Having a hard time finding a career

Don’t be good at something that doesn’t pay well.

[quote=“Tomas”]What has always worked for me is to ponder the answers to three question clusters:

  1. What do I love to do? What do I feel passionate about? Where do I feel I can make a real contribution?
  2. Am I really good at doing it? Better than most other people? Do I stand out?
  3. Is there demand for what I want to do? Do people already pay for it? If not, would they pay for it?

If you can identify work that fits these three categories, that is likely to be the career you want.

Hint: If you can’t honestly say you’re better at what you do than most people, you’ll flounder around in mediocrity until you either lose your spirit or you kick yourself in the ass and get trained.

Another Hint: Being great at a job is equal parts attitude, work-related skill, and in many cases, social skill, i.e. being a classy, pleasant person.

Good luck. I don’t think it’s as bleak as you think it is. Perhaps a good brainstorming session with some trusted friends would help?[/quote]

Thank you for the thoughtful post, Tomas.

I enjoy pretty much anything to do with Mandarin and I’m good at it. This skill is definitely valuable in the right company but like you said no more so than cultivating the right social skills. I met a German guy running the Asian branch of a successful company and he has a very good way of presenting himself. I learned a lot being around him for a few days. I also think about getting into something technical and combining it with Mandarin. I need to think about this more, though, and like you said talk to more people. I’m super tired right now and that probably showed up in my original post. I’m usually pretty good at looking at the good sides of things these days but not tonight. Thanks again for the encouraging reply.

More good advice. Thanks.

Technical / mandarin combo?
I can only tell that the local databases are overflowing with high caliber high-tech staff going for less market price than before.
Tomas is a wise guy so in relation with the remarks above, what would you represent as added value which is -or might not be available ? The answer might maybe not so clear thus nor the direction but food for thought.

[quote=“Tomas”]What has always worked for me is to ponder the answers to three question clusters:

  1. What do I love to do? What do I feel passionate about? Where do I feel I can make a real contribution?
  2. Am I really good at doing it? Better than most other people? Do I stand out?
  3. Is there demand for what I want to do? Do people already pay for it? If not, would they pay for it?

If you can identify work that fits these three categories, that is likely to be the career you want.

Hint: If you can’t honestly say you’re better at what you do than most people, you’ll flounder around in mediocrity until you either lose your spirit or you kick yourself in the ass and get trained.

Another Hint: Being great at a job is equal parts attitude, work-related skill, and in many cases, social skill, i.e. being a classy, pleasant person.

Good luck. I don’t think it’s as bleak as you think it is. Perhaps a good brainstorming session with some trusted friends would help?[/quote]

Well, I love to teach. Really. I’m very good at it. Really. People already pay for it, and will pay for it. But there is no demand for it, no formal market for it where I am now. Here, in TX, at the end of the 2011 school year, many teachers were told their contracts couldn’t be renewed because of federal education budget cuts. 17 from my son’s elementary school campus alone. That’s just one small school in the area. There are many out of work teachers here. If I stay here, it’s always going to be an uphill battle to be hired over these other laid off teachers.

I want to stay here for the time being because I want, and need, to be more near my mother.

There’s no real market for tutoring because there aren’t enough parents who could afford to pay. This is a small, and not particularly prosperous, town.

So, I’m looking into social work again, or an idea I have for starting a business. This idea is in no way related to education, but it would be helpful to others, which I like, and it would help me to support my family, which is what I’m most passionate about.

I’m posting this because I really like Tomas’ questions and his advice, but I can’t do what I’d do based only on those questions; I still have to find a way to make the answers add up for my current situation. I think the OP could do the same in Taiwan, he’d just need to think a little more outside the box. And if I were him, I’d start by finding some online aptitude tests and getting some sort of perspective on what might be out there that he may not have thout of yet.

I’m not successful, so you should probably just ignore this post, but anyway:

You’re what, 29? That’s great! [Whoever or Whatever Is in Charge of These Things] willing, you’ve got plenty of time to develop.

