Workplace reviews and discussion: 艾訊股份有限公司

Air conditioning.

I worked at the factory site.

Internal politics.

The younger PMs actually do things, while the older ones throw their weight around.

There are errors in the SOPs, but the older employees never admit them and even tell other departments not to issue abnormality reports.

When contractors point out problems with the SOPs, they blame the contractors for not understanding them.

Only when something serious happens do they start passing the buck—first to quality assurance, then on-site manufacturing, then material issuing.

No matter what goes wrong with a sign-off, the PMs push the blame away the most. But they fail to realize that the source of every incident is always unclear and incomplete SOPs.

There is an older, bespectacled employee in the finished-goods warehouse who complains all day. The person in charge of the warehouse, despite being one of the more senior employees there, is always half-hearted about managing it.

When you ask where something is, they tell you to find it yourself. Come on—the warehouse is your responsibility. Even when you ask where something was put, they just grumble and waste time that could be spent searching.

They completely shirk responsibility and are very good at dodging problems. They clearly know where things are, but never tell you. They are basically just someone who moves cargo around and serve little purpose.

Look closely at the assembly section of quality assurance: only 10% of the people actually do their jobs. Everyone else pushes their work problems onto that 10%.

The other 90% are mostly idle, or they disappear midway through their shifts.

As for benefits:

They are extremely basic—really basic.

Having benefits that comply with the Labor Standards Act is considered good, but they are not better than what the law requires.

Simply put, you need to have worked for more than a year to receive a subsidy for the company trip.

The year-end bonus was changed to one month’s salary; it used to be two months.

After working here for half a year, I have seen nothing but benefits shrinking, with no improvement. The stock price, however, has risen.

The employee welfare committee has not been updated for five years.

Even when activities are organized, they are all geared toward older employees: watching obscure basketball games, taking trips around Taiwan (old-town tours, mountain climbing), and movie days.

(They are cinemas I have never even heard of—actually, not cinemas, but theaters—showing movies I have never heard of.) In any case, these are all activities that young employees would not want to attend.

Vending-machine snacks are restocked once a week, and quite often only once every two weeks. Usually, three days after restocking, only obscure snacks are left.

The snacks are all cheap. The drinks are cheaper than those outside, although that is because they are brands of drinks no one has ever seen before.

The lunch boxes during the lunch break are expensive. There is basically no company subsidy; after 2,400 is deducted from your pay for meals, your actual base salary is what remains.

But lunch boxes generally start at NT$70. They are ordered collectively, so don’t expect otherwise. If you order separately, you can only arrange delivery yourself, which costs more.

There is a 30-minute break during overtime (17:00–17:30). At such a remote factory in Beitou, going out to eat is more exhausting than serving in the military.

There is no group order for lunch boxes either. If you want to eat, you have to go out, and you have to eat quickly enough to rush back for overtime. So basically, everyone working overtime waits until the end of the shift to eat. It is extremely inconvenient.

At this rate, if I don’t end up with colon cancer, I’ll be amazed. But I heard the new factory provides meals, although employees have to pay part of the cost. I don’t know how much yet (NT$40–70).

The advantage is that profits are distributed every March, June, and September, but it is always a fixed half-month’s salary, or otherwise a full month’s salary (so far, I have only received half a month’s salary).

For each of the three major holidays, they give NT$500–1,000. That’s it—really, that’s all.

This March, employees were no longer allowed to subscribe to company shares (but the stock is still rising; perhaps they want to keep all the gains for themselves?).

Basically, if you do not own a home in Taipei or have moved north for work, you can stop considering this place.

The salary is nowhere near enough to buy a home. If you already own a home, you can stay.

Renting is also possible, but then you end up neither well-fed nor starving.

So basically, the people who stay here are over 30 or live in Taipei and just want to earn some spending money.

However, I heard that the headquarters (Xizhi) offers excellent compensation. So if you have the ability, remember to apply for a headquarters position rather than a manufacturing position at the factory site.

The benefits system is not shared between them.

In short, it is a system manufacturer resembling a traditional industry. You could even call it a traditional-industry company, since internally people are rigid-minded, inefficient, or older employees use their seniority to pressure others.

I am referring only to the factory site.