美商磊新科技有限公司台灣分公司

A New Taipei City government–certified illegal employer—does that count? :)

Feel free to share a screenshot of this company’s labor inspection penalty: https://imgur.com/a/gVmmx9S .

(Image source: New Taipei City Labor Cloud illegal employer search page; https://ilabor.ntpc.gov.tw/cloud/Violate )

I really can’t be bothered to type half a word for this lousy company, but considering how much they seem to be asking to be cursed out, there’s no need to be polite!

Putting everything else aside, everyone should be able to see—and guess—what’s going on with this company changing project assistants every three months. Also, they have already been fined for violating the Labor Standards Act for over half a year, yet they still have not legally paid the outstanding overtime wages. I seriously have to wonder: did this company come to Taiwan thinking Taiwanese workers are easy to bully??????!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, okay then—the court it is! See you there! Good luck! With that legally ignorant new manager of yours, you'll need it!!!:)

If you want to be worked to death and angered to death, go ahead—you’ll get your wish nine times out of ten! Unless you’re so stupid that you make it impossible!

I honestly don’t know where to begin commenting, because what leaves me speechless is that the review from two years ago is almost exactly what I’m about to say now! This company has made absolutely no progress! The only difference is that the company’s current manager not only has ideas that violate the Labor Standards Act, but has no understanding of it whatsoever. Unless you pressure them with the government or a lawsuit, they will completely disregard their employees. (This company has currently been formally sanctioned by the New Taipei City Government for violating the Employment Service Act, and also came close to crossing the red line under the Labor Standards Act—who knows what other laws they have violated.) The manager has absolutely no understanding of either management or the law and relies on the company’s internal PM to make every decision. Everything is completely absurd. (Just one example: What kind of genius asks whether DTP work requires certified Adobe Creative Suite software?! It’s so ridiculous you can only laugh and cry!) I really don’t know whether this person was hired because they’re too capable or because they’re completely incapable! And the PM doesn’t know how to manage people either, constantly filing reports against the manager who interviewed and hired them. Wow—what exactly is your success based on? It’s truly unbelievable.

This company is generously called a technology company (which is strange—how can it call itself a technology company when it has absolutely no technology R&D capability?!), but judging by the talent and headcount, it probably can’t even handle local marketing. If a foreign startup wanted to expand into Taiwan today, in my view this company simply wouldn’t have the ability to do it. It is nominally the Taipei branch, but in reality it is merely a backup office for the San Diego headquarters and Madrid branch. Whatever those two offices tell it to do, it can only obediently accept, but no one serves as backup for the Taipei office. When the Taipei PM takes annual leave, they still carry their computer around and remain on standby in case something goes wrong.

Just like the review from two years ago, they are still exploiting employees! Project coordinators (I’m not saying it’s only the poor PCs who are exploited!) have to work endless overtime coordinating with overseas translators until they are exhausted, and the company doesn’t even proactively pay overtime. What the hell—WTF! As for the so-called promotion opportunities, just look at the contracts and the office’s operating budget and you’ll know there’s no hope. The entire office is dirt poor. Their software policy says freeware cannot be used, yet their own office software was originally OpenOffice and 7-Zip, and some computers don’t even have SDL or Adobe CS installed! If you happen to—oh, I’m not saying they think new hires are easy to bully and therefore do this, so don’t misunderstand—get assigned one of these computers, you can only work by remotely connecting to the U.S. headquarters. Just imagine what it’s like to use a terrible computer to remotely run SDL and Chrome while also running a bunch of specialized programs. I can’t be bothered to curse about it! Oh, and don’t bother asking your supervisors or their superiors for anything, because they won’t pay any attention to you! Then they still dare to demand high-efficiency work from employees. F***—if I just watched you continue harming people like this, would I even be human!? The hardware and operating systems are also unbelievably terrible. What era is this—why are they still using Windows 7? If a security vulnerability ever appears in Windows 7 and hackers threaten them, no one will be able to save them. The computer towers are so old they’re harder to use than my phone. (Of course, I use a Samsung flagship, haha, sorry—I may actually be richer than your manager! I was wrong to join with the intention of learning project coordination and let you exploit me!) You pay such a miserable salary while demanding high-efficiency work with inadequate equipment. I advise this company that if it intends to continue operating this way, it should stop recruiting people to go in and be harmed and have their moral boundaries forcibly violated. The two of you—a manager and a PM—can just keep singing each other’s praises and do whatever you want. (Oh, I’m not saying you two are so close that if someone accidentally provokes either one of you, you’ll join forces to bully them, so don’t misunderstand.) Just handle things yourselves!

