美麥行銷股份有限公司

None

Your company sent an interview invitation through 104, then suddenly disappeared halfway through. Very irresponsible.

- Excellent hardware and equipment

There are dedicated staff who clean the restrooms, and around October the restroom sinks start providing hot water. The office uses BERMUDA ovens and microwaves, and the bread that comes out is incredibly delicious—so good you can’t stop eating it. There is also a coffee machine and a milk frother (but you need to bring your own milk; there is a supermarket downstairs in Taipei 101 where you can go buy some during work hours).

- An annual L’Oréal employee sale at Taipei 101

This may not entirely count as a company benefit, but it is only available because the company is in Taipei 101. Both L’Oréal Group’s luxury and affordable brands are available for purchase (during those two days, people usually have no interest in working).

- A high degree of freedom

The boss is often not in the office or keeps themself shut in their office, so usually no one monitors what you are doing (HR may be a little more troublesome).

- The company always uses official accounts for external communication

When adding clients to groups, they do not use your personal account; instead, they add you to the official account. This means you are less likely to be bothered by client messages after work, and when you leave the company, you do not have to leave every client group one by one.

- The boss controls everything but does not point out what they are dissatisfied with

The boss has to review performance reports and proposals before they are sent to clients. They will tell you which page they are unhappy with, but not specifically what they dislike about it, so you have to spend a long time guessing. I have heard that the record is someone guessing all night: )

- No overtime pay, even if you work yourself to death

Many people have already mentioned this, so I will not elaborate. You can apply for compensatory leave (and the application time is one hour after finishing dinner following the end of your workday, so it is later than the actual time you worked overtime), but you will be so busy that you will have almost no time to take it: )

- You have to write down your work tasks every day

Every day, you must record, by the hour, what you worked on, how much time you spent, and your planned work schedule for the next day. The boss says this is intended to understand each colleague’s working hours and make better assignments, but in the end, nothing changes: )

- One person playing multiple roles

When you join, the agreed-upon job description is A, but gradually the boss will want you to “challenge yourself” and start asking you to do A + B. Then you will begin, as described in the first point, trying to guess what the boss wants. But honestly, even if you guess correctly, it is useless, because what the boss wants may not be what the client wants. It ends up feeling like a waste of time: )

- The colleagues at the entry level are all very nice

- The office is on the 69th floor of Taipei 101, with a great view; it sounds impressive when you say it out loud (?)

- The pantry is well stocked

- Unlimited overtime

Overtime is commonplace in advertising or marketing companies, but as other former employees mentioned above, the level of overtime here means that every day you are not thinking about whether you will work overtime, but what time you will work until. I personally started working overtime during my first week at the company, and by the second week I was working until 10 p.m. (There are other colleagues who started on the same day as me and have worked overtime every day since their second day.) If you do not mind working overtime, I heard from other colleagues that the sunrise viewed from the 69th floor of 101 is quite beautiful.

- Absolutely no handover or adjustment period

Take the project planner position here as an example. On the second day after joining the company, the boss spent an hour explaining the current status of a client's project. After that, she told me that starting that day I had to take full control of the situation. From the second or third day onward, I was directly responsible for dealing with the client and other relevant parties (miscellaneous communications, reports, contacting endorsers' agents, and contacting media vendors). If I did not immediately follow up on the situation or accurately proceed with the next step, the boss would chew me out. Even though I had only taken over the project midway through, and had not even finished reading the new employee materials (yes, by the day I resigned, I had read less than 40% of those so-called new employee training materials), I was thrown straight into the deep end. There was absolutely no time to adapt or understand the company's methods and related procedures. During the course of a project, if there was any information that had not previously been communicated, I would only be told afterward how that part was supposed to be handled. Strictly speaking, it was almost as if there were no handover at all.

- Extremely high turnover and organizational problems

The entire company has fewer than 20 employees, and excluding the boss, even the most senior current employee has only been there for one year (the company has been around for about five years), which clearly shows how high the turnover is. In terms of the organization, the boss is nominally the chief operating officer and manages all projects, while project planners below her handle the actual work. Since the boss simply does not have time to review every situation, frontline employees are basically left to handle matters themselves. On the surface, you are given free rein, but as soon as a problem occurs, it becomes your responsibility. Even in serious situations, she will not step in to help deal with the client (I saw this happen to other colleagues). Also, because the boss is the highest authority, if she is dissatisfied with something proposed by a media vendor, she will leave you to communicate between the client and vendor without clearly explaining what exactly she dislikes, forcing you to guess and waste your time. In the end, it should not need further explanation who the unfortunate person becomes the target of both the media side and the client side.

- Loose and pitiful new employee training

What is called new employee training here consists of placing around three or four folders in a shared drive, containing past cases and a PPT giving a general introduction to the project process, and having new employees read them on their own. What is baffling is that, because you can only find time to read them yourself, under the no-adjustment-period and no-handover conditions mentioned above, it is practically impossible for anyone to finish reading the new employee training materials before starting practical work. Overall, this training is completely meaningless. (By the way, the company advocates “smart questions”: even if something was never explained, is not mentioned in the new employee materials, and was not covered in the “handover,” you are expected to search through past materials and Google the answer yourself. If you ask directly, you will even be given a dirty look :))

- When you resign, the boss will still emotionally blackmail you, telling you that she is very disappointed that you resigned, that you were not like this during the interview, that you should not put your self-respect ahead of everything else, and that you are just like those young people out there, among other things. After you announce your resignation, she will treat you as if you were invisible. But for someone who has been bombarded with the boss's messages every day up to that point, I believe this will actually feel like a kind of liberation.

Colleagues are easy to get along with

Lots of snacks to eat

1. Unlimited overtime. You must first state the reason for working overtime, and then obtain your supervisor’s approval before you can work overtime.

2. After you submit your resignation, your supervisor will treat you according to their mood.

- If they are in a good mood, they won’t make things difficult for you, and your resignation will proceed smoothly.

- If they are in a bad mood, they will make things difficult for you over all sorts of trivial matters and minor reasons, and deduct your pay.

3. If you have a masochistic streak, or if you like people with princess syndrome or lazy habits, this place is a great fit for you

Flexible work; you can listen to music

The assistant’s salary during the probationary period is 33k

Overtime is unlimited. Before 5 p.m., you have to decide how long you’ll work overtime, and any overtime beyond the allowed hours is on you.

After you submit your resignation, your supervisor will completely ignore you. Even if you’re standing right next to them, they’ll act as if you’re invisible.