MStar_晨星半導體股份有限公司

On my first day, setting up the environment lasted until 12 midnight.

However, company policy requires clocking in at 9:10.

Personally, I average leaving work early at 12 midnight.

However, most of the overtime is voluntary.

I also often voluntarily work overtime until 1–2 a.m.

Everyone on the course actively wants to make the product better, so we all voluntarily choose not to claim overtime pay.

Every day, I voluntarily write an hour report and a daily report.

There is a morning meeting every day.

Those who leave before midnight the previous day will voluntarily be checked on by a junior manager during the morning meeting.

Starting on the second day, I began resolving issues.

During the second week, I voluntarily worked with the junior manager to resolve issues until 5 a.m.

If tasks are completed too early, I will voluntarily be assigned more work.

As for the workload, roughly speaking, tasks expected to be completed in a week are hoped to be doable in 10 minutes.

After completing the work, it also has to be reviewed.

Only after passing the review can I leave work.

The review usually takes several hours.

I voluntarily help female colleagues resolve issues.

Because female colleagues cannot solve them, I voluntarily put the issues under my name.

To ensure work efficiency,

I voluntarily submit to reviews where I cannot go to the restroom too many times.

Otherwise, I will be reported to a superior.

Then I will voluntarily be called in for a meeting.

Usually, if I leave work before midnight, I will also voluntarily be called in for a meeting the next day.

However, I am often considered to have left work early on the team’s system.

Female colleagues are not very good at programming,

so they only need to regularly ask us whether our issues have been resolved.

I voluntarily choose not to write any drawbacks.

Newcomers should think carefully before joining. Some departments have very poor technical standards and are bogged down with miscellaneous tasks, so you basically learn nothing. Before joining, I assumed my colleagues and supervisors would all be highly capable, but after joining I found that my colleagues' coding skills were roughly at the level of university students, and their software engineering concepts were stuck about 10 years in the past. A single function can be 2,000 lines long; people don't know how to write Makefiles or write them carelessly, and don't know how to use Git (this applies to people with 0–8 years of experience). Projects are done haphazardly and code is written carelessly; after checking out a project, it can never be compiled directly. Moreover, even if your department manager gives you a high performance rating, it will still be lowered by upper management to let senior employees cut in line. After joining, I found that I learned nothing and didn't receive much of a bonus either—a tragedy.

Seeing everyone discuss this so enthusiastically, I’ll share my thoughts as well.

In Morningstar’s early startup period, the era was dominated by the three founders (Steve, Sterling & Henry), with Steve holding all the power. As a result, putting costs first in the early days and maintaining a flat organization were foundations established by Steve.

Because costs came first, even the laboratory equipment was purchased on eBay, and orders were made while trying to avoid TSMC whenever possible. Because the organization was flat, there was almost no friction between departments, collaboration was highly efficient, and everyone had a chance to be called into Steve’s office to watch him roar.

Also, because the stock was valuable, everyone worked very hard. There were not many concerns about working hours at the time; everyone voluntarily worked until midnight, then came to work after 10 the next day.

In addition, the schedule was extremely tight, and everyone worked quickly, so it took only a few months from kickoff to project tape-out. Everyone was accustomed to this pace as well.

The advantage was that we could seize the market before our competitors. The disadvantage was that if a mistake was made, the resulting product could become junk and waste money. I saw several junk products come out; the most famous was Iron 8. When it was released, all its functions worked normally, but its leakage current was too high, so it could not be sold. This issue could have been identified in the initial simulation, but no one ran it, and afterward no one was held responsible either. It simply became a taboo among the executives, and no one mentioned it again (you need sufficient seniority to know about this).

As a result, the company adopted an authoritarian management style in its early days: if a subordinate made a mistake, it would be reviewed and criticized; if an executive made a mistake, no one mentioned it.

