正官庄股份有限公司

1. During interviews, the company gives away company products, many of which are within a year of their expiration date.

2. Overtime can be exchanged for time off, with requests registered on paper. (You know, and I know, the purpose of registering on paper.)

3. For overtime in the evening, you can claim up to NT$300 for a meal. If you finish work at 10 p.m., you can take a taxi home, paid for by the company.

4. When the Korean headquarters has a holiday, Taiwan may have the opportunity to take the day off as well.

5. I heard that the company will move to a new office next year. However, I also heard that the staff handling the move are having a terrible time (the supervisor is making a mess of things).

1. This company has a bias toward brand names in interviews; having worked at a large company or studied abroad is a plus.

2. When the Korean chairman or expatriate employees’ time is up, they return to Korea. The company’s culture and practices change whenever people are replaced, and employee turnover is the same. A bunch of people have left this year, including me. =.=

3. Korean managers say all the right things in meetings and claim that anything solvable with money can be handled (in other words, they spend money recklessly), but when it comes time for approval, they nitpick.

4. This company has no IT staff, so you have to figure out the settings and the Korean systems yourself (what a joke).

5. After all, it is a Korean company, so speaking Korean is naturally a plus. Having connections with Korea will also give you extra points in hiring.

It looks like a large company, but the way it operates is truly beyond expectations.

For the first time in my life, I encountered a situation where, after the interview date and time had been confirmed, they called to ask about my capabilities over the phone and then went back on their decision and canceled.

Although this capability was not listed as a job requirement, it was included as a bonus qualification.

Then they called to ask whether I had this additional qualification. When I said I did not, they said they might have to send a rejection letter~~

It makes me wonder whether major reversals after the fact happen frequently once you join the company.

Overtime compensatory leave

Overtime dinners can be expensed to the company (though it seems that these days you have to gauge the boss’s mood when applying)

The Korean office culture is extremely serious.

Supervisors have severe emotional-control issues, and every day, each person is taken aside in turn and berated until they cry.

Supervisors also act emotionally because the hierarchy is so rigid.

Supervisors require endless reports every day.

You also have to accommodate the supervisors’ ASAP-everything work style.

As soon as a supervisor is in a bad mood, all processes come to a standstill.

Upper management just wants to coast until retirement and basically only wants to copy and paste.

As a result, all decision-making responsibilities, performance pressures, and everything else are simply pushed down onto lower-level employees.

This leads to one person having to handle multiple roles.

If you do a good job, you are forever told it is not good enough.

If you do poorly, they criticize you after the fact, asking how you made the decision (even though you had already reported all of this to those managers beforehand).

Employees are also divided into factions because of certain specific employees, with even collective bullying taking place.

You spend all day taking time to “communicate” with certain employees.

In the end, you can only quietly accept it and do the work yourself.

When you report the situation to upper management and request coordination, they treat it all as after-dinner entertainment and gossip.

But aside from the “specific employees,” the other colleagues are fairly friendly.

Simply put:

You want to make use of your expertise at this company >> Dream on.

You want to learn at this company >> Dream on.

You want to work at a “large company” or experience the systems and scale of a large company >> Dream on, because you will not last long here.

In reality, you will only have your mental energy worn down again and again by all kinds of people and things.

The workplace atmosphere is also filled with negative emotions.

Because of all the above, you basically cannot clock in and out on time.

You will not be able to sleep peacefully either.

Unless you want to train your mind, there is no need to take a trip to hell.

Overtime can be compensated with time off in lieu

Departments appear harmonious on the surface, but in practice, Korean managers to some extent form factions and take sides with one another;

Staffing within departments is extremely out of proportion to the company's current size, and change is very slow.

It is a conservative, rule-bound company.

A hands-on business unit where overtime is often required; communication appears smooth but is actually very closed off; suitable for fresh graduates willing to work hard.

The company gives out small gift boxes, which is quite generous~

The interviewer kept asking you more or less the same questions, even though the information you brought clearly showed that you met the requirements, and you also emphasized that you were capable of handling the job. Still, it felt as though the interviewer could not fully trust the candidate’s abilities and kept asking the same questions. I suggest that they simply provide a test in the future, as that would make for a more complete channel of communication~