VoiceTube_紅點子科技股份有限公司

As a former employee, I’d like to recommend my old company XD

First of all, the company atmosphere is VERY good!

There’s not much of a hierarchy, and managers, colleagues, and interns can all mingle together. It’s perfectly normal to hear laughter and joking around at random times while people are working... (If you prefer quiet, there’s no need to worry. Although the company isn’t large, different work areas have been planned out, so those who are sensitive to noise or simply don’t want to be disturbed can have their own little space.)

Why talk about the work atmosphere first?

Because although I only worked there for one or two years, my friends around me have also changed jobs quite a few times, and the reason they usually left was not because of the “work,” but because of the “people.” This is also something that’s difficult to know in advance when job hunting. Usually, you only find out what a company’s atmosphere and culture are like after the interview or once you’ve started working there.

There’s a happy hour every Friday, and the company’s employee welfare committee is probably one of the most awesome among startups!

(That’s right, a startup actually has an employee welfare committee XD)

The activities are very diverse: escape rooms, laser tag, sports days, physical therapists, making essential oils, writing Spring Festival couplets, making tangyuan, wordplay games... There’s every kind of activity you can imagine, and anything you can think of might become a reality. Every Friday, you look forward to finding out what new surprise they’ll come up with...

Now that I’ve covered the fun, let’s talk about the work...

First, let me explain why I joined VoiceTube in the first place.

Besides genuinely identifying with the product (I work in marketing, and if I didn’t like the product, I really couldn’t bring myself to market it XD, so when choosing a job, I care a lot about whether I believe in the company’s product), I also hoped that working at a startup would allow me to learn faster, learn more broadly, and have more room to make an impact.

Since the VoiceTube product has continued to grow (if you’re considering joining a startup, you definitely need to pay attention to this point—if the company can’t grow, the things you do may get stuck in the mud or you may end up doing miscellaneous tasks), employees basically need to be able to grow along with it too, whether by strengthening their own expertise or becoming familiar with new technologies and methods! Another very important point is that the colleagues are all excellent, so there are opportunities to learn from one another, both in our core work and in cross-departmental collaboration. When colleagues take classes or courses outside the company, they also share what they learned internally. There’s a pretty strong learning culture.

Speaking of which, the company also has a really great benefit: a training and education subsidy. After entering the workforce, I realized that taking classes requires not only the determination and energy to keep learning after work, but also money! Everything is so expensive once you’re no longer a student... Back when I was a university student, there were tons of free lectures, and the speakers were major figures too. Now, with the same speakers, courses cost at least anywhere from a thousand to tens of thousands of dollars. Another thing is that I think this benefit directly reflects whether a company treats employees as disposable or genuinely wants to develop them—after all, it has to be willing to spend money to send employees to classes.

My hand is getting a little tired from writing all this XD

Feel free to ask any questions directly~

P.S. Not everyone is suited to startups, and not every startup is right for you. Joining a startup involves both potential gains and risks; please read the prospectus carefully before joining one.

You can stage the most popular and dramatic YouTuber-style script.

Today I heard Andy talking about Zhang Jianing creating a group, recruiting people from various sides, and using words to spread rumors and damage other people’s reputations.

I remember there was a new PM named Lin Taiyi who went around recruiting people into small groups, spreading rumors, causing trouble, and damaging other people’s reputations. She drove away quite a few male RDs and managers, and I was one of those who was driven away.

I still remember one day when that PM came over with her Mac and told me to resolve a bug ticket on Jira. Then Slack messages kept popping up, and HR kept posting in that group, starting to make up and spread gossip. The group’s name clearly showed that it was attacking me. At the time, I directly saw the group messages containing quite a few rumors and defamatory remarks damaging my personal reputation.

In addition, when that PM used sexual-harassment allegations and rumors to attack her supervisor, she also tried to recruit me to take her side. At the time, I told her to go to HR.

I never expected that she would later form a group with HR and several people who liked spreading gossip and defamatory rumors to attack me, and begin spreading rumors and attacking my reputation. This also included a newly promoted technical manager who wanted to clean house among their subordinates and find people who would side with them.

I never expected to hear today that Andy had encountered a situation with Zhang Jianing that was so similar: recruiting people and then starting rumors, causing trouble, and erasing other people’s reputations.

All I can say is that all the “green tea” 🍵 tactics are the same.

I’ve encountered two “green tea” 🍵 types at other companies whose methods were identical and who drove away a whole bunch of people!

