偉博科技股份有限公司

The interviewer in charge seemed pretty good.

At the beginning, the receptionist led me to an office separated from the lobby by transparent glass, where I filled out some basic information and answered some questions involving language logic (if p then q <--> if not q then not p). (I had prepared my own résumé.)

Then there was a joint interview with the probability interviewer, HR, and the receptionist (lol). First, they asked me to introduce myself, but I started directly with my work experience in relevant fields and explained what I had done. Since I have gone through this process many times, I used organized documents that the interviewers could flip through directly, occasionally drawing diagrams or explaining certain parts with a whiteboard marker.

The probability interviewer was a guy with an explosive hairstyle and clear language-based logic, so he correctly grasped my points of entry throughout my explanations (I was quite satisfied with that). At one point, he seemed to raise questions about parts of documents I had previously written that were circulating in the industry but that he did not understand. I explained the thinking behind my approach at the time (but I couldn’t figure out what the problem he mentioned was; in retrospect, just as the questions tested language logic, it was the interviewer’s way of thinking, while the “language logic” in my document was somewhat ambiguous).

After about 40–50 minutes, the interviewer left for a meeting. HR then began talking to me. She immediately said that I did not understand the gaming industry, and that there were many job seekers at this time, some of whom had not yet received their year-end bonuses or severance pay. She then said that many foreign companies came to Taiwan to establish offices because Taiwanese engineers were capable and inexpensive, but that these foreign companies had disrupted market salary levels by offering too much. I knew she was referring to the salary I had written down (but I have already worked at three companies and interviewed with more than a dozen; the key decision-makers had already told me the market salary for this type of position. I had accurately estimated my market salary, especially since documents I wrote were still being circulated throughout this industry. If I went to a foreign company, I would ask for at least NT$100,000-plus.)

She then implied that the salary would not be very good (I guessed their usual upper limit was around NT$60,000; they might adjust it up to NT$70,000 to accommodate me, but that would still be below my expectations). However, she said the boss would not treat employees unfairly, without explaining what “not treating employees unfairly” meant. There was also no guaranteed year-end bonus (which was really speechless, so I could basically only assume the year-end bonus was zero), and the boss would decide bonuses based on each employee’s performance.

What HR said to me felt like she was saying: There are lots of job seekers in the market right now. Job seekers are here to “beg us” to give them work; if you have a job and money, you should be grateful. We are just picking someone useful, and you still dare to ask for a high salary? Then please leave.

They could not directly assess an applicant’s abilities, style, or potential (isn’t that something the company should be capable of doing?), nor could they provide a transparent compensation package. They could only have the boss, the person in charge, and perhaps HR, who was close to the boss, judge who was more useful and give that person a little more money. My intuition was that this kind of evaluation ability and bonus system would only lead to “a company culture centered on acting.” Thinking about it, I already knew what to expect.

If the salary is not transparent, there is no need to waste time going to the interview. The mentality of ordinary Taiwanese companies rumored about in tech circles—using bonuses to lure people while refusing to clearly state the amount—is exactly what this company is like. I only came to take a look because it was very close to where I currently rent.