You posted something about career issues a few years back: [Forumosa - Taiwan's largest and most active Taiwan-oriented global online community in English … 77#p890877](Preparing for the future while living and teaching in Taiwan

Those don’t sound like bad ideas at all. I don’t know what the job market is like for that specialty, but I think if you have a passion for that sort of thing, it can up your odds for getting a job.

Another poster in that thread had some interesting ideas: [Forumosa - Taiwan's largest and most active Taiwan-oriented global online community in English … 84#p891084](Preparing for the future while living and teaching in Taiwan - #9 by sjhuz01

Unless you’re starving, I think you’re in good shape, and in fact, there are successful people who starved awhile when they were your age.

One day years and years ago back in the States, while I was wandering around in pursuit of some hobbyhorsical nonsense or other in a university library, I happened to open a book that contained an English translation of a saying of a Chinese philosopher. I don’t remember the man’s name, I’ve never been able to find that saying again, and I sometimes wonder whether I hallucinated it, but I think it went something like this:

Anyway, if a Chinese philosopher didn’t say that, he ought to have.

Be careful with this “be better than most people” thing, it’s often a fake impression, the result of not having widened your horizon enough. It’s better to always seek good people, interact with them and learn from them. Be great at a job, no need to compete, bit like the aura of a wise man.

Online teaching has got to be an option Housecat.
I like Thomas questions, although there is a caveat that we don’t always know what we would like to do and are good at until we try it.
I tried being a lab scientist, and while in some ways it was immensely fulfilling hands-on work mixed with some brain power , mostly it was boring repetitive work with little future prospects. I looked at the bright lights of commercial roles and have had various positions in sales and marketing roles in bigger organizations. Again they can be fun and interesting but also can be limiting and repetitive too. Lack of hands-on for me is a real drawback.

I find, for me, the most interesting and enjoyable role was actually getting involved in all parts of a small startup, it was also the most fulfilling and rewarding, I guess I am suited to entrepreneurial type roles in some form or other. In fact I always thought I was, but now having experienced life from different angles, I have proven it to myself too. That’s the difference between experience and imagining what you would like. Unfortunately, like you, circumstances beyond my control blocked me (and some within my control like having kids), but I am hopeful to re-enter that environment someday, hopefully sooner than later! Meanwhile I am picking up organization skills and business networks for the future.

Luthiers, by getting away from the strict role you have defined for yourself, you will be able to break free from the trapped feeling you have now. I don’t believe that we are born to do just one thing, we all have different talents and aspects to our personalities, some that are not always so obvious until we try different things.

Finding a mentor is a great way to learn, just try not to learn their bad habits too!

To clarify, my advice has little to do with comparing yourself to others and most everything to do with learning to be as good as you possibly can at a job.

Since some people love to nitpick, I’ll clarify further: I find it helpful to figure out what it takes to be really outstanding at a job and then learn how to do what it takes. A big part of that is learning from, and seeking feedback on your performance from, people who are really good at what you do.

[quote=“housecat”][quote=“Tomas”]What has always worked for me is to ponder the answers to three question clusters:

  1. What do I love to do? What do I feel passionate about? Where do I feel I can make a real contribution?
  2. Am I really good at doing it? Better than most other people? Do I stand out?
  3. Is there demand for what I want to do? Do people already pay for it? If not, would they pay for it?

If you can identify work that fits these three categories, that is likely to be the career you want.

Hint: If you can’t honestly say you’re better at what you do than most people, you’ll flounder around in mediocrity until you either lose your spirit or you kick yourself in the ass and get trained.

Another Hint: Being great at a job is equal parts attitude, work-related skill, and in many cases, social skill, i.e. being a classy, pleasant person.

