1. Can serve as an engineer’s first job experience (the requirements aren’t high)

2. There are employee clubs to join (employees have to pay a welfare fee)

3. The company premises are impressive

4. User requests and engineers’ changes going live all follow a process, so you can learn the workflow from requirements to deployment, including a complete Git flow

5. Generally complies with the Labor Standards Act (the company cares a lot about its image)

6. There is a travel subsidy, but it can only be used to purchase the company’s products

1. There used to be one WFH day, but now you have to go every day to a kingdom that’s incredibly far away. Although the company provides shuttle buses, you are responsible if you are late because of the shuttle bus (traffic jams); sometimes delays aren’t even announced. The shuttle buses are also quite often full. The company’s attitude is: “We provide a shuttle bus as a favor to you. Our tour buses are meant to go out and make money!”

2. Front-end is arguably the lowest-level function in the company. Whenever a website breaks, it is considered the front end’s problem; even when the HTML hasn’t received a response, it is still the front end’s problem… If you need help from another team (even when it is their bug), you have to beg them a thousand times (some departments)

3. Most websites still use jQuery, and some even mix React and jQuery, so routing is still controlled by the back end—amazing! There is a lot of historical baggage (after all, engineers are treated as disposable)

4. It depends on your luck which team you get assigned to. The worst is being responsible for shared modules… Let me say it again: there is a lot of historical baggage!

5. There are no regular raises (the decision is in HR’s hands; some people have even received only a 1% raise—what can I say…). Even if you perform well, you will not get a raise if you have not been with the company long enough. Without raises, why would anyone want to stay? So they just hire new people again. Engineers can be treated like disposable chopsticks, and existing employees have to keep training newcomers

6. The information provided at the year-end party is extremely stingy (there were even near-expiry tea bags as prizes). The company considers IT a cost and the party an expense; Lion Travel is the client—the kind that is very high-handed

7. The company restructures its organization almost every year. Front-end is even more pitiful now, although newcomers can learn things (staying for about a year is enough)

8. The usual problems of traditional Taiwanese companies: making grand promises and using emotional blackmail

9. Deployments have to be done at night (overtime, with overtime pay or compensatory leave). A less reasonable case occurred when people were required to work overnight during a previous long holiday (it rarely happens—almost never—but if it does, you have to follow the arrangement)

Overall, most colleagues are easy to get along with, but the more people leave, the worse things become… Staying for one year is pretty good; staying for two years is a different story.

The company does not see employees as assets; basically, they are all costs.