As for the annual leave they love emphasizing, you’ll understand once you join: the workload is so heavy that even if you want to leave, you can’t get away. And that company also has a PM with an unbelievably terrible temper. If they tell you to take on work, would you dare leave??? They brought you in to exploit you. This is the first time I’ve seen a PC also being responsible for proofreading and revising drafts, and then having to ‘wait’ several hours at night for translators in other time zones to respond. And they still don’t proactively pay overtime. Go drink northwest wind, you lousy company!!!

Lei Xin, if you’ve got the guts, sue me. If you still think I’m easy to bully, that is! Let me tell you first: my body has not yet fully recovered, but all the evidence is in the hands of my lawyer and notary. Once I’m fully recovered, I’ll see how sincere you are and decide whether to fight back. I’m completely confident that if you dare to make the first move, you’ll receive an even harsher punishment and end up utterly miserable. Ah, I almost forgot—you’re so ignorant that you don’t know what to fear, so go ahead and come at me!! I only decided to speak up and curse you a few times because I don’t want you to harm anyone else. But if you’ve got the guts, come fight it out. Don’t forget: only if you sue first can I ask the judge to impose a harsher punishment, you bunch of ___!

N/A (Honestly, I can't think of any.)

1. Low pay and heavy workload

To everyone considering interviewing, I urge you to think it through carefully! This company’s low pay and heavy workload have long been common knowledge in the industry, but I still really wonder where they get the nerve to issue recruitment notices every three months. Once you join the company, you’ll find that there is basically no smooth path to promotion. The company is simply too small: if there isn’t an open position, there won’t be an opportunity. Expansion? You’re dreaming! The owner of this company is notorious for being stingy in the United States. The current manager of the Taipei office has a finance background and studied abroad, yet never stayed overseas. Not only is this person unfamiliar with management, but they also know nothing about the Labor Standards Act or related regulations, and have all kinds of ideas and practices that violate the law. But as our predecessors have said, they never think the problem is theirs and only criticize employees.

2. Senior title, junior-level pay

As mentioned above, this is blatantly an exploitative company. If you enjoy doing several times the workload of a position advertised by an ordinary company while your title never changes and your salary is only about half—or even less—than what other companies pay for the same position, then you are very, very welcome here!

3. High turnover and no path to promotion

As stated in the first point, this company is too small and has too little funding. Even if it actually gets new clients, all you’ll get is more work; there is absolutely no chance for promotion or a raise. At present, the project coordinator position is filled by recent graduates, and people are casually fired for political reasons. The company treats Taiwan’s labor market like a cheap toy. Anyone with a strong tolerance for servility will be very, very well suited to this job!

4. Small scale, lots of office politics

Whether this company wants to employ you or not depends entirely on its whims. They will tell you to leave immediately if they are dissatisfied with you after your probationary period, but in reality it is simply because you failed to win their favor or crossed some so-called hidden red line. In any case, they have thousands of substitutes for you and simply don’t care.

5. Insufficient resources and intense work pressure

This company cannot provide everyone with the same resources, yet believes that as long as you can find alternative solutions, your work should still meet its targets. This has caused some people to leave because they could not tolerate it. However, the company continues to deceive itself. I would not be surprised if someone at the management level stepped forward to defend the company by claiming that no such situation exists. When that happens, I will do everything I can to respond—I certainly won’t let them down.

This company is completely disorganized, and no one from the boss down to the managers knows how to manage. The company’s and managers’ approach to staffing is low pay and a heavy workload. They set KPIs, but the key factor managers use to judge whether employees are working seriously is apparently whether employees are willing to work overtime and whether they do so. The current manager of the Taipei office is a foreign national who has all sorts of ideas that violate the Labor Standards Act. This manager is also extremely poor at managing the team/employees: if he likes you, he will be tolerant of all kinds of things; if he does not like you, no matter what reasonable opinions you put forward, he will only act like an NPC saying NO. If you want to set a new low for your impression of Spanish people, you are very, very welcome!