Legacy reviews: 38
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The interview experience was extremely poor.
The COO was very disrespectful.
The position was misleading and not what it was advertised to be.
I applied to another subsidiary, but during the interview they directly told me, “You wouldn’t only be doing this, would you??”
Yet they could not clearly explain what the job actually involved.
They just kept saying that the company was not large but had a certain amount of revenue.
They also asked how much annual revenue my previous company had.
They said that one of their business units could earn that much in just one month.
They also said that I was a blank slate (even though I had already been a manager in my previous job).
They spoke and communicated in a demeaning and sarcastic manner throughout.
They also emphasized the importance of stress tolerance.
From what I can see, the source of stress is never the work itself but the people.
They may well be the biggest source of stress.
Finally, they told me that the salary they were discussing with me did not mean I had been hired.
They also cut my salary while taking an attitude of doing me a favor.
They said they would evaluate other candidates as well.
Yet they notified me that I had been hired less than three days after the interview.
That was really quite interesting!
If you can get past it mentally and are comfortable with all the sales scripts, you can earn decent bonuses.
1. Telephone marketing
A whole bunch of sales scripts deceive elderly people with dementia, and many games that people think are funny disturb customers!
The prices are extremely high, and the discounts are made up! There are 100 different sales scripts for 100 people.
If your performance doesn't reach the target, your bonus is reduced. This rule can supposedly be bypassed—you are told that it won't be reduced—but there is still a maximum cap on what you can receive… anything above that is not paid. You help the company generate sales and still have your bonus deducted?
2. Order customer service
The same deceptive sales scripts are used to deceive both customers and employees. It is purely a case of selling something under a false label!
TV hosts say that you can use a certain amount of XX coins, so the purchase will cost only a certain amount, and after deducting shipping, you only need to pay xxx. In reality, every product has a limit on how many coins can be applied. When customers call and find that the situation differs from what they saw on TV, they raise questions that can never be fully explained.
For example, a customer sees Product A priced at 2,000 on TV. The host says that 400 XX coins can be used, and after saving 100 in shipping, it costs only 1,500. But when the customer calls to purchase Product A, the maximum coin deduction is 150. Shipping was already free, so the customer actually has to pay 1,850.
You cannot proactively remind customers about the discount coins; you have to wait for the customer to bring it up. You give people rewards but don't let them use the discount?
VIP members are transferred to a specialist through the voice system. Even when the order was already placed through the voice system and the customer is transferred to a specialist, you still cannot proactively deduct the XX coins for them. You get severely berated because of this—an inexplicable policy.
They constantly talk about putting service first, but all they look at is sales performance. Rewards are also based entirely on performance, including employee incentive trips.
The discounts for promoting add-on purchases are nowhere near as large as claimed. The computer documents clearly say 20% off or 25% off, while online colleagues tell customers 30% to 50% off. Reporting this to supervisors has led to no improvement at all.
There are also countless inexplicable sales scripts used to deceive customers. For example: “You spent XXX this year, so you can participate in a three-product promotion: A, B, and C.” C has supposedly already been fully redeemed, even though there are actually more than 1,000 sets in stock. “If you don't want any of those, I can exchange it for Product D.”
Another example: “You won a discount of X%” (even though no drawing is actually required). “Because you are a VIP, you were eligible for a lucky draw. Only 10 people were selected, and you were the seventh.” The entire passage above is a lie.
On the service side, you can receive an honorary title called “Customer Service Star,” but it only adds a tiny number of points to your evaluation. Aren't they supposed to put service first????
Regardless of whether it is early or late, or whether you are on leave, messages tagged @all pop up in the group. Even your break time is interrupted.
Attendance and leave
If you are late, they pressure you to change it to annual leave; otherwise, they deduct an excessive number of evaluation points. Each use of annual leave must be taken in four-hour increments, and during those four hours you are still required to answer calls and generate sales.
Any type of leave that was not scheduled for that month is treated as emergency leave and results in point deductions. Taking just one day of sick leave can make a huge difference to that month's evaluation bonus, even reducing it to zero.
Every day, you have to arrive early to turn on the computer and log in to the system before your attendance is considered successfully recorded. As a result, you swipe your access card an average of 20–30 minutes early every day.
