威技電器股份有限公司

Good benefits, a very nice boss, harmonious relationships among colleagues, an excellent, clean, and conveniently located work environment, and a very stable company.

It’s okay; there aren’t any major problems.

Position: Overseas Sales Representative (Japanese)

I was the previous Japanese-speaking sales representative who was laid off. I’ll share some experiences for everyone’s reference. Feel free to ask questions, but please no purely complaining or smearing the company.

1. The factory staff, from the technical team to the production line, are all very enthusiastic. They patiently explained and taught me, even though I came from a liberal arts background and knew nothing, and they also patiently accommodated unreasonable customer demands. I myself am very interested in mechanisms and compressors and really wanted to continue working there, but unfortunately I was still laid off.

2. In Taiwan, overtime is paid. Just clock in and out, and no additional procedures are required.

3. The company decisively lays off unsuitable employees instead of pressuring them to leave.

4. The company has plenty of money, and the work is demanding. Those proficient in Japanese should negotiate a salary of at least NT$45,000; if you are proficient in both English and Japanese, you should definitely negotiate at least NT$50,000. Don’t shortchange yourself. The sales department is suitable for married women over 40 who are familiar with traditional extended-family culture. The company has plenty of money, so be bold when negotiating your salary.

1. For the past 30-plus years, the company has made money mainly from European and American customers. The company still isn’t very clear about how to position this Japanese-speaking role, and no one in the company understands Japanese, so you must be highly capable of working independently.

2. The sales department consists entirely of women over 40, so the workplace culture inevitably includes a lot of gossip and petty talk (I wasn’t interested and couldn’t join in). However, this gossip somehow led to some strange decisions, and even when I seriously tried to ask a question, I couldn’t get any constructive answers.

The administration department is likewise made up entirely of women over 40, and the boss’s family members work there. From my very first day, the people there wouldn’t even look me in the eye or speak to me properly. When I asked questions, I didn’t get any direct answers; their attitude was basically that the sales department would tell me, or that someone would explain it to me anyway.

3. The boss’s wife doesn’t understand Japanese and believes whatever the agent says. Although I worked hard to perform well, I ended up being reprimanded by her in front of a customer. The boss’s wife likes to reprimand her own employees in front of customers to demonstrate her authority, but then turns around and blames the sales staff for not knowing how to refuse unreasonable customer demands.

4. You have to work on holidays, work on holidays, work on holidays!!!!! There is no overtime pay. During business trips to China, I was busy until 11 p.m. every day, and there was no overtime pay either.

5. High turnover. I worked for three months, and my predecessor didn’t even last six months... People who understand Japanese can’t stay; the sales staff in the company all speak English.

1. The Tainan plant has a new environment and new equipment

2. Reporting overtime is not made difficult; overtime pay is provided in accordance with the Labor Standards Act

3. Colleagues in the technical department have harmonious relationships

1. The supervisor's credibility is low

　　During the interview, I had already stated that I could not accept frequent overtime. After reporting for work, I found that colleagues routinely worked overtime and that the workload could barely be completed without overtime. If you do not work overtime, the boss's wife will keep asking to talk with you and question your attitude toward work.

　　The supervisor said there was a task and repeatedly required me to travel to Taipei for business. Only after arriving did I find out that the work had not yet been finalized. In reality, the Taipei department was short-staffed and I was called up to share miscellaneous tasks. In the past, other colleagues had stayed there for several years, and someone from Taichung had stayed in Tainan for more than a year.

　　New employees are required to intern on the production line during their first month to learn about product components and assembly procedures and to write a daily work journal. In reality, you are treated entirely as a technician for a month and are required to continue writing daily work journals for more than three months.

　　During the interview, they said that after completing three months of work, employees could have lunch in the employee cafeteria. After the three-month period ended, there was no further information at all. When I asked about it myself, I was told that there was no space and that I could not go—an obviously dismissive excuse.

2. Poor attitude toward employee benefits

　　I was sent to Taipei for three weeks without any business-trip allowance, receiving only a little over NT$3,000 in transportation subsidies. The accommodation was a rundown apartment on a high floor. There was only one single bed in the room, and everything else had to be arranged independently. The layout was strange, and roommates had to pass through the room to access the balcony, leaving no privacy. No transportation was provided, so every day I had to ask colleagues for rides to and from work or take a bus and walk. However, company executives frequently traveled between Taipei and Tainan by high-speed rail on the same day and used taxis for transfers.

　　A family member of the company owners serves as the plant affairs manager and frequently watches surveillance footage to monitor employees' every move. If an employee is not resting during the production line's break time, the manager takes a screenshot and reports it, even though the supervisor has not stipulated that the technical department's break times must coincide with those of the production line. The manager takes breaks at will and does not smoke in the designated smoking area.

