FORTINET INC ( R&D MALAYSIA (KL OFFICE) )
1. Micromanaging everything :
They expect to control every aspect of your work, even chatting with colleagues will be monitored/ shoulder-surfed by the team leader. Team leader doesn't have any boundaries and doesn't treat his subordinates as a adult, rather like a preschooler. Even asking colleagues about work will get you questioned and pinpointed unnecessarily.
They create a system that requires you to key in your work into a spreadsheet to monitor hours worked, which does not tally to the actual hours you spend on completing the task. You may end up working 10 hours or so just for the report to show you only worked for 5 hours. This gets you pin-pointed and dont bother asking for advice or help because this means putting an open target on your back for them to pick on you further
2. Seniors are not friendly
Some seniors, not all, are not friendly and can be very sarcastic when you ask them work related tasks. I even got a reply of "dont tell me you dont event know this" on my first month there using THEIR system. These bunch of seniors who are always in close proximity with the team leader often tattle on the smallest thing and report to management. This will affect your performance bonus because they will log everything, to the point where some things doesnt make sense as they love playing favourites. So a 'mistake' made by you, is totally normal and acceptable if its made by someone they favor. These group of seniors are very easy to spot, and they have a groupchat where do talk bad about their peers. Able to understand and converse in mandarin is a plus for you as they openly talk bad about you in their mother tongue infront of you. Some seniors however are very friendly and treat you as an employee in the department, rather than a slave or someone lower than them.
3. No boundaries.
They dont respect your boundaries when you are on leave or MC. I was texted non-stop by the team leader during my MC because he was 'not satisfied ' with my reason for taking MC, although i had already obtained a MC from a clinic. You are required to work even outside the working hours and dont even think of you deserving even a slither of appreciation from them. If they dont favour you, be prepared for remarks like "this also you want me to praise you ah?" which can be "waahh!! I really appreciate your hard work".
4. Favourites and Racism
You may think i might be someone who is problematic which is why i went through this situation. I think it may be natural to think that as humans but believe me when I say that they have already decided to favour or bully you the moment you walk in on your first day at the company. They judge based on the colour of your skin and have the audacity to claim that they dont condone racism. Funny enough how ironic this is. I would like to add that, just because you are a favoured skin color, doesnt mean you are safe as well. They will make it hell for you the moment they decide you are their next victim of thier boredom. You can do perform well at work and still get called out for nothing almost every week. It was to a point where my colleagues who joined the same time as me, started to wonder why its acceptable if they do smtg in such way but its not acceptable when I do it. These that I have mentioned are only the tip of the iceberg.
5. Office culture is non-existent.
No team lunch, no team dinner. Even if they decide to have it, there are still people required to work at the venue. Don't expect to go for lunch as 'colleagues' cause the seniors have their own group and they never invite or show new joiners around. So it often feels like you are separate from your colleagues although you are part of the same department and team.
6. Lunch is strictly an hour but this rule does not apply to Team leader and his gang of seniors. They often go for 2 or 3-hour lunches and act like its totally normal. Its a ritual for them on Fridays to go missing for about 3 hours roaming around pavilion or bukit bintang.
7. Absurd tasks and task claiming rules. You may take an hour to properly complete a task but they only accept it for 30 minutes for instance. This is what I meant in (1.) where they make you work more than the promised hours. Team Leader will throw his tasks at you and expect you to work like a slave. Asking the team leader for a solution or advice on how to manage work will get you laughed at in your face. Yes, this happened to me and a few other colleagues as well. BTW, Team Leader mentioned here is not someone with cybersecurity or even IT background so good luck trying to talk to a child education grad.
8. No flexibility or understanding.
Shift schedules are made based on who they favour (not surprised). If they like you, you get more shifts that month and u get paid more (shift allowance + performance bonus). If you happen to be the unlucky ones, the schedule is absurd. You may be required to suddenly work at 8 am on a wednesday when for the past 2 days, you had been working from 5pm to 1 am. So imagine logging off at 1 and waking up for 8 am shift again.
9. No career progression
They claim they are industry-leading and all that good stuff but haha not at all. They claim their internal system is a SIEM which actually isnt. Most of the things and business processes can be learnt within 8 to 10 months and after that its pretty repetitive, apart from the absurd tasks the Team Leader throws at you. There is no progression beyond this, other than doing QA work for juniors before they submit their work into the system. More new tasks are added recently and they make the juniors and intermediates work on it, the seniors only do QA (check ur work) but its ironic because some of the tasks have never even been done by the seniors before. Workload increases as they wish and they are not bothered by your well-being (obviously) because as I mentioned, they expect you to work like a slave.
I would not recommend anyone to work here unless you are passionate about being burnt-out, losing your sense of self, developing depression and anxiety, and losing your confidence to be curious in exploring and learning. Life will go in a loop mode of uncertainty of problem coupled with an overwhelming abundance of extra workload. Please acknowledge the company logo for what it is, a HUGE RED FLAG!
