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

A company that simply coasts along

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

2. This company does not require machine validation. At your company, I spent only nine days developing a new machine model and completing the 2D/3D drawings; 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 loves 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 UI until just before the machine was shipped. This clearly shows 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 the development stage. After 15 machines had already entered mass production, they 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 communicates with every relevant department before making a decision. Instead, the PM makes decisions without consulting anyone and only brings them up when the product is about to ship. The PM vice president even shifts the blame by saying that he mentioned it long ago and that everyone else simply failed to listen. As a result, external vendors and internal R&D staff are constantly left to clean up his messes.

4. The company has no concept of an approved sample document. The procurement department often switches from Supplier A to Supplier B without notifying anyone, and the issue is only discovered when problems arise during mass production. Even more absurdly, mechanical R&D is always held responsible when something goes wrong. Basically, everything from the production line on the eighth floor to PQC on the fifth floor 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 operates based on emotion. When R&D needs to modify a mold and asks procurement whether inventory should be stocked, procurement always says there is enough. Then, when the mold actually needs to be modified, they say inventory is insufficient and ask when the work can be completed, after which they relentlessly hound R&D. It is astonishing. Procurement also never stocks inventory in advance, so material shortages result in a waiting period. A production-control department finally began to counterbalance procurement, but within a few days the procurement manager went to become the manager of the production-control department. In other words, she still controls everything, so the same problems described above continue to occur.

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

6. The company's HR department has no real 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 adjust an employee's salary, it must go through the CEO. As far as I know, when the R&D manager raised the issue of salary adjustments, it was rejected!

7. Because the company's HR department cannot find mechanical engineers or testing interns, it often comes up with bizarre ideas, such as giving a non-major document-control employee the title of mechanical engineer or turning a testing intern into a test engineer. The purpose is to attract people who want to be called “engineers” to work here. Such strange ideas are extremely unfair to genuine engineers. People with the company's “engineer” title have widely varying skill levels, causing engineers who actually graduate to face questions about their abilities from companies across the industry!

8. The company's MIS department is extremely incompetent. Whenever there is a computer problem, they tell you to restart the computer. 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 made it sound as though we should list our 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 does not realize that 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, which means that drawing files exchanged within the same company cannot be shared properly. Even the system and part-number conventions 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 asks us to switch to its coding principles, leading to constant arguments between the two sides, which ultimately go nowhere.