Sources and scope
This page collects workplace experiences, questions and discussions submitted by users. Dates shown are submission dates, not periods of employment. Individual reports do not describe the entire company.
Read the community guidelinesThe department operates like a small company: one engineer has to discuss features with clients, plan the architecture, code, and test; you must always be prepared to be blamed for problems; development timelines are often unusually short.
You can develop many abilities that are not traditionally considered part of an engineer’s role, as well as quick thinking and workplace political skills.
Finally, overtime is paid (which is also an advantage because it is legally required in Taiwan).
Industrial Control Business Group
Department related to plastic injection molding machines
No version control
No code reviews
No PM
No software testers or QA
The people above only make grand pronouncements and completely fail to understand software. The only thing they know how to do is scold you when you encounter difficulties, saying, “You can’t even do something this simple,” without proposing any feasible solution. I’ve heard that the most advanced operating system is DOS, and they have brilliant ideas such as wanting to use customers’ decommissioned office computers as cloud servers.
There are several people in the company who can’t do anything. The approach taken by management is to tell you to “assist” them, which in practice means doing their work for them. However, your pay does not increase as a result. If you do not “assist,” they scold you for why the matter still has not been resolved, while the person who caused the problem is not reprimanded.
They let senior employees act entitled, verbally abuse other colleagues, shirk responsibility, and even attack their character. When this is reported to management, they do nothing and only tell you to ignore the person.
For many issues, even after explanations and evidence have been provided in advance, they simply do nothing and keep pushing the matter off until something goes wrong. Then they call everyone to a meeting, claiming that they need to address a major incident threatening the customer’s order. Afterwards, however, they do not hold the person responsible for the problem accountable, allowing the same thing to happen again and again.
They make no judgment whatsoever about whether a customer’s demands are reasonable, blindly telling engineers to find a way. They do not assess or listen to opinions even when many proposed approaches are infeasible or have consequences. They insist on doing things first and discussing them later, because in the end it is “just” the engineer’s job to deal with it: they have absolutely no intention of taking responsibility. Any mistakes are the engineer’s fault.
If you are considering joining as an engineer, please carefully consider whether you are an ordinary person capable of making mistakes, or an engineer with abilities in programming beyond your superiors’ foresight and with incomparable skill.