Later, in 2010, due to the issue of going public, two of the three founders joined forces with external shareholders to launch a coup and force Steve to step down, successfully taking the company public. At that point, Morningstar still retained its early belief in putting costs first. Everyone still had a heavy workload, though working hours were not yet monitored. However, because stock-based compensation began to be expensed, incomes started to decline.

The real turning point came after MediaTek acquired Morningstar. HR’s influence rose, and it began closely monitoring working hours, requiring employees to arrive at the company before 9:10 a.m. But the company’s senior management inherited Morningstar’s early philosophy of putting costs first, so they did not want to hire more people and instead demanded that employees leave work later.

However, given the current pay, although it is better than that of most companies (but lower than GG & M), it is still far lower than before the IPO, so some people began to feel that the cost-performance ratio was declining. Consequently, Morningstar’s turnover rate has started to rise over the past two years, and new hires have become increasingly difficult to find.

Therefore, if you want to learn technical skills and make it easier to find a job in the future, Morningstar is a good choice. But you must be mentally prepared: you have to stay for at least three years to learn enough technical skills and receive the full bonus. If you do not receive the full bonus, Morningstar’s pay will not be higher than that of other companies.

If you want to work regular hours, Morningstar is not suitable for you, except for a small number of departments (such as Product Operations). You should give up early.

Also, the things mentioned in the previous posts are all true. I experienced some of them and heard about others, but they are all things of the past. Now, because new hires are difficult to find and older employees are difficult to retain, things have gradually started to improve. If you believe these issues will disappear one by one in the future, I recommend taking this opportunity: now is the easiest time to get into Morningstar. If all these issues disappear in the future, it may become impossible to get in.

However, be aware that HR will deduct six months to a year from your seniority. Therefore, people with greater seniority should be mentally prepared: after joining, their salary may actually be lower than at their previous company.

1. The schedule is often just wishful thinking.

They say 4 weeks, but in the end it always turns into having to finish it in 4 days.

2. When there are problems with cross-module integration, everyone pretends nothing is wrong. Newcomers don't know how to investigate, they can't get the source code, and the PM doesn't understand the architecture either. They tell you to figure it out yourself. They suggest using objdump or ADA to disassemble other people's binaries.

You have to save your own module yourself.

3. The computers are unbelievably terrible! The Trojan, however, is very powerful. Every time you open a new file, it starts a thread to service it, using up 25% of the CPU. In the end, it takes 10 seconds just to open a file.

When you're in a hurry, it really makes your blood boil.

4. They give you a huge pile of things to do, and if you make a mistake, they review your work and tear you apart. It's best not to agree to work casually; agreeing only brings trouble upon yourself.

5. Setting up the environment is extremely troublesome and often takes half a day. The strangest part is that when you find someone to help fix a bug, you also have to set up the environment for them. Why do I have to set it up myself too?

6. The managers are pretty nice, and my coworkers are also very capable, but there is just so much work and the schedule is so unreasonable… Even a god would have trouble saving this situation…

Extremely long working hours. Those with a wife and children or a girlfriend, enter at your own risk!!

Revenue keeps getting worse and bonuses keep getting more pathetic, and on top of that, they make it difficult at every turn even when you submit an overtime claim.

HR uses all kinds of methods that violate the Labor Standards Act, plus internal company rules to block your overtime claims.

Things like “you can’t claim overtime if you were late,” “meetings don’t count as overtime,” and a whole bunch of other restrictions. After the one-fix-one-rest-day policy was introduced, it gave them even more excuses to impose strange restrictions.

Still afraid to send out an email about it? Only dare to mention it verbally during meetings? Afraid of leaving evidence?

Employees can’t even check their own clock-in and clock-out records? Afraid former employees will take them to the Labor Bureau and bring you down?

Also, although the working hours at this company are extremely long, the managers are all very nice. They absolutely won’t force you to stay.

As soon as a client or the sales team highlights something, they immediately hold a meeting and challenge you relentlessly.

The managers are all wonderful—they often say, “If there’s nothing else, go home early~”

Dare to leave before 10 p.m.? Okay, no problem. The next day, they’ll immediately dump a pile of work on you.

