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

Retirement home 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 does not require machine validation. At your company, I spent only nine days developing a new model and completing the 2D/3D drawings; as soon as one prototype was completed, it was shipped. 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 UI design until just before the machine was shipped. This clearly demonstrates a lack of cross-functional communication. To top it off, after rushing to complete a new project, the bonus was only NT$3,000.

3. Machine specifications should be confirmed during development. After 15 machines had already entered mass production, they said the IPC had to be replaced because the price was cheaper. I can accept the reason that it was cheaper, provided that the PM communicates with every department before making a decision. Instead, the PM does not communicate with anyone until the machine is about to ship. The PM vice president would even shift the blame by saying that he had mentioned it long ago and that everyone else simply had not listened. As a result, outside vendors and the internal R&D team often have to clean up after him.

4. The company has no concept of an approved sample or sign-off document. The procurement department often switches from Supplier A to Supplier B without notifying anyone. The issue is not discovered until a problem occurs during mass production. Even more absurdly, the mechanical R&D team is held responsible whenever something goes wrong. Basically, the procurement manager manages everything from the eighth-floor production line to the fifth-floor PQC. When the procurement manager calls to ask about something, she acts as though you owe her NT$2.58 million and conducts business based on her emotions. When R&D needs to modify a mold, it asks procurement whether inventory should be stocked. Procurement always says there is enough, but when the mold actually needs to be modified, it says inventory is insufficient and asks when the repair can be completed. It then relentlessly pressures R&D, leaving everyone speechless. Procurement has also never maintained sufficient inventory, so material shortages result in a waiting period. Just when a production-control department finally began to counterbalance procurement, the procurement manager transferred there as the manager after only a few days. In other words, she still remained in control, so the problems described above continued to occur.

5. Regarding the same incident that occurred on 2025/06/13: previously, Lens A was used in the design to consume existing inventory. Now that Lens A is out of stock and its MOQ is too high, procurement opened an ECR to replace it with Lens B. The R&D manager disagreed, but procurement directly issued the material to the production line and required 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 salary matters firmly under his control. Even an application for mechanical samples costing less than NT$100 must be approved by the CEO. Even when a department manager wants to adjust an employee's salary, it must go through the CEO. As far as I know, the R&D manager's request to discuss salary adjustments was rejected.

7. Because the company's HR department cannot find mechanical engineers or part-time testing assistants, it often comes up with bizarre ideas, such as giving a non-major document-control employee the title of mechanical engineer or proposing that a part-time testing assistant become a test engineer. The purpose is to attract people who want to be called “engineers” to work there. Such strange ideas are extremely unfair to genuine engineers. People with the company's “engineer” title have widely varying skill levels, which will cause truly qualified graduating engineers to have their abilities questioned by companies across the industry.

8. The company's MIS department is a mess. Whenever there is a computer problem, they tell you to restart the computer. If they cannot solve it, they simply reimage the computer. Desktop computers are labeled by MIS as “Internet access prohibited.” Everyone knows why internet access is prohibited. In addition, the desktop computer specifications are antiquated. The department manager politely tells 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 a perpetual license, believing that renting 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 higher version, making it impossible to exchange drawing files within the same company. Even the system and component part numbers follow different standards, making it seem as though the two sides are not operating as the same company at all. The Serbia side also occasionally requires us to switch to its coding principles, leading to constant arguments between the two sides, which ultimately remain unresolved.