　　After I reported that the mouse was malfunctioning, I was only told that they would ask the cooperating vendor whether a replacement was available, and then there was no follow-up. It took nearly a month, and only after I reported it again did a senior colleague in the same department in Taipei help resolve the issue.

　　The company is located in a remote area. When working overtime at night, you can only go hungry or eat snacks to stave off hunger. Going out also means worrying about being criticized for exceeding the break time.

　　The employee trip was arranged as three days and two nights at an expensive hotel, with two activities paid for separately. Employees who had worked for less than one year had to pay two-thirds of the cost themselves. Even if you had told colleagues long in advance that you would not go and had to report to work, if you were told without warning three days before the departure date that the trip was canceled, you still had to use annual leave or take unpaid leave.

　　Using the coffee machine in the pantry as a regular employee would result in criticism. Breakfast could only be eaten in the cafeteria and had to be finished before work hours began.

3. Poor division of labor and collaboration between departments

　　After the sales department takes on a project, it asks the technical department to provide a schedule, then repeatedly demands that the timeline be shortened and that employees work overtime to speed up production, while assuming that every procedure can be completed perfectly on the first attempt. This results in the strange situation where most colleagues' projects are delayed. On the one hand, they require procedures to be followed; on the other hand, they demand that procedures be skipped and simplified. When problems arise, they come back and criticize you.

　　Project requirements are frequently changed. You often work overtime to meet the schedule, only for the direction to change two days later, forcing you to restart almost from scratch, after which you are constantly urged to work faster.

　　After the design is completed, the sample model must be tested at a plant in mainland China. The test reports are extremely sparse and provide no indication of the reason; you only know that the design was rejected. Supervisors disagree with one another, leaving employees caught in the middle and placed in a difficult position.

　　The work items are complicated, and from time to time you also have to handle production-line issues. When customers request data or pictures, the sales department often does not clarify the details and directly orders the technical department around, treating it like an errand boy.

4. Incomplete historical data and work software

　　The company uses an obscure, non-mainstream drafting software that frequently crashes and is very inconvenient. When communicating with the vendor, file-conversion problems also consume time and require the drawings to be modified again.

　　The data is disorganized. A single product may have several versions, and it is unclear which file was last modified and is the current production file. You may discover halfway through editing a drawing that you picked up the wrong file.

There is much more, but I will not list everything.

When I initially didn’t know their true nature

There’s so much to criticize!

1. Laying people off for no reason

I completed my work on schedule, followed the company’s attendance rules, and also helped my colleagues with their work,

but a few months later, Deputy Manager Wu, a malicious person, made excuses and claimed that management felt this position was no longer needed.

I was told I was being laid off, yet a new employee arrived that same day—clearly to take my place.

I feel this way of handling things was extremely dishonest, despicable, shameless, and downright vile!

2. Job responsibilities

The position and job responsibilities described in the interview did not match the actual work. After tricking people into joining, they changed their story. Several colleagues experienced the same thing.

3. Workplace location

It is in an industrial park, so there are many large trucks. If you commute by scooter, it is essentially risking your life every day.

There are many foreign workers nearby, and at night the area is sparsely populated and dimly lit, so women should be especially careful.

4. Internal policies

Employees are forced to wear very ugly uniforms—two sets each for winter and summer—and friends make fun of me whenever I wear them outside.

Besides that, there are many ridiculous rules. For example, you have to go to a designated area some distance away to eat, and you cannot walk around wearing slippers. We were also threatened with claims that there are surveillance cameras everywhere in the company and that they can monitor us in real time through mobile phones, knowing everything we do.

The leave application process is extremely complicated and staff will make things difficult for you; you have to watch their expressions. Some people here are not very friendly, and it makes you feel like a complete slave—these are clearly basic rights, yet you are treated this way.

Internal power struggles between departments are extremely serious, and there is a lot of gossip. Deception and intrigue are everyday occurrences.

It is a very traditional family business; the people at the top are all members of the family, and those at the bottom will always remain at the bottom.

5. Salary and benefits

The salary is on the low side. They say it is usually just over 20,000, claiming that investing in factory buildings and equipment means they do not prioritize people. Yet the people at the top all drive nice cars, which is quite ironic.

The lunch benefit was different from what was originally promised. They initially said that after completing the three-month probationary period, employees could eat in the staff cafeteria (although, legally speaking, there is no such thing as a probationary period), but later changed it so employees could only order boxed meals from the same vendor (NT$50–70 each), with only a small portion of the meal cost subsidized.

They claim on the surface that there is no overtime, but in reality you still have to work overtime—especially to put on a show for others. At this company, you have to be very good at appearances.

Conclusion

Get out of this awful company on this godforsaken island—fast.