None

Not to mention whether colleagues have any empathy

There isn't even a feeling of being respected

Basically, they just tell you to go to hell

Whether it can actually be finished, or whether you know how to do it

Anyway, once a Jira ticket is opened, they just slap on some arbitrary deadline

If you can't finish it, they have the technical lead use review forms and verbal abuse to tear down your character and self-esteem

You ask a senior engineer for guidance and still get looked down on, but you still don't receive any instructions

Why on earth does a company like this exist?

A high turnover rate, with many people not even lasting a year

They treat employees as disposable chopsticks—no wonder the company is about to go under

None

The manager keeps calling you a self-propelled artillery, a map cannon, and an autistic person, saying, “You saw that engineers make a lot of money and came here to scam money, right?”

A senior engineer pulls the manager aside to criticize them, saying that you do not fit in and that you cannot express yourself clearly.

They bully others while demanding that others fit in—is something wrong with their brain?

So, are you unclear when speaking, acting like a map cannon, or acting like an autistic person?

The insults are so contradictory. Is their brain okay?

A colleague in the same position was messed with by the PM.

Engineers under the manager were messed with by the PM.

And yet the manager still helps the PM mess with the engineers.

The schedule is set so that people are asked to do things on Friday,

with Monday as the deadline.

It is obviously just messing with the R&D team,

forcing them to work overtime on Saturday and Sunday.

The PM only knows how to create Jira tickets

and does not communicate.

Are the R&D engineers supposed to communicate with spirits?

The PM has delusions of her own:

she imagines that everyone likes her,

thinks that her manager likes her,

and still treats her own manager this way.

She reports directly over the manager’s head,

causing everyone to think that the manager has poor management skills.

Then, after driving that manager away,

she somehow decided that I liked her.

She did not communicate at all,

which made it impossible to get anything done.

She made everyone keep thinking that I was suffering from heartbreak,

to the point that I developed PTSD

and could no longer work properly.

A thunderstorm of problems.

Can a company really have this many problem employees?

The bad money drives out the good money.

The good people in a good company have been ruined by all those bad employees.

None

Be careful, when you're talking, the PM will be making clicking noises over there.

None

If you’re an introvert, you still need to be careful.

Be better at communicating through writing than speaking.

After a while, in a meeting, the COO

直接說你們新進來的人

不要像某人一樣文字很厲害講話卻不行

None

Be careful: while you are writing code, the PM may change the project process and the designer may change the designs without discussing or informing you.

After you report this to your manager and receive no response, you raise it again at the technical meeting. Once the project ends, you are directly put on a one-month improvement plan (what exactly are you supposed to improve? They say they will look at the quality of your code afterward?).

Then a senior engineer brings your manager into a meeting to criticize you, saying, “Their process and design changes didn’t prevent you from writing code, so what were you raising at the meeting?”

Then, when the project is rushed and there is only one day between acceptance and going live, the senior engineer throws over a piece of code and says, “Just solve it this way—it’s very simple. Do you even know how?” But when you run it, it does not meet the project’s requirements at all, and you also waste time explaining this to the senior engineer.

People who don’t want to work will have a great time here.

Those who always say they’re too busy and will do it later

can live for a long time.

And they often invite people into a small room to chat and gossip.

Pretty great.

If you want to get things done, don’t come here.

People who work seriously will be pushed out.

Especially those who don’t join in the gossip.

The people above rely on them to find out about you.

And once you finish something, those people will say

that you’re narcissistic and annoying, and that you only did certain things.

Of course, the final trump card is to list things everyone has gossiped about and tell you to make limited-time improvements 👍

HR is finally working on the company's public relations crisis over the years to meet its KPIs. Although it isn't HR's problem, it still counts toward HR's KPIs. It's truly hard work.

I hope that people who join in the future won't encounter what those who came before them experienced. The people, company culture, and systems are truly terrifying.

None

LOL

Last year, they were looking for a contract tester.

The job responsibilities were the same as those for the senior tester they were recruiting.

This year, they’re looking for a tester,

but the contract position has become an internship.

It also comes with PM responsibilities,

plus an accountability-based work arrangement.

And it’s only a 20–24-hour-per-week internship.

This is the first time I’ve seen an internship with an accountability-based work arrangement,

and with the responsibilities of two positions.

There’s only one opening for each RD position,

yet every time Chinese New Year comes around, everyone leaves.

Just how awful is it?

When the backend position gets criticized, they stop hiring for it.

They’ve got a lot of guts, I’ll give them that.

A-Ming is a veteran. During his career, the person who left the deepest impression on him was his battalion commander. The commander not only gave lectures, but was also deeply concerned that someone might not be paying attention and would occasionally bang on the table to remind everyone to focus. Despite the immense weight of his responsibilities, he personally reviewed everyone’s weekly journals every week to keep track of their physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. His hands-on presence left an unforgettable impression on A-Ming; whenever he thinks of it, he is still moved to tears.

