國泰世華商業銀行股份有限公司

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I had previously heard horror stories about Cathay’s IT department, so I came to the interview out of curiosity. During the process, the department manager asked about the technologies used at my previous company. If they did not use what he wanted, he would respond in a contemptuous tone and disparage my former company. Halfway through the interview, the department manager said he had to attend a meeting and simply left, leaving another person from a different department who was assisting with the interview to ask me to submit a report by a specified deadline in exchange for the opportunity to proceed to the next interview stage. Unexpectedly, the department already seemed quite dysfunctional before I had even set foot in the company. From the manager’s behavior, I could roughly tell what the atmosphere inside was like. Every company has its own reasons for choosing particular technologies; instead of understanding them, don’t reject them outright or feel superior simply because others do not use the technologies you want.

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When speaking with people in departments such as overseas management, you must not use a confident, firm tone. You have to be timid and overly deferential, lowering your own status as much as possible. You also must not explain or clarify work-related matters clearly, because this style of communication is what keeps people in that department from feeling afraid.

Speak timidly and position yourself as the most lowly person; this is the proper way to deal with people. That way, your supervisors and colleagues will like you instead of being so afraid of you that they want to set you up.

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When communicating, you absolutely have to lower yourself to the level of a lowly servant and use a cutesy, soft tone to call them “brother” or “sister.” If your speaking style involves clear pronunciation and diction, forceful wording, substantive content, and a confident tone like that of a scholar or news anchor, they will strongly dislike it because they will feel intimidated by you and accuse you of pressuring them. They will even criticize this kind of high-quality communication style, saying that people in their department would be frightened by it. Extremely difficult to deal with.

They provide a take-home assignment as a learning opportunity, and it’s pretty good for practicing.

The hiring manager had concerns about the reason for leaving my previous job and asked me to complete an assignment. After I submitted it, they didn’t provide any specific feedback, only saying that it didn’t meet their standards (did I get the answers wrong?)

Within half a month after I was rejected, I received another interview invitation. Does this mean their talent management isn’t well coordinated internally, or do different departments handle their own recruiting?

Little overtime

The seniority culture is strong. When you join, don’t call people “brother”; call them “sister.” Bowing and scraping will get you targeted.

Work assignments are only given to people in their own little circles. When the time comes, they’ll review your performance and tell you to leave.

Managers let senior cliques manipulate office politics. As long as you handle the politics well, nothing will happen even if you don’t do your work properly.

Conversely, if the cliques take a dislike to you, they’ll pin all kinds of blame on you. This is the first time I’ve encountered something so disgusting.

If you want to learn about workplace education, you can give it a try.

See whether it’s really as I said: if you maintain good relationships, there will be no problems.

The direct marketing department is very sexually promiscuous.

(1) The pressure is very high, so there are many affairs going on. There are already 3–4 couples in the surrounding area, all secretly fooling around with people from other teams behind their partners’ backs.

(2) People really do sleep with supervisors, clients, or people from other departments or organizations in exchange for resources.

(3) While others work hard and sleep around to survive, staying too clean in there will make life very difficult.

The basic benefits are all provided, and there are many additional allowances.

The year-end bonus depends on how good your relationship with your supervisor is. Workplace bullying is serious, especially from supervisors toward employees. If you cannot meet your performance targets, they will tell you to spend your own money to buy products, and will also intentionally or unintentionally say that otherwise you are not being a team player. In the final month, if you do not meet your performance target, forget about the year-end bonus—you will go directly from 3 to 2, completely disregarding your previous performance. After many people resign, employees are asked to refer experienced bank employees they know, but then they only offer them NT$28K. It is ridiculous—go see for yourself how much experienced bank employees earn elsewhere. Graduates can come here to gain experience, but staying long term is not the first choice. Performance requirements are becoming increasingly unreasonable; regardless of the branch size or number of customers, the performance targets are all the same.

Some people work very hard and hope the company will improve, putting the public interest first in their considerations.

Some people perform poorly at the company and keep trying to drive it into the ground.

