Sources and scope
This page collects workplace experiences, questions and discussions submitted by users. Dates shown are submission dates, not periods of employment. Individual reports do not describe the entire company.
Read the community guidelines1. Free lunch provided.
2. Free motorcycle parking.
3. Frontline colleagues are very warm and personable.
4. Work starts at 8:30 and ends at 17:30, so you can leave on time, but…
1. During the interview, HR said that it was possible to flexibly start work at 9:00. After I reported for duty, however, they said that this was a special arrangement requiring an application. This contradicted what had been discussed before the interview, so I just had to accept it.
2. I interviewed for an institutional position. A manager, C, said during the interview that overtime pay could be claimed. The interview also mentioned that the company was undergoing a generational transition and establishing standardized systems. It sounded very promising and made people look forward to a complete transformation, creating an impulse to jump in and become a guinea pig. In reality, there was a gap, as described below.
3. Regarding the work: I joined before the Lunar New Year, and after the holiday it had been about a month. In his very first week, Manager C assigned me to assist with model assembly at a model factory. It turned into me being the person responsible for the project—note this: I was assigned a project in my first week, and they even said they needed someone who could be immediately effective because I was an experienced engineer. Having experience really does not mean being thoroughly familiar with a new company’s products and processes. He emphasized that I should understand everything and get up to speed immediately. Was I supposed to be some all-knowing expert? On top of that, I was expected to teach myself everything and not make mistakes.
Shortly before the Lunar New Year, in my second week, he said that upper management was applying pressure to reduce the height of the model’s design, and that it would be simple and quick to modify the drawings. He then added further requirements based on his expectations. Before the holiday, he asked when I could finish the modifications. I said they could be completed within one week after the holiday. On the first day back, he pressed me to finish immediately. On the second day, he added that the engineering department had identified ten deficiencies and asked when everything could be completed. I requested another three days.
Manager C then saw that I had submitted overtime and compensatory leave, and called me to his desk. His true attitude came out: he said the project he had given me was not difficult and that he had given me ample time, so why had I reported overtime? If I could not finish it, that was my own problem. He also said that after nearly a month, I had shown very little initiative in learning about the products. It was clearly just an excuse to criticize me. This manager’s EQ was frighteningly poor. He also said that the deadlines I gave were far too long and that it should not take that long. Is he seriously out of his mind? A week to revise the drawings seems about right, especially since I was new. He claimed to have previously worked at a well-known systems manufacturer, which made me wonder about his logic.
He even tried to argue that, during the interview, he had said he was looking for someone experienced rather than a blank slate. I replied, “Didn’t you say overtime and compensatory leave could be reported? Why is it suddenly not allowed?” If those two hours could not be reported, fine—but was it necessary to nitpick my completion time and the fact that I left on time instead of staying late to learn more about the products? (At this point, it was clear that he was illogical and contradictory: he wanted me to work overtime but would not allow me to report it. In fact, there were several days when I stayed late to prepare reports and revise drawings, but I reported overtime only once. Was Manager C suffering from selective amnesia? Who knows.) Later, I said that if our understanding differed, then it would be best for us to part amicably.
4. After observing for a month, I found Manager C’s professionalism and management skills very difficult to respect. He spent all day in the prototyping room watching engineering staff assemble things, then acted like a lackey serving them and chatting with them. Whenever there was an assembly problem, he expected ME to improve it. I have really never seen anything like this. Normally, design optimization should prioritize customers, not cater to every ridiculous production-line issue. (For example, when a 12AC head needs to be changed to a 24AC head, is the EE department dead?) I truly do not understand what this manager’s role is; he simply accepts everything and lets the engineering department lead him around. It was frightening. ME could not work overtime enough to fix all the deficiencies.
5. After observing for a month, I found that the systems were not integrated and were scattered across roughly three or four platforms. You had to remember three sets of accounts: one for leave requests, one for business-trip or off-site forms, and another for applying for part numbers in the ERP system. It was extremely confusing. A company with such a long history still had such a poorly integrated setup. They also said that the future drawing library and part-number management would be moved to PDM. The part numbers themselves were also a complete mess.
Manager C had only been parachuted in three months earlier, and I happened to be the first person he hired after completing his three-month probation. I really stepped on a landmine. My advice is that unless you are exceptionally gifted and capable of taking on a hundred people by yourself, do not follow him. Unless you can tolerate this kind of system and a manager who has only recently arrived and is not very capable, you should stay away.
There are too many shortcomings in the work to list. All I can say is that these entrenched beneficiaries consider ruthlessly exploiting frontline staff an essential skill. I cannot see any prospects for development, nor am I optimistic. At least what I saw was the familiar face of these habitual managers and their extremely poor management abilities (most of them were around their mid-50s on average).
6. If you want to put yourself through a tough training experience, you can give it a try. Basically, the organization’s practices are probably much the same as those described by predecessors in the earlier reviews—just a change of skin without any fundamental transformation. It may take a long time for that transformation to succeed. In any case, I have left after experiencing it firsthand. Any brave souls who want to take on the challenge can go and report for duty.
An absolutely terrible company.
Utterly awful. The infighting is terrifying, and the people at the top are all psychopaths.
This is a notorious company.
The boss is famously awful and constantly sets traps for people to fall into.
They also get employees forced out to save on severance pay.
The office is full of dogs raised by the boss; you could be bitten at any time. Some people act as dogs and still do not get a good ending.
Therefore, people who go to this company may not make it out alive.
It is a workplace with extremely vicious political infighting—from the company itself down to the operators, it is all the same.
So, before going to an interview, first consider whether you can afford to be bitten.
It is a company with serious problems, and former employees often file complaints and lawsuits against it. So think carefully.
Every Friday after work, employees attend concerts held at the company, and only those who attend can receive an excellent performance evaluation!!
It’s great to be unable to leave work on time on weekdays to listen to this kind of music!! It’s truly worth it, exchanged for mountains and mountains of overtime pay!!
The interview says one thing, but the reality is completely different. There is a clock-in system for starting work (even being one minute late results in a pay deduction), but leaving work is based on personal responsibility. There are also countless office rules: no eating, no jeans, and so on… Violations result in deductions of several thousand dollars. In addition, the systems are not widely used, and for most system operations, new employees have to read the “secret manual” and practice on their own. Sometimes a supervisor will quickly demonstrate the operation once; for anything else, you have to ask around yourself, but most people don’t know the answer to anything. Sometimes, when you can’t get an answer anywhere, all you can do is ask the heavens… Supervisors often say to different colleagues: “You’ve been doing this for so long—how can you not even know this?” People suited to this company must be either Zhang Wuji or Yang Guo: exceptionally gifted and highly perceptive. Ideally, they should even be able to communicate with spirits, so that when no one can be asked, they can cast divination blocks for guidance.