全智科技股份有限公司

【A Day-to-Day Look at a Certain Company: Permissions Are Merely Decorations】

At this company, the finance manager’s computer isn’t a safe—it’s a public library.

The IT staff’s motto is: “I wasn’t snooping; I was merely providing ‘technical care’ for your salary.”

They call this “cross-departmental collaboration”—

Finance handles the confidential information, while IT “accidentally” logs in.

One dares to leave it open, the other dares to look. They work together seamlessly—more in sync than a married couple.

The boss loves to say in meetings: “We’re one family.”

That’s right, family means sharing everything—

your payslip is my bedtime reading.

Information security policies? Of course we have them.

Rule one: Unauthorized access is prohibited.

Rule two: If you really can’t resist, remember to turn off the logs.

Here, privacy is a legend, professional ethics are decorations,

and the IT staff’s mouse is more all-powerful than the finance manager’s access card.

Welcome to this company—

confidential information is shared, and everyone is “one of us.”

Permissions are merely suggestions, information security is a joke, and being family means exposing everything to one another.

Finance is unsafe; wear two pairs of underwear.

Permissions are merely suggestions, information security is a joke, and being family means exposing everything to one another.

Finance is unsafe; wear two pairs of underwear.

The “CPO Dust Research Lab,” where they didn’t even turn on the lights

Using a completely technically hollow shell to extract billions in massive arbitrage from the state and capital markets

Software systems: They need to be customized, implemented, and maintained, and you also have to pay hefty licensing fees every year. They may even trigger an uprising on the production line when processes change.

•Human APIs (assistants, engineers): Taiwanese employees have a strong servile mentality and a strong sense of responsibility. Whenever the system malfunctions or fields do not match up, they will voluntarily work overtime and use their own sweat to piece together Excel spreadsheets.

You are either overwhelmed by the useless requests these human APIs generate every day, or pushed forward to take the blame for system errors caused by a particular Excel formula.

When dealing with government audits, bank inspections, or visits from important clients, the “automated production lines” and “high-tech R&D” are often also carefully rehearsed stage plays.

You may be pushed out at any time to serve as the scapegoat: when fabricated data does not match, an internal scandal breaks out, or a client discovers data falsification and seeks to hold someone accountable,

this group will definitely band together at the first opportunity and shift the blame to the IT system, claiming that “the IT program was written incorrectly” or “a system bug caused the data anomaly,” making you the most dangerous culprit.

When the systems are lousy and senior management lies, the workplace is naturally rife with buck-passing, factions, and serious technical fraud.

In their eyes, you are merely “disposable slave labor” that can be replaced at any time.

The absurdity of this test facility truly made IT professionals question everything they thought they knew. Using a “hundreds-of-thousands-dollar toy system” to package “tens of billions in government-subsidized loans”—looking like a tech giant on the outside but operating like a cottage industry within—is the quintessential example of high-tech sophistication on the surface and rotten IT at the core.

The exhaustion of dealing with “manual, human-powered Excel data transfers” every day is even more mentally draining.

Want to know how IT can protect themselves, slack off, and avoid taking the blame in such an absurd environment?

Want to know how IT can protect themselves, slack off, and avoid taking the blame in such an absurd environment?

1. As long as human labor is cheaper than software, keep using human labor: In Taiwan, hiring a bunch of assistants and engineers to manually transfer data in Excel, paste and copy things around, costs only tens of thousands of dollars in salaries per month, and these people are “always available for overtime and can be replaced at any time.” But mobilizing a powerful IT team to develop a modern ERP/MES system would not only involve a lengthy implementation period and staggering initial costs, but could also trigger resistance on the production line due to process changes. To short-sighted executives, “using human APIs to patch system gaps” is the cheapest short-term solution.

So you’re not mistaken—this is a perfectly crafted “packaging script.” Externally (to the government, banks, and shareholders), the company used 6 billion to demonstrate its powerful growth ambitions

Ardentec

This is the most magical aspect of the capital markets. Intuitively, one might think, “To claim that it’s a smart factory, wouldn’t the information systems alone have to be worth at least several million, or even tens of millions?” But for semiconductor assembly and testing plants of this kind, they use “million-dollar hardware to package hundred-thousand-dollar software.” In traditional manufacturing, this is actually a very common “arbitrage leverage” tactic.

They can use a lousy system costing a few hundred thousand to borrow several billion. The key is that evaluators and banks simply “don’t understand the technology”; they only look at “physical assets”:

• Hardware is the protagonist; the system is merely a supporting actor (there for decoration):

When the company applies for government-subsidized-interest loans or seeks bank financing, the main assets are those high-end semiconductor testing machines, often costing tens of millions of New Taiwan dollars each and imported from the United States or Japan (such as Teradyne and Advantest). Ninety-five percent of a budget worth several billion is tied up in this hardware.

