Workplace reviews and discussion: 威進國際資訊股份有限公司

I switched careers from a non-IT background. I was promoted from a project assistant to a project manager, and before I knew it, I had been with the company for three years.

Darren, the PM supervisor who left a comment in 2018 below, is still here. There are also more and more long-serving employees. This company is not as bad as most reviews make it sound—it really depends on whether it suits you. From my perspective:

1. The internal team atmosphere is great.

No matter which department you are in, everyone asks one another for advice and support when problems arise. It is not limited to sharing professional and technical knowledge—we also joke around to relax and relieve stress. Sometimes, when the pressure gets too high, everyone has an incredibly low threshold for laughter. It is painful, but we get through it by laughing and crying together.

The company has a fairly flat organizational structure, so it is not difficult to communicate with managers and colleagues from other departments. Even with the general manager or vice president, you can simply knock on their office door and go in to find them. If they are not in the office, you can also contact them directly by phone through LINE.

2. Help is available, and diligent learning leads to explosive growth.

I have encountered PM assistants who were not serious about their work or had weak learning abilities, and they found the job very painful. PMs have to outthink and negotiate with various departments and clients. If you cannot absorb what your seniors teach you and apply it creatively, you naturally will not be able to adapt and stay.

However, if you are someone who becomes more courageous after setbacks and looks forward to soaking up your seniors’ experience like a sponge, this is a very suitable place for you.

Most of the PMs, engineers, customer service staff, and administrative staff here are excellent teachers who are willing to teach. They can train a complete beginner PM until they become highly capable and can use all kinds of tactics when dealing with people outside the company.

3. Good performance and results are noticed by management.

If you produce results, the path to promotion and a raise will be smooth. In the PM department, you should report both bad news and good news about projects. Proactively reporting allows your manager to see your efforts and the corresponding results, making it much easier to discuss compensation.

4. Most project clients are easy to work with.

Apart from a few organizations with emotional or behavioral issues, everyone is just earning a salary, and no one deliberately wants to oppose a vendor. Moreover, in many cases, the client’s main contact person is actually in a similar position to the PM: both are responsible for coordinating between parties and are caught between many senior managers and actual system users. As long as you help the client understand that taking down the PM also means making things difficult for themselves, clients generally will not deliberately give PMs a hard time. Instead, after going through some challenges together, you may become comrades and close allies.

The above are the reasons I like this company. Of course, as is inevitable, there are also some awful people and things, but overall, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

Based on what I have observed, about 80% of PMs who left after falling out with the company were PMs who received poor client feedback or had projects spiral out of control. The other 20% left because they had other career plans.

The PM is the soul and core of a project. You need to manage the scope, schedule, cost, and all kinds of inexplicable stakeholders. There will absolutely be no shortage of difficult and complicated problems to handle. Unsuitable people will certainly experience frustration and hardship, while suitable people will gain a large network of cross-disciplinary friends as they unlock new skills.

Comments mainly focusing on PM-related drawbacks:

1. When project acceptance schedules overlap, there may not be enough engineers available. As a PM, it depends on whether you secured people in advance, whether the priority is high enough, and whether you have a valid reason that can win the staffing competition.

2. There are no dedicated staff for functional testing, project documentation, quoting and sales, and similar tasks. PMs will unlock many skills, much like a convenience-store employee who does everything.

3. The PM is the point of contact for the project. If an important system has a problem, you may receive a notification and need to help handle it even on weekends or holidays.

However, in return, properly reported overtime can be compensated with time off in lieu. After informing your manager, you may also flexibly arrive late or leave early.

4. We are seriously short of PMs lately! Is everyone being scared away by online reviews? Come experience the atmosphere at an interview first, then decide.

When I first read the online reviews, I was scared. But when I saw how lively and cheerful the office area was while entering and leaving the meeting room for my interview, I decided to take the plunge and give it a try. Little did I know that I would learn and grow so much over these three years.

The company’s senior management may want to hit me for saying this, but I sincerely feel that Weijin in its current state cannot be called a top-tier company, but it is better than many and not as good as the best. If it were truly terrible, how could so many long-serving employees still be here, staying happily, and how could clients continue introducing new projects for us to take on?

During the Level 3 COVID-19 alert, many companies either laid off large numbers of employees or forced them to continue working in person. Weijin responded quickly by switching to remote work. Senior management was very concerned about the condition of employees who tested positive, and the company’s business did not decrease. We made it safely into the post-pandemic era.

People who are not a good fit for the company naturally will not see what is good about it, and the things they say online will not be very flattering. PMs who are doing well at the company are extremely busy with a ton of projects—who would have the time to go online and share their work experience for no reason? This time, let’s use this post to test whether online reviews are the reason we cannot find good teammates.

If, after reading this work experience sharing, you are interested in joining the Weijin team and feel that this is meant to be, please contact HR through 104 as soon as possible. Our PM team needs teammates! As the number of projects increases, engineers and customer service staff also need new blood. If you see a suitable opening, submit your résumé right away!