宏正自動科技股份有限公司

Pros? I guess I managed to trick them into giving me another after-hours interview opportunity, hehe!

There were two managers in the interview. When they heard that I had already received an offer from another company with a monthly salary NT$10,000 higher, they found it unbelievable and even asked which company it was. Asking questions like that made me feel that they lacked perspective. The senior manager even pressed me further, asking: If ACME offered a salary higher than my current one, and my current company offered to match it, how would I choose? I would come out for an interview because there was a problem with my current company's compensation system—that's why I was exploring other opportunities. I told the senior manager that my current company would not match the offer, but he continued to ask: If they did, which would you choose? Later, a senior family member said that ACME's salary was not better than that of my current company and that it would be difficult for them to offer a high salary. In any case, I had only gone to chat after work, so I didn't lose anything!

There were two interview stages. The first involved a basic aptitude test and situational simulation questions. The simulation questions and answers were in English.

Overall, the difficulty was not high, and the interview manager was a decent person.

1. After the second interview, HR provided a verbal offer and discussed the salary, saying that once the department vice president completed the approval, they could issue me an offer.

2. There was no update for several weeks. When I followed up, HR said that the vice president was abroad and unable to approve it, so I had to wait until the vice president returned.

3. A few weeks later, the explanation changed: the vice president had concerns about the candidate and asked me to wait longer.

4. During the process, I followed up about once every two weeks. HR only said they did not know and that the hiring manager had not provided them with any updates. The hiring manager only said that senior management had not yet made a decision and that they could not tell me anything.

5. More than two months after the second interview, I emailed again to ask about the status. HR replied immediately that the company did not intend to hire me.

I think anyone who has been working for more than a day knows that, before receiving a formal offer, none of the verbal information counts as final. However, the constantly changing explanations and prolonged delays throughout this company's communication process were truly baffling.

The hardware extension cable department has the potential to become one of the company’s core product lines in the future. The department has a good atmosphere, few miscellaneous tasks, and employees leave work on time.

The requirements are relatively high, and the turnover rate is not particularly high.

The company places great importance on software, and software-related departments can obtain a great deal of internal resources and influence. There is not much overtime, and overtime is paid.

The hardware department has a good internal atmosphere. It can be observed that after work, most engineers will “voluntarily stay behind” to conduct research and improve their competitiveness. The company also has a sound performance evaluation system that eliminates engineers who neglect their own growth.

I am very grateful that the company is willing to provide its facilities for HW to use after work, avoiding project delays caused by engineers’ insufficient capabilities.

The hardware department has relatively fewer resources it can secure, while the department head likes to take on too much, resulting in a wide range of complicated matters to handle.

There are essentially two factions within the department. Those who choose the right side are generally very stable, and project development is less likely to be obstructed by senior management.

Over the past two years, many engineers and section-level managers who chose the wrong side have resigned because they were unable to adapt to the company culture.

The company’s overall benefits are good, and its profitability is stable. The location is excellent—right across from the train station—which is very convenient for commuters.

During the interview, it sounded as if the organization were very large. After joining, I discovered that the department is always short-staffed. “We’re short-staffed” is the manager’s perennial excuse for the department’s poor performance.

The manager loves pretending to understand things they don’t and gets defensive when challenged. They can never give concrete suggestions, yet are very good at shifting blame; somehow, every mistake is the employees’ fault. They only nitpick employees over trivial mistakes, while not knowing anything themselves. What they say often contradicts their own previous statements—today it’s A, tomorrow it’s B. They only know how to berate people below them for poor schedule management, when in fact they themselves are the main cause of the project delays!

The company is actually quite good to its employees, but the manager of this department is unquestionably one of the company’s biggest shortcomings!

All the basic employee benefits that should be provided are available. Overall, they’re pretty good.

The company is exceptionally good at shirking responsibility and passing the blame. It’s bad enough when they shift responsibility for work-related matters—although that’s something you can encounter at other companies too—but at this company, they even push things that have nothing to do with your work onto you. At the beginning of this year, the company was hit by ransomware, which encrypted the files on many computers. While dealing with it, they inspected everyone’s computers. When they saw that the Trend Micro antivirus software on your computer had not automatically updated to the latest version, they immediately questioned and scolded you, saying, “Why didn’t your antivirus software update automatically?” (That was the supervisor questioning me.) Why don’t you ask Trend Micro instead of coming to ask me? How could I possibly know how their software was designed?? It was really bizarre—the first time I had encountered something like this.

The thing the supervisor required you to complete was originally a, but the following week, after you finished a and reported it to them, they would tell you that what they had originally asked you to complete was b, and then scold you. Sometimes they pretend to understand things, but what they say is wrong.

All the basic employee benefits that should be provided are available, so it’s fairly good.

The company is exceptionally good at shirking responsibility and assigning blame. It’s one thing to push work-related responsibilities onto you—this is unavoidable at other companies as well—but this company even assigns things to you that have nothing to do with your work. At the beginning of this year, the company was hit by ransomware, encrypting files on many computers. While dealing with it, they inspected everyone’s computers. When they saw that the Trend Micro antivirus software on your computer had not automatically updated to the latest version, they immediately questioned and scolded you, saying, “Why didn’t your antivirus software update automatically?” (That was the supervisor questioning me.) Why didn’t you ask Trend Micro instead of coming to ask me? How could I possibly know how their software was designed?? This was really bizarre—the first time I had encountered anything like it.

