I used to work as a network administrator for about 5 years (4 in the military) I had the Cisco networking and switching cert as well as security+. This was now 8 years ago. I’m certain I can repass those exams if I take them.
I’m wondering if there’s any money in it here? Are the salaries higher? Currently teaching public school. My university degrees are in psychology. But if I can work a higher salary in IT while working on my PhD, maybe it’s better to switch back to my old job?
What do the typical salaries look like for this in Taipei?
Or public school either. The worst part is public teachers aren’t eligible for government pension since you have continuously resign contracts each year. The pay scale only goes up very little every year and is capped pretty low (though the bonus, free flights and 10,000 extra a month for housing does help)
So is it low if you have previous experience? Or would the large gap make me basically start over?
I also don’t have any coding experience. I can make scripts in Powershell but I never needed coding for my network administrator position in the military and got no training on it at all
I don’t know much about your previous experience, but from what you’ve said, if you speak decent Chinese you could probably get a job starting at 75,000+. No Chinese is possible too, just gotta find the right company.
Another option is side hustles. I have been offered lots of extra work lately and might consider opening a consulting business in the future (education, and ESL).
Universities have options for upward mobility if you get this
Not coding and no Chinese seem like big barriers to a high starting salary. At least with ESL you have low expectations for performance and if you’re good a lot of extra time for that PhD
Below is the closest I found from the 2020 Taiwan Salary Benchmark by Michael Page Group:
min / med / max total package per year in Million NTD
Systems & Infrastructure
System Analyst 0.9M / 1M / 1.2M
Network Engineer 1.2M / 1.5M / 1.7M
Security Engineer 1.2M / 1.5M / 1.7M
@DogmaticStoic I guess you would be closest to a “Network Engineer”, but maybe (way?) below that due to “wrong” degree field, and likely also hard to find work if mandarin is not super good already.
As far as I can tell, English Teaching is getting quite good salary in Taiwan - and it is something where non-Taiwanese have a huge head start. Sad, but probably way more lukrative than entry level IT work.
It also doesn’t get added retroactively. It only starts once your permanent residency does. I’m not sure about if it’s the same package local teachers get