Even when the workday ends, you cannot leave until the supervisor releases everyone at once. In 90% of cases, people are kept behind to continue answering calls because their sales performance is insufficient.
They use a pile of sales scripts to deceive customers, and a pile of terrible policies has brought in many negative members. You spend every day dealing with their complaints and disruptions. They generate no value, place orders and then cancel them, place orders and refuse delivery, complain everywhere, and waste the frontline staff's time.
Because the group operates in many industries, when you receive a referral lead, you must ask whether the customer is willing to be contacted—most of these are insurance-related. There is a standardized and completely accurate script, but only a small number of employees read it as written. Everyone else coaxes and deceives customers, saying, “You can just take a look for reference, thank you.” Once, a supervisor asked me to help with an audit. After listening to one employee's three recordings, none of them included the customer responding “okay.” The supervisor told me to directly add “okay” as the customer's response at the beginning of the transcript of that recording. Isn't that illegal!? Can employees with good sales performance really behave this recklessly?
There is an extra-credit item called “Social Media Add-On Sales,” which requires you to sell products on your personal social media accounts. Besides directly taking commissions from your friends and relatives, you also receive additional points, and those points affect your evaluation bonus for the month. Employees who do not profit from their friends' and relatives' pockets receive three or four fewer evaluation points. That three- or four-point difference can mean a difference of 2,000–3,000 in the evaluation bonus.
Fate brings us together
The turnover rate in telemarketing is extremely, extremely high.
Every day, you have to memorize the effects of different health supplements and skincare products. You are not allowed to read them—you must recite them from memory completely.
Every day, you have to meet N hours of call time, talking until your throat is raw.
You must meet your daily sales targets; otherwise, you will be harshly berated and verbally abused until you feel like life is no longer worth living.
Eight out of ten people leave within two weeks of joining; 95% leave within two months. Those who remain are the elite and may have the opportunity to earn quite a lot per month.
But the prerequisite is being heartless enough to force members to buy overpriced junk products!!
Extremely poor—misleadingly promoted.
You will go there and intensely doubt your own abilities. The people above only look at performance; night sacrifice is king.
1. As a frontline employee, you don’t have to worry about being singled out, because the company has too many highly paid senior executives, and the executives themselves are also busy with many things.
2. Advantages... The restrooms, air conditioning, and internet are all fully equipped.
3. The colleagues are all very kind. You don’t have to worry about colleagues plotting against you behind your back, forming cliques, or someone having a bad attitude. Everyone is very friendly toward colleagues from other departments. Since we often interact with colleagues from other departments, everyone is very willing to help whenever needed.
1. There are really too many tasks, and they are too miscellaneous.
2. Decisions are always made only at the very last minute, even the very last second.
The managers up the chain spend a great deal of time hesitating, lacking experience, fearing being reprimanded or that something will go wrong, and calculating which approach would be best. They absolutely will not give you enough time to prepare.
3. The company is unwilling to invest in equipment for business operations, always thinking about using the lowest possible cost to generate revenue. These low-cost equipment choices make people feel that the company is unprepared and has no intention of investing in the business.
4. The company is unwilling to invest in or develop software and equipment, and keeps doing business through purely manual methods, wasting a great deal of time.
5. Before the election, we had to listen to the president praise Hou You-yi and say how great he was, and talk about what would happen if we voted for Ko Wen-je or Lai Ching-te—as if everyone in the meeting room would vote for Hou You-yi just because you talked to them about it.
1. Close to the MRT station
2. Flexible working hours (by 1 hour)
3. A slow-paced work environment with a retirement-oriented atmosphere, provided that you join the right department
Benefits:
1. For those earning a monthly salary of over NT$50,000, 20% of the year-end bonus is converted into gift vouchers or other goods.
2. The three traditional holiday bonuses are only NT$1,000; for employees at the manager level or above, they are converted into goods of equivalent value. There is a high chance that all three holiday bonuses will be fully converted into goods in the future.
3. Every year, employees are inexplicably required to purchase a certain amount of products from ET Mall, but you can try your luck.
