Hey everyone,
I am super excited to move to Taiwan and start my studies the only thing that is giving me doubt is mixed reports about job market. I don’t mind paying my dues but I do want a decent paying job sooner rather than later. I don’t know any Chinese yet but I will give it my all if I decide to do this.
P.S. I would also appreciate feedback regarding the degrees international recognition (both in South Asia/SE Asia and Canada/US/Australia)
ME, like many engineering-related post, is hard to come by. Too many half-decent local half-wits could do the job in-par with you. Because most of the time, you need to deal with other half-wits from other Taiwan-based companies.
In short, Chinese is important if not the only factors that matters.
Some Taiwan-educated Computer/EE Engineers managed to land a job in SG. Some can’t.
PhD from a Taiwan University degree mean very little in the job market in Hong Kong/Australia. They have a strong talent pool already.
Also PhD training from Taiwan is every different so to what it is from the Western countries. Hence why many foreign PhDs are recruited to Taiwan (me) to drive innovation.
Sorry to be blunt.
You’re painting a hell of a picture of the local work environment. Sad thing is you’re probably spot on.
I think with the right focus (heat transfer, as in heat dissipation for electronic products), there could be some good options. For example, you already have a technical degree. This would qualify you to sit for the patent exam in Canada or the US. You could do this at the same time as you work on your PhD. I think there are options, but you may need to be a little creative and not confine yourself only to design engineering options, although getting a bit of design experience could very well pay off down the road if you do decide to get creative with your choices. Good luck.
Outside of Taiwan, Taiwanese degrees are kinda useless. In Taiwan, NTHU/NTU will lead to a job, IF your Chinese is good (it’s kinda important), and if you’re willing to accept an average salary (below 100 000 NTD). For decent paying jobs competition here is immense, you’ll go against top of the top of NTU/NCTU/NTHU and some others who obtained degree overseas in US, EU e.t.c… And natives come first, of course.
You’ll also need to survive PhD here first. Pick your advisor wisely, or you’ll forget how sun looks.
Hi, thanks for the reply. Yeah, there seems to be a consensus on this. Easy to get average salary jobs super hard to get decent ones. Can you please elaborate on the following as well?
1- I don’t know if this changes anything at all but I will definitely apply for ROC citizenship since I can apply without renouncing my current citizenship (home country doesn’t allow citizenship renunciation).
2- Are those average salaries in a dead end job or is that just for the first few years until climbing up the ladder.
3- How are NTU/NTHU regarded in mainland? (just as a plan B, don’t really like to live under PRC rule). I have an offer from Zhejiang University as well.
4- In regards to knowing Chinese, from what I could gather on internet 4 years is enough to be working-fluent in speaking and listening but writing will take many more years.
Those are goods plans, but really, just come to Taiwan and live here first for year or two(or five), and then decide about citizenship. Taiwan is truly great in many ways, but it may still be a tough experience to deal with local culture in long term.
Taiwan has a problem with stagnation, in general, local people start with about 30000 NTD (that’s a good start) and finish at about 60000 NTD or so, and it’d difficult to go higher. And 30 years ago it was the same. Promotions for foreigners are hard to get (don’t forget about culture), so it’s really possible to stuck in a dead end.
For places like Science city, where IT guys work, salaries are better. Problem is, like with Korea, if you’re a foreigner and you qualify to work in Science City as a techie, you probably can go to a better place abroad and get twice or triple as much money with much less work stress. Key point of Taiwan is that country is cheap, and you may even get a much better life with 2000 USD salary here than with, say, 4000 USD in Singapore (hypothetically). And it still is a good place to work a year or two to get an experience.
For Mainland, of course they will value Zhejiang better than any University of Taiwan. They don’t value Taiwanese universities that much.
Last, Chinese language is individual. Some people have natural talent for it, some can’t learn it no matter what. For me, for example, tones are a true nightmare, even after 4 years. If you’ll love the culture of Taiwan, you’ll learn the language, if not - it will be an useless struggle.
Again, be warned about Taiwanese PhD programs, things may go really weird. PhD and Confucian values don’t mix well for engineering (Taiwanese students and professors are in the lab 24/7, constantly showing cult-like devotion to their research and teams). But hope you’ll like your stay here, if you’ll come.
It’s like in the old Kungfu movies, where a prospect student (you!) must devote himself to a shifu day/night until you are proven worthy to graduate.
Do not in any way challenge your shifu… or you are doomed.
When you graduate and need to have him giving a recommendation letter or kattebelletje, you need to convince him that you have tried to learn everything he has taught you and you want to go outside the dojo to see the world.
