The day that Taiwan bosses allow this (and also have the necessary software and hardware for you to logon remotely) is the day that hell freezes over.
I think it would be interesting to see how many of us here are given the freedom to work remotely or are we all just zombies at our desks for 4 to 5 hours between the time of 9AM-5PM.
We were all just forced to go over to Office 360, and all my proprietary software is licensed for my home computer, so I donât think the HW/SW deal is much of an issue.
Your first point, however, regarding Taiwan bossesâ rampant (and totally justified, in most cases) paranoia, on the other hand, is accurate, itâs the real stumbling block.
Really, though, in your average IT company, itâs pretty hard to get through the day without some F2F requirement.
Taiwanese bosses know that their employees would all slack off if they donât keep a close eye on them for 10-hours a day.
I was waiting for someone to make this comment and I canât agree more.
So is it something that âweâ bring upon âourselvesâ for having that kind of reputation or is it because the bosses or managers really nothing better to do than to know exactly what youâre doing at all times at the desk?
Iâm actually having a hard time deciding which side of that argument I would side with.
I have the option of going back to the States once a year for a month or so. I asked my boss and he incredibly said âyes.â
The first time I took advantage of this, I found I was EXTREMELY efficient. I would wake up very early and start work immediately with my morning coffee. I would have a simple breakfast at my desk with a second cup of coffee. I would then go and workout, have lunch, then work a bit more. I was done by 2 or 3 pm every day. I mean really done with more than I do working a normal schedule here in Taipei.
I wish I could do this all the time.
What a load of bollocks. I work from home and I spend 50% of my day avoiding work, 30% on going outside on pointless errands (eg., buying coffee), and 10% on actually earning my keep. Sometimes I work on improving my math skills.
OTOH, when I worked in the office, I probably spent 5% of the time on earning my keep.
This really is a âthingâ, and my impression is that itâs because every Taiwanese person wants to have âmanagerâ on his business card, even if he doesnât have the skills or experience to manage an inebriation event in an alcoholic beverage production facility. Thus you end up with 16 managers with not a lot to do except issue contradictory commands, and 3 engineers who just give up in despair.
This is a total chicken/egg deal.
Staff act like 5-year-olds because The Man keeps a boot on their necks from dawn til dusk and beyond.
And The Man has to keep a boot on their necks because they act like a bunch of 5-year-olds.
Yeah, I done the Work At Home thing before, itâs not for me.
For starters, my wifeâs at home.
Working culture in Taiwan seems crap to me. Even âprofessionalâ jobs where everyoneâs got about two MSc, people have to clock in & out like plebs in a factory.
It makes me laugh
That is because US infrastructure allows efficiency. Itâs so much easier to find things back home, generally can get places faster (if not in rush hour traffic). Itâs not as noisy and crowded. The offices are not as cramped as Taiwan. Food is better and easier to find.
Taiwanese culture doesnât seem to care about efficiency, just how many hours they can get out of you.
Just quick posting.
At present time I still prefer if my boss was not around I can work faster and efficient.
If boss around all my work are pending because I need to do her stuff first dang, what can I do iâm 20th century âslaveâ.
Youâre in the wrong century. Just do what your boss says - poor cow.
It wouldnât work on a large scale if the boss suddenly allowed it. People are impulsive creatures. Itâs kind of like the weed abuse youâd get if it became legal overnight. Sure, it will go back to normal eventually but the initial changes cannot be ignored. Bosses should instead introduce it slowly, starting with 1 day a week for best behaved employees and going on from there (assuming the boss is progressive enough to allow it in the first place).
Disclosure: Iâve been working 100% from home for the past year and my productivity is reasonable.
In our Taiwan office more than half the staff work remotely as they are service and sales staff for Taiwan.
They drop into the office every week or couple of days.
I go to the office most days because it helps me focus somewhat and my other choices are stay at home (boring) or coffee shops (can be noisy and cramped). Its also impossible to work outside for at least half the year. I have remote worked on and off for many years, and like most of my colleagues we have calls in early mornings or evenings and take them from home or wherever we happen to be at the time.
Yes, it depends on your industry. What is MLM but working remotely - and there are/were tons of these.
I used to work for a drug company and 50% of our headcount were sales people. All of them are in the field (i.e., working remotely), none of them had desks in our office, all the way up to National Sales Managers. Every quarter, we organize a sales conference aka âcycle meetingâ when our marketing team would (try to) introduce their latest plans and tactics.
There is a lot of effort and technology involved in trying to make sure sales people do what we expect them to do (read Jamie Reidyâs hilarious book about being a Pharma Sales Rep in the US: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/147887.Hard_Sell) - and here in Taiwan, our issues were no different. We group alot of this stuff under SFE or SFA - Salesforce Effectiveness or Salesforce Automation.
I supported the SFE Team and one year, we were rolling out EEE PCâs (remember those?) as part of our SFE campaign. I came up with the acronymn SIMIAN and suggested we make the Monkey King the mascot of our SFE program. I couldnât understand why the artist, a smart fellow who was one of our marketing product managers, refused to draw Sun Wukong with a crown. When I asked him why, he looked at me like I was an idiot. Then he carefully explained that Tripitaka had used the crown to control the Monkey King. The artist felt including the crown on the mascot was merely rubbing our (marketingâs) disdain and mistrust of the habits of the sales reps into their faces.
I have always wondered how on earth some people get some serious work done in a coffee shop or even a Mos Burger. I was always the library rat back in uni. If it wasnât pure silence and at most rustles of paper and laptops keys going off, there was no way I was able to concentrate.
I guess you have never heard of a Kć¸ä¸ĺż?
Iâd be able to do a lot more work if it wasnât for the noise at the office. We have everything from protests, military convoys, cops doing the bash their skulls in dance practice, non stop sneezing, coughing up a lung, arguments escalating into fights, high heels clack clacking, printers printing and the ocassional fire alarm/computer explosion, etc. Top annoying thing: phones ringing, people answering them screaming into the headset. âCan you hear me!?â They should be able to hear you in Timbuktu without a satellite or land line involved, dear.
Iâd love to work from home. For creative stuff, it is a lot better to concentrate. Here, I am curently playing Brazilian samba to drown out the ambient noises.
I havenât, but I know of some cafes near NTU that are quiet study cafes and itâs frowned upon if you go in there to chit chat.
Sounds more like the middle of a zoo than an office.
True that. Despite being completely unproductive at home, Iâm equally unproductive in the office for exactly this reason. Thereâs always ONE guy who considers it his duty to walk around interrupting everyone with the latest office gossip or a fascinating story about his car problems.