Later, A-Ming went to work at this English-teaching platform company that called itself a startup. Unexpectedly, the workplace was so similar to his experiences in the military that he felt as though he had fallen into a time tunnel. In particular, the “soldier’s weekly journal”—well, the work journal—was even more extreme.

With such vigorous Huangpu spirit, and with our superiors treating us like parents, brothers, and teachers, every employee became highly motivated to learn. We swore never to let down our superiors’ painstaking efforts, and strove to get ahead so we could move on to a better company and bring glory to our ancestors.

Give him a reenlistment form and tell him to fill it out immediately!

1. Human-centered management

2. Operations run normally

3. Everyone gets along well

4. No bullying

5. Smooth cross-department communication

6. There is a development process in place

7. No meteor development

8. Information is kept in sync

9. When requests are made, upper management listens seriously and responds

The above “advantages” are all sarcasm.

Let me share about the lousy job I stuck with for two years: “Senior Backend Engineer.”

1. After the mass layoffs, there was no handover of documentation, so backend engineers had to track the code for everything.

2. There was a massive amount of technical debt, which caused many operational problems that backend engineers also had to solve.

3. The code’s coding style was jokingly called the “Eight-Nation Allied Forces” (caused by hiring a bunch of people in 2019).

4. A major layoff happened halfway through a redesign, resulting in two versions of the API being used in production, while the database tables were different.

5. PHP developers were already scarce, so they could never find enough people.

6. Nobody handed over the code.

7. A lot of development delays and operational problems accumulated, all of which got stuck with the backend. Management always responded with one sentence: “There are no backend resources.”

If you want to take over, prepare the famous line from *Katekyo Hitman Reborn!*: “With the resolve to die, fight!”

And don’t forget: it will be even harder to find a job when the economy goes into recession in the next couple of years!

＊ 2016: Winner of Facebook’s “FbStart Apps of the Year” Awards

＊ 2021: VoiceTube Hero won Google Play’s App of the Year award

＊ A pioneer in online English learning, with more than four million members to date

＊ You can work from home every Friday

＊ The most authentic iOKR

＊ A world-class company-style Career Framework, with job levels and promotion criteria. Those who want a promotion or raise should prepare a PowerPoint presentation and present it to everyone

＊ Low entry barrier

＊ The CEO encourages everyone to have a Growth Mindset. The reason you still cannot build a great company like Elon Musk is that you have not yet learned Elon Musk’s skills—not that you are incapable. Very inspirational

You can refer to the comments from senior colleagues in this section

None

Junior people who join should be careful not to get chewed out by the PM: “Go ask a Senior. If there’s a problem, have the Senior come find her.”

Also, when informing the manager about this issue, you may get chewed out: “Why does the company hire Junior people?”

There may also be strange checklists with no objective execution standards (subjective descriptions… for example: “You don’t know how to do xxx,” rather than objective criteria… for example: “Meet condition x”). The checklist is created by HR, and when the review deadline arrives, it may ultimately be rejected by the head of HR.

Also, be careful about asking questions via private message. You may be told to ask them in a public meeting, and then, after you ask during the meeting, be publicly humiliated, making everyone think that you ask too many questions and are difficult to deal with.

There were three interviewers: HR, the department manager, and the CEO. They were all quite polite and friendly during the interviews. They did not ask overly tricky or difficult-to-answer questions, and they answered my questions quite thoroughly. In response to the pandemic, the company adopted remote work and also provided employees with equipment such as laptops. The benefits comply with the Labor Standards Act. The company’s employee welfare committee is made up of company employees, who also receive additional bonuses.

After receiving a message saying they were willing to interview me, the first stage was a phone interview (about 10 minutes). HR asked basic questions such as why I applied and my salary expectations, and finally said they would contact me again after passing my information on to the department manager.

The second stage was a video interview (a test of about 30 minutes, followed first by an interview with HR and then by an interview with the department manager), lasting two and a half hours in total. Some of HR’s and the department manager’s questions were repetitive (such as why I applied and what qualities I thought I possessed). When I asked HR about details of the company’s policies and benefits, they answered quite thoroughly. During the interview with the department manager, I learned that this position had been opened because the company had reorganized and streamlined its departments and was short-staffed (at that point, a warning signal appeared in my mind!).

About a week later, I received notice of an interview with the CEO. The interview felt more like casual conversation, but there were still quite a few questions, and it also lasted two and a half hours.

