KPMG_安侯建業聯合會計師事務所

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Some managers have rather neurotic personalities and periodically have panic or anxiety attacks directed at their subordinates. Their instructions change from one moment to the next, and besides being unclear about how they themselves want to handle things, they would rather rely on laborious, old-fashioned methods than ask for support. They tell subordinates to follow their instructions and manually modify data for an ancient model from the 1980s–1990s on a computer from around 1990–2000—one with “no Bluetooth, no internet, no Wi-Fi, USB disabled, and no acceptance of employee account credentials.” When subordinates say this is very difficult to carry out and ask whether they can be given a work laptop appropriate to the era, the manager then has another emotional outburst. After calming down, they feel they were in the wrong and try to placate the subordinate, but they cannot control themselves and frequently have another episode.

If you encounter this manager, consider yourself unlucky.

If you’re not an auditor, there really don’t seem to be any particular advantages.

I applied for a secretary position in a department that handled audits. During the interview, the boss said that this was a newly created position, but after I joined, I realized that probably wasn’t true. I feel they said that because they were afraid they wouldn’t be able to recruit anyone.

The secretary in the same department who trained me was extremely experienced. I learned from her for about a week, and after that, she completely let me fend for myself. At first, when I didn’t know how to do something and asked her a question, she would answer in an extremely impatient tone, or constantly lecture me in a tone that made me feel like I was the world’s biggest idiot. None of what she said was relevant, and she never answered my questions, so asking her anything felt like a complete waste of life. If I was lucky enough that she was willing to teach me one day, but I did something differently from her way—whether while doing it or after I finished—there would be another round of life-wasting lectures. Also, if I made a mistake or any minor error while doing something for the first time, she would absolutely be the first person to rush over and scold me. Although it’s understandable to be reprimanded when you make a mistake, she would immediately report my error to the boss in an exaggerated way, making the boss think I was an idiot. What she didn’t mention was that it was my first time doing the task and no one had taught me how to do it. Most importantly, even after all of this happened, she still wouldn’t teach me. She would simply take over my work herself, so the boss would think: “Wow, our senior secretary is amazing. She handles everything so well and even has to clean up after the new secretary. Why is the new secretary so stupid and unable to do anything?”

Also, because I didn’t major in business, I asked during the interview whether that would be an issue and whether the job would involve many related tasks. They said it wouldn’t. But after I started, I unexpectedly had to work with tax and financial reports—something I was seeing for the first time in my life @.@—and was criticized for being slow at handling them. Then, because I had to prepare presentations for the boss, all of the content was related to finance and business. I had to find everything myself, and if I genuinely couldn’t find something and asked someone, I would get eye rolls and an impatient response.

An interview experience from many years ago. They required your official transcript for all four years of university. The school was in southern Taiwan; fortunately, I had requested it when I graduated, otherwise I would have had to make another trip back to the school. In the end, I was ghosted.

I didn’t get in, so I don’t know.

The office is relatively large and has more resources.

I am a colleague at the Taichung branch. The regular overtime goes without saying; after all, that is simply how the Big Four accounting firms operate, and anyone joining needs to be prepared for it. However, ever since the one fixed day off and one flexible rest day policy took effect, the company has forcibly prohibited overtime on Sundays. Although it says it hopes employees will get more rest, the workload has not decreased, nor has staffing increased. As a result, we still have to work overtime on Sundays, and then absorb those overtime hours ourselves. The company says that if a client makes unreasonable demands requiring Sunday overtime, the accountants and managers will communicate with the client and negotiate for us. But despite saying this, clients’ unreasonable demands continue, and the accountants and managers have not said a word.

Therefore, I strongly recommend not applying here. Unless the company’s policies improve, go to one of the other Big Four firms instead!

Fast-paced, with plenty of people around to get things done; the benefits are decent.

The supervisor of Team E in the Tax Department drove out more than 30 people in one year, conducted repeated interviews until HR no longer wanted to deal with it, and was unable to improve the verbally abusive management style, even going so far as to violate the Labor Standards Act to dismiss employees who spoke the truth.