Workplace reviews and discussion: 自力國際工程顧問有限公司

None

Be extremely cautious before joining this company! The company also operates under another name: Yashe Energy Development Co., Ltd.

1. The company has inverter air conditioning, but the boss insists that the air conditioning must be turned off at exactly 12 noon and cannot be turned on again until 1 p.m.

For a high-rise office, this is absolutely hell.

The company is on a high floor and has no windows facing outside.

There are also people throughout the office.

People often come back from their lunch break drenched in sweat.

The company has circulation fans, but they are not allowed to be turned on together with the air conditioning.

The air conditioning must be set to 25 degrees and cannot be lower.

If the boss sees that both the circulation fans and air conditioning are on and the temperature is below 25 degrees,

he gets angry and says he will have the surveillance footage checked and impose punishment.

So everyone often arrives at work covered in sweat in the morning and also leaves work covered in sweat in the afternoon.

2. Sugary drinks are not allowed on office desks.

The boss hates cockroaches, but anyone who has worked in an office building knows

that some cockroaches do not originate inside the office; they may appear because the building is old,

and there are bound to be some in the pipes.

Once, the boss caught a cockroach and took it directly to a female colleague’s desk.

It was not caused by that colleague, but he began blaming us for leaving sugary drinks on our desks, supposedly causing small cockroaches to appear in the company.

The problem was that we were not drinking beverages at all.

Even eating was subject to centralized control.

The company also had no refrigerator, microwave, or anything like that.

If you brought your own lunch, you could only eat it cold or from a thermos.

The only reason was that the boss really hated cockroaches.

3. The company has many access-control checkpoints.

In a small office of less than 40 ping, there are actually four card-access checkpoints.

The boss thinks employees are stealing work time whenever they go to the bathroom or smoke.

He often tells MIS to investigate each employee’s entry and exit times.

4. The turnover is frighteningly high.

None of the company’s employees have worked there for more than a year; even the longest-serving employees have only lasted 9–10 months.

The company’s job openings are never closed, and no one can stay.

New hires are often involuntarily terminated before they have even been there for three months.

The company even once became the subject of a ridiculous incident: it had decided to involuntarily terminate an employee, but after submitting the paperwork to the Labor Bureau, it discovered that the employee could still be utilized and forgot to withdraw the submission.

The employee later received a call from an employment service station checking in, and only then discovered that they had been involuntarily terminated.

The employee was so angry that they went to argue with the boss’s wife. The boss’s wife handled the employee’s enrollment in and withdrawal from labor insurance.

She actually did not dare admit that she had submitted the involuntary termination.

From the time I joined the company until now, more than 50 employees have left.

The number continues to rise.

5. The boss has no professional ability and lacks both emotional and intellectual intelligence.

The boss is unfamiliar with the industry and often takes drawings from foreign manufacturers, modifies one or two details, and then tells employees to apply for patents.

If the client asks him a question he does not understand during a conference call,

he scolds the client for having no understanding of the subject.

Employees cannot ask questions either, because the boss will throw them out,

saying that they are completely incompetent and cannot understand plain language.

Even worse, if the boss fails to win a particular deal, he will use the drawings from his patent application to sue the competitor.

He has probably made quite a few enemies in the industry.

6. He does not trust employees.

He thinks all employees are trying to harm him.

He rejects every suggestion.

He loves holding meetings, but they are all ineffective.

An employee can say one sentence, and he can spend 10–20 minutes berating them.

This leaves everyone completely uninterested and without the motivation or desire to prepare reports or share anything.

The employees he considers capable are worked to death, with everything dumped on them.

He has no idea how to allocate work.

Clients are often already in the office,

while he is still loudly berating employees and his wife.

He truly embodies the saying: if you are not embarrassed, then someone else is.

7. He often goes back on his word.

The company’s procurement process has always required the boss’s approval,

followed by the boss’s wife applying the company seal before any action can be taken.

Several times, procurement had already been carried out according to the process,

only for the boss to change his mind. On one occasion, he even made an employee personally bear more than NT$20,000 in payment for the goods.

7. The boss likes hiring middle-aged and older employees. Middle-aged and older employees should definitely think carefully before changing jobs here!

Before interviewing with this company, first consider whether you are sufficiently willing to be exploited as a corporate wage slave.