安東貿易股份有限公司

Pros: Fresh graduates can give it a try. If you’re lucky enough to encounter a veteran employee who is willing to mentor you, count yourself fortunate. However, there is also a high chance that a veteran who takes a dislike to you will drive you out.

A 60-year-old company with deeply entrenched factions, making it easy for newcomers to step on landmines. Business has contracted and infighting is severe, so staffing gaps are being filled under the name of rotational assignments. After the second generation took over, department heads were reshuffled and replaced with their own people. As a result, the newcomers currently being hired are intended to be groomed as confidants of the new managers, while the veterans who have not yet been pushed out still control the core operations. Newcomers are therefore essentially left to fend for themselves—not because the veterans refuse to train you, but because they would also be attacked for doing so. All they can do is assign you miscellaneous tasks and let you sink or swim. If you have decent relationships with people, the company may reluctantly give you a way to make a living. If you refuse to accept handouts, it is recommended that you leave as soon as you have gained enough experience; otherwise, being treated like a servant and ordered around is very difficult to endure.

It depends on the business unit and department. Office-based work is relatively stable, and basically follows the Labor Standards Act.

Since the second generation took over, the organization has been continually changed, with new systems or management policies introduced. Because the trading company represents many different products, each with customers from different industries, the same management system is applied to all of them. The owners and senior managers did not rise through frontline roles, so when employees explain the difficulties of advancing business initiatives, they are easily dismissed as merely making excuses or deflecting responsibility. Internal infighting is severe in some departments.

I went for an interview in 2018. Throughout the interview process, everyone I interacted with was very friendly, and the managers were also very courteous.

There was nothing particularly negative about the interview itself, but I could tell that the people interviewing me seemed a little mentally exhausted. It felt like they were overwhelmed with work...... They also explicitly said that overtime would be required (it felt like working overtime was the norm, and in my experience, overtime pay is something you can see but never actually receive). Because I was afraid of falling into hell, I did not pursue further contact (although perhaps they would not have hired me anyway).

Free movie screenings

Domestic travel subsidy based on seniority

Pros

Free movies

Partial subsidy for domestic travel based on seniority

Cons

1. The organization is constantly being restructured, with policies changing from day to day and a lack of proper planning.

2. The company lacks long-term planning and introduces many unsuitable and highly redundant systems, which instead wastes time and labor costs.

3. Long working hours; under the responsibility-based system, there is no overtime pay. The company keeps downsizing to reduce labor costs, resulting in extremely poor work quality.

4. There is a lack of training, and the database is chaotic. New employees are thrown into the deep end as soon as they join. Staff turnover is high, and anyone with more than three years of experience is considered senior.

5. The company only reviews the administrative departments, while rarely scrutinizing how much money the sales department has lost—a company run according to sales priorities.

6. There is intense internal backstabbing, factionalism, and conflicts of interest. The company favors obedient, compliant employees.

7. The company is highly polarized: experienced employees who know how to pass the buck leave work on time every day and enjoy themselves, while those willing to work are worked to death and keep working overtime until their health deteriorates.

8. Every sales department follows different practices—a single country with multiple systems.

The interview threshold is not very high, making it a suitable place for fresh graduates to gain work experience. In addition, the company will be preparing to go public in a few years.

From when I interviewed ten years ago until now, the company has still been working hard to prepare for going public. Its unwavering spirit is worth learning from for employees. Like most small and medium-sized Taiwanese enterprises, the company is still primarily managed as a family business, so expectations regarding promotion and compensation should be adjusted appropriately. Working there is basically a little easier than selling fried chicken cutlets yourself, so overall I think it is pretty good.

Occasionally, you can watch free private movie screenings.

1. The organization has been reorganized into an absolute mess. Everyone’s workload has increased, while bonuses have decreased due to SAP implementation, exchange-rate losses, and order cancellations (and sometimes payment is even delayed for some strange reasons).

2. Following from point 1, the workload is heavy and overtime is often required, but certain departments simply do not pay overtime. After working past 19:30, you only get a 150 meal allowance. Departments that do pay overtime have much lower starting salaries, little to no bonuses, and the overtime rate is only 1.33—no one uses the 1.66 rate.

3. You have to travel for work, but there aren’t enough company cars for everyone? Vice president: “Can’t you drive your own car on business trips?” (But salaries are so low that many people can’t afford a car.) (And you have to absorb the mileage, maintenance, and depreciation costs yourself—kisses.)

4. You work yourself to the bone to get promoted to manager, but even if you haven’t done anything wrong, the boss may transfer you to a department with poorer performance and strip you of your managerial rank simply because they don’t like you.

5. In short: lost orders => benefits cut => employees resign => everyone else’s workload increases => no overtime pay => they also want to resign and have no energy left to fight for the company => lost orders—a vicious cycle (while management still complains that it can neither retain nor recruit employees).

6. And somehow, everything is the engineers’ fault.

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