Workplace reviews and discussion: 工研院 _財團法人工業技術研究院

1. It’s very busy when things are busy, but very relaxed when things are slow. You can use the institute’s resources to learn things you’re interested in. Once you’ve learned what you need to, you can start using your new skills to look for your next job, making this a good stepping stone for a career change.

2. My favorite part is probably the swimming pool at the Youhuo Recreation Center. An annual pass is much cheaper than those elsewhere.

3. It seems quite suitable for people with children, but I don’t have children myself, so I can’t comment.

1. As many senior colleagues have said, the Industrial Technology Research Institute operates in an extremely bureaucratic and rigid manner. Many matters require consideration of supervisors’ preferences and connections, making things that could clearly be resolved simply unnecessarily complicated. Many projects are also outsourced to mediocre external vendors (I only later learned that a vendor may have had some connections with the supervisor). Supervisors occupy high positions and receive the most money, yet push all responsibility onto frontline staff. They don’t understand the project’s execution, completely ignore the project during its day-to-day implementation, and provide no clear guidance on its direction. Figuring out what supervisors are thinking mostly requires mind reading; it’s only the day before an external presentation that they start nitpicking and expressing dissatisfaction in all sorts of ways.

2. The Industrial Technology Research Institute was my second job after entering the workforce. Personally, I feel that if you’re new to the workforce, it is extremely, extremely, extremely unsuitable to make ITRI your very first job. You won’t be trained here in basic skills such as report writing, presentations, or administrative work, and the quality of the reports produced here isn’t even as good as at my previous employer (which was just a small company with 10 employees). I developed many of these skills at my previous job and continued using them here.

3. Perhaps because the organization has become too bureaucratic, both horizontal and vertical communication are very difficult. Problems frequently arise because supervisors’ instructions and the division of responsibilities among colleagues are unclear.