瑪帛科技股份有限公司

1. Simple salary structure: From joining to leaving, I never heard anything about an annual bonus, so when negotiating salary, it is safer to calculate based on 12 months yourself.

2. You learn not to care too much about the company

There is an end-of-year meeting every year where they repeatedly say that you can talk about anything.

At the time, I thought there were many ways the company could improve, so I offered lots of ideas.

I even hoped that, since I was planning to leave at the end of May the following year, the company would know earlier and be able to make the necessary arrangements.

However, during the discussions, I merely mentioned the Labor Standards Act to indicate that I had already given the company plenty of time.

The CEO mocked me behind my back, and I only found out through a colleague.

In the end, they even got the date wrong.

I had to leave at the end of April. (They said they had already reported it to the shareholders, but after I left, I heard that other colleagues who took annual leave still had to stay longer. It felt like it simply depended on whether they had something urgent for you to rush at the time.)

3. You learn to put on a show for upper management

When I joined, the official start time was 8:30 a.m., but I was told that I actually had to arrive at 8:20–8:25. (Arriving early to prepare in advance is not really a problem.)

But

If you had something to take care of at home at lunchtime or after work and left on time for several days, they would repeatedly express concern in a way that made you feel you had crossed their line.

They kept saying they hoped you could cooperate a little and stay two minutes longer (basically, they wanted you to put on a show for the CEO).

4. The CEO “claims” that his temper has improved now.

5. Although sun cakes are sold downstairs, I got tired of eating the cakes the CEO drew for us, which saved me the money of buying actual cakes.

6. Engineers really do not work much overtime (no comment on other positions).

7. The colleagues are very nice (but most of the good ones have basically left).

8. You can build a relationship with your own computer

Equipment is provided, but it is all desktop computers. Meetings often require laptops, so in the end everyone uses their own computer (with no equipment allowance).

9. You can feel the warmth of family (?)

The CEO often says that the team spends more time together than with their families and is closer than family.

When someone is walking the edge of the traditional-industry rules he set, or when he wants to introduce a new rule,

he immediately puts on a different face: “We are not family” (occasionally he says “club”), “If we were family, I wouldn’t have to pay you.”

10. You can learn many different things

I joined as a front-end engineer. Because we used a set of back-end services, I also had to participate in designing the schema and database fields (which was almost like doing full-stack work).

After transitioning to a full-stack engineer, I learned more about cloud technologies.

(When I initially transferred to full-stack, they said I would do it for a short while and then receive a salary adjustment. In the end, they simply forgot about it and had no intention of making up the difference. The full-stack position on 104 Job Bank started at NT$50,000; I worked as a full-stack engineer for about seven months, but my salary upon leaving was still below NT$50,000.)

But after learning all of this and applying to some companies I wanted to join, when I asked for feedback during interviews, it became:

Looking for FE? Sorry, you are too broad; we want a specialized front-end engineer.

Looking for SRE? Sorry, you are too broad, and your experience is still too limited.

How could there be any downsides? You get to train your patience and learn to appreciate what you have.