Good luck. I don’t think it’s as bleak as you think it is. Perhaps a good brainstorming session with some trusted friends would help?[/quote]

Well, I love to teach. Really. I’m very good at it. Really. People already pay for it, and will pay for it. But there is no demand for it, no formal market for it where I am now. Here, in TX, at the end of the 2011 school year, many teachers were told their contracts couldn’t be renewed because of federal education budget cuts. 17 from my son’s elementary school campus alone. That’s just one small school in the area. There are many out of work teachers here. If I stay here, it’s always going to be an uphill battle to be hired over these other laid off teachers.

I want to stay here for the time being because I want, and need, to be more near my mother.

There’s no real market for tutoring because there aren’t enough parents who could afford to pay. This is a small, and not particularly prosperous, town.

So, I’m looking into social work again, or an idea I have for starting a business. This idea is in no way related to education, but it would be helpful to others, which I like, and it would help me to support my family, which is what I’m most passionate about.

I’m posting this because I really like Tomas’ questions and his advice, but I can’t do what I’d do based only on those questions; I still have to find a way to make the answers add up for my current situation. I think the OP could do the same in Taiwan, he’d just need to think a little more outside the box. And if I were him, I’d start by finding some online aptitude tests and getting some sort of perspective on what might be out there that he may not have thout of yet.[/quote]

Question #3, the one about demand, implies that you have to go where there is demand for your services. If you can’t do that, then yes, you might have to choose to do something else that is hopefully tolerable that allows you to get by for a while. That’s an honorable thing in my eyes, but I’d hate to see anyone I care about live that way for a long time.

My intuition tells me that you may do best in your current circumstances by working in a job where you don’t have to be on site, something online. Good luck housecat.

I agree. My third question, the one about demand, implies that people will not just pay you to do the work, but eventually will pay you handsomely to do it. That’s easier in some careers than in others.

I guess for many people its a lifelong search… most people don’t even know what they want to do in life before the age of 30 and they usually settle into whatever they have been doing, either through family or otherwise.

The grind is when you start living paycheck to paycheck because your pay is so low that you need all of your paycheck to cover your cost of living, and you work such long hours that you really don’t have a social life at all. This is how many Taiwanese youth works… but many of them use their work and school as a means of social interaction and may prefer the long hours to get away from nagging parents (remember most of them live with their parents). The low paycheck really necessitates living with their parents because if they lived by themselves, they would never be able to save any money to do anything, although one Taiwanese I know seems to pay most of his wages to his parents for some kind of an expensive insurance, the end result is that he saves nothing. The system works for a Taiwanese who was born and raised here, but for a Taiwanese-American with Aspergers, its a lot different.

As ctfimage says, start your own business, and treat your job as an apprenticeship rather than a career. The reality is labor right here sucks so bad that you really cannot rely on employment to provide a paycheck sufficient to sustain a family… getting more than 60,000nt a month as a Taiwanese is proving to be mission impossible, even 40,000nt a month is mission difficult. Your pay as a foreign cram school teacher is going to be rather high compared to a Taiwanese but you will see absolutely no prospect of any increase in your income due to your experience. If anything as competition increases (laid off teachers back in the US, laid off people back in the US all coming over to grab this teaching English pie) your income per hour may decrease and you have to work harder just to maintain your standard of living. So if you’re able to save some money, do so and use it to start your business. As for the type of business it’s gotta be something you’re good at, have reasonable demand that people are willing and able to pay for, and you get a great sense of accomplishment from it. It doesn’t have to be something you absolutely love and won’t do anything else but that, because once you start doing your hobby as a job those feelings will go away quickly. It is work after all. Even if business is slow at first, at least you have the freedom to decide what to do when business is slow rather than a merciless boss who often threatens to fire you just because you idled a bit since you completed your tasks early.

It seems the best way to make quick money is to work in sales, if you are good at sales. However employers in those jobs tend to be short sighted (in fact many Taiwanese employers are short sighted), they demand immediate result and have no patience to let you build up a network slowly. If you can deliver great sales though you can rake in a crapload of money quickly… but then I am not a good salesman so take my advise with a grain of salt.

