Good salary
After interviewing with the CTO, I felt that he has very strong opinions of his own, and at work, his opinions might be treated as the final word. It seems they need someone who is very versatile.
The mechanical manager had just joined when I interviewed~ haha, and kept saying that the working hours were completely normal.
This position has recently opened up. I guess either he lasted less than two years before burning out, or he found a better opportunity.
Anyway, it’s extremely demanding, extremely demanding, extremely demanding.
The supervisor is very nice
The HR staff are very friendly
The job responsibilities are clearly explained
The workplace is somewhat difficult to reach by public transportation
This company doesn't require overtime!
In the week before an event sometime in the middle of this year, half of the employees worked 20–40 hours of overtime alone; they worked Saturdays and Sundays, and some even worked from a regular workday until the next morning.
Someone told the boss, “Do you know this is illegal?”
The boss said, “I didn’t tell you to stay.”
So everyone reached the conclusion: no overtime required!
Not working overtime means being uncompetitive
It is rare to see a company where all colleagues have their own areas of expertise and everyone gets along so well.
The CTO of this company is a somewhat well-known American. Basically, everything is decided by him.
He seems to know quite a lot, but he does not really respect your expertise and likes to impose tight deadlines. He will ask you how long it will take to make something.
In order to perform well, an ordinary person might give a somewhat tight estimate and then work a little overtime to finish if problems arise.
For example, if something would normally take four weeks, he will give you two weeks to do it. But just finding materials and completing the design might take a week, so everything would have to go smoothly, including the assembly, with no problems at all.
However, it is possible that during the second week, he will ask you to put aside your current work and support another department, after which he will no longer have time to follow up on the work he previously asked you to rush through in two weeks. This situation seems to occur in other departments as well.
Overall, the CTO has too many outside commitments, and his time management is clearly problematic. Friends often come to visit during working hours, or he goes out and disappears without a trace.
His emotions are also rather unstable. Sometimes he arrives in the morning looking extremely gloomy, then in the afternoon wants to make small talk and joke around with you.
All I can say is that this is yet another beautiful story for Business Weekly. Keep it up, Taiwan.
If you are interested in electric vehicles, passionate about cars, or want to know how to design a car—including the design methods and concepts behind it—do not go to this company. Don't waste your time. Here, you can only design what the CTO wants, but the CTO's long-term background has always been as a quality engineer (you can check LinkedIn), not a mechanical engineer. There are no internal design guidelines, nor any experienced senior colleagues with many years of experience to learn from.
The company's website displays the blue electric race car Miss E. According to the content of a Yowu Report article (https://yowureport.com/23043/),
Xingji's core businesses are threefold: competitive electric racing, the sale of electric supercars, and electric vehicle technology R&D and technical consulting services… Xingji continuously participates in racing competitions, using races to train its capabilities, thereby honing its technology and building its brand…
Miss E has never participated in a race. More precisely, after appearing at the Dapeng Bay circuit, it was never driven on the road or tested. How could the company hone its technology through it? The truth is that it was still unable to move as of February 22, 2017 (being pushed by people does not count as moving).
Next, let's talk about the electric supercar. First, there was no way to learn how to design it from Miss E. Second, all of the core engineers who originally designed Miss E had already left the company, so the electric supercar project was effectively starting from scratch. The CTO had no concept of the design schedule: one week, he would say that Part A was important and had to be done first; the next week, he would say Part B was more important, and that it was fine to make only a concept for Part A. But a week later, he would ask why Part A had not been fully designed. Every engineer was burdened with an unbelievably large number of parts. When there was genuinely no time to do the work and report this to management, the response would be, “It's easy. I'll do it tonight.” Then, a week later, something fanciful would appear—something you could hardly believe had been designed by someone with years of experience—or perhaps Taiwanese engineers were simply too dull to understand it.
Next is the work environment. It is an open-plan space, with everyone, including the CTO, sitting in a U-shape around a wall. In other words, if you want to take a nap at noon but the most senior person wants to listen to music, you can only listen along with him. There is also a CNC machine in the office, which is extremely noisy when operating. The only advantage is the fresh-ground Panasonic coffee.
Finally, let's discuss the most important part: the benefits structure. Because the company follows an American-style approach, there is no clocking in or out. Work starts at 8:30, and every morning at 8:35 there is a five-minute morning meeting. Since every part is considered important, overtime is the norm. Leaving at 8 p.m. is not considered late; labor in Taiwan is cheap.
Finally, this is just my personal impression: I feel that the CTO has, to some extent, an unconscious disdain for Asians. For example, although he made the request in a joking tone, why is it that Asians must do morning exercises as soon as they start work in the morning?