I saw this on Gamers Nexus and was wondering what your guys thoughts were. GN is reporting they’ve had several reports from both employees and corporate partners, that EK is failing to pay some pretty big invoices and is also not paying several employees. There are also accusations that EK has shaved off paying overtime hours as well:
Pretty damning allegations. GamersNexus has been a pretty reputable outlet in my book, so I think it’s likely they’ve done a reasonable amount of due diligence here.
What do you guys think? Do any of you have any EK equipment in your rigs? What do you think of the allegations? Have anyone of you worked for a company where the paychecks stopped coming in and there were questions about solvency?
Well over a year ago, probably more like 2 years ago when I started doing my research for a new computer i became interested in the EK prebuilts. However, in my research I found many stories about delays in EK sending PCs lasting months as well as massive delays waiting for parts by people who had ordered water cooling parts… I decided to look elsewhere and now that this has come out, I am glad I did.
Mismanagement strikes again. At the prices EK charges for kit they shouldn’t be having problems, plenty of other brands are solvent or turning a profit in the watercooling space with lower priced kit but just as good build quality.
Speaking to the seemingly poor treatment of the subsidiary by the parent:
In my experience when a subsidiary of a company is stood up in a country or region that has significantly higher prevailing wages, resentment can happen by the parent because they are doing their jobs better/more efficiently due to the extra experience and time they’ve had to perfect more processes.
Accusations of laziness or incompetence can be quick if there is a lot of overlap in what the two do.
The best way to avoid this is to reduce the overlap and have the subsidiary specialize in what they do, or have good management that nips this sentiment in the bud.
@Kougar even at those prices I’m not surprised if they can’t even sell close to cover the MOQ they get from their manufacturers and end up with warehouses full of unsold inventory. Look at the number of SKUs they have on their website - how many do you think they can sell, realistically? Besides, the price may also be too high for the supply/demand curve.
@twin_savage it doesn’t even have to be a parent/subsidiary relationship, this kind of resentment may appear even between seemingly equal teams, just located in different countries/areas, just - as you said - with different prevailing wages.
Sure, but then you have companies that really can’t figure out how to bridge that gap anyway. Or they simply don’t care to. See TSMC’s list of grievances with US workers and deciding to import their own…
very true, although with the parent subsidiary-relationship there is a power dynamic and an access to oversight that makes it all the more easy for abuse to crop up.
TSMC has insane company culture that I think is going to cost them in the medium/long run, similar-ish to the recent brain drain that happened with AMD the last several months.
On a separate subject, I just bought a bunch of m.2 heatsinks from EK because they are the only company producing heatsinks for optane drives, also they are 80% off.
Crazy how interrelated some of those people are in the industry. Not happy to see how closely tied with EK that Swiftech and TitanRig actually are… seems even weirder that Swiftech picked up many of the other employees too given I wasn’t even sure they were still a viable company anymore given that they haven’t updated their news or new product page since 2018.
Was a little too coincidental some of the timings too, TitanRig popped up around 2017 right after Miguel signed the various paperwork for EK Water Solutions, both located in San Antonio. Then abruptly overnight TitanRig decided to move both the company & warehouse from San Antonio to California at the start of 2023, right after SA based EK Water Solutions was dissolved for not paying its taxes.
I mean … I’m sure some of our other favourite hardware companies probably move money around between international subsidiaries in questionable ways to limit exposure and tax liability. At the same time, they probably all prioritize paying their employees, vendors and partners (in that order). If they can’t take care of their basic responsibilities, then you get a lens you don’t want on you. Maybe it’s your country’s version of the IRS or FTC … or maybe it’s the media. Neither one is good.
If EK was spending crazy amounts on extravagant advertising and trade shows, but was still paying all their staff on time and wasn’t implementing insane cost cutting measures like removing loading pallets to increase transport space, no one would really care. People put up with a lot of corporate bullshit so long as working conditions are safe and the paychecks come in for the work they’ve done.
