Workplace reviews and discussion: 圓剛科技股份有限公司

1. Colleagues and most frontline staff are generally easy to communicate with.

2. The company is fairly generous with leave. New employees appear to get three days of newcomer leave, as well as birthday leave. Those who have been here a long time accumulate a large amount of leave; after five years, people generally cannot use it all, and unused leave can be carried over to the following year.

3. When the former senior manager was still there, each department had a monthly fund of NT$100 per person and one or two irregular department dinners per year. After the pandemic, these were effectively dropped.

4. The outsourced security guards are quite sharp and remember people's names. Online shopping packages can be left at the security office.

1. Many benefits look good on paper but are difficult to use, such as the gym and the stress-relief room. If you can leave work early, why stay at the company? In more than five years, I never used the stress-relief room, and there are no voucher benefits either, because senior management believes that directly giving out vouchers represents getting something for nothing. They think employees must work hard to earn benefits, which is why some activities semi-force employees to perform, and company trips have been canceled in favor of self-organized groups.

2. Senior management has a very traditional Taiwanese-business management style and places great importance on overtime hours, which are included as part of performance evaluations. Unless you are a favored employee, the year-end bonus is basically one month’s salary or less.

3. Salary adjustments are infrequent and generally small. Unless you are a favored employee or a supervisor is willing to promote you, moving up one minor level usually gets you only an additional NT$2,000–3,000; a major promotion may bring more. I knew someone in R&D who had been there for more than three years and received an adjustment of only around NT$3,000 before eventually leaving.

4. The senior management team changes every two or three years. Often, someone is invited in because they are initially very close to the top executive, but once they are no longer on good terms, they are quickly kicked out.

5. This workplace is more suitable for people with a business-oriented personality, because formal procedures are merely for reference—and having any procedures at all is almost something to be grateful for. Almost everything is resolved through communication and negotiation.

6. It is important whether your direct supervisor has the authority and responsibility to block unreasonable requests. As mentioned above, if they lack such authority, they will only keep taking on troublesome tasks and cleaning up other people’s messes. Difficult, thankless work will just keep coming.

7. Every year, employees are compulsorily required to complete a certain number of public-service hours, such as cleaning the company, wrapping gifts for holiday activities, or volunteering externally. All of this must be done on personal time. If you do not meet the requirement, your supervisor will question you, while the company can present itself as fulfilling its social responsibilities.

8. Large companies usually have a dedicated employee welfare committee, but here employees have to rotate through the role every year. It is difficult and thankless, and attempts to secure better benefits are blocked by upper management.

9. There are very few toilets. Apart from the toilets on the 1st, 7th, 8th floors (for external guests only), and 9th floor, there is one men’s and one women’s toilet on each floor, with only one squat toilet and one seated toilet each. It is quite common for both the squat and seated toilets to be occupied. The first-floor toilets were later renovated, but only the appearance was beautified; the number of toilets did not change. Perhaps the top executive is a believer in feng shui, or it was done for external guests to see.