Workplace reviews and discussion: 英福達科技股份有限公司

1. You’ll get interviews as soon as you submit your résumé, and as long as you’re not too strange in the interview, you’ll definitely get hired. Those who urgently need a job because they’re short on money may want to consider it.

2. The company provides free coffee.

3. You may need to work on-site at clients’ locations, giving you the opportunity to learn about various government agencies.

4. Fully complies with the Labor Standards Act.

1. New-hire learning: The company’s main product is an official-document system, so when you join, you’ll need to learn and become familiar with official-document procedures. The procedures and rules differ from one agency to another, so after a month of learning, you’ll probably only have a rough understanding, and the system is extremely unintuitive. The key point is that learning these things provides no help whatsoever for your future career. Everyone at the company is very busy, so no one will specifically train you. They’ll only give you training manuals from other agencies, and even after reading them all day, you still won’t understand what they’re about.

2. Salary: Although the company is very easy to get into, the pay is terrible. The company particularly likes hiring recent graduates or people looking to change careers, offering starting salaries well below the industry average and showing very little generosity. Raises are also extremely small. It’s strongly recommended that you negotiate your salary before accepting the offer, because managers will say that the amount is only the probationary salary and that you’ll get a raise after probation based on your performance. They usually say the raise starts at 3,000, but once you pass probation, you’ll find that your salary hasn’t changed. When you ask your manager, you’ll get nonsense such as “We can discuss a raise once you demonstrate ability and performance.” Everything they said before will be disregarded because the offer never stated that your salary would increase after probation.

3. Job responsibilities:

This company hires for only four positions: customer service, QA test engineer, software engineer (RD), and project manager (PM).

A. Customer service: There are two types. One is handling customer service calls at headquarters. This is more difficult because calls about all systems, old and new, and from every agency come in, so it is usually handled by more experienced staff. The other is handling customer service at the client’s site. New customer-service staff are sent directly to agencies for training at the beginning (to put it nicely, it’s training; to put it bluntly, you’re simply dumped there and left to fend for yourself). The people at headquarters no longer have time to train you—do you think the agency staff will have time to train you?

B. QA test engineer: After you’ve gotten the hang of things, whenever the system has a version update, you’ll be asked to test it. However, changes to system A often break system B (this will be explained separately), so the testing never ends. You’ll also be pulled in to handle customer service.

C. Software engineer (RD): To put it nicely, you’ll be writing code; to put it bluntly, you’ll be processing data. The company likes hiring people fresh out of the Institute for Information Industry, and new hires come in knowing nothing. The company’s systems are extremely large, and they won’t let you modify them, so you can only process data. The company’s systems fail very frequently, so every day is spent endlessly correcting data. You have no time to write code, and in the end, you’ll realize that you wasted a great deal of time without learning anything.

D. Project manager (PM): At first, your title will be “Assistant Project Manager.” Since the title includes “assistant,” you’ll be assigned a great deal of miscellaneous work, including customer service, QA, meetings, document writing, data processing, and all sorts of other unpleasant tasks. After being busy for a while, you’ll realize that you haven’t learned anything about project management at all—you’ve simply become a professional gofer.

4. Company products:

The company’s products are constantly being updated and span several generations. The latest generation is the company’s flagship product, which they use to bid for contracts externally (there are few competitors because not many companies develop official-document systems). The company’s sales team is also very good at winning business and is skilled at signing contracts with many agencies and schools. But here’s the key point: the company does not have many engineers (meaning people who can independently work on and fix bugs). They can’t even handle the old clients, yet new clients keep coming in. Some agencies that are more forceful will begin pressuring the company to meet deadlines. At that point, certain agencies are sacrificed, using delaying tactics for a year or two. Many agency representatives receive poor performance evaluations because they are delayed. After winning a contract, the company basically stops caring about it. Sales continues taking on new contracts without considering whether the company can handle them, and the engineers under them seem close to collapsing. As a result, the quality of modifications varies. Think about it: if one engineer is responsible for five or six projects and is the only person making changes, how can quality improve? The work is naturally slow.

5. Company personnel:

The CEO is the chairman’s son, and most of the company’s personnel are part of the family business. Although it is a family business, everyone does take their work seriously, so there isn’t much to say about that. However, you should definitely watch out for a manager surnamed Chang whose English name starts with J. He is the manager of both the project and technical departments, but this is absolutely not because he is especially capable; rather, he is very good at dealing with the CEO. When people in the project department ask him to handle project matters, he says he is busy with technical-department matters. When people in the technical department ask him to handle technical matters, he says he is busy with project-department matters. There are many meetings, and he spends all day in them, but you’ll find that he is completely out of the loop and asks very basic, foolish questions. Even clients ask whether he really understands what is going on. If he is your manager, be careful. He often asks you to do things without explaining the details of how they should be done. After you finish and the CEO chews him out, he will immediately shift the blame to you, saying that he had no idea about the matter. After joining, you’ll find that employee turnover at the company is extremely high. You can tell just by looking at the employee numbers; some people even leave after only a week.