信昌電子陶瓷股份有限公司

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Indirect staff engineer—consider the job level. I personally am under 40 (graduated from a private university, with about 3–4 years of relevant experience).

The position is under a responsibility system, with no overtime pay, although overtime is not often necessary. The laptops provided are very, very old—around 2017 models—and I don't know how many previous users they have had. There are few assignments, and account applications are extremely slow. The email system was developed by the group itself and is very difficult to use, unlike regular Outlook—extremely difficult to use.

If you want to join the 生X department, you need to be able to tolerate an emotional manager and be good at being left to fend for yourself. People who can work without guidance are very suitable.

You often need to go down to the production line in person. The work itself is not complicated; the main thing is being able to tolerate the manager. Please think carefully.

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To get straight to the point:

Indirect staff (various engineers): Those without experience and with a master's degree will not earn over 40K; even experienced candidates need “highly relevant experience.” Having connections inside the company makes a difference. Except for equipment staff, who can claim overtime pay, all other positions can only claim compensatory leave; everyone is on a responsibility-based system. The package is roughly 13–14 months of salary, plus gift vouchers worth one or two thousand dollars for the three major holidays and birthdays. Raises are rare, and even when there is one, it is usually only a few hundred dollars. Promotions bring a relatively larger increase. Management responsibilities come with a supervisor allowance, and sufficiently high grades come with a job-grade allowance. New hires in process and R&D must prepare a report over three months, then present it to the general manager. The topic is not necessarily determined by the supervisor. This is considered part of the probationary period; reportedly, if the presentation is poor or the general manager does not like you, you will simply be thanked and never contacted again.

Direct staff (operators): Basic pay starts at the minimum wage, and people rely on overtime to make ends meet. Everyone works a three-days-on, one-day-off schedule. About half the workers are Filipino migrant workers. On the day shift, you have to work only four days off per month to have a chance of exceeding 50K; on the night shift, it is easy to exceed that, approaching 60K. The year-end bonus is uncertain: anywhere from one to three months, or possibly nothing, depending on that year's operating results. Duties depend on the station and are the same on day and night shifts. Promotion generally tops out at station leader. If a supervisor appreciates you, you may have a chance to transfer to assistant engineer. The night shift is recommended because it is very relaxed at night, without a bunch of supervisors suddenly assigning meaningless tasks. Employees from other counties originally received company dormitories, with no monthly rent but utilities paid by the employee. However, it is said that to save money, the company changed this to a monthly subsidy of 3,000 and stopped providing dormitories.

The following is a strategy guide.

Indirect staff:

The company's management team has been replaced once, and all the old hands have been removed. Those in charge came from a certain Company H. They like forming cliques; if you want an easy time, you need to build good relationships with these people. If you do, browsing online shopping sites, Facebook, and group-buying pages, chatting about where to travel on weekends, or having afternoon tea in the office will not get you in trouble. People who are solitary, quiet, dislike socializing with others, or do not participate in activities outside work will be considered difficult to get along with. Even looking at messages or checking email on your phone will prompt comments that you are not serious about work or create a poor impression. This parachuted-in group from H has little technical ability. Their main talent is telling you to try things based on their past experience and hearsay. If you seriously investigate the science behind something, they cannot explain it at all; they will only tell you to try it. Being able to make up a story while looking at diagrams is enough.

Supervisor A: Loves holding meaningless meetings and going on at length without making any real point, only causing you to work past quitting time. Reportedly rose through the ranks from a junior engineering position and is responsible for the back-end process. Likes assigning direct staff to do tasks for him. When problems arise, he often directly changes operating conditions based on his past experience as an engineer or comes up with strange ideas for testing. If the test works and the problem is solved, so be it; if something goes wrong, he immediately keeps quiet and tells the engineers to clean up the mess. No matter how stupid his requested task looks, you absolutely must not question him, or you will only create a lot of pointless tests, waste time, and lengthen meetings. If you are responsible for a process station related to electricity, quitting directly is recommended. He loves backseat driving; you are just a shit shoveler, with little future prospects.

Supervisor B: Seems unfamiliar with production-line operations and disconnected from the factory. Does not consider the actual conditions on the production line. The things he develops or designs have many problems, which he then leaves unattended on the production line for several days. In meetings, he only says that none of these problems occurred during his testing phase. He lets the engineers reporting to him be chewed out by other supervisors without saying a word, yet when called on by upper management, he can speak eloquently, as if those problems were minor. It is unclear whether he really knows what he is doing or is merely pretending.

