Workplace reviews and discussion: 台灣錄得清科技股份有限公司

This trend cannot be stopped; applicants, choose carefully.

As for the advantages, the matter of “clocking out after work” can be divided into three major groups:

If you are in the 【Sales Team】 and need to travel outside to visit vendors, clients, auto shop owners, and so on, as long as your performance this month is not too poor, even if you are taking it easy or slacking off outside, you are unlikely to be discovered, and you can still leave work on time;

If you are in the 【Internal Team】, you can usually leave work on time. Unless you feel guilty because you know you have not been very serious at work, you are unlikely to be scrutinized over whether you are leaving work “too punctually”;

But if you are part of the company’s 【Inner Circle】 (the boss’s trusted confidants or the boss’s prospective son-in-law), then as long as you are good enough at playing dumb and thick-skinned enough, even if something really goes wrong, the fire will not burn you. Let alone something as trivial as “leaving work on time”—of course they can, if they want to!

Regarding “interview experiences,” based on the many employees I have seen come and go at this company, whether for ordinary staff positions or managerial roles, it is quite easy to get hired. The company is always short-staffed because it can never retain people. As long as you dare to paint a rosy picture during the interview and boast about how capable and experienced you are, the people inside the company are quite easy to fool. However, I believe that after reading my description of the disadvantages, you will not want to apply.

The disadvantages are practically endless. Here are several key points:

1. Boss / Boss’s Wife (Company Owners)

When it comes to work, the things that most directly affect whether you will continue staying, apart from your salary, are the company’s future prospects. Unfortunately, unless you can privately exploit loopholes in the company’s vague rules to earn bonuses without the boss finding out, or secretly cooperate with platform PMs you have a good relationship with so that the platform takes a higher percentage and boosts your performance (even though the company does not actually make money), the chances of receiving a high salary here are extremely slim. Senior management will not proactively give you a raise just because you have contributed to the company;

On the contrary, the company owner will even establish rules to dock your pay, such as the labor-law-violating game where “being one second late means forfeiting the entire NT$1,500 attendance bonus.” Note that here, “perfect attendance” is included within your “base salary,” rather than being added on top of it (I know very few companies on the market are conscientious enough to provide an additional attendance bonus, but at least they usually offer some leeway. Here, being one second late means it is gone. Also, just because other companies are terrible does not mean this company has an excuse to be terrible too—don’t learn the bad things from others). Or, for no apparent reason, your supervisor may tell you, “The boss’s wife calculated your salary incorrectly last month, so NT$1,000 of your salary will be taken back this month.” When you ask your supervisor about it, they cannot even say which part of your salary the boss’s wife is deducting, and then tell you, “After the boss’s wife returns to Taiwan next month, she will give you the salary statement she calculated.” Punishments always come far more quickly than rewards, and things like this are extremely common at this company.

As for year-end bonuses, do not expect to receive a transparent, publicly disclosed calculation method here. They are determined entirely by the “impression score” you have earned with the boss and the boss’s wife. Although there is supposedly an evaluation component, this “evaluation” basically just means “whether they like you.” To make them “like you,” you may not need to be very “talented,” but you definitely need to be very “obedient” and avoid giving them any opportunity to think that you are an employee who will “fight the company for your rights.” That gives you a good chance of rising, which in turn affects your year-end bonus. Consider this: a boss who says the company is not making money, while changing to luxury cars, spending over NT$100,000 on laser eye surgery, and using money to build a new company headquarters—where is their money coming from?

The company once had a warehouse auntie who had worked there for more than ten years. She did occasionally make mistakes at work, but she was kind to others. After the bosses finally lost patience with her, they fired her, but were only willing to pay this auntie three months’ salary (at most NT$80,000; under a normal severance-pay calculation, the company would roughly have had to pay at least NT$180,000). They also required her to sign a “voluntary resignation letter” and hoped she would not report them, because “the company would receive demerits from the government.” Since the auntie did not want to cause a dispute, she did not tell her family and silently endured it. If this auntie were your mother, you can imagine how heartbreaking it would be.

2. Supervisors (Company Leadership)

This company has a great many supervisors—almost more supervisors than team members—and practically anyone, regardless of qualifications, can become a supervisor. Here is one particularly outrageous example.

This company has never liked employees having ideas of their own. You may have ideas about marketing, design, or online sales, but the company has zero tolerance for subordinates who develop “an awareness of their basic rights”; it views you as a source of trouble who is “inciting other colleagues.” Once, a colleague proactively informed the company that someone in their household had undergone a nucleic acid (PCR) test because they were worried about a possible health issue. The colleague first took one day of leave, and after it was confirmed that the family member was negative, they wanted to return to work the next day but were stopped. The conversation also revealed that the company was unwilling to pay the daily wage, which clearly violated labor law. Although the supervisor responsible for communication knew the company was in the wrong, they still conveyed the message forcefully. When the colleague told them, “This violates labor-law regulations,” they were mocked as an “employee showing off legal provisions,” behaving with the childishness of elementary schoolchildren fighting and telling the other person not to tell the teacher. Although the employee was eventually allowed to work from home with pay, after working for less than half a day, they were told that the company was laying them off because of “poor operating conditions.” Absolutely reprehensible.

Supervisors should serve as the hub connecting upper and lower levels, but most supervisors at this company are accustomed to being afraid of trouble and rigid. Even though they complain constantly in private, they still pretend to be deaf and mute in front of the boss. Once, an employee informed their direct supervisor about things they had observed in the company that could be improved. The next day, a long message from the boss immediately appeared in the company group chat, saying that “the company’s unhealthy practices need to be improved, and certain employees need to reflect on themselves.” The timing was too coincidental not to make people wonder whether the supervisor had sold out that employee.

3. Additional Points

The company’s habit of changing policies from morning to evening has become nothing unusual. Instead, occasional displays of correct values will leave you stunned. Moreover, most vendors that have worked with the company will cooperate with it only once more. Perhaps this is because of unstable quality, a high product failure rate, or the company’s poor reputation outside. People in the industry also often say that the company’s boss is very lucky; this compliment is highly ironic in this context.

The company’s boss is not someone who welcomes opinions. Once, an employee merely mentioned how far a competitor’s features had advanced and gave this feedback to the boss. All they received was the cold reply, “If you like that company better, you can go there.” How, then, is the company supposed to improve?

Conclusion: I hope that, after reading the points above, you will have a better understanding of this company and of the mental resilience you need before joining, as well as the kinds of people and work environment you will face. Let us encourage one another.