Very good at painting a rosy picture, with a long history of being harsh toward employees. Even on typhoon days off, they’ll say, “You still dare to take a day off without meeting your targets? Come to work.” But when typhoons hit, factories and stores are closed—what are you supposed to visit? Sales staff work overtime without pay (and still have to clock out on time, then continue working after clocking out, in an attempt to evade the Labor Standards Act).

Harsh toward employees. Even if you work yourself to death, you can earn at most NT$30,000–40,000 a month. You work 12–14 hours a day. Usually, in a branch office, only one sales representative makes money—and that person is typically a veteran employee. Veterans can absorb public accounts and take resources from established customers (the answer above is exactly right). Besides competing with colleagues, you also have to engage in office politics with supervisors. Supervisors are very good at manipulating people through public accounts: they assign you a lousy account with a bonus of less than NT$1,000 (bonuses for chain-store accounts are under NT$1,000, and 30% of the bonus is also deducted as a provident-fund contribution. The supervisor tells you that contributions won’t be deducted if the amount is under NT$700, then changes it to NT$500, and eventually does everything possible to deduct a provident-fund contribution from that pathetic account bonus of less than NT$500). Accounts for Hi-Life and 7-ELEVEN convenience stores pay very little. Even when you meet your performance targets, they still deduct the contribution from you. A NT$500 bonus is reduced by another 30%, which isn’t even enough to cover your fuel costs. They use public accounts to threaten you, telling you that they won’t assign accounts if you don’t meet your targets. This is what a terrible working environment looks like. You might say that competing with other companies in the market and working hard is reasonable, but having to fight among yourselves internally is ridiculous.

There are just over 50 branch offices across Taiwan. If a branch’s performance is below 60%, it is considered a failure, but even when you exceed 60% every month, you still get criticized. You are ranked among the bottom 15. Suppose every branch in Taiwan achieves over 100% performance—passing with a perfect score and exceeding it—but you are still in the bottom 15. You will still be reviewed and criticized. They hold reviews simply for the sake of reviewing. I have to ask: other security companies are not inferior to Chung Hsing in terms of prices, promotions, or even equipment. Some charge less and give you 16 security cameras, charging only NT$2,300 per month, while you start at NT$2,500 and provide nothing. Do they think Taiwanese people are suckers, or have they lost their minds? Everyone works very hard to make sales, but it isn’t New Year every day. If it were really that easy and profitable, why are the general manager and chairman the only ones driving luxury cars? From headquarters and management offices down to branch-office employees, who doesn’t end up selling a kidney or a lung and losing money? Sometimes supervisors even assign you extremely difficult accounts without construction fees or deposits, and you end up paying the installers out of your own pocket. The general manager at headquarters is basically putting on a show for the chairman. Although this is a large company, the industry lacks a sound management system; management is crude and arbitrary, and the company can never retain employees.

Those considering joining, please think carefully first—especially sales staff. Various headquarters departments, the chain-store division, the disaster-prevention division, and others will compete with you for the market and sales, leaving you only the scraps, and then pressure you to meet the performance targets for all the departments.