財團法人東元科技文教基金會

Convenient transportation, and nothing else.

The chairman and CEO basically do not manage anything, allowing a certain supervisor, T, to run amok here for 20 years.

All the previous negative reviews about this foundation on Tianyan Tong were absolutely true warnings, and things have only gotten worse.

After resigning, a former colleague summed up this job as follows: “...I have encountered annoying bosses, heavy workloads, and tight schedules, but I have never experienced a workplace that makes my emotions feel clouded. During my time at the foundation, simple tasks had to be done in complicated ways, linear thinking had to be approached in a roundabout manner, only to circle back to the starting point. Tasks that could have been completed quickly had to take several times as long to execute; only then was it considered getting work done. All of these phenomena show that the foundation’s problems do not lie in insufficient manpower or an excessive workload, but in the managers’ incompetence.”

The passage above summarizes the current state of this job. The various other absurd things that have happened are also too numerous to list; below are a few examples for everyone’s reference.

1.

There is absolutely no respect for others, especially employees he dislikes. He criticizes everything without restraint, from their work abilities to their personal habits, to the point of personal attacks. He complains that people type too loudly, use the mouse too loudly, walk too noisily, smell bad, breathe too loudly, and so on. He also very much likes to turn off the air conditioning because he feels cold. When other employees say that they feel stuffy (anyone can imagine how stuffy an office building is without air conditioning), he questions whether they have a heart problem; otherwise, why would they feel stuffy? Even when it is not the area where his seat is located, whenever he passes by, he will “casually” turn off other people’s air conditioning.

2.

He often boasts about having done this job here for more than 20 years, yet when organizing events that are held every year, the process is still just as chaotic as it was in the first year. He is often frantic, every task is pushed right up against the deadline, and then vendors are pressured to work overnight. He once proudly told outsiders that the documents for every event were only frantically produced one or two days beforehand, apparently to show that he believes in “slow work for fine results,” but in reality this only makes people feel that the foundation is inefficient.

3.

He loves showing off his superficial knowledge of neuroscience, and some of the sources of the knowledge he has encountered are also controversial. However, because the people providing him with this knowledge are his good friends and major donors, he refuses to accept any corrections. When he encounters people he finds difficult to understand, or people who do not listen to him closely enough, he starts saying that there is something wrong with their brains and that they need to get examined, among other things.

4.

There is no need for any work plan when working here, because whenever you arrange your schedule for the day, supervisor T can always use some trivial matter to disrupt your entire day—and I mean the “entire day.” It is impossible to handle more important and urgent matters during working hours, resulting in everyone having to work overtime.

Supervisor T also does inexplicable things during work hours, such as organizing his desk or cabinets, or going out to wash his hair. As a result, tasks get stuck with him, and he only starts doing real work near the end of the day, delaying employees’ departure time.

5.

He has absolutely no respect for professional expertise. Anyone whose opinion differs from his, even if they are a leading expert in the field, will be privately criticized by him as worthless, with him saying that they do not understand and are unprofessional. He also loves threatening and enticing vendors, and completely ignores industry standards in design—he changes things whenever he wants. This leads to constant complaints from vendors about being exploited, while employees end up caught in the middle and unable to work effectively.

Moreover, if the other party is influential and he cannot win an argument, he incites other Indigenous teachers to join in the uproar, creating opposition between the production team and the performance team, and then acts as a mediator himself. He plays this two-faced game to perfection; it is truly a shame that he did not go into politics.

6.

He is extremely hypocritical, often pretending to care about your situation when in fact he wants to pry into your private life. If you do not tell her, she will go around asking others. He often loudly announces that everyone should leave work on time, but when you are wrapping things up and preparing to leave, he immediately asks about the status of something and whether you can produce it for him right away, or immediately assigns you other work, forcing you to work overtime. Yet he will then say that there was no overtime that day, so he refuses to sign the overtime application. In short, he takes advantage of you.

He loves using LINE for work, insisting that everyone work in the group chat, but privately he often messages people asking them to do things that might make him look unreasonable if he posted them in the group, or complains about other employees, while not daring to confront and correct the employees he dislikes face-to-face.

If supervisor T worked for a for-profit organization, she would probably be fired within two months. The staff turnover is so high that one might mistakenly think the foundation has no full-time employees and that everyone is a volunteer. Yet the issue of high staff turnover has never prompted any reflection on whether management is at fault. Everything is blamed on young people being too pampered and lacking resilience.

If you want to become a model Taiwanese wage slave, this foundation can be said to be the top choice.

Very close to the MRT station

The surrounding amenities are good

1. The two-hour interview barely covered the job responsibilities.

2. The application form required personal information, including the personal information of all family members.

After I left it blank, the supervisor (the deputy executive secretary) said, “Do you have any sincerity about coming to the interview? Are you here to chat? What are you hiding?”

The application form did not state that, under personal data protection regulations, the information must not be provided to third parties or used for other purposes.

Demanding my entire family’s personal information was very unprofessional.

3. They said there might be an opportunity to transfer to a related company after one or two years,

but they did not explain anything.

They said it might be a business development role or an internal position,

might be in Taiwan or an overseas assignment,

and asked whether I would agree.

4. For my family members’ personal information, I only provided their occupations and educational backgrounds.

The supervisor then began criticizing my mother for having a higher level of education than my father,

yet achieving less than him.

(My mother is currently a homemaker.)

However, my mother had retired as a sales manager.

Before that, she received a year-end bonus equivalent to 20 months of salary.

She had simply returned to the family to support my father’s business,

yet was spoken about this way.

It was very unprofessional and irrelevant to the position.