4. There are no company trips, and meals are not provided.
5. (Neutral comment) There are prizes to be drawn at the year-end banquet, but most are products from Natural Beauty, and they are all close to their expiration dates.
Personnel:
1. The president is strongly pro-blue. The day before the presidential election, all employees were required to attend an online meeting. We thought it was a legitimate business meeting, but it turned out to be a humble plea for everyone to vote for a certain political party and candidate. Yet in regular meetings, the president is as harsh with employees as can be—the contrast is enormous.
News link: https://reurl.cc/yYvAyE
2. Personally, I feel that the company's upper management says one thing and does another. Many policies explicitly stated to benefit employees disappear without a trace just one or two months after being introduced.
3. Employees are treated like disposable chopsticks. The company does not view its workforce as an asset. One supervisor even said, when someone resigned, that the company could survive without them anyway. (The president has the same attitude in meetings, so it is no surprise that this culture is passed down.)
Other suggestions
1. Run away quickly.
2. Choose this place only if you have no better options or need the prestige of a large company on your résumé.
3. Do not choose a team whose manager lacks a relevant background; you will be hit by one problem after another. During the interview, ask the people interviewing you about their backgrounds within the team, especially the manager's.
My sincere advice: The overall company culture is very poor, and benefits have been reduced year after year. The only reason you can work well here is if you have the right people and team—but problematic managers are usually more common. I'll leave it at that.
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If you are going to work at the Eslite Logistics warehouse in Yangmei, please take note of the following. After watching the news about the sexual assault committed by the leader of the Providence Church, a male supervisor loudly said to his colleagues in the office, “Why didn’t he just have sex with Taiwanese people instead of foreigners?” The standard is extremely low! There were also many other vulgar remarks; both the male and female supervisors were at the same low level.
Very close to the MRT~
The head of online livestreaming operations was extremely disrespectful to the interviewee.
After the interviewee finished introducing themselves, this operations head unexpectedly did not introduce the company or the job duties at all,
and instead directly tried to dismiss the interviewee and send them away~
Throughout the interview, they kept interrupting and showed no respect for the interviewee's way of speaking, repeatedly insisting that the other person speak according to what they wanted.
Sorry~ I haven't even joined the company yet; I'm not your employee. I completely disregard your condescending attitude.
Their attitude throughout the interview was extremely dismissive, and they showed no interest in getting to know the interviewee.
Their facial expression seemed to say: “Let's see how you spin this.”
Moreover, throughout the entire process, this operations head did not express even a single professional opinion or share any relevant experience.
It made me suspect that they did not understand the detailed operational aspects of this position at all.
I'm curious about Eastern Broadcasting Company:
How could they have someone who only knows how to manage but has no professional expertise conduct interviews???
If this is their attitude during interviews,
it is clear that their attitude toward employees in private must be extremely arrogant.
They really wasted my time.
A certain design department
Close to the MRT, with convenient transportation
The systems at a large company are relatively complete
The benefits are difficult to put into words
Some senior managers frequently communicate with strong personal emotions, boosting subordinates’ work morale
When there are communication problems, they first scrutinize subordinates, enhancing their ability to self-reflect
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It can be a place to coast toward retirement. The benefits and salary are average. If you’re considering joining, I strongly advise negotiating a satisfactory salary before you come, because you shouldn’t expect bonuses or raises.
Work is unevenly distributed in some departments.
If you get on the right person’s good side, you can have an easy time; if you back the wrong person, you’ll have a lot to endure.
The turnover is high, and supervisors aren’t afraid of people leaving because they can always hire replacements. From time to time, you have to put up with supervisors’ uncontrolled emotions: when they’re in a good mood, they treat you like a treasure; when they’re not, you’re on your own.
The workload is fairly normal and doesn't require overtime.
At the meeting, the president explicitly told everyone, “Don’t worry. Inflation is severe this year, but I absolutely will not give anyone a raise. I absolutely will not adjust your salaries!” “Work hard. If you do a good job, I’ll give you a bonus; if you don’t, get out!” When layoffs first began, people who were laid off would be stigmatized. I’m not stupid, but now many companies are laying people off, so no one will think much of it anymore. If you can’t do your job well, get out!
Everyone knows inflation is severe, yet they still loudly emphasize that they absolutely won’t give anyone a raise. What a “happy company”!
