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

Who wouldn’t love a company where, from the moment you join OP, everyone gets bonuses, quarterly bonuses, and performance bonuses?

Even if you’re an idiot with no ability, you can receive the same percentage as engineers—perfect for people who just want to coast~

There are three strange things about this company: people, systems, and quality. I’ll introduce them in order.

People

The R&D staff hired here actually have very strong thinking skills. On the factory side, even OPs who came from R&D can handle the existing team-leader and section-manager positions. By comparison, the only advantage old employees have is that they “understand the procedures,” but their innovation and self-learning abilities are almost zero; their thinking has remained stuck in the first five years of the company’s founding.

Then there’s the new department director. He seems to really want to reform things, but there’s always some invisible force preventing him from发挥ing his abilities (the higher-ups).

There’s nothing he can do. The factory is full of old-timers, including many people who entered society at this company and have stayed until now. Their thinking has long since become fixed. Asking them to change would be less effective than simply replacing them.

It’s just like the military here: if you stay too long and then go out to look for a job, you won’t be able to find one. So those who have been here for almost five years should be careful. Don’t stop learning; keep up with the outside world. Your self-learning ability must keep pace with the outside world—don’t instead become assimilated by this place. If you’ve been here nearly five years, get out while you can~

The higher-ups are quite protective of these people who don’t have much ability. Seriously, if the higher-ups retire,

the new director gives people the impression that he would want to replace those old-timers immediately, minute by minute.

This is the first time I’ve seen a department director work so hard at a mid-sized company.

At outside companies, department directors just wait to hear reports and receive proactive updates. At this company, the department director has to proactively go around asking for information himself.

Systems

The bonus system uses a one-size-fits-all approach: bonuses, quarterly bonuses, and performance bonuses are all shared by everyone at the same percentage. Employees below engineering positions receive the same amount, which leaves both frontline staff and engineering-level employees with no motivation to improve their independent thinking or abilities. Everyone eats from the same communal pot, leaving the company lacking competitiveness.

I suggest differentiating by job level: positions below engineering should receive only manufacturing bonuses and year-end bonuses, while engineering positions and above should enjoy all bonuses, quarterly bonuses, performance bonuses, and so on. This would also strengthen the motivation of employees in engineering and below to pursue higher positions and the benefits they bring.

Add external learning subsidies: regularly hold or subsidize external certification courses, bringing in the latest information and technical thinking so the company can keep up with the pace of society.

There is also a solution for old-timers who “make no contribution”: their quarterly and performance bonuses could be distributed to other proactive colleagues in the same department, naturally creating survival of the fittest.

Quality

There are unexpectedly many people in QC at this company. I don’t know why.

And it seems that even QC engineers have to go down to perform inspections?

It seems that this company’s production-line quality awareness is extremely weak. Why not refer more to other companies outside?

Aren’t engineering positions supposed to have QC engineering staff perform inspections? The production line should be able to conduct self-inspections and understand the relevant standards, shouldn’t it?

No wonder things often go wrong, and then QC gets dragged out and flogged (WTF?

Whenever something goes wrong, the production line is of course responsible, but QC is always blamed first for not seeing it and not inspecting it.

Let me first clarify the responsibilities.

At the most basic companies, QC is divided into two job levels:

1. Inspector (QC): performs incoming-material, in-process, and outgoing-product inspections.

2. Quality-assurance engineer (QA): performs abnormality analysis and process optimization.

This company seems not to separate them, mixing them together like a “urine-and-meatball” concoction, while the salary is at least 5K lower than the industry standard.

There are also people with low-end thinking who believe QC is an easy job. They either slack off or cause trouble, and think anyone could work in this completely useless department.

What they say is not entirely wrong: QC really needs to show its credentials, but not one person is up to standard—no brains, no logic, and always trying to shift blame.

Basically, if we use a score of 10 as the full mark for a group of ten people, then on the factory side, all the QC staff combined do not even reach 5 points in qualifications.

Across the three departments, only one to three people in each department on average actually have brains.

Only a very small number have qualifications and abilities that might even allow them to replace old-timers who have stayed for more than five years.

With quality like this, they still dare to make QC shoulder everything? I really don’t know whether people were hired with their feet in the past.

It seems the engineers are expected to shoulder responsibility for the quality of the entire company and gamble on customer complaints.

There are only two ways to improve:

1. Follow the most basic external-company model and divide QC into two job levels (high cost).

2. Instill quality awareness throughout the production line.

Most companies use the second approach. It saves QC personnel costs and raises the overall standard through quality awareness,

rather than having the scales tipped entirely to one side as they are now, with all quality being gambled on a single checkpoint.

The most cost-effective approach for the company would be to delegate first-line inspections to production-line OPs, teaching them basic self-inspection according to AQL and basic appearance standards. QA should be reserved for audits and coaching, focusing on root-cause analysis (5 Whys, fishbone diagrams, D8), customer complaints, projects, and improving systems.

Quality-awareness and process-improvement workshops should also be held regularly at the factory so that OP and QA can learn together and truly instill quality awareness into every step.

Axiomtek is not bad in essence; what Axiomtek lacks is essence.

Only through major reform and a change of personnel can Axiomtek grow rapidly—even to the point of buying back the shares held by R&D.