Pluspunten
The US team and expats working in Vietnam are knowledgeable and have many years of automotive experience with legacy and startup automakers. Work relationships among the American employees is fantastic. Everyone was working together towards making the products and company successful. There was a very good team atmosphere that is absent in larger established organizations. American/expat employees wanted to succeed. Being a smaller organization, decisions are made quickly and efficiently compared to legacy manufacturers where decisions need to go through multiple layers of management, committees, and approvals. At VinFast, your analysis and recommendations went straight to the decision maker. The product is actually pretty good from a build perspective. Things are built well for a start-up. Salary is competitive for industry.
Minpunten
Being a start-up there was no RSU or stock options provided. Benefits were also lacking compared to legacy OEMs and other automotive start-ups. Health insurance was expensive with poor coverage. Premiums were very high and coverage was not very good. No Health Savings Account or Flexible Spending Account either. 401k match was 100% vested with no vesting schedule. Being a startup, there's little to no funding for needed resources. Operational software, industry databases, marketing budget is non-existent. A negative experience for me really resides with the Vietnamese executive management and Vietnamese working teams based in Vietnam. Many of the Vietnamese come from other VinGroup subsidiaries, e.g. real estate, resorts, scooters, etc. Most of the Vietnamese do not have any automotive background expertise. This becomes problematic as they do not have the experience or knowledge to understand common industry standards or even best practices in the US, Canada or Europe. They understand the Vietnamese market but that market is very different from Western markets. With VinGroup being the biggest entity in Vietnam, they thing what works there can work in the West. Unfortunately that is not true. What is really difficult is that the Vietnamese executives and working teams do not listen to the experienced Americans, Canadians, Europeans that they have hired. It's very much VinGroup hubris that I believe creates a culture where the Vietnamese don't want to listen to the local markets. Compounding the effects of hubris and not listening to the local market is the Chairman, Mr. Pham Nhat Vuong. Ultimately, all decisions are his to make. In a normal corporate entity, a CEO's subordinates advise the leader on best courses of action to take. Unfortunately, the Chairman's Vietnamese advisors are all yes-men/women. They do not dare object or counter the Chairman's decisions due to the toxic Vietnamese culture even when local markets have advised them of a course of action. Typically anyone who objects or has a differing opinion to the Chairman has lost their job. There has been tremendous turnover at the executive level and much of the reason is due to Chairman not liking an answer or strategy from hired advisors, thus there's a fear driven culture in Vietnam and it has lead to dire consequences to the company. Recently the US/Canada teams have lost 20%-30% of staff in layoffs with the US CEO, CFO, CSO, and Head of Marketing being dismissed. Additionally, Marketing, Sales Ops, Logistics, Purchasing, Accounting, B2B Sales, Recruiting, etc. have all been reduced or eliminated. The Vietnamese want to rush out product and even tried to launch a product with serious hardware and software issues that should have been fixed in the factory prior to shipment. However, the Vietnamese really want to "save face" and look like they know what they are doing. Problems include lower EPA range ratings vs. what was originally advertised to the market. Hardware and software issues that impact safety. VinFast needs to create standard operating procedures to help teams understand processes and timing of things because many times things are done out of order.