Bonuses for doing a good job? The criteria are completely unclear—visible but unattainable! I haven’t received a bonus to this day!
The company's ideas for cutting benefits are quite creative. Today they announced that going forward, employees who attend meetings in the meeting room will get a lunchbox, while the other half, who are assigned to attend the meeting from their seats, won't get one. Are these employees not attending a meeting, or are they animals?
Benefits keep getting cut. Last time, it was finally our turn as frontline engineers to lose the NT$1,000 cash gift for the three traditional festivals. NT$1,000 was already too little, and now we're being forced to take a Mama Bear gift box instead, which isn't even worth NT$1,000. It's really damn infuriating.
Benefits keep getting reduced.
The atmosphere is getting increasingly strange, and more and more people are leaving. I’d advise anyone considering coming for an interview not to bother. 囧
Often receive a whole bunch of health supplements
Close to an MRT station
The training tells you that there are certain things you cannot say. Although the pressure from telemarketing is very high, that is secondary. The main issue is that you feel as though you are tricking members into buying things. It is not that health supplements are ineffective; it is just that these sales tactics go too far.
The base salary is 25,600 + bonuses, but no matter what time you get off work, you will not receive overtime pay. The next day at work, you also have to fill in the reason for leaving work, supposedly because you need to avoid peak hours. They are unwilling to pay overtime at all; even when those high bonuses are converted into overtime pay, they would only just about make up for it. This job does not provide any sense of accomplishment whatsoever, leaving you physically and mentally exhausted. You may also be verbally attacked by relatives and friends because of the negative impact of E. Sun's direct-sales business.
1. Transportation in Zhonghe is fairly convenient.
2. There’s a RT-Mart next door to browse around?
3. Do employees get a discount when buying the company’s own products? (Or is it a forced-purchase price?)
1. The information-related departments (the IT department/R&D units) seem to have a very poor environment: old desks and chairs, and a dim environment.
2. The résumé you fill out before the interview requires a lot of information, and they first ask whether you can work overtime and until what time you usually work overtime.
3. When you arrive on-site, you have to fill out another aptitude test and sign a consent form stating that, if hired, you must provide a police clearance certificate and credit report (Does Eastern Broadcasting consider itself a financial institution?).
4. There aren’t many generous benefits; the gifts for the three traditional festivals may be cash or the company’s own products.
They will ask you to purchase the company’s own products; the higher your position, the more they ask you to buy.
This time I want to talk about the news regarding salary increases—to combat inflation, EBC reportedly adjusted employees’ salaries by 2–7%. You can imagine that the majority must have received 2%. Fine—even if many people really did get increases of 4% or 5%, it was limited to those earning less than NT$50,000…
Many engineers in Taipei happen to earn just over NT$50,000. So do these people have no inflation problem? Are they not responsible for supporting elderly family members and children? When the company wasn’t making money, it was understandable to say that everyone should stand together through difficult times. But now it is making big profits, and the stock price has risen from NT$17 to nearly NT$50, yet it still won’t give us a raise… Salaries just remain frozen, while the company continues to call itself a “happy enterprise” publicly!
If you want to be a happy enterprise, at the very least give us a raise every year—really do something to combat inflation!
To all the junior employees who feel that prices are getting more and more expensive, their salaries have stayed the same, and the pressure is growing: stay strong.
There are a bunch of people there who do nothing, or who look for pointless work to do every day. If you just want to coast, it’s a pretty good place to retire.
Never mind all the company’s strange practices—I haven’t been this angry in a long time!
The pandemic was severe, and the company had also allowed some employees to work from home. I was one of the lucky ones who could work from home, and I had been shut inside my own home for almost a month without going out. I was alone, and whenever I needed anything, I ordered delivery. Life was still manageable.
Then the company sent out a notice forcibly requiring employees to return to the office for testing, or they would immediately be suspended and have their pay stopped.
It was even reported in the news:
https://udn.com/news/story/7238/5530208
I don’t understand. I had been shut at home for so long—why should I risk traveling all the way to the company, only to have large groups of people gathered there for the company’s testing, further increasing the risk of infection?
