Workplace reviews and discussion: 曜田國際股份有限公司

Aside from the manager being terrible, all the coworkers are very nice. There is free lunch at noon on Mondays, which you can consider compensation for the Monday morning meeting's barrage of noise. There is a break room (does that count as a benefit???). The company complies with the Labor Standards Act and various regulations (although this is required, I still have to mention later how crafty this company is). If you want to start your own clothing brand, this is a suitable place to gain experience—a startup training camp.

To get straight to the point, the salary is NT$27,000 and basically will not increase, especially in the marketing and design department. They also do not hire people without experience. I was initially tricked into joining because I was told the boss was very wealthy, and that NT$27,000 was just the base salary, while the boss handed out bonuses generously. It turns out I was fooled by sales talk again. From your first day here, the boss will take notes on everything you do. Certain personal speech patterns, work habits, lifestyle habits... all sorts of things—the boss records everything. At some meeting, he will bring them up and say that he has noticed you have certain shortcomings. Many of them are simply based on his personal preferences, such as thinking you speak too negatively. Whether someone speaks negatively is also his own judgment. He shows extreme disrespect for employees' professional abilities. When you say in a meeting that you have encountered certain problems with your work progress, he will say that you are being too negative. The boss will say to solve problems yourself and not dump them on him. He is weak and unwilling to take responsibility, hesitates when making decisions, and ultimately blames you for being inefficient.

The manager is extremely scheming. If you really want to join this company to gain some experience in textile printing, first, flatter the boss; second, minimize contact with the manager. If you encounter any problems at work, try not to ask the manager and ask your coworkers for help instead. This manager is basically the tumor of the company. The boss's weakness created the conditions for this manager to become so powerful. She will not help you solve problems; she only puts on a show. She comes to work to perform for the boss, pretending to work very hard and enthusiastically scolding everyone. Basically, she is a salary thief. Every day she comes to the company, she looks for departments to hold meetings with. The meetings consist of scolding people, and once she is done scolding them, she goes home.

She is not very old, probably born sometime between 1986 and 1990. She is a woman. The boss here strongly favors a Western-style work environment (in reality, this is just a company run by an exploitative boss who is spoiled to the core; it is not Western-style at all). Everyone is expected to address one another by English names. This manager's English name starts with “L,” so if you encounter her, take note and be careful. As for the manager, I do not even know what to say. She is garbage. She loves holding meetings, but when decisions made during meetings with her are criticized by the boss at the morning meeting, she joins in with the scolding. She will not say that those decisions were made in a meeting with her. In any case, she puts on a very thorough performance. Even when working from home while camping or getting her nails or hair done, she still keeps up the act. But acting is all she can do. When problems arise at work, she cannot solve them, will not help, and certainly will not teach you. I seriously doubt whether she knows how to do anything at all. All she can say is, “Why should I come and deal with these kindergarten-level problems for you?” Fine, then come work here when your son is in kindergarten. Thanks. In any case, be especially careful if you encounter this person.

Every morning there is a meeting. Mondays are the general meeting, and during the first week of every month there is a monthly meeting. Every Saturday and Sunday, you have to prepare at home the report for Monday's meeting. Your schedule is supposed to be packed to the brim, and the work for the following week or month should also be packed to the brim, regardless of whether it makes logical sense—just fill it up. Then you have to prepare responses, because the boss and manager will start picking apart the report based on its contents. You need to be prepared, or you will be thoroughly berated. If your schedule is very full, ideally you should have progress on everything by the following week, and once something is scheduled, it must be completed. Basically, there is a fairly high chance that everyone takes work home. Some coworkers even take special leave to work from home simply because they do not want meetings to delay their progress.

Meetings here generally last at least two hours. The longest one I saw started after the morning meeting ended and continued until the afternoon. Most of the time is spent scolding people—scolding them for slow progress and for not being able to solve problems. Why is this company a startup training camp? Because nobody above you will teach you how to solve problems. They only know how to scold, not solve problems. They talk nonsense. The boss will say, “I see there are some problems with this proposal. I have thought of a way to solve them, but I am not going to tell you. Let’s see whether you notice them yourself.” The manager will say, “I do not want my ideas to influence your ideas. Come up with something yourselves.” This is how the company drags down progress. When problems arise, they do not help; they just silently watch you and later start assigning blame.

During the interview, they said the boss was very wealthy. I do not know whether he is wealthy, but I do know that the company is constantly losing money, and the boss is extremely stingy—possibly because the company is constantly losing money. The work equipment is not very complete. The computers do not have graphics cards, products are photographed using employees' own phones, and quite a few coworkers bring their own computers to work. The boss has some very bizarre ideas. He thinks the company only needs one good computer, and all the work software is installed on that one good computer, which everyone takes turns using. He says many companies do this (????).

The boss himself has many ideas that are hostile to human nature, and you can experience them if you get the chance to join this company. In any case, if people can bring their own tools, everyone brings their own: computers, tablets, cameras, tripods... and so on. Getting the boss to pay for anything is like asking for his life. He will say that we are not paying enough attention to costs and tell us to solve problems ourselves. The demands are high in principle, while the costs are shifted onto employees. How much are we actually supposed to accomplish with how many resources? Of course, if we had enough technical resources, we could do better. But when resources are insufficient, we are still expected to achieve results beyond what the available resources allow. To achieve those results, we can only use our own resources. Is that normal? If you genuinely love the job, I would not consider it excessive. But we are required to deliver above-standard performance every day and are subjected to psychological manipulation. With resources provided at this level, we are instead criticized for lacking ability. I do not think NT$27,000 is worth doing all this for.

But it really is a startup training camp. The boss and manager may simply be the kind of asshole clients we will encounter: indecisive clients and demanding, impossible-to-please customers. How do we operate when resources are insufficient in the early stages? These can count as benefits, right? Haha.

Finally, I have to say that this company is very crafty. It is this terrible, but all its procedures follow the regulations, so we cannot catch them on anything and have no way to deal with them. All the shitty things are considered part of the company culture. So I can only come here to warn everyone who is thinking of working at this company: if you see this, consider it carefully.