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

An old-age company

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

2. This company’s machines do not require validation. At your company, I spent only nine days developing a new model and completing the 2D/3D drawings, and it was shipped as soon as one prototype was completed. Moreover, the head of the PM department is also the company’s vice president. He cannot manage projects but loves to interfere. 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. There is clearly a lack of cross-functional communication. Most importantly, after rushing to complete a new project, the bonus was only NT$3,000.

3. Machine specifications should be confirmed during the development stage. After 15 machines had already entered mass production, they said the IPC needed to be replaced because the price was cheaper. I could accept the explanation that it was cheaper, provided that the PM communicated with the relevant departments before making the decision. Instead, the PM says nothing until shipment is imminent, and the PM vice president even shifts the blame by claiming that he told everyone long ago and that we simply were not listening. As a result, external vendors and internal R&D staff often have to clean up after him.

4. The company has no concept of an approved sample document. The purchasing department often switches from Supplier A to Supplier B without notifying anyone. People only find out when serious problems occur during mass production. Even more absurdly, mechanical R&D is always held responsible when something goes wrong. Basically, everything from the eighth-floor production line to the fifth-floor PQC is managed by the purchasing manager. When the purchasing manager calls to ask about something, she acts as if you owe her NT$2.58 million and handles matters based on emotion. When R&D needs to modify a mold and asks purchasing whether materials should be stocked, purchasing always says there is enough inventory. When the mold actually needs to be modified, they then say inventory is insufficient and ask when it can be fixed, before relentlessly pressuring R&D, which is baffling. Purchasing also never properly prepares inventory, so shortages result in long waiting periods. An operations-planning department finally began counterbalancing the purchasing department, but within a few days the purchasing manager went to become the manager of the operations-planning department. In other words, she is still in control, so the problems described above continue to occur.

5. Regarding the same matter that occurred on 2025/6/13: previously, Lens A was used in the design to consume excess inventory. Since the inventory of Lens A has now run out and its MOQ is too high, purchasing issued an ECR to replace it with Lens B. The R&D manager disagreed, but purchasing directly issued the materials to the production line and required the mechanical engineer to modify the BOM.

6. The HR department at this company has no authority and does not know employees’ salaries, because the CEO tightly controls all salary matters. Even an application for mechanical samples costing less than NT$100 must be approved by the CEO. Even when a department manager wants to grant a salary increase, it must go through the CEO. As far as I know, when the R&D manager requested salary adjustments, the request was rejected.

7. Because the company’s HR department cannot find mechanical engineers or testing part-time workers, it often comes up with bizarre ideas, such as designating a non-major document-control employee as a mechanical engineer or turning testing part-time workers into test engineers. The purpose is to attract people who want to be called “engineers” to work here. Such strange ideas are extremely unfair to real engineers. People carrying the company’s “engineer” title have widely varying skill levels, which will cause genuinely qualified engineering graduates to have their abilities questioned by companies across the industry.

8. The company’s MIS department is extremely disorganized. Whenever there is a computer problem, they tell you to restart it. If they cannot solve it, they simply 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 computer specifications are antiquated. The department manager politely asked us to list the current computer specifications, but in reality the CEO simply does not want to upgrade the engineers’ hardware, and nothing has happened for a long time. For software, the company currently uses SolidWorks 2016. The CEO does not want to purchase the software outright, believing that renting it is cheaper, but apparently the software update issue remains unresolved to this day.

9. As mentioned above, the version in use is 2016. Strangely, the Serbia region uses a more advanced version, making drawing files from the same company incompatible and preventing them from circulating. Even the system and part-number specifications are different, making it completely unlike the same company in operation. The Serbia side also occasionally asks us to change to their coding principles, causing the two sides to argue constantly, after which the matter is ultimately left unresolved.