Taiwan missed a chance to transform its backwards work culture

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Are you sure?
My team and the rest of the shop have been WAH since the end of March, and I know other companies have been as well.

Either way, the standard Taiwan office culture has been around for a long time. Pretty big boat to change direction in only a couple months.

FWIW, as I think brother @Brianjones and I have discussed before, if you actually look at job postings in the last few years, the number of truly remote gigs (anteCovid) in North America are actually pretty few and far between.
In my experience, the vast majority of gigs advertised as “remote” (again, before the beginning of this year) were actually “remote in the same area as the office, with regular office visits required”

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Many smaller companies used VPNs to allows workers to work remotely. Most major companies, especially IC manufacturing companies with fabs, and even some of the fabless IP selling chip makers, are stuck in the old ways and refuse to try remote work from home for the sake of “data security” when most of their computers still run Windows 7, and some of those all important computers controlling the manufacturing processes runs Windows XP.

That’s how concerned they really are about “data security.” That’s why TSMC last year could be hit with a company wide computer virus. All from a Windows computer from supposedly safe in the “internal network”.

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Same with at least one major insurer here, playing the data security card for not investing in WFH, but internally running an ancient version of Windows. One usb stick is all it takes. Clearly they just don’t want the investment and upkeep of a VPN and all the rolling OS upgrades. The intangible benefits from this sort of thing must be a hard sell to boards here, they don’t understand or see the immediate dollars in it, and shoot it down.

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I’d really like to try that four-day work week they’re floating in New Zealand. I’m generally near worthless by Friday anyway. And I promise I’d use my additional weekend day to like, stimulate the economy and stuff. :pleading_face::innocent:

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How do you say work from home in Chinese? I want to ask my relatives about it.

That’s a well written article. Taiwan News take note. :grin:

Although our company has been using apps like Slack and Trello, meant to enable seamless virtual communication, we weren’t ready for a crisis. As a digital media group, we ought to be more tech-savvy than traditional corporations. The three weeks of work-from-home practice proved that we weren’t.

Nobody could be truly ready. There was a steep learning curve all over the world. The international org I work for has been trying to learn on the fly as well, and we have mostly adapted quite well (we always had a lot of international telecons I guess). Our HQs require our staff to be in the office or at work usually because they are close to management, manufacturing and research and quality etc. I kind of see their point but I think they should have much more remote working to cut down on ridiculous commutes ! A complete waste of time along with needless carbon emissions .

I see our regional teams and country teams moving to more remote work long term due to large cost saving . We already started closing our offices in non capital cities a few years ago.The irony is though that we cannot travel right now.

Taiwan companies could benefit massively by hiring foreign talent and managing them from Taiwan remotely. Because let’s face it many people will never move to Taiwan and there is a lack of local diversity and skills.

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There’s no word for it. The concept doesn’t exist.

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If I was a Taiwanese boss, I wouldnt allow working from home. How can you without the concept of taking responsibility for your work and performance

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IMO the big hope for changing Taiwan work culture is Hong Kong immigration

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Taiwan laoban when told an employee wants to 'work from home '.

:neutral_face::thinking:
:joy::joy::joy:
:angry:

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The bosses here don’t take responsibility for their own work either, so the workers take a queue from them and react the same way. Its all about appearing busy. The bosses take no criticism from lowly workers that could actually improve efficiency and workflow.

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Yes, I agree. Its a two way dance of everyone pretending to be busy and shirking responsibility. Every Taiwanese company has people basically doing nothing, but you wouldnt know unless you investigated

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Off topic but I’ve actually got a working teddy ruxpin in the old country from when I was a kid. Makes me laugh when I see it as your profile. Gonna see if it still works one day.

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As has been discussed here before, it’s tough to actually assess the chicken/egg conundrum of Taiwan management relations.
Whether workers are untrustworthy work-to-rule drones because the Boss treats them like kindergarten kids, or the Boss treats them like kindergarten kids because they’re untrustworthy work-to-rule drones. :idunno:

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As an author, if you are going to be pretentious, it has to be well written!

The only party that can break that stalemate is management. :slight_smile:

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I had a manufacturing job in the US and we worked 4 ten-hour days a week. The drawback was we alternated shifts so every four months I had to work night shift. Still, three days off each week was pretty awesome! I doubt it’ll ever happen here.

It very likely will happen, but you might not be working by then :grin:.
And to be honest there are plenty of business people and managers who do this already, those that have freedom to set their own schedules.
I have some colleagues in the UK on this kind of schedule, but they won’t be promoted. They are okay with that .

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That’s good to hear. Sometimes I’m a pessimistic old coot.