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

A company that is just coasting along

1. To put it nicely, this company is hiring a mechanical engineer; to put it bluntly, it is simply looking for a draftsman. The company does not expect you to think—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 developed a new model and completed the 2D/3D drawings in only nine days; as soon as one prototype was finished, 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 to design the external display UI until just before the machine was shipped. This clearly shows a lack of cross-functional communication. To top it off, the bonus for completing a new project on time was only NT$3,000.

3. Machine specifications should be confirmed during development. After 15 machines had already entered mass production, we were told that the IPC had to be replaced because the new one was cheaper. I can accept the explanation that it was cheaper, provided that the PM communicates with the relevant departments before making a decision. Instead, the PM says nothing until shipment is imminent, and the vice president/PM then shifts the blame by claiming that he said it long ago and that everyone else simply was not listening. As a result, outside vendors and the internal R&D team constantly have to clean up his messes.

4. The company has no concept of an approved sample or change-approval document. The procurement department often switches from Vendor A to Vendor B without notifying anyone; the issue is only discovered when a problem arises during mass production. Even more absurdly, mechanical R&D is held responsible whenever something goes wrong. Basically, the procurement manager controls everything from the eighth-floor production line to the fifth-floor PQC. When she calls to ask about something, she acts as if you owe her NT$2.58 million and conducts business based on her emotions. When R&D needs to modify a mold and asks procurement whether materials should be stocked, procurement always says there is enough inventory. When the mold actually needs to be modified, they then say the inventory is insufficient and ask when the modification can be completed, before relentlessly pressuring R&D—completely outrageous. Procurement has never properly maintained inventory, so material shortages lead to long waiting periods. Just when the production-control department began to counterbalance procurement, the procurement manager became the production-control manager after only a few days. In other words, she still controls everything, so the same problems described above continue to occur.

5. Regarding the same incident that occurred on June 13, 2025: previously, a design using Lens A was adopted to consume excess inventory. Now that the inventory of Lens A has run out, and because Lens A's MOQ is too high, procurement initiated an ECR to replace it with Lens B. The R&D manager did not agree, but procurement directly issued the materials to the production line and demanded that the mechanical engineer change the BOM.

6. The company's HR department has no real authority and does not know employees' salaries, because the CEO keeps all salary matters tightly under his control. Even an application for mechanical samples costing less than NT$100 must be approved by the CEO. Even when a department head wants to recommend a salary increase, it must go through the CEO. As far as I know, the R&D manager's request regarding salary adjustments was rejected.

7. Because the company's HR department cannot find mechanical engineers or test interns, it often comes up with bizarre ideas—for example, listing a non-engineering document-control employee under the title of mechanical engineer, or turning a test intern into a test engineer. The purpose is to attract people who want to be called an “engineer” to work here. Such strange ideas are extremely unfair to genuine engineers. People with the company's “engineer” title have widely varying skill levels, which will cause genuinely graduating engineers to have their abilities questioned by companies in the industry.

8. The company's MIS department is extremely incompetent. Whenever there is a computer problem, they simply tell you to restart it. If they cannot solve the problem, they just reimage the computer. Desktop computers are labeled by MIS with “No Internet Access.” Everyone knows why internet access is prohibited. In addition, the desktop specifications are antique-level. The department head says, to put it nicely, that we should list the specifications of our current computers, 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 license, believing that renting is cheaper, but apparently does not realize that the software upgrade issue remains unresolved to this day.

9. As mentioned above, the version in use is 2016. Strangely, the Serbia region uses a more advanced software version, which means that drawing files exchanged within the same company cannot be shared properly. Even the systems and 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 demands that we switch to its coding principles, leading to endless arguments between the two sides, which ultimately go nowhere.