When you went into your PhD course, what sort of job did you have in mind at the end of it?
I can’t think of a whole lot of possibilities - engine design or solar thermal systems, perhaps? - so it looks like you’ve painted yourself into a fairly small corner. Jobs, if you can find them, should be quite lucrative, but there will be very few of them. I would suggest adding another string to your bow (ie., a regular source of income) and investigating your prospects of getting occasional contract work based on your PhD.
Lol. I will definitely take that into account. I don’t know but I feel like it cant be much worse than the US, my friends who are working as an RA or TA during their PhD work from 8 to 6 everyday. I don’t know how to find what kind of professor he is, except maybe contact some of the alumni and/or current grad students?
Hi, I haven’t gotten into it yet, that’s the point of this thread. I wanna make sure that it is a good idea.
Job-wise its much more diverse than that. I don’t know what I will specialize in yet it but can be anything from wind farms, fuel cells, thermal management in electronics (looks like this has the most jobs in Taiwan), EVs to power/chemical plants and many other areas that I cant think of right now.
Thanks a lot. That was quite a detailed explanation. Taiwan is looking more interesting by the day. I know it has a its share of problems but I get a very Canada/Finland of east Asia vibe from it.
I don’t know about 24/7 but I love my research, so I’m sure I’ll be fine as long as the professor is remotely fair and I get the weekends to myself.
8 to 6 is generic in TW.
I know a professor in ME Dept (Thermofluid science) of NTUST who demand the Masters (and PhD) students to leave at earliest 10 pm each day.
i don’t know what you’re specific job prospect will like but it looks like it won’t be a dead end phd anytime soon, even the opposite. i’m quite sure, besides what everybody here’s telling you, you’ll find a decent job very likely.
i looked at NTU ME’s faculty and most of them graduated from top unis in the us, eg. caltech, ucla,mit etc.
now i know, professors here are very demanding but first you have the advantage of being a foreigner and second they had a western education. imo professors mostly go slavery-style on taiwanese students. and one would think, someone who received their phd in the us would copy that style to here, hoping they would hold to up to the same standards as they have experienced there.
afterall, a degree is a degree, it’s what you have learned from that, that counts. i’m sure with your knowledge you’ll find a decent job, at least 70k. but if you’re really skilled with knowledge not many can provide, i’d guess it would triple.
and yes, chinese is of course important, since this is the official&everyday language but when it comes to professional, high-tech stuff. they’re not dumb, most of them studied overseas anyways.
i’ve heard of some stories, where taiwanese went overseas to study at ivy league and when they came back no one was waiting for them because their skills were no longer required. but with a degree like that you can still get a 2nd-tier academic career anywhere in taiwan, earning 70-110k. if you really like being a teacher/professor here in taiwan, that’s always a route to go
I was just curious what drives you, or what motivated you to study that in the first place - in other words what job you would love to do rather than what job you could do if you were forced into it.
Taiwan moved a lot of its industry to China, and the things that remain are quite … niche. You might want to fish around companies like Gogoro, who are open to recruiting foreign talent and are doing some real groundbreaking first-principles stuff (quite unusual for Taiwan).
I will try to answer your questions as much as possible. I hope it will be helpful for you because I am international student in Taiwan doing MS. It has been almost 2 years so I can help you out in many things. Let’s go one by one.
Best of luck for your future decisions. And if you come to Taiwan then REMEMBER one thing that don’t show your professor if you are efficient to finish something before time. NEVER! Because he will not let you get break and will assign you new work because professor is looking at you like an opportunity to cash you as much as possible. So just keep finished work under the table until deadline is near. Otherwise you may need to do two projects in same deadline.
All of the above mentioned things are from my personal experience and my friends’ experience. Because we keep discussing these issues to feel that we all are same XD Otherwise we will be in sad cycle. LOL
Anyway best of luck 
For current grads, asking them may be useless. They may tell you a lot of good things about your possible advisor, and nothing bad. Because if you say bad things about shifu, you aren’t worthy. And shifu always knows everything. (Actually, this is true mostly for Japan and Korea, can’t say about Taiwan for sure). Asking people who survived (graduated) is a good idea, and those who didn’t survive can give a good background info too. From what I’ve seen here, local PhD students are not 8 to 6 everyday, but sometimes 9 to 23 everyday, including weekends, but foreigners, especially “white monkeys from right countries”, are on a much easier life. Asian people are especially susceptible to that “guilt” thing, which follows every graduate student around. 8 to 6 in the States sounds like a dream too. Science is seriously f…cked up.