Workplace reviews and discussion: 經貿聯網科技股份有限公司

“Once” suitable for retirement, flexible working hours

The company was “once” very profitable, earning a great deal of money every year from system maintenance projects for its major client. However, as the major client’s system maintenance projects have gradually ended in recent years (they have now ended completely), the company has had to rely entirely on its own earnings. It can be said to be going from bad to worse.

In the past few years, the company has started forcing senior employees with more than ten years of service to leave. They are either sent to other affiliated companies (with their seniority recalculated) or pressured to resign. This year, it also established a subsidiary and transferred unwanted employees there (the subsidiary’s benefits are extremely poor). Those who do not want to transfer are denied their year-end bonuses. So please think carefully before choosing this company. However, a small number of departments are still profitable, and the salary is still OK if you join one of them.

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However, if you are going to the department responsible for “card payment terminals,” I strongly advise against it. The department head (manager) is a man in his sixties who is just muddling through, waiting for retirement, and believes that as long as things are handled superficially, everything is fine. He has made the department extremely chaotic and lacking in systems. There is no project schedule planning whatsoever. Whenever the director thinks of something during a given week, the manager will tell you to do it that week, then tell you to hurry, hurry—it is extremely urgent. Things are constantly changing, and there is a different direction to follow almost every week.

The manager has no professional expertise whatsoever and has absolutely no idea what his subordinates are doing in detail. He only knows the surface-level information, which is enough for him to bluff his superiors. However, he is very good at managing upward. His method is this: whenever the director speaks, whether or not the director is telling a joke, he laughs uproariously, almost uncontrollably. In addition, the director and the department manager have been friends for many years, so no matter how incompetent the department manager is, the director will always protect him.

Unless you are extremely interested in the details of card payment terminals (transaction flows, message contents, and so on), you will not learn any other newer technologies in this department. If your goal is to improve your programming skills, this department cannot provide that opportunity. Whether it is traditional card payment terminals or Android card payment terminals (writing the apps for them), the program architecture and coding practices are extremely messy and outdated. You will not learn new technologies, and the manager is also strongly opposed to applying new technologies, believing that it is enough if the program runs.

Although the company is called a software company, the card payment terminal department has no mechanisms such as Coding Style guidelines, code reviews, or technical knowledge sharing. Everyone writes code however they want. Although the company requires code reviews, the department’s review method is to print out all the code changed this time, after which the manager quickly scans it with his eyes and checks a box on every page (PS: The manager cannot understand the code at all...). Sometimes he even complains that you printed too much and tells you to print less. (But there is simply that much code in the changes, so this is essentially fabricating records and going through the motions.) He then asks a colleague who has never looked at the code you changed to sign, which means the code review is complete.

The methods for Unit Tests and Function Tests are even more bizarre. You are not asked to write test code; instead, you must describe your testing method and results in words, and the content does not need to contain any code at all....

Therefore, I strongly advise people who still want to strive and improve themselves not to join this department, because it will truly waste your valuable time. However, if you are already highly skilled with card payment terminals and only want to find a place to apply your expertise, without seeking to learn new technologies, you can give it a try. But when negotiating your salary upon joining, negotiate as high as possible, because your growth afterward will be extremely slow.