Pros
1. There are excellent colleagues, and the team is very cohesive.
2. Colleagues stand united against external challenges.
3. Leaving work on time? However, since June, signs of overtime have gradually begun to appear.
Company Disadvantages
1. Although this is a brand that has been operating for many years, it still uses the third-party e-commerce platform CyberBiz. Using a third-party platform might still be understandable, but the paid plan is only the lowest-tier Professional version, which is very puzzling. Does the brand really want to grow?
2. The e-commerce platform is planned with no logic whatsoever. Decisions are made according to the brand manager’s feelings rather than through data analysis.
3. Employees are expected to proactively think of ways to solve every issue, but ultimately their work still has to be modified according to the brand manager’s wishes. If something goes wrong, employees must also shoulder the responsibility themselves.
4. The company mainly operates an online website, yet does not understand what SEO is. Even the most basic requirement, submitting a sitemap, has not been done, while the company only wants to rely on constant promotions and external campaigns to improve performance.
5. Product prices are set directly according to the brand manager’s feelings. Basically, every product starts with a gross margin of over 70%, and prices are continually raised on the grounds that a marketing budget is needed.
6. Promotional discounts and external platforms have no logic whatsoever. It often happens that a product is cheaper on an external platform than on the official website. The brand manager’s solution is to offer an even lower discount on the official website to attract customers, resulting in internal competition.
7. The e-commerce website currently has absolutely no SEO planning. An SEO plan and project schedule were proposed previously, but about a week later they were put on hold, with the preference being to focus on launching discount campaigns.
8. The brand manager and owner have no management or operations experience. They directly push execution responsibilities onto employees, then make various revision requests during the execution process. If things do not proceed smoothly, all responsibility is shifted onto the employees.
9. The company is extremely dirty and messy; it is basically impossible to find a clean place. Ants often appear near the workstations, and employees are responsible for cleaning the office and taking out the trash.
10. It often feels as though one person is being used to do the work of five. For example, someone in marketing may also have to handle accounting, sales quotations, customer service, graphic design, and other roles. Unless you possess extraordinary abilities, do not attempt this lightly.
11. There is no year-end banquet, no spring banquet, and employees have never received red envelopes for any holiday. The only thing received was a Dragon Boat Festival allowance of NT$500.
12. The brand basically has no planning at all; it does whatever comes to mind. If you want a stable job, think carefully before joining.
13. Products are generally sourced from manufacturers in China, with the company designing its own labels and packaging. Only about 15% of the products are conceived and produced in-house.
1. All the colleagues are very nice.
2. You leave work on time; even if you cannot finish everything, you do not need to worry about it.
There are simply too many to list—they are practically endless. If you really want to know the details, I suggest talking with your colleagues after you join the company.
1. The boss’s and the boss’s wife’s desks are extremely dirty and disorderly. They do not proactively organize their own spaces, which are roughly comparable to the garbage-house rooms featured on Videoland Japan Channel. (The company does hire a cleaning lady, but she does not touch or tidy the items on the office desks.)
2. The boss may sound humorous when he speaks, but in practice he is unable to offer effective directions for improvement. He always says things that only he understands, then expects you to figure out what he means. In reality, he is merely shifting responsibility for execution onto his subordinates. The boss’s wife only provides design references found online and asks you to pursue that feeling. Not only is there no creativity involved, but the references are not even helpful. When the two disagree, the boss’s wife’s originally emphatic position will inexplicably be automatically silenced. (In other words, you have done extra work for nothing once again.)
3. The company’s salary includes a perfect-attendance bonus. In other words, the perfect-attendance bonus is not an additional reward; NT$500 is taken from the originally agreed salary and designated as the attendance bonus. This was not mentioned at all during the interview. Put another way, if you have no absences whatsoever during the month, you receive your full salary (obviously, after deducting labor and health insurance premiums). If you are absent at all, your daily salary will be deducted, followed by another NT$500 deduction—the attendance “secret technique” is used here—and then labor and health insurance premiums will also be deducted. Of course, from the second day of absence onward, only that day’s salary will be deducted; the additional NT$500 will not be deducted again.
4. The company’s salary is not always transferred first thing in the morning on payday, because it must first be approved by the boss. The boss sometimes does not come into the office until the afternoon, so it is very common not to receive your salary until that afternoon. If payday falls on a holiday, the salary absolutely will not be paid early—that is impossible.
5. The boss is extremely stingy. After four months at the company, there was no year-end banquet, no spring banquet, and no start-of-year bonus—not to mention ever being treated to any drinks or snacks by the boss. (At first, they said there would be no year-end banquet because it was too close to Lunar New Year; later, they changed it to saying that there would be no spring banquet because of the pandemic.) The only company-provided food I ever had was pineapple cakes sent by a supplier; everyone got two to take home.
6. The company uses every employee as if they were three people. Senior designers also have to act as design assistants and handle miscellaneous tasks, and occasionally help revise the wording of crowdfunding materials.
7. The boss and the boss’s wife are short-sighted. They only look at immediate profits and have no concrete ideas for the brand’s long-term plans. Many of the company’s products are sourced from manufacturers in China, with the company designing its own labels and packaging. The business is developed in the form of gift products. Do not assume that because Mr. Sai has a counter in department stores, all of its products are developed and designed in-house! If you have imaginative, unconventional ideas, this is absolutely not a suitable place for you. I personally was a victim of having my creativity ignored.
Finally, based on my own observations, I believe the boss and the boss’s wife treat employees with an attitude of distrust. I will not give detailed examples. They do not want to cultivate talent; they treat employees like servants.
Of course, everything above is purely the personal opinion of this servant. If you cannot stomach it, just regard it as me venting and talking nonsense.