Work environment

The company is very close to an MRT station, making commuting convenient. The office building itself is bright and clean, and the overall work environment is fairly comfortable. The restrooms are also well maintained. For a job that requires working in the office every day, the physical workspace is a definite plus.

Job content

If you are interested in the humanities, history, culture, or exhibitions, the projects the company takes on are actually quite interesting, and there are genuine opportunities to work on projects with public significance and cultural value.

This is also what I consider relatively rare about the job: you are not simply completing commercial projects; some project topics genuinely make you want to learn more.

Relationships with colleagues

Most colleagues are quite easy to get along with, and the atmosphere in day-to-day collaboration is generally fine. The issues mentioned above are, in my view, mainly related to systems, processes, and management methods, rather than interpersonal relationships among ordinary colleagues.

Basic labor conditions

The labor conditions basically comply with Taiwan’s Labor Standards Act, and the basic systems that should be in place are there.

“Complies with the Labor Standards Act” theoretically should not count as a special advantage, but given Taiwan’s job market, I suppose it is still worth listing 😂

The company has been established for around 10 years, but its overall management style still feels a lot like that of an early-stage startup. Although it has employees, many systems and SOPs have yet to be established. The owner has a PhD and a background studying in the United States, but their actual management mindset is relatively traditional. If you have previously worked at companies with more complete systems, processes, and benefits, you may need some time to adjust.

Employee management

Clocking in and out must be tied to a mobile phone and the company’s Wi-Fi. Once, I was already standing at the company entrance when I clocked in, but I had accidentally connected to mobile data. The next day, I was asked to submit a “forgot-to-clock-in” correction. At the time, it felt as though my integrity was being questioned, and I couldn’t help wondering: if the question was whether I had actually arrived at the company, why not simply check the security cameras?

Work processes and project management

The company has no comprehensive training system, fixed project procedures, kick-off meetings, project documentation, or habit of keeping records. It also has no project management software.

During my time there, I often had to find out for myself who was responsible for each part of a project and what my colleagues were currently working on. PM staffing was highly dependent on management’s decisions. I once had a project that needed design resources, but for two consecutive months I could not get anyone assigned. In the end, I was evaluated as “not proactive enough about the project,” which made it very difficult for the person executing the work to understand how responsibilities were actually divided.

Documentation was also a major issue. The owner seemed to prefer “if you have an idea, execute it quickly,” but there was a lack of written records. On one project, I even discussed with an engineer: “If something happened to the two of us tomorrow, basically no one could take over this project, because no one else knows the details.”

On the other hand, the owner often complained that project handoffs had gaps and that the company should find ways to prevent this. To me, these are actually the same problem: if documentation and handoff procedures are not established, information will naturally become highly dependent on individuals.

Frequent changes in requirements and decisions

The owner often says, “Clients don’t know what they want, so we need to find ways to propose something that convinces them.” Because all proposals intended for clients must first go through the owner, in practice, the person who changed requirements most frequently was not the client but the owner.

The owner would sometimes forget decisions made at the previous meeting and generally did not check messages very often. Since the company also had no project management software, the main way the owner kept track of project progress was through relatively long and unfocused meetings. Many judgments also depended more on how things felt at the moment than on existing records.

Opaque evaluation standards

The company has no public, clearly defined project SOPs, so many work standards seem to exist mainly in the owner’s and managers’ minds, and it is not certain whether those standards will change.

For example, I was once asked to help with marketing, but two weeks later I was told, “At your salary, you shouldn’t be doing marketing.” This made it difficult for me to understand what the boundaries of responsibilities and evaluation standards actually were. It also made me wonder whether this statement implied a judgment that some roles have more or less value than others.

If your working style differs from that of your manager or the owner, you may also easily be seen as performing poorly. During one performance review, one of the improvement goals set for me was even “don’t make the owner worry.”

Because this goal was so abstract, I directly asked at the time, “The project isn’t behind schedule, so what exactly are you worried about?”

This is also what I consider one of the company’s major management problems: if performance standards cannot be translated into behaviors that employees can understand, measure, and carry out, it is very difficult for them to know what they are actually supposed to improve.

Culture and communication climate

This section involves more personal impressions, and the comments in question were mostly made in informal conversations. I am therefore sharing only my own work experience; this does not represent the company’s official position, nor does it imply anything about the managers’ political or gender-related views.

The company takes on quite a few projects related to culture, education, and exhibitions, and it also emphasizes diversity and integration among different groups. In informal conversations, I once heard a manager describe cultural workers as having “no cultural depth.” I also heard comments related to women’s physical characteristics that made me uncomfortable. These were scattered remarks made in private conversations. I do not intend to infer the managers’ political or gender-related views from them, but they did affect my impression of the company culture. Job seekers who care about these issues may wish to evaluate them for themselves.

Job scope and salary negotiations

Job boundaries are usually more blurred at small companies, and this company is no exception.

In practice, it may turn into a situation where you apply for A but later end up doing A + B at the same time. Working across fields is not necessarily a bad thing and may even be interesting for employees who enjoy taking on different types of work, but I recommend clarifying the job scope during the interview.

Especially if you are negotiating your own salary, it is even more important to think this through first: does the salary correspond only to the work listed in the job description, or does the company expect you to support other functions as well?

Do not evaluate the salary based solely on the job title. You should also factor in the work you may need to take on concurrently at a small company, the scope of your responsibilities, and the communication costs involved.

Otherwise, after joining, you may find yourself asked to provide cross-functional support while also being told that “this salary shouldn’t cover doing these things,” creating a contradiction.

Work environment

The company has no formal meeting room, so privacy is relatively limited when discussing work, performance, or other sensitive matters.

The owner’s communication and management style

The owner is quite confident in their own judgments, but their manner of speaking can sometimes feel strongly didactic and even somewhat disrespectful.

For example, one interviewee gave up a stable career, paid to study, and switched careers to web design. During the interview, however, the owner directly commented, “After spending so much money, the courses in Taiwan only teach the basics anyway.”

Another example that left a deep impression on me happened to me personally. When the company recruited me, it proactively agreed to a relatively high salary. Later, dissatisfied with my cost-performance ratio, the owner said directly to HR in front of me during a meeting:

“If you don’t learn from experience, you don’t gain wisdom. Next time, recruitment needs to ask more questions.”

This kind of communication makes employees feel that management regrets its earlier recruitment or salary decisions, but the employees who have already joined are ultimately the ones who bear the brunt of that dissatisfaction.

Overall, I do not think the company’s problems are entirely about workload. Rather, they involve an insufficient degree of institutionalization, unclear authority and responsibility, decisions that are not documented, and management and performance standards that depend heavily on the manager’s personal subjective judgment.

People who are comfortable with a highly flexible environment, where many things are communicated verbally and figured out independently, may be able to adapt. However, if you have previously worked at a company with clearer systems, SOPs, project management, and performance standards, the adjustment gap may be quite noticeable.