United Microelectronics Reviews

Pros

Good work/life balance; disencourage unnecessary overtime. clock in/out on time 9-6.

Good knowledge/document management

Cons

Career advancement is a barrier for people looking for excel and escalate.
Annual promotions are often "rotated"/distributed evenly across IT functions; candidates' legitimacy/ranking are debated within the relevant management circle, focusing often not as much performance as needed, rather than seniority/year spent in the company.

Annual salary increment are very low, I suppose on par with most East Asian company cultures.

Advice to Senior Management

It is good to be lean, but it is also a very thin line to cross to over-stretching resources.
Focus on ways to retain talents to stop "retirement home" trend.

Pros

- Slightly higher pay than average
- Benefits not bad compare to similar industry
- Good learning ground for greenhorn
- Nice, big compound
- Top 5 foundry

Cons

- Ineffective and inefficient groups of management
- Management has no capability to lead effectively
- Spoken language is usually in Chinese
- Documents are sometimes in a mixture of Chinese and poor English
- High pressure environment
- No work-life balance (No Life)
- Outdated managing strategy
- Lack of professionalism
- "Master-slave" treatment

Advice to Senior Management

Time to review your business, operation strategy as well as organisation structure. Build a more international company's culture

Pros

1. gain knowledge of the latest technology, industrial ecosystem
2. potential to grow within the UMC group --- there are many subsidiaries

Cons

1. overall compensation may not be as good as competitors
2. foundry business is a mature industry

Advice to Senior Management

Once the compensation matches, the talent comes.

Pros

first job with ok salary

Cons

busniss getting worse these years

Advice to Senior Management

regular promotion only

Pros

- pretty much good pay, compared to direct competitor like SSMC
- beautiful office, looks like a hotel
- globally known

Cons

- extremely high workload, thus high pressure at work
- unfair treatments, nationality-biased
- ineffective management system
- lacking of professionalism

Advice to Senior Management

please provide equal treatments for everyone and please judge the employees by their capabilities, performances, not nationalities. it is a waste to see talents running away from the company

Pros

Your growth in professional knowledge is very fast. You can get a comfortable salary and salary compared with familiar companies.

Cons

You will work under high pressure. Overtime work is frequently, and it's unpaid on the workday night. You have to work very carefully to avoid be fired.

Advice to Senior Management

We need to build a more comfortalbe company's culture. And the manager should be nice to his subordinates and collegues whenever.

Pros

UMC provides foundry working experience for new graduate to explore process technology, design support, and customer support.

Cons

UMC is 2nd tier foundry and the top management team is 2nd class executives who don't have good strategy. Their strategy is to match TSMC process technology. Their existence is to provide another competition for fabless company such that they have alternative to negotiate price with TSMC.
Their business will be very subject to the business cycle of semiconductor industry.

Advice to Senior Management

They needs new thinker that can think out of box to inject good strategy.
The customer driven strategy means no strategy at all and is doomed to fail.

Pros

UMC is a traditional company with a lot of job security. They try very hard to not have to lay off any employees (it's seen as a place where you can work until retirement). Also, given the size of its business (large for a Taiwanese company), it affords a lot of different experiences to its employees. It is seen as prestigious (in Taiwan) and since it has fabs in many different countries, you will have travel experiences as well. Good vacation package and benefits package. Also, there is good work life balance. Finally, there is a good mix of younger and older employees.

Cons

There is a lot of internal politics and bureaucracy. This sometimes makes it quite hard to get the information needed to complete a project or to implement anything cross functional. Also, like many other big companies, promotions can sometimes be more about who know rather than what you know. There is a heavy emphasis on seniority within the company and there are cases where it seems that if you've been around long enough, you will be given management opportunities over someone who is more capable. This creates dissatisfaction among the most valuable junior employees and contributes to higher turnover and attrition.

Advice to Senior Management

Streamline business more and focus on cost reduction and profitability. Also, do away with some of the bureaucracy to improve retention of most talented employees.

Pros

Relatively higher salary in singapore.
State of the art technology.
Office politics not heavy, you are judged mainly due to your work performance.

Cons

Absolutely no work life balance. The management put too much pressure on work quality, sometimes the target are just too high to reach.

Advice to Senior Management

Give employee more freedom to rest.