5. Because I used some habitual phrases out of nervousness during the interview,

the supervisor mocked me and said I would not be able to find a job.

(I had already received three or four offers at the time of the interview.)

Whether I can find a job is not for her to decide.

6. Since they had an event that evening, one employee, A, came in to ask some questions.

After A left,

the supervisor began badmouthing A to the employees present, B and C,

saying that A was unprofessional

and could not even understand technical terms, among other things.

Criticizing their own employee in front of an interviewee—

even if they thought it would establish authority,

it certainly did not win people’s support.

The people at the partner companies you work with are all very nice.

You can’t even take leave in accordance with the Labor Standards Act.

The supervisor will ask you to post your request in the work group chat to see what everyone thinks,

and then privately ask everyone to reject your leave request.

Colleagues who think there is nothing wrong with taking leave will also be called people-pleasers.

Previously, the deputy supervisor took leave because his wife was giving birth.

There was an important event, but even with the deputy supervisor on leave, everyone was still able to handle it.

So the deputy supervisor continued taking leave (his wife had already given birth approximately three days earlier),

but the supervisor was still very understanding—or rather, not understanding—about it.

The supervisor even said that people who agreed the deputy supervisor could take leave were people-pleasers.

This kind of mindset is just unbelievable...

They don’t even comply with the Labor Standards Act... Work efficiency is low, and personal and professional matters are all mixed together....

The supervisor has little understanding of costs and benefits and is also easily brainwashed. Last year’s Indigenous folk song album project was decided on at 10,000 sets, with the price set directly, without first calculating the potential sales volume, pricing, and other factors. The result was, of course, poor sales: more were given away than sold, and, like some DVDs from previous years, they are now gathering dust in the warehouse. If that money had not been wasted this way, how much better it would have been to use it to help Indigenous children.

1. The employee turnover rate is very high, and many employees casually find an excuse just to leave as quickly as possible.

2. The supervisor pretends to be democratic, saying that there will be a vote, but privately uses LINE to tell a certain colleague to vote for the option the supervisor prefers.

3. The supervisor and deputy supervisor often get into arguments. The supervisor will ask you to take sides, but in reality, you are expected to take the supervisor’s side (even when the deputy supervisor is actually right). This also wastes other colleagues’ working time.

4. The supervisor claims that they will teach you a lot of professional knowledge, but if you have an in-depth conversation with the vendors, you will discover that what the supervisor says is not particularly professional. In practice, that so-called professional knowledge is insufficient for communicating and collaborating with vendors.

5. The supervisor is very good at pressuring vendors. Design drafts are not handled according to industry standards; if the supervisor subjectively decides that something is not good enough, they demand revisions. As a result, employees below have to act as the middlemen and bear the vendors’ anger. Only after I changed career paths did I realize that it is possible to communicate with vendors smoothly and achieve a win-win outcome.

Although most of the points above are negative, this foundation has quietly worked for the preservation of Indigenous cultures and education in remote areas, and has made a certain contribution. Activities such as technology competitions and the TECO Award, which are more oriented toward building a corporate image, will not be discussed here.

In short, the fields and direction in which this foundation works are excellent. You can meet many people from the arts and cultural sectors, as well as many individuals who have been quietly working in various fields in Taiwan.

However, for applicants, it is not enough to talk only about the vision. I believe that the work environment is also an important factor, but currently, this foundation’s work environment does not really allow people to devote themselves wholeheartedly to their work. More time is spent trying to figure out what the supervisor wants and observing the discord and arguments between the supervisor and the executive secretary. If you are genuinely interested in fields such as technology education, Indigenous cultural preservation, or education in remote areas, I recommend looking into other nonprofit organizations that are also working in these areas.

The supervisor lacks basic respect. They say that an employee’s perfume smells like saliva, that an employee’s hair looks unwashed, that an employee’s lunch smells like sewage, and ask visiting journalists whether they are new here to clean the toilets, among many other similar incidents. The supervisor is also extremely unclean themselves: small cockroaches occasionally crawl around on their desk, there are often sounds of rats running through the ceiling cavity, and the shared oven and refrigerator are frequently left very dirty and untidy after they use them.

The supervisor also likes to gossip privately and pry into or directly ask about employees’ personal lives. For example, if someone takes their lunch break on time, the supervisor will privately comment on whether they have so little work that they have time to go out for lunch. They also like to ask about employees’ romantic relationships and family circumstances, and if employees do not answer directly, they will inquire with others.

Meetings are extremely inefficient. The supervisor likes to discuss irrelevant matters or go off topic, and it is common for meetings to last three or four hours without producing any results. Any suggestions made by employees they like are considered good, while those made by employees they dislike are considered bad. They are adept at using their position to force the group to agree with their ideas. For example, they may ask everyone to vote for option A or B, but regardless of whether A or B is selected, they ultimately go with the option they prefer and require everyone to change their choice to that option and provide a reason.

They do not respect professional expertise or accept any opinions, and even mock employees by saying that although all of them have higher educational qualifications than they do, none of them is as capable.

If this were not a foundation, it is believed that this management style would have disappeared long ago.

1. Senior executive T is very fond of emotionally manipulating others and meddling in their personal affairs. Even with so few people in the office, she still plays all sorts of political games.

2. She likes ordering employees to do her personal errands.

3. She secretly criticizes employees for being terrible instead of saying it to their faces, while packaging it as though she is doing it for the employees’ benefit and is personally troubled by it (eye roll).

4. She does not respect professional expertise, making all the people she works with very unhappy.

5. She requires employees to write apology letters and send them to everyone to prove that she is right.

Employee turnover is extremely high. If you want to train your tolerance for setbacks—and have the guts—welcome to joining the foundation (wry smile).