Then a bunch of highly paid people from the company left comments under the news story, harshly attacking the employee who exposed it and saying that EBC was a happy company!
So forcing employees to return for screening by suspending them without pay—that’s what they call a happy company!
Plenty of resources and many locations
Those who have been there will understand. Remember to choose the right side to stand on, or you’ll just end up getting blacklisted.
Those who give ratings like “123” are probably just trying to wash the ratings, right?
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The company is utterly outrageous. This morning, we received an email saying that every employee has to promote two sets of the company’s products, while those at assistant manager level and above have to promote even more. I only earn a tiny salary each month, and if no one wants to buy them, I’m expected to pay the company out of my own pocket. This is absolutely infuriating!
Later, another updated email was sent saying that only those at assistant manager level and above are required to do this. However, it says “2 sets/half-year/person.” Does that mean we’re being forced to resell two sets of products to the company every six months?
Previously, the NT$1,000 holiday bonus for employees at the assistant manager level was canceled, and we were forcibly given the company’s skincare products instead. Now it’s even more outrageous—they expect us to spend our own money to support the company…
Although I don’t have to promote these two sets right now, who knows whether this will eventually become a requirement for every employee to promote the company’s products! I’m speechless! And this is happening during the pandemic, even though 東森得利’s performance is growing—employees are still expected to pay the company out of their own pockets. It’s truly outrageous!
None
Worked as a QE part-time student employee for a period last year
During the interview, they mentioned that part-time student employees could not work overtime
A few months later
During a meeting with my supervisor, they said that part-time student employees could not accommodate overtime
Therefore, my contract was not renewed
Absolutely ridiculous
The company provides a limited supply of free snacks, beverages, and coffee
One health checkup per year
Subsidies for external training courses
Starting salary better than that of system integrators
The following is lengthy…
1. It is called a research and development center, but there is no actual R&D. In reality, it is a contracting company dedicated to taking on projects for the Eastern Media Group.
2. The team recruited at high salaries in 2016 has mostly left, and the company’s focus is not on the software department either.
3. Software companies outside offer much better compensation than Eastern Media. Eastern Media’s advantages are stability and steady, long-term employment; don’t expect to get rich through software here.
4. Get onto the right team and follow the right people. The Infra, payment, and DBA departments—where technical skills have barely grown for decades—are the preferred choices. Avoid F2E and QE, which are easily berated by product marketing. BackEnd, ProjectTeam, and App are mediocre, and suitable for career changers and beginners to build experience.
5. The development process uses a two-week sprint cycle. Release day operates under a responsibility-based system, and PO, F2E, and QE usually have to work overtime.
6. QE is purely manual testing. You don’t need to understand software; your manager will shield you from exposure to professional knowledge.
7. Testing covers IE 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12; Chrome; Android 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10; and iOS 10, 11, and 12. The CTO places great importance on users comprising 0.x%—tens of people—so the fact that multi-platform testing multiplies QE’s workload many times over is not a key consideration.
8. The backend uses .NET MVC5 and the Windows ecosystem.
9. iOS uses Objective-C, while Android is written in Kotlin. The App manager is quite good, so AppTeam is relatively stable, and some colleagues have even returned to the company.
10. The software development environment was established around 2016, and there is currently no team responsible for this area. As a result, there is little code review, few requirements for pull requests, and hotfixes are commonplace.
11. F2E uses React and Vue, taking responsibility for multi-platform development including desktop, mobile, and WebView. It is the worst development team, without a doubt. The WebViews for the Eastern Shopping Network, Sen Sen Shopping Network, and Eastern Shopping App all fall within their scope of work.
12. The F2E manager is the former Scrum Master and PM. The team is managed well, but technology is somewhat beyond him. Don’t expect new hires to develop strong frontend and architecture skills here.
13. The PO team has considerable power and can communicate directly with the CTO. After the organizational reform, all testing work was also handed over to QE, so they are doing fairly well. The only downside is that when there is a production issue, they get berated along with QE. But it does not matter much; in the end, the main focus is still on reviewing QE’s testing problems.
14. I almost forgot the Platform Team. This team’s predecessors were the R&D center’s DevOops and SDET teams, but they were later assigned new tasks, so they exist in name only. It is also rather strange that Eastern Media’s CTO comes from a QA background but does not value the development environment, DevOops, or automation testing.