• “Minimum-standard automation” that gets evaluators to nod:

When the government reviews “smart manufacturing subsidies” or loans, its standards are extremely superficial. As long as this system costing a few hundred thousand can achieve “connecting the machines to a network” and “periodically sending data back to some database” (even if it is merely dumped there and everything afterward relies on people manually pulling data into Excel), the proposal can check the box for “smart manufacturing and automation capabilities already in place.” Most evaluation committee members are university professors or government officials. During an on-site inspection, the company only needs to open a very crude dashboard that periodically displays changing numbers for the committee, and it passes.

• Banks recognize collateral, not source code:

For a bank, the risk in lending several billion is whether the company will go under. If the company buys testing machines, those machines are hard assets; if the company actually collapses, the bank can still auction them overseas and recover cash. But if the company spends tens of millions hiring a top-tier IT team to build an ultra-modern cloud architecture, then if the company goes under, that code is just a pile of worthless garbage to the bank, with no liquidation value whatsoever.

This creates an extremely distorted ecosystem: a company would rather spend 5 billion buying the world’s top sports car—the hardware equipment—but, to save money and satisfy inspections, it is willing to spend only 200,000 on a cheap plastic toy steering wheel bought at the roadside—the IT system—and bolt it on.

As long as the car can move (the equipment can perform tests), the government provides subsidies, and the bank is willing to lend money, senior management simply does not care how the IT inside is manually operated every day, or how employees use Excel to somehow make this lousy steering wheel flush the toilet. After all, from their perspective, the cost of the “human API” has long since been shifted onto frontline employees in the form of overtime pay.

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1. Both the interviewer and HR were quite friendly.

2. The interview was not difficult, and there was only one round, so it was settled all at once.

1. Many of the questions during the interview felt like they were intended to find out whether I would be willing to cooperate with the company by working overtime.

2. The manager and HR were fairly straightforward and proactively informed me that the working hours are relatively long and that overtime is required. Working past 8 p.m. seemed to be normal, and it was also considered normal to occasionally receive urgent work matters to handle after returning home.

3. They said overtime pay is available, but overtime must be reviewed and approved by the manager before it can be claimed.

4. You have to order your own lunch box, and the cost is deducted from your salary.

5. The benefits are ordinary at best and cannot be considered good.

6. The leave system follows the Labor Standards Act. There is flexible leave that does not require making up the workday, but HR said they do not know whether it will still be available next year.

7. The guaranteed annual salary is 14 months, but they did not clearly explain how much the bonus actually is.

8. The company hopes you can confirm and respond as soon as possible, but when I had questions that needed to be confirmed with the company, it took them a long time to reply. I felt that I was not treated with much respect.

In short, it is a job that requires you to be very hardworking and able to endure a lot, while the salary and benefits are only average.....

None

A worthless company with a chaotic decision-making system and engineering mistakes everywhere. It has no money and exploits its employees, leaving the company with nothing but monkeys. Working more than 12 hours a day is the norm. Absolutely do not come.

1. The HR staff were courteous

1. They require experienced candidates. Upon joining, you are asked to indicate which types of machines you know how to operate, and to take a simple English test and psychological assessment.

2. The company was acquired, and the salary and benefits are far worse than before. Many employees have left, and the company cannot retain staff.

3. The interviewing supervisor seemed somewhat inattentive and did not really want to listen carefully. They kept looking at their phone for no apparent reason, giving the impression of being very impatient.

4. The same position has been opened and closed repeatedly and is constantly recruiting, which tells you what you need to know.

5. Overtime is frequently required, but overtime pay is not properly provided. There is already a record of violations of the Labor Standards Act.

At the beginning of the interview, you will be asked to write a short Chinese-to-English translation. After completing it, you will take an aptitude test, followed by interviews with the department supervisor, then the manager, and finally Human Resources.

In fact, the salaries are generally a bit low, and many people say that the internal work environment is not good... Please consider it for yourself.

The work environment and benefits are quite good

If you’re interviewing for a sales-related position, dress appropriately; looking good is definitely a plus

Fill out basic information and translate and respond to English correspondence

After meeting with each manager, you’ll meet with HR; basically, everyone is quite friendly

The tech industry is demanding + stressful + has long working hours

1. The HR representative was very polite and talkative

1. There is a form asking you to select which machines you have previously operated or maintained. The supervisor will ask how long it will take you to get up to speed.

2. Including shift and meal allowances, the day shift is approximately 41K.

3. Many people have left.

The benefits are pretty good by Hsinchu Science Park standards. Production line operators have a base salary of NT$20,000 even before other allowances, for a total of about NT$27,000–29,000. There are 14 months of guaranteed pay, plus a year-end bonus of about one month’s salary. The production line is made up almost entirely of female migrant workers... but they’re all very nice and easy to get along with.

After the change in management, overtime has been restricted, and the opening-of-work red envelopes have been slashed. It feels like the new boss is very stingy. It seems likely that a lot of bonuses may be cut in the future. Since there’s no overtime, people who don’t want to live on a fixed salary will just leave. It’s very suitable for taking it easy until retirement.