to manage people or lead a team. She has many ideas and works very hard on turning UX methodology into product-oriented data or results. She has also worked hard to help the UX team gain more recognition within the company. However, her hard work and dedication do not mean that she is a good manager. She has a highly subjective evaluation standard. If you are not especially proactive, you may be laid off even if you complete all your responsibilities perfectly. As for proactive people who ask for opportunities to grow, once they make a mistake, she will put them aside permanently and no longer give them opportunities to try. Her expectations are also unreasonably high for newcomers. A small mistake could similarly make the other person feel completely worthless.

After discussing the product and UX teams, let’s talk about QA. In fact, apart from being understaffed, QA is the biggest bottleneck in the entire company. Almost nothing can move forward because there are not enough QA staff. Everyone on the QA team is very conscientious, and under the release manager, no one really dares to interfere with them. If the company is going to continue hiring, it should fill out the QA team first. Otherwise, neither the UX nor product team can demonstrate the value of their existence. (Of course, even if the QA team were fully staffed, it is still possible that the heads of product and UX would refuse to support them.)

As for engineers, including ML engineers, as mentioned earlier, you will have a very comfortable time because the CTO blocks everything. The engineering team is also reasonably capable, but the manager’s authority is substantial. Engineering often thinks it can create useful features for users on its own. However, these features usually have not been validated by UX, nor is there sufficient data to prove that they will help with the OKRs. Even so, these features always find a way to be pushed up in priority. Once these unverified features, whose origins are unclear, take up the queue, the PMs responsible for other KRs can no longer get their work done. And not only can they not get their work done—they are also criticized for why they cannot do it. It is unclear whether this is a conflict between the CTO and product, or whether the CTO genuinely believes that starting from technology is what creates good functions and features.

At the beginning, the senior PM worked very hard to try to turn this company from a one-person dictatorship into a company with a stronger product process. But the combination of the CTO and owner is essentially impossible to overthrow. The owner says he likes people who “have ideas,” but in practice, he likes people who “have the same ideas as him.” If he does not like you, no matter how capable or experienced you are, he will quickly dismiss you. On the surface, the owner seems steady and gentle, but his words are actually caustic, and he can convey belittlement through a look or gesture. Although he generally speaks softly, he shows no mercy when berating people.

In short, this is a very typical Taiwanese company. It merely packages itself on the surface as an accepting and free-spirited software startup, but that is not the reality. The product is actually very ordinary. I think chance may be the reason this company can continue making money. To be honest, the product itself is too simple, and I think the UX and PM teams are superfluous. If the company has always been a one-person dictatorship, why make the company and its employees work so hard on things that the company does not sincerely believe in or consider important? Unless you simply want a stable job and are an RD who can play around with things, I would discourage people in other professions from joining, because this company cannot accommodate so many experienced, capable, and thoughtful people. As for the salary... it is average, I guess. You will not complain that it is low, but the owner really likes cutting salaries. If you are not the type to actively ask for raises, you will still be earning the same salary two or three years later while doing the same unfulfilling work.