15. The Maintain Team’s work is somewhat like DevOops or SRE, but not quite. Its main job is to monitor production and prevent major problems. Occasionally, it helps its own teams build some automation tools, but it does not provide automation services for other departments in the company.
Summary:
Once you come here, don’t think too much about it. Just work with the mindset that this is a place to coast and wait for retirement, and don’t have any expectations of the company.
Wang Ling-lin runs the company in a traditional way. Direct selling (Eastern Times Tiens), cosmetics (Natural Beauty), and similar businesses still make up the bulk of the company. The departments that make money are the business departments; the software department merely handles projects for them.
The only advantage is probably that there are not many exceptional experts at the company—if you come here, you can do it too.
Conveniently located next to an MRT station and a bus stop.
Revenue has been stable in recent years, and there are basically no layoffs. Suitable for ordinary people who are willing to work hard.
If you follow the right people and join the right team, you can leave work on time and have a good family life. But first, you have to actually find the right people and join the right team. Let me say it again: “the.right.people.the.right.Team” (or you need the domain know-how of certain teams).
On weekdays, overtime generally cannot be claimed for overtime pay, and there is no compensatory leave either. Because the work is treated as being under a responsibility-based system, most people simply hope to leave work on time.
Traditional-industry culture and management practices: clocking in and out, HR having no recruiting function, and requiring a credit check when reporting for duty, which you may decline to provide.
There is no nursing and pumping room or dedicated smoking area. The benefits and facilities lack the scale and standards of a large company.
Salaries are on the lower side of average. Although there is guaranteed pay for 14 months, those extra two months are actually year-end bonuses and are not included in the contract, so there is still a very small chance of not receiving them.
The senior boss comes from a sales background and does not understand technology, but does understand how to make money. Therefore, those capable of influencing important company decisions usually do not have a technical background.
Although revenue has increased, the ability to make money is not particularly outstanding. Many decisions are ultimately dictated by upper management or customers.
Management decisions are not transparent. Frontline employees usually just follow orders. Although there are channels for raising issues, you know how it is... Some people at the top have the intention to change things, but...
Some middle managers seem to have forgotten that they are also salaried employees. Their habitual way of communicating with frontline staff is to threaten them rather than reason with them.
(“If you don’t..., then maybe...”)
Employee tenure is split into two extremes. A great deal of knowledge exists only in the minds of senior employees, and from the perspective of most employees, they are not treated as assets but rather as...
There is basically no communication between teams on weekdays. When something goes wrong, the usual practice is not to find and improve the real root cause, but to find the person who caused the problem...
Most development-process tools and concepts lag behind those of leading companies by many generations.
There does not appear to be any particularly strong core technology. Most of the time is spent on business requirements, leaving only “s.c.a.t.t.e.r.e.d. t.i.m.e” for software engineering.
“Research and development” at the R&D Center is a noun rather than a verb. Most people are fairly easy to get along with, but the R&D Center has always been a department rather than a team, and there is a food chain within the department.
The reviews here are still somewhat polite. To better reflect reality, it would be best to discount them by another 20–30%.
Good
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Good
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123
123
The following are my subjective impressions after one year here as a junior frontend engineer.
1. The e-commerce system is stable. The B2C frontend website is developed with React, and there are also internal projects using Vue. People familiar with both frontend technologies can be found within the company for discussion.
2. The members and managers of both the frontend and backend teams are nice. Colleagues also look after one another. When encountering problems or uncertainties during development, we can discuss them with each other. It is not a situation where everyone works independently without communicating. If you are willing to ask, you can receive plenty of feedback.
3. There is a weekly frontend meeting, and employees are also encouraged to give presentations and share knowledge.
4. If there is something you want to learn or optimize, it can be included as one of your quarterly individual RD goals and counted in your performance score. Even for passive employees, managers will push them to set goals, at least ensuring that team members continue to grow gradually. Note that you need to make use of the limited free time available to research improvements or prepare presentations.
5. Online revenue is growing.
6. The PO (PM) is friendly, and communication and discussion are possible. Everyone focuses on solving problems and sticks to the issues at hand.
