Workplace reviews and discussion: 鴻發國際科技股份有限公司

A retirement home company

1. To put it nicely, this company is hiring an equipment engineer; to put it bluntly, it is merely looking for a draftsman. The company does not require you to think about anything—just follow the PM’s instructions and complete the work by the deadline.

2. The company’s machines do not require validation. At your company, I spent only nine days developing a new model’s 2D/3D drawings, and shipped it as soon as one prototype was completed. Moreover, the head of the PM department is also the company’s vice president. He does not know how to manage projects but likes to micromanage. During development, for example, the hardware department was unaware of changes to the coin module, while the software department did not rush the external-display UI design until just before the machine was shipped. This clearly shows a lack of cross-functional communication. Most notably, the bonus for completing a new project under tight deadlines was only NT$3,000.

3. Machine specifications should be confirmed during the development stage. After 15 machines had already entered mass production, they suddenly said the IPC needed to be replaced because the alternative was cheaper. I can accept the explanation that it was cheaper, provided that the PM actually communicated with the relevant departments before making the decision. Instead, the PM made decisions without consulting anyone and only brought them up when the shipment was about to go out. The PM vice president would also shift the blame, saying that he had mentioned it long ago and that “you simply weren’t listening.” As a result, outside vendors and internal R&D staff often have to clean up his messes.

4. The company has no concept of an approved vendor list. The procurement department often switches from Vendor A to Vendor B without notifying anyone. The issue only becomes known when a problem occurs during mass production, and, even more absurdly, the mechanical R&D team is held responsible whenever something goes wrong. Basically, everything from the eighth-floor production line to the fifth-floor PQC is managed by the procurement manager. When the procurement manager calls to ask about something, she acts as if you owe her NT$2.58 million and handles matters emotionally. When R&D needs to modify a mold and asks procurement whether inventory should be stocked, procurement always says there is enough. When the mold actually needs to be modified, they then say inventory is insufficient and ask when it can be fixed, followed by relentlessly pressuring R&D, which is astonishing. Procurement has also never maintained adequate safety stock, so whenever materials run short, there is a waiting period. There was finally a production-control department that could counterbalance procurement, but within a few days the procurement manager went to become the production-control manager. In other words, she was still in control, so the problems described above continued to occur.

5. As with the incident on 2025/6/13 mentioned above, an A lens had previously been used in the design to clear inventory. Since the A lens is now out of stock and its MOQ is too high, procurement issued an ECR to replace it with a B lens. The R&D supervisor disagreed, but procurement directly issued the material to the production line and instructed the mechanical engineer to modify the BOM.

6. The company’s HR department has no authority and does not know employees’ salaries, because the CEO keeps a very tight grip on compensation. Even a request for mechanical samples costing less than NT$100 must be approved by the CEO. Even when a department manager wants to give an employee a raise, it must go through the CEO. As far as I know, the R&D supervisor was rejected when he raised the issue of salary adjustments.

7.  Because the company’s HR department cannot find mechanical engineers or part-time testing workers, it often comes up with bizarre ideas, such as having a non-related-major document-control employee nominally serve as a mechanical engineer or turning a part-time testing worker into a test engineer. The purpose is to attract people who want to be called “engineers” to work there. Such strange practices are extremely unfair to genuine engineers. People with varying levels of ability are given the company’s “engineer” title, which will cause companies in the industry to question the abilities of engineers who genuinely graduate and enter the profession!

8. The company’s MIS department is extremely disorganized. Whenever there is a computer problem, they simply tell you to restart it. If they cannot solve it, they directly reinstall the operating system. Desktop computers are labeled by MIS with “Internet Access Prohibited.” Everyone knows why internet access is prohibited. In addition, the desktop specifications are antiquated. The department manager makes it sound as though they want us to list the current computer specifications, but in reality the CEO simply does not want to help engineers upgrade their hardware, and nothing has happened for a long time. On the software side, the company currently uses SolidWorks 2016. The CEO does not want to purchase a perpetual software license, believing that renting is cheaper, but, unsurprisingly, the software update issue remains unresolved to this day.

9. As mentioned above, the version in use is 2016. Strangely, the software used in the Serbia region is a more advanced version, making it impossible to share drawing files within the same company. Even the systems and part-numbering rules follow different standards, making it seem as though the two sides are not operating as part of the same company at all. The Serbia side also occasionally demands that we change to its coding principles, causing the two sides to argue repeatedly, with no resolution in the end.