That interview was the most absurd beginning of my entire career.

I applied for an engineering position at X Fan Company, but ended up being interviewed by HR Lynn in the very first round.

They called it an interview, but it was more like firing questions at random—the interviewer spent less than three minutes looking at my résumé, and the questions made no sense. One moment they asked whether I could write firmware; the next, whether I understood antenna design. Finally, they even asked whether I could accept “supporting any department whenever necessary.” At the time, I thought it was just a large company with a chaotic process. I had no idea that was the most normal part.

Only after I was hired did I learn that I was actually “double-outsourced”: nominally employed by X Fan Staffing Company, then assigned to Vendor B, which sent me to Company S. Three layers of relationships—each one claimed it wasn’t my employer, yet each one gave me orders.

On my first day, there wasn’t even a seat for me. I was assigned a hastily added desk in a corner, next to broken antenna samples and outdated documents. My supervisor patted me on the shoulder and said, “Get familiar with things first, then help test this batch of antennas.” I didn’t even have a system account, yet I was thrown into production-line support.

The work itself made no sense. I wrote code today, soldered circuit boards tomorrow, and was told to move equipment the day after that. Most outrageous of all, at two in the morning, LINE would pop up with a notification: “There’s a problem on the client side. Check it remotely right away.” That kind of “always on call” wasn’t an exaggeration—it was meant literally.

Things were even worse during peak season. The company would order pizza, supposedly to “show appreciation,” but in reality it was an announcement that no one was going home that night. Everyone would chew on cold pizza while staring at test data. Someone joked that it was “all-you-can-eat,” because you would stay until the next day, and even the fried rice for breakfast was ordered for delivery by the company.

The overtime policy sounded great: “The overtime rate is better than what the Labor Standards Act requires.” In reality, you might work more than 12 hours straight, then continue handling issues remotely after getting home—and none of that time counted as overtime.

Sleeping less than four hours a day became normal. My brain often felt like an antenna that had lost its connection, unable to lock onto a signal no matter what.

What hurt most wasn’t the exhaustion. It was the unfairness.

Bonuses were entirely determined by “the inner circle.” The few people around the boss could receive generous bonuses even when their projects went wrong; people like us, the outsourced workers, would only get a “That’s what you’re supposed to do” even after rescuing a failing project. We were even publicly criticized, in a tone so vicious it genuinely felt like they were insulting your entire family.

The office atmosphere was warped too. People in the inner circle would lead the exclusion, deliberately leave you out of meetings, and then dump the blame on you when something went wrong. Once, a project was delayed because the requirements had changed three times, but at the final review meeting, the boss pointed directly at me and said, “This is the quality you get from outsourcing.”

That was when I finally understood: I wasn’t an engineer. I was just a replaceable part that could be swapped out at any time.

On the day I resigned, there was no handover meeting, and no one asked why I was leaving. My supervisor merely said, “The next peak season will be even busier. It’s probably good that you’re leaving now.” The tone was like talking about a batch of antennas that was about to be scrapped.

I walked out of the company and, for the first time, ate a hot plate of fried rice at a normal hour. No pizza, no on-call notifications, and no messages at two in the morning.

That job taught me not technology, but how to recognize just how bad a workplace can be.