7. Managers periodically meet with RD members in small meeting rooms to discuss and check on work conditions. Problems, suggestions, or other situations can be raised at an appropriate time.
8. The computers at the R&D center are ThinkPads. Their carbon-fiber bodies are lighter than Macs, and they are quite usable. The R&D center is currently split between two offices. RD members in the new office have height-adjustable desks, and the old office is also scheduled to move there in the second half of the year.
9. After all, this is a large company, so there are occasional departmental activities. You can also apply for company funding to purchase tickets for large conferences.
10. There are many opportunities for cross-departmental communication, and you can collaborate with different teams.
1. The schedule is tight, and development also involves refactoring old things. There is quite a bit of frontend legacy code, so it is easy to run into strange and difficult-to-modify code.
2. The company needs people who can contribute immediately, but certain tasks are overly focused on simply tightening screws. They are the kind that can make you ponder the meaning of life while doing them. I deeply felt that I was a small cog and code farmer in a large company. This team needs people who can immediately modify code and inventory the codebase, so if you encounter a genuinely new development requirement, make sure to seize the opportunity.
3. Following from the previous point, based on observing my colleagues' situation over the past year, basically taking on a new large-scale requirements project means working overtime. Handling projects from the parent group or other companies in the same group is reasonably part of the job, but new project assignments do not seem to offer any substantial incentives—apart from learning new technologies—to increase colleagues' willingness to step forward and take them on.
4. The previous agile implementation failed, leaving behind only some terminology (for example, PO here actually means PM). The current development model is Waterfall, so nearly all the various shortcomings encountered in the process are the shortcomings of the Waterfall model.
5. Even though the PO helps filter requests and directly face the requesting departments (other departments within the group), you know how large-company politics work. Although the PO assists with communication between departments, when there is an urgent request that really needs to be modified, RD and the PO still have to swallow their frustration and take on the sudden meteor. Most requirement changes are made simply because someone says to change them; only those that are not so urgent are merged into the requirements for the next release.
6. UI/web design does not belong to the R&D center, and even the office floor is different. Although communication software is available, this still creates significant communication costs. In theory, frontend engineers should interact closely with designers, so it is quite unfortunate that this situation exists.
7. Due to the characteristics of certain tasks, you may obediently complete and test them according to the requirements, only to discover after launch that specific situations produce different results. You only learn these hidden pieces of know-how and subtle details after encountering a pitfall and issuing a hotfix. Although it is true that problems should be solved when they arise, hotfixes compress the development time for that release cycle.
8. Browser support levels and features can be discussed with the PO, but the main workflow still has to support ... IE9 as much as possible.
Other:
All current frontend staff joined in 2018, making this a relatively new team. In the 2019 IT邦幫忙 Ironman competition, four of the seven frontend members participated, and everyone encouraged and challenged one another. However, there are many fragmented frontend tasks, with very different characteristics. Some tasks are interesting, and you can build requirements that are quite fun to work on :); other tasks are dull—so boring and mechanical that they wear down your enthusiasm :(
The pros and cons here are all within an acceptable range. Ultimately, I chose to resign simply to pursue better pay and a new environment and experience.
The company as a whole is not that bad. It is much better than some inexplicable outsourcing or gambling companies, and the Eslite Group's business and traffic have indeed grown over the past year.
It’s relatively close compared with Nangang and Neihu.
Overtime cannot be reported as compensatory leave, so staying late makes no difference. You still have to clock in before 10 a.m., or your pay will be deducted.
1. The R&D department is equipped with ThinkPads, desktop computers, and two monitors.
2. Height-adjustable desks.
3. The office chairs are acceptable.
4. The R&D team is guaranteed 14 months of pay.
5. Employees can purchase products from the company’s own platform at employee prices.
6. Those who follow the right supervisor, or who do not want much career development, can stay.
1. Inconvenient transportation.
2. The organizational structure changes frequently.
3. There are more people who know how to talk than people who know how to get things done.
4. In most cases, bad money drives out good.
5. Although the automation testing team was established many years ago, its members still only know how to perform manual testing.
6. The company really likes to investigate its own employees’ personal backgrounds and have employees help promote the company’s products.