Dare to leave before 10 p.m.? Okay, no problem. Leaving early means there’s nothing going on—then the next day they’ll immediately dump a pile of work on you.

Also, HR, please—apart from cutting our benefits and browsing PTT, could you actually do something? Come on, okay?

Once again: if you have a family or a boyfriend/girlfriend and want to stay healthy, I strongly suggest thinking twice!!!!!

If the hard drive in a Linux computer fails and needs to be repaired, you have to pay NT$3,000 out of pocket for data recovery; otherwise, MIS won’t give you the time of day!!!

1. The leadership lacks integrity. Before the company went public, the general manager promised employees that all retention shares would be distributed over three years. However, one year after the IPO, department-level managers were instructed to ask these long-serving employees to sign new contracts extending the distribution period by one year, effectively cutting one year of their dividends.

2. Unreasonable schedules are set and subordinates are required to meet them, yet the necessary staffing is not provided. Whenever additional staff are requested, the request is either rejected or reduced by 30%. For work of the same nature, M has twice as many employees as m, but m still refuses to add staff.

3. Overtime cannot be requested on short notice. A supervisor must first submit a request to the department-level manager in advance. Only after the department-level manager approves it, and the scheduled time arrives and overtime is actually worked, may the employee apply for overtime.

If the department-level manager does not approve it, but you still work overtime because you cannot finish the work, you cannot claim overtime pay. Moreover, even if the department-level manager approves it, you must fill out a work-hours record form to claim overtime pay, documenting what the employee doing overtime worked on each hour.

If you apply for evening overtime from Monday to Friday, you can only apply for overtime starting after 20:00. In addition, the work-hours record form must be filled out starting from when you enter the company at 9:00 a.m. Missing even one hour will result in HR rejecting the submission. Usually, however, the rejection comes a month later, by which time you no longer remember what you entered.

4. Overtime pay is difficult to claim, but the boss looks at working hours when evaluating performance. This has led to the strange phenomenon of many people chatting at night just to pad their hours, or even going home for dinner and coming back in the middle of the night to swipe their cards. Those who properly finish their work and go home are instead rated lower than people who game the system by manipulating their swipe times.

HR’s power overrides all departments and only takes the employer’s side to exploit employees.

1. Policies are changed overnight. At the beginning of last year, it was announced that no additional flexible leave would be provided. However, after Da M later announced that flexible leave would be granted, the company changed its position and claimed that this was to align with “happy enterprises” and provide benefits better than those required by the Labor Standards Act. The same issue happened again this year: at first, it was announced that annual leave would be granted after the employee’s start date; because too many people objected, it was changed a few days later to granting part of it in advance.

2. Even though the annual holidays are fixed and predictable, at least two rounds of annual salary adjustments were delayed by one month, supposedly because there were too many holidays and insufficient staffing. (Compared with the Engineering Department, no matter how much leave there is, if the work cannot be finished, engineers just work overtime to complete it.)

3. The salary adjustment system is extremely strange. People with longer tenure may end up with a lower base salary than colleagues hired in the same year simply because they were promoted. Employees with the same job title may also receive different position allowances depending on the year in which they were promoted. The worst case is for people promoted to assistant manager: although their salary appears to increase, they can no longer claim overtime pay.

4. Problems with the company’s processes prevent overtime pay from being allocated in the relevant month, meaning employees cannot benefit from the Labor Standards Act’s tax exemption for up to 46 hours of overtime. When employees email HR to ask about it, they receive no response and can only absorb 12%–30% in income tax themselves.

5. Promotions are extremely opaque, and there is a headcount limit each year. Even if you perform very well, you will not be considered if you lack the required tenure. Moreover, HR has the final veto. Even if your department head thinks you are qualified, you still will not be promoted if HR says no—despite the fact that your department head is the person who actually sees your performance.

HR will only reduce employee benefits.