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This page collects workplace experiences, questions and discussions submitted by users. Dates shown are submission dates, not periods of employment. Individual reports do not describe the entire company.
Read the community guidelines“Once” suitable for retirement, flexible working hours
The company was “once” very profitable, earning a great deal of money every year from system maintenance projects for its major client. However, as the major client’s system maintenance projects have gradually ended in recent years (they have now ended completely), the company has had to rely entirely on its own earnings. It can be said to be going from bad to worse.
In the past few years, the company has started forcing senior employees with more than ten years of service to leave. They are either sent to other affiliated companies (with their seniority recalculated) or pressured to resign. This year, it also established a subsidiary and transferred unwanted employees there (the subsidiary’s benefits are extremely poor). Those who do not want to transfer are denied their year-end bonuses. So please think carefully before choosing this company. However, a small number of departments are still profitable, and the salary is still OK if you join one of them.
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However, if you are going to the department responsible for “card payment terminals,” I strongly advise against it. The department head (manager) is a man in his sixties who is just muddling through, waiting for retirement, and believes that as long as things are handled superficially, everything is fine. He has made the department extremely chaotic and lacking in systems. There is no project schedule planning whatsoever. Whenever the director thinks of something during a given week, the manager will tell you to do it that week, then tell you to hurry, hurry—it is extremely urgent. Things are constantly changing, and there is a different direction to follow almost every week.
The manager has no professional expertise whatsoever and has absolutely no idea what his subordinates are doing in detail. He only knows the surface-level information, which is enough for him to bluff his superiors. However, he is very good at managing upward. His method is this: whenever the director speaks, whether or not the director is telling a joke, he laughs uproariously, almost uncontrollably. In addition, the director and the department manager have been friends for many years, so no matter how incompetent the department manager is, the director will always protect him.
Unless you are extremely interested in the details of card payment terminals (transaction flows, message contents, and so on), you will not learn any other newer technologies in this department. If your goal is to improve your programming skills, this department cannot provide that opportunity. Whether it is traditional card payment terminals or Android card payment terminals (writing the apps for them), the program architecture and coding practices are extremely messy and outdated. You will not learn new technologies, and the manager is also strongly opposed to applying new technologies, believing that it is enough if the program runs.
Although the company is called a software company, the card payment terminal department has no mechanisms such as Coding Style guidelines, code reviews, or technical knowledge sharing. Everyone writes code however they want. Although the company requires code reviews, the department’s review method is to print out all the code changed this time, after which the manager quickly scans it with his eyes and checks a box on every page (PS: The manager cannot understand the code at all...). Sometimes he even complains that you printed too much and tells you to print less. (But there is simply that much code in the changes, so this is essentially fabricating records and going through the motions.) He then asks a colleague who has never looked at the code you changed to sign, which means the code review is complete.
The methods for Unit Tests and Function Tests are even more bizarre. You are not asked to write test code; instead, you must describe your testing method and results in words, and the content does not need to contain any code at all....
Therefore, I strongly advise people who still want to strive and improve themselves not to join this department, because it will truly waste your valuable time. However, if you are already highly skilled with card payment terminals and only want to find a place to apply your expertise, without seeking to learn new technologies, you can give it a try. But when negotiating your salary upon joining, negotiate as high as possible, because your growth afterward will be extremely slow.
There is a long-standing major client that is basically unlikely to go under, so the company makes plenty of money.
The general manager/chairman is a decent person and not a typical exploitative boss.
The benefits, compensation, and working hours vary greatly between departments.
If you are in the department that regularly brings in money from the long-standing major client, you can happily chat over afternoon tea every day and comfortably receive four to six months' worth of bonuses.
The sweat and toil in the other departments is about the same as at a typical outsourced software vendor, and the total annual salary is also about the same.
In addition, performance reviews depend on whether your supervisor likes you and have little to do with how much you contribute, so the company cannot retain talent.
I suggest not spending time learning things that are about to become obsolete.
This department does not pay overtime.
Everything depends on the bonus and on how management rates your performance.
In other words, even if you work overtime until you drop dead...
The rest is for those who are interested to judge for themselves ^^
The work environment and benefits are good, but the salary needs improvement.
Factionalism is quite serious.
A company that’s very suitable for coasting toward retirement; not recommended for younger people. Although there’s little overtime, there are many people who occupy positions without doing their jobs...
There are unspeakable secrets between us and a certain bank, and the system is also very much like a bank—extremely bureaucratic.
There is no overtime pay. They say they give it all back in bonuses, but employees who work more overtime than others because their supervisors demand it actually end up receiving less money.
The performance bonuses over the past two years have been pretty good.
Whether the workload is intense or the people are difficult naturally depends on the department and the current team members.
It’s really not as bad as some of the other posts make it sound.
Mainframe work and on-site assignments are genuinely more demanding, though.
In the department I used to work in, I often saw new employees being trained through scolding and sarcasm, with extreme impatience. No wonder the turnover rate is so high... Sigh, it’s becoming increasingly unbearable to watch. I hope those people’s children have just as smooth a time in the workplace in the future.