Workplace reviews and discussion: 微笑元素創意概念有限公司

SEIC, a well-known electric bicycle company in Taiwan

Applied for the position of Product Designer

The owner conducted the interview personally and seemed very polite.

Later, because they felt that the salary for a professional product designer was too high, they said they wanted to change it to some kind of contract-based collaborative designer arrangement, which increasingly felt strange. I asked a lot of questions about product planning, design, and the details of the collaboration, and also quoted the owner a range of prices. I don’t know why they kept repeating that they wanted to get me to sign a contract first and discuss the details afterward.

After carefully reading every clause of the contract, it was simply a list of unreasonable demands designed to ensure that the client would always win. (They wanted to tie you down but didn’t dare pay a salary.)

I wasted a full two months handling matters related to the collaboration project, only to be brushed off in the end with the excuse: “Due to insufficient funding, we’ll consider other directions later….”

This is absolutely outrageous. It’s obvious that they only want to trick designers who don’t know better into falling for it, using cheap labor costs to obtain product design work.

I never expected that a year later, a designer friend of mine would also nearly be tricked by the same tactic. Everyone, be careful.

This company is not reputable. Be careful.