7. Performance ratings are always the top grade.
The following are reflections from this past year working as a senior frontend developer at the R&D center.
1. Large companies are stable, and there are many business units to collaborate with different people across.
2. The backend system architecture is mature.
3. Managers look after their team members.
4. The work is diverse, covering desktop, mobile, and app web views.
5. You can work on e-commerce and marketing campaign development, providing opportunities to build communication skills with stakeholders.
6. Members are encouraged to learn from one another and attend conferences.
1. There are often strange or very urgent marketing requests.
2. The organization has a clear hierarchy and is not sufficiently flat.
3. Senior employees need to be promoted to management-level positions to have opportunities for career development.
4. Testing is entirely manual.
5. You need to be very good at preparing reports.
6. In addition to completing business requirements, you also have to improve legacy code.
Overall, being on the right team is very important. There is also a plan to implement automated testing. If you do not mind the commute to Zhonghe, it is a place worth considering.
None. Convenient transportation.
Noisy environment. Difficult to enter and exit. The computer system is extremely outdated, and the workspace is also extremely small.
The interview was for a telemarketing position.
I felt that the system was extremely... It seemed so desperate for money that it wanted me to sell my personal information first.
The interview form required a huge amount of information, including all of my previous employer’s information.
It also required my national ID card information, as well as consent for something called a certificate of good conduct.
I was also asked to provide the phone numbers of friends, family members, and colleagues, with the explanation that they would call to ask about me. It was essentially an investigation into my personal information.
When I said I would provide my ID card after being officially hired, the HR representative’s expression changed.
I am still employed and was also unable to provide information about my current company.
They immediately packed things up and told me to leave. There was no respect at all, and the environment was extremely noisy....
They also wanted me to exaggerate the effects of certain health supplements when introducing them, but the problem is that you simply cannot make claims like that.
1. Stable
2. Revenue from online channels is growing
3. You can see the company’s spokesperson at the year-end banquet (this year it’s Xian Ge).
1. The Waterfall development model
2. There are often issues connecting the front end and back end during acceptance testing. Requirements documents may be updated without being communicated to the R&D team, or requirements may even be changed by the PO on the day of a release.
3. Responsibilities are clearly divided, but incident tickets sometimes disappear without a trace when they reach certain teams.
4. The testing team lacks relevant technical expertise, reports issues indiscriminately, and asks R&D to investigate them.
5. R&D does not write unit tests. Many R&D team members think that once development is complete, they can simply wait for QE to report issues and then fix them.
Overall, this is still a worthwhile company to join, and the organization is being adjusted. However, getting onto the right team is very important.
There aren't really any special advantages.
If I had to name one, it would probably be that the company complies with the Labor Standards Act, so you don't have to worry about things like delayed salary payments.
The company's processes are very lengthy and slow. Even though I was referred for the interview by someone I knew and had already received a verbal offer, it took more than a full month just to go through the hiring and onboarding process—I'm not exaggerating!!!
The company's equipment is outdated, and the desktop computers crash extremely easily. Yet, because of information security concerns, you can't even use your own laptop at work!
The company's performance is poor: the online department is losing money, and the TV shopping department is also close to losing money, so don't expect any particularly good benefits!
On top of that, a bunch of old-timers who don't understand e-commerce occupy managerial positions, while many others have a civil-servant mentality and just coast along, waiting to collect their paychecks~
Because of all these factors, the atmosphere in the department is noticeably dull. Anyone who values their precious time in life should probably stay away!
1. Stable.
2. The system is large, so you can gain experience working with large-scale systems.
3. There are excellent backend engineers to learn from.
1. The CTO's messages are blocked, so it is impossible to know what is happening below.
2. Scrum is completely incorrect Scrum, and has become an excuse to exploit the engineering team.
3. The frontend manager lacks technical depth and does not understand architecture.
4. The company's mid-level managers have been sidelined; the Product Owner has the final say on everything.
5. Most of the app team uses web views.
6. The testing team is unable to perform automated testing or generate reports; everything is done manually.
7. The backend manager is highly capable, but after being sidelined, does not manage much.
I recommend this company for backend roles; I do not recommend it otherwise.