There were quite a lot of interview questions, and the interviews were also quite long. Since I did not know at the time of the interviews that there had been major layoffs the previous year, I was unable to ask about them. During the interview with the CEO, I felt that the company had not yet found a stable business model and was likely to keep experimenting and making adjustments. The CEO’s expectations for and positioning of this role were also somewhat unclear, and it was not very clear how this position would contribute to or matter to the company.

During the interview, I got the impression that there was a good atmosphere of collaboration among the company’s teams, and they were very generous with paid leave. There was also a salary adjustment this year.

When I asked HR and the department manager about the previous layoffs and the things written here, they answered very directly and openly without hiding anything. I can understand that, after securing funding and wanting to expand into the market, rapid expansion led to personnel cost issues. However, many startups do experience layoffs, so I gave high marks to the managers for their responses to the reviews written here.

All I can say is that reviews are just reviews. I recommend that anyone who has the opportunity to interview should still learn about the situation for themselves before making a judgment. At least this interview experience was positive and pleasant.

There were a bit too many interview questions XD

There are many attractive women, and the men are quite handsome too. The office environment has a nice artsy, hipster style.

Voicetube is my fourth job, and I experienced workplace bullying, verbal abuse, and exclusion. It was very different from the company’s public image… At first, I thought the problem was with me, but I had never encountered this situation in my previous three jobs.

I’m sharing the company’s current situation with those who are considering joining:

Company executives: They have no direction for the product, so they can only keep copying other products. In addition, the company has lost its previous stable business model and is still exploring a new one.

Mid-level managers: After the major layoffs following the Lunar New Year, only a handful of people remained. After being forced—or perhaps expected—to become managers, they had to implement a system-less system… It is quite consistent with the Peter principle.

Colleagues: Everyone is new and needs time to adapt and communicate, so conflicts are unavoidable. In addition, after the major layoffs, most things were not handed over, making everything quite chaotic! Also, because the layoffs caused the company to rise in Google search rankings, it became difficult to find people… Every department is severely understaffed… It is perfectly normal for one person to do the work of several people.

I hope a savior will appear in the future to rescue everyone.

The colleagues are very supportive, but almost all of them have left. Applicants, please think twice.

People who like a flat culture may not be a good fit here.

Because of the previous expansion, the way upper management operates and its understanding of a startup are no longer the same (and the recent downsizing hasn’t changed that back).

Anonymous questions at the weekly meeting, which were already practically useless, have also been discontinued.

The company’s benefits policies are for reference only, especially the bonus-related ones :)

The relationships among colleagues are very good.

Both the new and former C-level executives have a lot of ideas about the product. Whenever competitors have something, they want to copy it, and they only want employees to follow their instructions. When the results are poor, the employees are held responsible; otherwise, the blame is shifted to employees who have left.

They carried out a large number of layoffs, yet claimed that the layoffs were not based on performance, but rather intended to retain people who identified with the company—so those who left were all supposedly people who did not follow orders.

Many of the current vacancies are for positions held by people who were laid off at the time. Think carefully before applying.

The colleagues get along very well.

The former CEO was either cultivating their own interests or letting the team develop in a meteor-strike fashion. The new CEO loves holding endless brainstorming meetings without reaching any conclusions, and also likes asking colleagues in different positions whether they would like to try being the product lead. Most terrifyingly, they turn their own decision-making mistakes into everyone else's fault…

This company keeps bragging about raising 100 million in funding, yet carried out major layoffs before the New Year. I recommend this only to people who can tolerate their worldview and instructions; more junior people may find it easier to stay longer.

The office is beautiful. Around this time last year, they boldly rented an additional floor and spent a lot of money renovating it, turning the office into two floors. However, after laying off nearly 20 people before the Lunar New Year and then experiencing a wave of resignations afterward, they now only retain one floor of office space. There used to be lots of snacks too, but the administrative staff were also fired!

This company has militarized management. Be careful in meetings—if you anger a superior, they may slam the table. Having ideas comes second; obedience is what matters most.

Online reports should only be taken with a grain of salt; they are all packaged to look good.

There’s no guarantee that you won’t be the one laid off next time.

The company's products are really easy to use.

The company's CEO always follows through on his own ideas, absolutely never changes orders from one day to the next, and never changes back and forth—really, never. The newly appointed CEO also definitely won't lay off employees; he trusts them a lot and gives them complete freedom to do their jobs. He also gives out generous year-end bonuses. What a great company : )

I had a very pleasant conversation with the hiring manager; it was a very different interview experience.

They weren't very willing to offer a good salary, so those seeking high pay can cross this company off their list.

The best company, colleagues, and managers I’ve ever encountered—bar none! The men are handsome, the women are beautiful, and everyone is treated equally. As long as you have an idea, you can freely and confidently speak up. You absolutely won’t regret joining—your only regret will be not having joined!