1. NT$15,000 annual travel allowance, NT$6,000 education allowance, and allowances for some activities. There is also a separate monthly subsidy for club expenses.
2. The company has a retirement benefits fund. Each month, a portion is deducted from your salary, and the company contributes an additional 50% to purchase shares as a long-term retention benefit.
3. The company has systems for training, code reviews, annual evaluations, and PIPs.
4. The company has also adopted AI to a very high degree. AI is widely used in meetings, discussions, business, marketing, project planning, and work involving the front end, back end, and art. For those hoping to build experience using AI tools, this may be somewhat appealing.
5. The company has many diverse projects, allowing you to accumulate experience quickly.
The performance evaluations of a foreign company, with the benefits of a Taiwanese company.
1. Salaries are relatively low, and the salary ceiling is also fairly limited, with little room for growth. The company has now canceled its automatic salary adjustment system. Employees must instead actively submit an application, undergo an evaluation, communicate with their manager, and have the request reported upward before there is any “possibility” of a raise.
2. Bonuses are also limited, consisting mainly of a guaranteed one-month year-end bonus and NT$1,000 for each of the three major holidays. The contract also contains clauses related to the year-end bonus—that is, the company may choose not to pay it.
3. The subsidies mentioned among the advantages all come with various caveats and restrictions.
A. For example, travel must be taken together with colleagues, and you have to take photos, write a reflection, and so on...
B. The retirement benefits fund requires you to stay for five full years. If you leave early, you must repay a proportionate amount according to the regulations (can you really stay for five years @@?).
C. The education subsidy is limited to subjects related to the company’s business and your own job functions. Language-related books cannot be claimed, and in some cases you also need to explain to your manager why you are buying them.
4. The interview process is extremely lengthy. The entire process may usually take more than a month. After finally making it to the last stage, you may laugh when you see the salary they offer in light of their requirements.
5. Probationary period: New hires have a three-month probationary period, including two months of training.
The recruitment process does not provide a particularly sufficient explanation of how the probationary period actually works.
A. Candidates are not informed of the evaluation criteria. They only learn some of the actual evaluation methods from the department afterward.
B. Some evaluations involve deliberately making unreasonable requests to observe whether new hires raise questions. Asking too many questions may make them think you lack ability, while asking too few may make them think you have not correctly understood the requirements.
C. The standards and explanations may differ between evaluators, making it difficult for new hires to understand the actual evaluation criteria.
D. In addition, the training content may differ from the department to which you are ultimately assigned, and different business units have their own ways of working. As a result, new hires may still need to readjust after entering their actual department.
6. There are evaluations every year, and the company places considerable importance on schedules, coding standards, and various requirements. Employees must continue meeting the evaluation criteria over the long term. There is also a system in which colleagues evaluate one another, and the overall experience is not very positive. In addition, quite a few of the managers, senior employees, and PMs I encountered frequently worked overtime, so the overall work pressure is not particularly low.
7. The company’s organizational structure is mainly divided into “business units” and “departments.”
Business units are primarily responsible for actual business operations, including product development and customer development, and are somewhat similar in nature to independent subsidiaries.
Departments are primarily responsible for internal personnel management, such as attendance, performance evaluations, and training.
The problem is that communication and coordination between business units and departments are not particularly smooth, and their goals or requirements may sometimes be inconsistent.
In my own case, I often encountered situations where something was allowed by the department but not by the business unit.
The business unit thought something was acceptable, but the department thought it needed improvement.
8. The company’s current level of AI adoption is extremely high.
It is no longer just engineers using AI to assist with programming. AI is now heavily involved in everything from meetings, discussions, business, marketing, and project planning to front-end, back-end, and art work.
New hires need to be particularly aware that if they rely heavily on AI-generated output over the long term, they may become very good at using AI without their own engineering abilities growing at the same pace. This issue may be less significant for people who already have experience, but for those just entering the industry, I believe it is a risk worth noting.
Moreover, the positioning of the company’s engineering department also seems to be gradually changing. In the past, engineers were mainly responsible for development. Recently, however, some new projects have begun to be developed by people without engineering backgrounds using Vibe Coding, while engineers instead have to spend more time handling subsequent integration, fixes, and maintenance. From the company’s operational perspective, this may improve efficiency, but from the perspective of engineers’ career development, I am not sure this is a good thing.
As for the work culture, my personal assessment is relatively negative. As AI has been introduced, the company’s overall focus seems to be gradually shifting from the engineering department toward the PM and marketing departments. Quite a few of the PMs and marketing staff I know work overtime, and some marketing employees even have to take on additional business-related work.
Recently, quite a few senior employees have also left the company, including through layoffs, unpaid leave, and voluntary resignation. Both newer and older employees are among those who have left.
Taken together, these circumstances have made me even less confident in the company’s long-term stability.
9. Technically, I believe some older projects also have fairly obvious problems. Some projects have accumulated a very long history of code and modifications. With different people making changes at different times, combined with the addition of AI in recent years, some of the code has become highly complex. Such projects have relatively high costs for understanding and subsequent maintenance.
10. In summary, I believe job seekers need to pay particular attention to several issues: limited salary growth, considerable work pressure, the need to face evaluations over the long term, and whether the company’s direction will further affect their skill set and career competitiveness.
If you are looking for a stable job that you can keep until retirement, I would recommend carefully evaluating this company.
If you are a recent graduate, I recommend it even less. The main reason is that the company has adopted AI extensively. I am concerned that after staying here for a long time, new hires may become very familiar with AI tools while accumulating less practical engineering ability than they might expect.