Extreme Unprofessional - Anonymous employee Aopen America Employee Review

1.0
9 Jan 2013
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I am putting down as much as I know from a neutral perspective even though I was a former employee. There are a lot of negative comments but it’s more helpful to know why the feedbacks are negative. Hope this could help the people who are considering the company or in the process of interviewing the company. All of the top management speak Chinese and half of the employees speak Chinese so if you can speak Chinese / Mandarin and understand Chinese culture (with experience working in other Chinese company is a plus), the work environment is environmental friendly for you because all of the Chinese employees communicate with each other in Chinese. If you have the eagerness to challenge new jobs, you may consider this company. If you can show the top management you have flexibility to expand your career path and your willingness to make contribution to the company, you could have a stable income job for survival. The company offers market competitive annual vacation and sick hours. The medical insurance is ranked medium among companies if you’re single. If you’re married, the insurance package ranks above average.

Cons

Due to the company structure, this company has no solid company rules. Most employees interpreted as no rules or not much rules to follow. The president is the head of the U.S. branch and every little thing is under his discretion, and pretty much he organizes the whole company structure. He was not raised here in the United States and came to America for work (maybe after age 30 or even later), so he does not understand much about American culture. Company culture is 100% Asian (Taiwanese) so the impact of cultural shock doesn’t need to be explained. The company rules made internally can be changed as simple as flipping a page. Every decision made from management team was effective immediately. Company would re-organize at least once a year sometimes multiple times within a year. There is a possibility that your title could be changed due to company vision and business focus (whatever reason they give you), and you will not have a choice but to change your title. If your title is changed, of course so does your job responsibility as well as your career path. No need to get in detail on that. They will not mention this during the interview about title change (or proceed new career path) but I’ve seen it happened to other former employee (even me). During the interview, none of the manager will give you position description in paper or email because this company will change their focus later. Top management does over-promise your request so make sure you get that on paper or else reconsider the offer. If you are interviewing a position as a field position / work from home and you don’t live in the Bay Area (Northern California), you will definitely be offered as contracted only. You will not have PTO, Holiday pay, and medical insurance. In the company overview section states the sizes of employees are 70+. The actual office sizes of cubicle could only have enough for 30 employees max. Therefore, more than half of the employees could be field positions. Here is the part which should not be encouraged. The employee(s) who were not market competitive always sent sincere compliment boost to top management’s morale for job security (trying not to use the word kiss ass and it’s my bad comment). Although it is a common culture among all industries, the management in this company somehow indirectly encourage employees do so. In Sales team, if you could not reach your goal/quota in a consecutive 3 months, company has the right to terminate you. The turnaround rate is very high in the sales team although it’s actually all the departments. If you still could not reach your quota in the 3rd month, the company might not terminate you right away. Instead, they will give you more pressure and even make you to do more work. Because you’re afraid you will get terminated, you generally will take any work by all means for survival or for proving you are still capable. The cycle goes on non-stop every day until you’re exhausted and couldn’t take it anymore or company sees you as no value and cannot make anymore contribution, then they will give you terminate you in same day notice. At the end of the year, there’s employee performance evaluation they called KPI (Key Performance Index) and it’s also structured by the President not manager so there’s nothing you can change. Every employee in different team could share the same goal in their KPI. Most people in the company share the same mentality and think if the other person can reach the goal, he or she could also reach the goal because their goal is correlated. Therefore, it creates a bad cycle loop of pushing job responsibility to each other and creates mess to clean. If the job (mess) is not done, somebody will get blamed (follows by finger pointing game) and get terminated. Every single piece of work done is needed to report back to headquarter in Taiwan. For any type of maintenance work is also needed to report back to headquarter. For example, sometimes there’s controversial work given to you that needs to be done ASAP and it will be in your KPI but those work were originally done by the team in headquarter. If you are getting the job done by yourself, at the same time you’re making the other team in HQ feel job insecure. You will create a conflict with HQ team which usually is the contact window on your daily basis request and you might not get help from them anymore. The bottom line to this company or the president is everything is always about revenue and although it’s true in every company. However, the President reviews you as how much revenue you can bring in so that’s also the reason why he said everybody can be Sales and make a sale. So if you are in the Engineering team, QA team or RMA team, you work done here is not appreciated because it doesn’t generate any revenue.

Explore other reviews about Aopen America

5.0
8 Aug 2018
Anonymous intern
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Everyone on the team was great to work with, they really helped me learn and improve.

Cons

Upper management needs works and global communication is lacking.

4.0
31 Jul 2018
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

When I was first contacted by AOPEN I was skeptical based on Glassdoor reviews. As the interview progressed I got more excited about the projects and the team. Management never denied the bad reviews, instead they invited me to look at the dates, and to be part of the change, which I gladly accepted Few months in, and I’m excited about the projects, the collaboration among the local and global teams, and the direction that the organization is going. It is inspiring to work with people that you can learn from, and are receptive for what you have to offer. So far, most of the people I have been working are innovative, smart, and ambitious, yet humble, collaborative and fun. Due to its smaller size, processes and development are faster and more efficient than larger organizations. Executive and management welcome new processes and projects that make sense. Another major plus, personally, is that AOPEN is a result-driven organization, which enables us to be strategic and focused on the right track. Another thing I appreciate about this company, and honestly one of the reasons I’m here, is its thoughtful, inspiring and reasonable leadership.

Cons

- Medical benefits are ok - No stock options - Work pace can get chaotic at times - Once a week work from home culture could increase efficiency and employee morale (not sure if its an option)

1
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All