The item the supervisor required you to complete was originally A for that week, but by the following week, after you finished A and reported it to him, he would tell you that what you were supposed to complete in the first place was B, and then scold you. Sometimes they pretend to understand things, but what they say is wrong.

Many specialized knowledge-based courses, but these courses should have been canceled too!!

XX engineers, whatever you do, don’t join this company. Senior employees will take advantage of you until you’re overwhelmed. Then the managers won’t review your drawings; when something goes wrong, they make the engineer shoulder the blame. You’re also expected to constantly produce research, but they won’t provide anything for reference. As for patents, if you’re not sufficiently familiar with the company’s products, it will be very difficult to get started—just wait for your performance evaluation to be wrecked!! Maybe they’ll be nice to you when you first join, but they keep telling you not to ask others about their salaries. I don’t know what they’re afraid of.

As for overtime pay, the explanation during the interview is very vague. Once you join, you find out that there actually isn’t any, although in practice they make it sound as if there is! But if no one else dares to apply for it, do you dare? If you don’t obey, just wait for your performance evaluation to be wrecked too!!

The company’s assembly process is extremely lousy. Many validations are never run, and the process is a complete mess. Then, when problems arise, we can’t change much because everything has already been acknowledged. Later, they modify some bizarre inspections, forcing engineers to perform many extremely strange design validations, just to give the company an explanation. It’s incredibly brainless! There were basically no design specifications from the start. There are some, but they’re essentially freestyle. If you stay long enough, your professional skills will genuinely deteriorate—I’m not kidding!

On top of that, engineers in this position also have to do a bunch of procurement work, because the head of procurement is the boss’s wife. I won’t get into the backstory of how that came about, but it makes the engineers anything but engineers!

As for senior employees taking advantage of others, the issue is that the manager doesn’t dare ask them to do anything, because the senior employee has more seniority than the manager. So if one of your colleagues takes a long vacation or something, you’re basically doing the work of two people by yourself...

1. No business travel; the factory is right next door.

2. The company provides cafeteria-style lunch.

1. During the interview, they said overtime pay was provided, but after joining I discovered that was a lie. The company simply does not pay overtime. More accurately, the company uses performance evaluations as a threat so that everyone is afraid to report overtime, creating a culture in which employees appear to work overtime voluntarily. They even have the audacity to claim that the company complies with the Labor Standards Act by paying overtime, and that employees simply choose not to report it. Then everyone is pressured to work overtime every day; the extra hours are essentially donated to the company. Even when there is a legitimate reason to report overtime, it can only be exchanged for compensatory leave, not money. Even if you insist on receiving payment, the overtime pay will merely be deducted from your performance bonus, meaning your annual salary remains unchanged.

2. The company has an absurd number of document procedures and trivial administrative tasks—more than the actual projects. A great deal of time and energy is wasted handling meaningless paperwork and processes.

3. Cost-cutting is the most important factor in project development. They cut costs so aggressively that it is impossible to make anything good. Components must be shared across many product models because the owner's wife is head of purchasing, so purchasing has the final say in many matters. Professionals are forced to follow the lead of a group of nonprofessionals, and this has also produced several extremely arrogant, self-important veteran buyers.

4. The company is genuinely very profitable, with product gross margins of around 59% to 60%, but it is unwilling to invest in its own employees or purchase new equipment. As a result, the equipment is seriously inadequate, and much of it is very old—some of it more than 20 years old. The R&D and testing teams spend their days fighting over equipment and waste a great deal of time.

5. Many of the company's policies are astonishingly unreasonable, and its perspective is extremely short-sighted. It is a company with a persecution complex, constantly guarding against the possibility that its own employees might steal company data. There is no trust whatsoever between employees and the company. Even information that is not particularly confidential cannot be discussed with vendors. Personal USB drives, portable hard drives, tablets, and laptops are not allowed inside the company. The company also insists on using free software rather than paying small amounts for proper tools, making it difficult to get anything done.

6. There is a very strange phenomenon: the higher-paid departments seem to have it easier and also leave work earlier. Examples include IC, the Innovation Research team, and Application Platform Development. The IC team is even consistently the first to line up for lunch every day; sometimes they can be seen lining up at the cafeteria as early as 11:50. The department manager also leaves promptly at 5:30 every day.

7. The company was plagued by intense internal power struggles a few years ago, and a large number of people left. Several years ago, the current vice president of R&D cut the heads of many departments and then installed his own people, so many department managers were parachuted in and have little sense of shared history or solidarity with the employees.

8. Many other unfair factors have caused the company's R&D turnover rate to be high. Most of those who could not accept it have already left. The employees remaining are generally either very senior or very inexperienced. The senior employees are those who endured the previous period of internal conflict, while many other R&D staff are simply biding their time and waiting to change jobs. However, people are not leaving in one major wave; they are leaving gradually, one by one.

None

The software manager called to ask whether I was interested in an interview. During the call, I had already stated that I write Android apps.

The test on the day of the interview was in C/C++. I confirmed twice with HR Frank, and Frank mentioned that I could answer in Java, but most of the questions involved structure pointers (fill in the blanks in the code). If someone has never studied them, how could they even understand how to answer in Java?

Those who want to go should take note: please prepare C/C++ for the test.

Also, remember to do the personality test properly~~It should account for a large proportion of the evaluation reference value XD