I’ve thought about this for a long time, but I still have to say it.

A Taiwanese woman from Takming University of Science and Technology in a certain IT department is still browsing Tianyancha during work hours. All the posts here are negative reviews; I suspect one of those negative reviews was left by you. Ugly on the outside and ugly at heart—you really are very unattractive.

Suitable for coasting toward retirement in a military-style culture, with decent company group insurance and an annual travel allowance of NT$10,000. There are many external training resources (though it also depends on whether the company lets you attend). The annual salary is effectively 16 months’ pay (just take HR’s claim of 18 months with a grain of salt). Compensation is based on educational qualifications and does not place much emphasis on experience.

There are so many bullying incidents that have driven employees to seek psychiatric care that the company has to provide employees with EAP counseling services. The culture is highly bureaucratic, and you need to know how to read the room. Internal infighting is severe. There are many bizarre and incompetent managers; instead of dealing with them, the company just keeps hiring more people. Many long-serving employees pass tasks off to others, resulting in low administrative efficiency.

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1. Infighting among employees

2. A culture of currying favor with supervisors

3. Unequal distribution of resources among departments

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1. Infighting among employees

2. A culture of currying favor with supervisors

3. Unequal distribution of resources among business units

Withdrawals are convenient, and that's about it.

There is far too much that needs improvement.

1. There is too much infighting within the branch, along with officials protecting one another.

2. Long-serving employees who have done their jobs for years are just waiting to retire, holding a large amount of resources and throwing their weight around because of their seniority.

3. Employees are forced to transfer into financial advisory roles despite knowing nothing, treating customers entirely like guinea pigs in experiments and leaving them with heavy losses.

4. Branch managers and financial advisors demand far too many kickbacks, causing certain financial advisors to monopolize resources and secretly give kickbacks to branch managers.

5. Branch managers have no backbone and handle customer complaints timidly.

1. Beautiful office

2. A place to coast toward retirement

3. Benefits such as group insurance, various subsidies, and so on

1. The senior management in the Information Technology Department changes too frequently (every 1–2 years). Each change is followed by a reshuffling of senior management, while work priorities and the promotion system are also adjusted accordingly.

2. Severe factional infighting.

3. Managers have too much power. If you are not careful, do not know how to curry favor, and do not put on a good show at year-end, you may not receive the six-month bonus.

4. The six-month year-end bonus guaranteed by HR is not paid every year. As a conservative estimate, it is better to calculate based on a four-month year-end bonus.

5. There are many employees who pull rank and push their work onto others. Administrative efficiency is low; “one team” is just a slogan.

6. The hierarchy is overly rigid; working here is no different from serving in the military.

7. The promotion system is unfair. Meeting the performance requirements does not mean you can be promoted on your own; you can only be promoted if your manager nominates you. When McKinsey was brought in previously, employees could nominate themselves for promotion, but after McKinsey left, the company culture reverted to the old Cathay Life way.

8. Those considering joining should think twice. The prerequisite for staying here until retirement is being able to accept this culture of constant infighting. People who simply want to work without engaging in office politics will only find that the more work they do, the more uncertain their performance rating becomes.

The air conditioning is very strong, and the supervisor answers questions whenever there are any issues.

The résumé I submitted on the job bank did not say that I wanted to work in banking, yet I received a call from someone claiming to be from the Jianguo Branch of Cathay United Bank asking me to come for an interview. They said they were hiring an internal administrative staff member. I said, “Sure, but I don’t have any relevant certifications,” and they still said OK. After searching online, I found that it seemed to be a case of the direct marketing department using a misleading job title to recruit people. Sure enough, it was a telemarketing job—calling people to ask whether they wanted a loan. = =

The base salary is 22K, plus performance bonuses. You apparently have to bring in around three million (or was it five million?) per month to meet the target, and only anything above that qualifies for a bonus.

I feel they could simply state during the phone call that it was the direct marketing department. There’s no need to recruit people in such an inefficient and misleading way.