So right now I work for an international school. It’s not one of the first tier ones, and while the salary is decent I am not sure if I will be here after this academic year.
I’m wondering if anyone on this forum has started out teaching (I teach math/physics now) but moved into something else. My degree is actually in Engineering (mechanical/biomedical), but I graduated almost 12 years ago. I’ve done some short gigs like translation and even private security in my time here, but most of my time has been spent on teaching, aside from the few years I took to try and open my own buxiban.
I don’t think it much matters. What brings in the most money for the least amount of stress and burden? What gets you to retirement without sapping your will to live?
There are jobs where your engineering and science background could be helpful, without having to, for example, do mechanical design work. For example, you could do finance work focusing on biomedical companies, or you could do marketing for a high-tech company, or you could go into patent law.
I was an English teacher years ago and switched to doing other work. I just didn’t enjoy teaching. I tried all age groups.
Im also an engineer that began life here as an English teacher. I enjoyed teaching, but not English, and there weren’t opportunities to teach Math, Science when I began. So, I went into Technical Writing, that I enjoy a lot. I get to write original content, that’s reviewed by R&D, not editing what R&D write. That’s a big difference, to me.
I suggest to keep your eyes open for opportunities. I was an MBA graduate who first taught English until I found a job in an IT company…which lead to me being in IT industry many years. I answered an ad in English newspaper. I think my having some basic Chinese language capability definitely helped for first job in IT as was smaller company.
Yes. Moved here. Esl teacher. Owned schools. Now do agriculture and food. Done mineral, forestry, trucking etc as well here. Both as the the lowestbitch and as the owner. Do what you want, key issue in Taiwan is get legal freedom to be able to do such things. That is my single biggest opinion here. Be legally allowed to be/do!
In my opinion I think these are absolutely important to gaining total freedom in taiwan and enjoying everything the country has to offer:
Permanent residence (citizenship is obviously the best, but depends on your sotuation). At least get a real visa that doesn’t rely on another human being.
Resident status based on work or marriage/fmaily carries a lot of risk, for all the predictable reasons. Countless heartbreak stories here about this issue. Many are on this very forum. Or others. I have experienced it myself, and seen hundreds of reflow immigrants suffer tldue to it. Plan your visa well, have a goal and don’t be lazy. Get it done.
Permanent visa and open work rights. Key. You will still be limited a bit based on citizenship status, but it’s as good as it gets without being full blown proper ID carrier. Some jobs and companies are not allowed to be done by foreigners. Also experienced this myself. Completely fucked me when I went from JFRV to an APRC. Look into what your doing. Despite taiwnas reputation for lack of diligence, there are actualy quite a lot of regulations. Just because they are not enforced doesn’t not mean they do not exist.
Golden rule of Taiwan: It’s not a problem until it’s a problem.
Learn Mandarin. Even being fluent, many taiwanese aren’t. Many governemnet drones have no idea about their own laws. By fluent i also mean culture and society. Hard if nkt married into and lots of experienfe. But take lots of notes as you go. Knowing the ins and outs of taiwan makes up for a lot of poor mandarin skills while youre schooling up ;). Many people don’t even know why they are trying to tell people what to do. If you speak at least kimd of fluent spoken Mandarin, you can counter most people when there is an issue. Especially when they are talking total bullshit, which is often the case in the very beginning.
…Deleted the examples…
Knowing mandarin had made my life exponentially better here going forward. Which I guess is a “no shit, Sherlock” statement. But sometimes it needs to be repeated.
That sounds like a more interesting career. I’ve also been considering doing the actuarial exams as I potentially know a good bit of the material. I do know I’ll have to brush up on stuff like Excel, and data analysis but also given the low salaries here, it would be a huge paycut.
If you don’t mind me asking, what’s the pay situation like for a Tech writer? A lot of the postings on 104 say salary negotiable, which doesn’t help me a lot.
No company pays a tech writer in Taiwan 150,000 USD a year UNLESS it was TSMC with a huge bonus thrown in or something. Tech writing isn’t a highly paid job generally speaking, are you trying to wind people up again ?
Especially with LLM’S now. Bosses are loving how AI enables them to be even more stingy.
Segue - I was in tech for a bit here after teaching for a while, but the pay was awful, the politics worse, and I realized my department was going to be replaced by AI soon sooo…
That sounds… unlikely. Companies in the US mostly don’t approach that for tech writers, even at the high end, but you’re telling us many do in Taiwan? Do you work in this field?
I actually know a few in Taiwan making that much, working remotely for companies not based in Taiwan. We have this amazing thing called the internet. Turns out, you don’t have to physically be in Silicon Valley to get paid like you are.
Unfortunately yes especially now with AI doing pretty good proofreading. Try to specialize in some area, yo go beyond 'correctibg the wording", and actually write usable content. Good luck!!
