Whatever your role in this industry, work throws up moments worth complaining about. Some of those complaints turn out to be the main reason people leave.
As players from other sectors keep pouring in, there are more medical-aesthetics companies than ever, and with them more chances — and more frequent moves — to change jobs. At the same time, a consensus has quietly formed across the industry: it’s landmines everywhere, so don’t move unless you have to.
Switch companies and you land somewhere much the same, so a lot of people choose to sit tight and endure. I have started telling friends not to hold on to this industry so tightly; if the chance comes, it may be worth walking away — and to friends outside it, don’t come in with romantic expectations.
Saying this makes me genuinely sad, because the original conviction is still there.
Medical aesthetics is one of very few industries that has to win at B2B and face the consumer at the same time. It demands professional rigour and an understanding of consumer thinking. For a professional manager it is one of the most interesting arenas there is.
More to the point, many of us who are still here are struggling through the chaos while hoping that our own efforts can push this industry toward being more professional and better run.
So when we complain, part of it is personal disappointment — but part of it is wanting better from something you care about. We can see specific problems in how these companies are managed, and we have neither a channel to report them nor any expectation of being heard.
Today I have filtered and organised these scattered voices into a starting point: a first collection of what people actually complain about. I hope peers find something they recognise in it, and that company owners hear it too and take something from it — whether there is an opportunity to turn these signals into real changes and improvements in how the business is run.
(A note to manufacturers: please don’t read yourselves into this. I am not targeting anyone. Nothing below was included unless at least two companies showed the same pattern. And yes, I know that to some people any opinion or suggestion is insubordination to be crushed. Stated up front: I won’t be engaging with that.)
This round is only part of the feedback friends around me have given. At the end of the piece I will also launch a survey to gather more. If the sample size holds up, a follow-up will share more of the results.
Over-management
Control ≠ efficiency
Leaders exercise excessive control over detail. People joke about it: “Would you believe there are cameras at both ends of the office?” “HR assigned two people to sit in the office and watch us.”
Approval chains run far too long. Anything involving money means “a single yuan needs signatures all the way up to the boss”, and “procurement, finance and HR can each second-guess the business unit”. Getting anything done is hard and efficiency is minimal.
Management stays at the surface. “From director down to sales, everyone clocks in.” “Daily reports, weekly reports, weekly meetings, monthly reports, monthly performance reviews, monthly meetings — I write reports every single day.” It is process for its own sake, with no real exchange, no feedback and no suggestions for improving strategy.
Everything runs on what the boss wants. Never mind where the market is or where the team is, management has to stay physically close to the boss, available whenever summoned.
Responsibilities blur. A cluster of chiefs of staff surround the boss, each covering different parts of the business, with no clear line between them and the actual department heads they supervise and stand in for at will.
Takeaway
What over-management consumes is trust. Process exists to create consistency, but when form outweighs substance, execution gets worse, not better. Genuinely effective management is clear objectives, plus a focus on outcomes and KPIs, plus a sensible amount of delegated authority.
Communication that communicates nothing
More information ≠ the message landing
Meetings run long, are frequently called at short notice, and go in unprepared. Discussion goes nowhere and the whole thing becomes a black hole for time.
Endless WeChat groups, and no proper professional channel for notices. Important information gets buried, and the day goes on replying to and checking group messages.
Managers focus on reporting upward and are deaf to what the team tells them.
Takeaway
What matters in communication is not volume but quality.
Effective communication means clear information, simple channels, explicit objectives, and traffic in both directions. Cut the duplicated initiatives, make the up-and-down mechanism explicit, stop managing several levels down, and focus on what matters — team efficiency and morale both improve.
A sane rhythm between work and life
Balance is what sustains a team
Overtime culture is deeply entrenched — mandatory “voluntary” overtime.
Working through public holidays, uncompensated.
Drinking culture is everywhere, with willingness to drink at the table used as a test of obedience and loyalty.
Workplace manipulation: maintaining “control” by belittling and undermining people, making employees feel guilty for reasonable requests, seeding doubt about their own competence, and building an unhealthy dependency that keeps labour cheap.
Takeaway
Medical aesthetics is fast and stressful, but a company that draws down its employees’ time and trust only accelerates their departure.
A company built to last uses sensible incentives and a healthy culture to make people want to push hard — not force them to.
Leadership problems
Leading a team matters more than holding the floor
Managers who do not trust, who are poor at assessing and selecting talent, and who hire on the basis of loyalty rather than ability.
Family-style office culture and heavy internal politics, dragging people into power struggles.
Insufficient professional or managerial capability, leaving the team without a clear direction.
Takeaway
The core of leadership is enabling people, not constraining them.
Someone who trusts and lets their team perform generally produces far stronger execution. The reverse leaves the team consumed by internal friction and the business stalled.
Performance reviews and bonus schemes
Fairness is more persuasive than numbers
No clear performance-review system; the boss docks pay whenever he feels like it.
No clear bonus scheme, or one that exists only verbally, or one that is constantly being adjusted. Never actually implemented.
Targets detached from reality and impossible to hit.
Reward and consequence are indistinguishable — doing more and doing less come out the same.
Takeaway
The point of performance management is to drive growth, not to squeeze people and withhold money.
Realistic targets, transparent standards, fair reward and consequence, and market-benchmarked incentives — that is the kind of management that actually motivates a team.
Beyond the complaints
This is signal, not noise
Put these voices side by side and a few things become clear:
They are not invented slander or idle rumour. They are grounded, evidenced accounts of daily working life, and they resonate across the whole industry.
They point directly at the things that determine company efficiency, talent retention and commercial momentum.
Ignored — or worse, suppressed and copied — they settle into high attrition, low morale and a business that stops moving.
Company leaders will of course start from a different place, weighing their own experience, management cost and risk control.
But if these signals can be heard and acted on within whatever is feasible, they amount to free improvement proposals. Offered here for your consideration.
