A friend of mine in hi-tech left their previous job and country, and came to Taiwan on the offer of the CEO of a large Taiwanese company for a handsome compensation package.
After arriving in Taiwan, the CEO told him that there were delays in being able to hire him, and he should wait a bit. Furthermore, the size of the compensation package has been reduced “due to unforeseeable limitations on what the CEO is able to offer”.
To date, no formal employment contract has been signed.
My friend has now gotten demands from the HR department for his PhD thesis - the full, electronic version as part of the engagement process. After a few hints that it was not possible, and the HR department not getting the hint, my friend has now plainly refused to supply it.
Do you think my friend did the right thing? It seems the Taiwanese company keeps giving promises it doesn’t keep, and now they want a few years of his life’s work for free, furthermore in a format that is easily forwarded around.
Has anyone else experienced something similar? Is HR hoovering up the person’s knowledge before hiring them often done here? It strikes us as odd that HR would want or is even capable of understanding a few hundred pages of technical jargon.
Is this bait and switch tactic common in Taiwan? Basically don’t trust anything here until it is on paper in black and white?
Given the details you have provided, if I were your friend I would write to the company and tell them (the company) that I am no longer interested in the position.
a diploma from your university should be enough for HR purposes. if the thesis has proprietary information, explain it and ask them to sign NDA enforceable overseas.
its very unusual and can be a red flag.
as for TW companies’ honesty, your mileage may vary.
With state-related organizations, this kind of diploma however needs to go through a complicated authentication process overseas, due to (one surmises) heaps of fraud in the past.
As some forumosans have detailed—here I am thinking of @Marco 's epic battles—it is possible to get justice by getting the Labor Bureau involved. But it does take time and determination to do so!
There was recently a huge scandal involving a high government official who had plagiarized their thesis. I wonder if that has triggered a new trend in potential employers verifying everything during the hiring process.
Also, is your friend applying for a job in academia? It’s pretty normal for potential employers in some fields to ask for a PhD thesis, as it speaks to the quality of the applicant’s research.
There are more Formosans here versed on these matters, but regarding negotiations, rebid high above what they have lowered it to. You can come to an agreement. Whether it is feasible will be on you.
Isn’t their PhD thesis now publicly available anyway? I wouldn’t have thought they should have published anything proprietary/sensitive in the first place. Some unis release them online by default.
It seems unwise to have come here without at least a signed contract.
It’d be an odd situation if there’s anything in someone’s PhD thesis that’s of that much value to an unrelated company. Your friend should be more surprised that anyone is interested in reading it…
never heard of it, even for tenure track academic positions you dont need the whole copy of the phd, an abstract is enough.
PhDs arent written to be put in a library, they are written to get published. if you have a phd chances are you also have a few publications (which are openly accessible ) that can be used to evaluate your skill level.
Her first job at a cram school. Can’t remember the actual numbers but it doesn’t matter to the story.
She applied and the salary was 40k.
She went to the interview and they said the job advert was wrong. 36k.
Then they said her English wasn’t very good so will offer her 32k.
She agreed.
The day before she started, they phoned her and said that they reviewed her uni and for that level of uni, it is normally 28k.
She still agreed.
She started working there and after three days, her boss informed her that the first three days were a trial. No pay. And her actual start day was the following week.
That was enough for her to fuck them off. Still wasted a lot of time and worked for free for three days.
She always tells the story to my daughter. Don’t do as I did. Preparing her for dealing with these types.
Many many many Chinese are scam artists. NYT columnist Thomas Friedman Called China “low trust society”. I guess that sounds better somehow
The bs has started and he hasn’t even worked 1 day there.
I had all day interviews at TSMC. But I sensed a toxic work environment. So first thing I did when I got home was tell them to mail my work samples I’d given them and I wasn’t interested
Definitely fishy but immaterial. Dissertations are almost universally publicly available. If there are pending patent applications the dissertation might be temporarily withheld. Not to speak of the publications.
Dude either wants to work there or not. This is nitpicking. I would have said no when they reduced the package.
