Workplace reviews and discussion: 湧立股份有限公司

Guofeng Rental Co., Ltd.

【Pros】

1. Colleagues get along very harmoniously, except for one editor who calls herself an artist.

2. The company is very convenient to commute to.

3. The colleagues responsible for advertising placement and graphic design are highly capable and easy to communicate and work with; they are good work partners.

4. The Sales Department next door is also very lively, and everyone is easy to get along with.

5. The troublesome SEO specialist whose English name starts with N has resigned, so there is no longer the problem of “her deliberately refusing to give you permission to open GA reports.” You also do not have to worry about her badmouthing you behind your back, picking faults with you at work, or making you do pointless work because of “her incorrect ideas.”

6. There is a 15-minute monthly late-arrival allowance as a buffer; the calculation is cumulative.

7. There is a spring banquet trip, where you can see managers and colleagues getting drunk (it’s pretty funny, hahaha).

8. This does not really count as either a pro or a con, but I’ll mention it here: there are no bonuses for the three major holidays, only gift boxes. The year-end bonus is issued on December 31 (after one full year, it seems to be equivalent to one month’s salary).

<Work>

1. The salary structure is complicated.

In my case, my salary included a NT$2,000 perfect-attendance bonus. If I took personal leave, that NT$2,000 was deducted directly. I’m not sure about sick leave because I never took any. Also, not everyone’s salary structure includes a perfect-attendance bonus, so be sure to ask clearly during the interview.

2. After being notified by phone that you have been hired, make sure you receive an offer letter.

In theory, this should not need to be emphasized, but I still want to remind everyone because there was once a graphic designer who was hired, but the supervisor later learned that she had a 20-day notice period. Since they could not wait that long, they rejected her. I don’t know whether that woman had already submitted her resignation or not. In any case, it is safer to make sure you receive an offer letter.

3. Consider recording the interview to protect your rights.

The matter of “a salary adjustment after passing the probationary period” must be brought up during the interview. The supervisor will not mention it proactively and will not proactively adjust your salary when the time comes. Also, taking leave too frequently will affect salary adjustments; the company will not state this clearly. [Unspoken rule]: Salary adjustments, promotions, and being entrusted with important work depend on “how good your relationship with the supervisor is.”

4. This position is not suitable for beginners; you need to have a certain understanding of SEO.

The copywriting assistant position is currently vacant, and no one will train you! I recommend that copy editors with an understanding of SEO apply, as they will have an easier time getting started and communicating with colleagues responsible for advertising placement. Although those colleagues can provide assistance, I’m not sure they can offer full support in copywriting-related areas because their professional fields are different.

5. Verify the accuracy of articles, and do not plagiarize.

The SEO specialist whose name starts with N taught me to use competitors’ articles as extensive references (I personally did not follow her instructions). As a result, she caused the company to be sued by a competitor (the company that filed the lawsuit has a name that has recently become very popular in political circles). She was quite lucky: her superior said that the company would bear all the consequences. Even so, I recommend that anyone joining the company write article content based on their own ideas. It is both safest and best, and Google crawlers love original content.

<Workplace Culture>

1. If you have a dispute with a colleague or are bullied, do not expect the supervisor to handle it.

Why do I say this? When dealing with interpersonal problems, he does not like to play the bad cop. Therefore, as long as the company’s operations are not jeopardized, he chooses to “make big things small and small things disappear.” There are two examples from people around me. (1) A copywriting assistant was bullied by the SEO specialist whose English name starts with N, who picked faults with her at work, increased her workload, and even belittled her abilities, leaving her distressed and unable to sleep. A few days after she resigned, she finally found the courage to tell the supervisor about it. However, the supervisor did not contact her again or provide an explanation of how the matter would be handled. It was only when she contacted him again that he said he would deal with it using a “boiling the frog slowly” approach. After hearing the person involved describe the incident, I found it quite outrageous. (2) Previously, the supervisor called an editor and two other colleagues together to ask about the editor’s submission of work logs. The editor suddenly slammed the table and began berating the colleague responsible for consolidating the work logs. During the argument, the supervisor was not the first person to calm them down; another colleague stepped in to smooth things over and defuse the awkwardness. Only afterward did the supervisor privately try to calm both parties, but from beginning to end, he never reprimanded the editor for her inappropriate words or behavior. I found this extremely absurd when I heard about it.

2. If you encounter an overly troublesome problem at work, solve it yourself, because the supervisor may find it bothersome and leave your message on read.

This is something I experienced myself. I asked the supervisor whether articles with problems should be revised by the colleague whose name starts with N before filing an appeal, since that might improve the chances of a successful appeal. The answer I received was simply that my message had been read. In the end, I did not deal with it either—after all, I was not the one who wrote the problematic articles ^_^

3.

【Personal Thoughts】

Personally, I feel that staying in this department for more than half a year was a complete waste of life. My abilities practically stopped developing; the only area in which I improved was writing. However, I learned concepts related to SEO copywriting structure—such as H2 and H3 headings, internal links, and external links—by reading books and discussing and studying them with the copywriting assistant who was being targeted. The SEO specialist whose name starts with N never taught us any of this. She only insisted that we follow the content of competitors’ articles (and ultimately caused the company to be sued), as well as create multiple accounts under the “same domain” to build external-site backlinks.

However, the methods she taught were wrong. Her instruction was to “paste the entire article” onto an external site and then embed backlinks, with those backlinks “embedded in the same word and all pointing to the same URL.” Two months before leaving the company, I discovered while reviewing the articles that I had been doing it completely wrong. In other words, “I had been doing the wrong thing and wasting my work for more than half a year.” The handover document I saw before she resigned stated that “it is best to write external-site content yourself; otherwise, extract a ‘paragraph’ from the official website and add a backlink.” When I first joined, her instructions were completely different and seriously incorrect.

Furthermore, she refused to grant me access to the GA reports. Even though I mentioned during my interview that I knew how to read GA reports, I could not obtain access within my first week of employment. She simply said, “We only look at ‘Google Business Profile,’” apparently trying to fob me off. At first, I thought she simply did not know how to configure the access, but later I discovered that the GA reports page was open on her computer. I also discovered that when I had been employed for one week (December 27, 2021), the company Gmail account she gave me did not have permission to access the GA reports. She deliberately hid the Gmail account that did have permission and refused to give it to me, as if she were afraid I would use the GA reports.

But she did this because she fundamentally did not know how to read GA reports. In every meeting I attended, she almost never presented GA report data for discussion. Whenever it was mentioned that something needed improvement, she did not use the data. Even at the final meeting before she resigned, when the supervisor asked her about the serious decline in the official website’s SEO performance, she had no idea how to answer any of the questions. In fact, the abnormality could have been detected much earlier simply by looking at the data.

In summary, the SEO specialist whose English name starts with N and whose surname is Liu was not only unprofessional but also spread rumors and defamed colleagues privately in the workplace. Anyone working in marketing should be cautious around this person.

As for new copywriting assistants, you can rest assured—and I also want to say: good luck! You will not have to suffer because of the problematic person, but the work may still be somewhat demanding because there are matters involving a new website to handle. As for the supervisor’s attitude and way of handling matters, I found them very disappointing and untrustworthy. I cannot accept the management style of this “nominal supervisor.” For all of these reasons, I decided that I wanted to leave.