Supervisor C: During meetings, he likes asking, “So, XX department, what are your thoughts?” or “XX department, how do you think this should be handled?” to shift responsibility, as though everything were another unit's problem and therefore ours to deal with. If he is dissatisfied with or dislikes the response, he will keep saying “Mm-hmm, mm-hmm” and humming, as if extremely impatient. Asking him questions only gets you inefficient or idiotic answers, and the matter still has to be handled by other units. He loves boasting about his experience at his previous company, but when a product fails, he changes his story and says he was not familiar with the project and never actually handled it. Reportedly, there have been instances of making engineers work until midnight and then report normally the next day, as well as forcing engineers to come to the company on weekends when workloads surged. He often changes operating conditions back and forth, increasing the burden on line operators. The same problems recur repeatedly, with a different excuse every time. He likes demanding that the production line accommodate the engineers under him. If the yield is truly too poor, he will even loosen the standards himself so products can ship. His likes and dislikes toward engineers are obvious. Even if you are from a different department, if he dislikes you, he will try every possible way to set traps and get rid of you; even small mistakes will be magnified. Conversely, anything done wrong by people he trusts will be minimized, with major issues made minor and minor issues made to disappear.

Supervisor D: Easily swayed; when working under him, being good at talking is more important than being good at doing the work, and he cannot resist flattery. He will automatically shorten new-hire training, hoping new employees can work independently after just two days. He frequently changes employees' assigned stations, sending people wherever staffing is tight and returning them to their original stations once the need is met. He has little ability for long-term planning and simply robs Peter to pay Paul. If you work overtime too few times, he will secretly deduct your production bonus. If you happen to encounter him, he will keep nagging that since you never come in for overtime, you might as well quit. If you need bereavement leave, remember to notify him in advance; otherwise, he will block your request and you will be unable to take it.

Procurement department: The company's procurement supervisor is very conscientious and wants to save every penny. He loves digging into details and asking questions, including aggressively asking about things not listed in the specifications, such as the composition of materials or why equipment was designed that way. The supplier varies each time even for the same item. It is said that there have been cases where, to save money, he changed suppliers without notifying the factory, resulting in quality problems, as well as cases where the factory nearly ran out of materials because price negotiations could not be settled.

Facilities department: Rather than a facilities department, it is more like an outsourced-contractor supervision department. They never have a clear grasp of the water and electrical layouts. Certain work areas frequently leak or lose power, and the outsourced contractor is different every time. Even “supervision” merely means bringing people into the factory and issuing badges; normally, no one knows where they have gone. Sometimes an outsourced contractor accidentally touches a switch or something and cuts off the water or power. They only patch whatever is missing and do no planning whatsoever. The air conditioning in work areas is either so strong that it is freezing or too weak and unbearably hot. Work areas with furnaces often have strange smells, and temperature and humidity control is highly unstable.

Direct staff:

The junior engineers are generally quite easy to get along with. Besides work matters, they occasionally chat. Sometimes you need to help them with tasks. Some engineers love chatting on the production line, while others barely talk and just do their own work or scroll on their phones. Some disappear for the entire day; if there is a problem, they simply give instructions over the phone. The Filipino coworkers, regardless of gender, are also quite nice and easy to get along with. Some have already been trained by veteran workers to speak and understand Chinese. At work, just follow the SOP. If you are unsure, ask the station leader or group leader on the line. You can ask an engineer too. If there is no one to ask, simply set it aside and do not touch it; otherwise, they may say that you failed to follow the SOP and deduct money if there is a problem with the product. This is a way to protect yourself. Breaks are one hour regardless of shift. The day shift provides lunch and dinner, with the cost deducted from your salary. Most stations require standing all day; a small number allow you to sit. Some stations strictly control non-work time: even going to the restroom or getting water must be recorded precisely down to the minute and second. Working on holidays is somewhat more relaxed; sometimes coworkers organize group orders for outside food or drinks. You can do so on weekdays too, but if a supervisor sees it, they will keep nagging you. When the workload is heavy, management will use the threat of withholding the production bonus to force you to come to work on your days off.

Speaking of the Taoyuan plant of E-Hsin Chang Electronic Ceramics, the on-site base salary is extremely low. The base salary + perfect-attendance bonus + transportation allowance + meal allowance totals 22,009, excluding the environmental allowance (paid according to the department) and work bonus (1,000). Overtime is calculated using 1.33 and 1.66 multipliers. (When asking HR, they seemed to deliberately avoid answering why the overtime calculation method under the One Fixed Day Off and One Flexible Rest Day policy was not used.)

For administrative office staff, there is no overtime pay, only compensatory leave, and even that depends on whether your supervisor approves it.

When coming in to work overtime on holidays, a 30-minute break is deducted regardless of whether you actually eat lunch.

There is a high turnover rate among the people in commonly advertised positions. Staying for more than 1.5 years can be considered senior.

Supervisors are very good at controlling time and often assign tasks right before the end of the workday, requiring them to be completed immediately.

Some supervisors have extremely poor emotional intelligence and take out their frustrations on subordinates from time to time.

P.S. You have to pay a monthly fee to park inside the facility. However, if you sneak in and park without paying, no one there will do anything about it. Don't be a sucker and pay the NT$300 monthly parking fee.