Workplace reviews and discussion: 四零四科技股份有限公司

It’s quite wealthy, but it only takes care of certain long-serving employees who occupy positions without contributing.

The work culture is extremely poor. You cannot criticize some of the company’s strange cultural practices, otherwise HR will call you in for a meeting and the vice chairman will label you. The internal compensation system is extremely chaotic and absurd. The company shelters some older employees who do not work. These long-serving employees receive a large amount of so-called E-share dividends every year; their annual salaries are two to three times those of less senior employees at the same level, and are even higher than the annual salaries of their less senior direct supervisors. Senior management uses shameless rhetoric that treats people like fools (because they are part of the same interest group and receive more E-share dividends) to cover up and suppress internal dissatisfaction and protect these senior employees who do not work and have poor abilities, saying: “E-share dividends do not count as salary.” The company also loves organizing all kinds of strange activities. Some employees have ordinary professional knowledge, limited abilities, and are not focused on their work, but can still get promoted by frequently participating in activities. The unwritten rule is that if you want to advance, you must participate in activities often; otherwise, you cannot enter senior management’s circle. If you express a different opinion about this culture, you will immediately be labeled and called in by HR to be given a hard time.

The culture is strange, and the basic boundaries of “right and wrong at work” are vague and constantly shifting. This is a company with many rules and behavioral guidelines. If you are ambitious, want to get things done, speak the truth, and do not simply smooth things over, I do not recommend joining—you will be put through a lot. If you are not seeking advancement, have limited abilities, and only want to find a stable company to coast toward retirement, you may consider it.

Senior management takes very good care of and protects the company’s old employees because they are part of the same interest group. Incompetent older employees who do not work can survive very comfortably there, so newcomers eventually learn to become like them: as long as they understand the rules of survival and behavioral guidelines and become a “Moxa-style” person, they can live comfortably until retirement without being productive or seeking improvement.

These employees who have been there for ten or twenty years benefit from years of accumulated so-called “E-share dividends.” Regardless of whether their annual performance evaluations are good or bad, their annual salaries are at least two to three times those of people who joined later, and they may even earn much more than the direct supervisors who joined after them. Therefore, this absurd compensation system—which ignores performance and job level and looks only at seniority and tenure—is a major feature of the company, a source of pain for many new employees, and a factor that has created its peculiar corporate culture.

If you ask senior management about this unfair compensation system, the consistent response from executives who control large amounts of E-share dividends is: “E-share dividends are not part of salary; you should only look at the monthly salary.” This reflects the hypocrisy, embellishment, sophistry, and specious reasoning behind the scenes at a company that publicly touts integrity and honesty.

I do not recommend this company to people who have ideals and thoughts about their own prospects. At present, the company generally does not provide much in the way of E-share dividends to people who joined later, unless they hold a high-level position, because the E-share dividends distributed each year have already become a heavy burden for the company.

For those who join later, your earnest efforts and hard work are simply helping fund the E-share dividends paid to the company’s old employees!!