Workplace reviews and discussion: 鎰威科技有限公司

The following describes the operating conditions of the company’s software department; the actual situation may differ from that of the systems department:

1. The company is willing to cultivate new talent and is relatively friendly toward job seekers without a degree in a related field.

2. It is highly tolerant of newcomers and interns. As long as they do not make overly fatal mistakes, most things can basically be tolerated.

3. The office atmosphere is fairly good, colleagues get along harmoniously, and they often organize group orders for meals and drinks.

4. Weekly technical sharing sessions and code reviews have a positive effect on the team’s technical growth and are a good practice.

5. For people with less experience, there are many practical development techniques and concepts to learn. For example, backend engineers can learn API integration, DB schema planning, flowchart creation, technical documentation writing, and more.

6. The senior members of the team are responsible and diligent. They will do their best to guide you until you can independently take charge of a project. You can also ask them for advice whenever there is something you do not understand.

7. The manager has an information technology background and some coding experience, so discussions can more easily get on track and establish a clear direction. This provides some assistance when subordinates encounter bottlenecks while solving problems.

8. The boss has a cheerful personality and is fairly good-tempered toward employees. He has an extensive network of contacts, and people often inexplicably send things to him, so there are frequently good things to eat.

Summary: You can learn many of the fundamentals of project development. For inexperienced newcomers, it is a good place to build their skills. Colleagues get along harmoniously, and there is almost no bureaucratic culture.

1. The salary and benefits are relatively poor by industry standards. The workload is disproportionate to the compensation, and engineers at some companies who only handle maintenance and operations may even receive better待遇.

2. The boss is eager to expand the customer base and boost performance, so he keeps taking on projects at a frantic pace. Often, the preceding project has not yet been closed out before the next one has to begin, resulting in an excessive workload for designers and R&D staff and a severe imbalance between staffing and workload.

3. Because of the staffing imbalance, SEs usually also have to serve as SAs and SDs. Sometimes they even have to double as PMs and discuss requirements with clients. The more capable you are, the greater your workload becomes.

4. The project-responsibility system, combined with the excessive number of tasks each person must handle, has caused regular overtime to gradually become a department-wide problem. However, the company typically uses statements such as “sometimes overtime is caused by insufficient ability, so a supervisor must determine whether overtime is necessary before it can be requested” or “you can only apply for compensatory leave; there is no overtime pay” to discourage you from applying for overtime. The actual situation is that there is simply far too much work to finish, and in the end everyone ends up working overtime on their own initiative.

5. Under tight schedules and heavy workloads, development quality is sacrificed. Many SOPs and communication processes in project development are omitted outright, causing the screens and workflows designed by designers to be inconsistent. As a result, R&D staff often have to patch things up on the screens, workflows, or error-prevention mechanisms.

6. Management places great importance on reporting daily progress. In addition to reporting the work they plan to do that day during the 9 a.m. daily scrum, employees must also report their completed progress for the day via text message before leaving work. Although this enables efficient work monitoring and planning and prevents subordinates from slacking off or progress from stalling, this tense management style is undoubtedly a physical and psychological burden on team members in the long run.

7. Although it is nominally a responsibility-based system, that does not mean you can have more freedom once your work is finished. In practice, supervisors still care greatly about employees’ attendance. Being a few minutes late to work will often draw their attention (because everyone must participate in the stand-up meeting on time every morning), and employees generally cannot leave early without an unavoidable reason. In other words, attendance flexibility is very low. In the software industry, where working hours are relatively open, this is not a good management approach.

8. For the sake of maintaining harmony, supervisors usually do not bring many situations or conflicts into the open. They are ultimately resolved through private meetings, creating a culture of closed-door discussions. This may also be a common problem in Taiwanese workplaces: people often dislike speaking openly and instead place excessive emphasis on keeping the peace. The result is that grievances can easily build up. Personally, I do not agree with this communication style.

Summary: They want the horse to be strong but do not feed it; the compensation and benefits are relatively poor, so the result is “using bananas to hire monkeys.” The staffing is unbalanced, the workload is abnormally heavy, and working hours are not flexible enough by industry standards. Management places excessive emphasis on scrum while neglecting subordinates’ physical and mental well-being, eventually causing everyone’s enthusiasm for the work to gradually disappear.