Or you can just do your job, collect your paycheck like what many Taiwanese aspire to do (which is why so many of them wants to work for a SOE or the government, big paychecks with no accountability and its very difficult to get fired by the government or a SOE), and be happy…

Focus on what you need to do next, Life has its way to upset the best laid plans.

Food for thought, this thread reminds me this book: amazon.com/Linchpin-Are-Indi … 1591843162

[quote=“Tomas”]
My intuition tells me that you may do best in your current circumstances by working in a job where you don’t have to be on site, something online. Good luck housecat.[/quote]

Excellent intuition, Tomas! Thanks for this (I’ve looked into getting back into online TOEFL rating, but they’re not hiring at the moment), and to the poster above who mentioned online teaching. I hadn’t even thought of that. That’s something I’m going to spend some time today looing into.

Cheers! :thumbsup:

Online teaching is going to boom with telepresence coming on quickly. Theres already plenty of tutoring opps but I think it’s going to get much bigger than that.

Luthiers , I doubt your Asperger’s prognosis because you seem to have a good idea on how society works here, I think you might just need more chances to hang out with people.

Interesting thread. The question of what to do with a career has been going round in my head for years. I’ve always worked in IT (prior to moving to Taiwan) and although I was pretty good at it (good enough to earn a decent wage anyway) I never really felt it was my ‘calling’’. Maybe I just never found the right role in the right company.

Trouble is despite all the good advice to ‘do what you love’ I have never been able to work out what that thing is. I mean I LOVE music and played in semi-pro bands for years thinking I would someday make money from it, however as Taiwan Luthiers has said, turning a hobby (even a ‘serious’ hobby) into a job can suck alot of the fun out of it. You’re whole attitude to the activity can change as it is no longer something you do simply because you want to. Now you ‘have to’ do it. So, is music the thing I should do with my life, or am I better off keeping it as something I will always enjoy (a ‘serious’ hobby) whilst making my money doing something else? Who knows.

Anyway, although I may not feel any closer to working out what I really want to do, I still think the search is beneficial and part of my life. My attitude is to try and be as happy/satisifed with the present (positive thinking and all that) whilst still spending time thinking about the future.

EDIT - fixed a few spelling errors. ipad keyboard driving me nuts.

Well, you gotta be good at what you’re doing or else you will not last in the trade for long, especially luthiery which in Taiwan is a small market, a mistake can cost you your job.

You can still turn a hobby into a job, the thing is now is that you would enjoy your job but it does suck the fun out of it. However now you would turn it into a sort of a challenge instead of a hobby. There are many reasons why you should get a new hobby if your main hobby turns into a job though, you really need a distraction from your normal job and not mix work and hobby.

There are also other reason not to mix hobby and work, for example certain trades like pyrotechnics which requires a license to practice professionally but not generally as a hobby means that with a license you will be under certain scrutiny from the government, preventing you from practicing them as a hobby.

My former guitar teacher was a real impressario, very talented guy who loves making and playing music. He played in various bands, including a time when he played guitar for Alice Cooper. His cousin was a singer who made it really big in a band you’d all know if I told you. He could never figure out how to make good money playing music until one day he found himself in Germany and, lo and behold, they loved him. He’s lived there for ten years now, has a house and a nice life playing with his own band in various clubs, makes a six figure income.

Sometimes you just have to keep searching for the right place, the right market, to become successful.

Yea, I gotta do a few years in Taiwan as a professional luthier before I can go into say Germany and break into their instrument making market. The bar is pretty high especially in those countries and they are much less tolerant of mistakes there.

The music market in Taiwan really sucks balls, I don’t know if its because of the whole celebrity culture here.

Tomas, would agree that sometimes the right market is all that is needed. Have you read ‘career renegade?’ . In it the author suggests first defining your passion (what would you do for free if money was taken out of the equation) and then looking for markets or niches within markets where you can be successful.

Great advice but I think some people (and I include myself in this in the past) fall into the trap of thinking the problem is the location when actually the problem is their business model or their attitude to the business. Like most things in life the answer probably lies somewhere in the middle.