… and thats the double edged sword… when you finish teaching English in Taiwan and return back to your home country you have a expertise gap on your CV. (note: i am not criticising those who choose/want to teach English, just speaking from obeservation)
I’m still willing to do technical work here despite the lower pay. Looks like I’ll have to supplement with private tutoring. It’s important for me to continue learning.
It is a sacrifice but it’s ok.
I’ve been working in a large computer/electronics company in NeiHu for about 9 months now as a Technical Writer. Funny thing is I just found this thread, and it’s been really interesting to read.
Here’s my experience.
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I sit around doing nothing for a lot of the time, which is not as good as it sounds. It can be incredibly boring. However, this has improved as I’ve found interesting ways to fill my day (i.e. learning new stuff through internet).
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People don’t tend to speak to me, which makes life even harder. For the first few months, there were some weeks where I could sit at my desk for a whole week without a single person speaking to me. That can kill you. However, this has got better with time.
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When there is a project to do, and the deadline is approaching, you occasionally have to do a shitload of work at the last minute, mostly due to other people changing everything a day before it’s due. Just the way it is here, and it’s OK, cos it doesn’t happen too often.
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I get paid a little less than I did teaching English (just under 60k), but I feel I need to do this so that my CV doesn’t look crap when I head back home in a few years.
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Since I’ve joined this company, and it has been noticed that my workload is somewhat “light”, I’ve been asked to do other things, like presenting some of our products to foreign visitors, which is actually quite interesting, though not really my cup of tea.
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The hours are “officially” 8.30 to 18.00 or 9.00 to 18.30 (or anywhere in-between, if you know what I mean). I used to arrive at 8.15 and leave at 18.00, but I got dirty looks for proverbially running out the door as soon as the bell went. I realised that if I arrived at 8.45 and left at 18.15, no-one complained. Ironic, cos that’s 15 mins less. It’s just the way it is.
Anyway, feel free to ask if there’s anything I’ve left out.
P.S. Can I ask if anyone else here works in NeiHu? Lunch can be boring 
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I recently bailed out of a software company where I was working as a token foreign guy, mostly technical writing, before getting an ARC. I got some of the same vibes as irishstu: light workload, people not tending to talk to me (or probably knowing really what I actually did). But my biggest concern was I was being pushed into the business side. Since the world of corporate buzzwords and powerpoint presentations doesn’t really appeal to me, and since I saw no way of breaking into what I really wanted to do there, I decided to cut my losses. I should have seen it really: the opening was advertised as a “Product Marketing Manager”. While the business side of software certainly appeals to some technical people, I’m not one of those.
The moral? While it may be tempting to apply for and take anything that vaguely meets your qualifications just to get a foothold into the local job market, it’s not a good idea. If you wouldn’t want to do it back home, you certainly don’t want it in a foreign country, particularly one that’s a low-wage economy.
what “irishstu” said.
I live life so bored about 90% of the time and in a life and death rush the other 10% cause no one can plan. And im sitting around in NeiHu to boot.
Ah well.
Yeah, what knocks me off my feet is always Taiwnese colleagues who do not talk to me or just with wordless guestures trying to avoid speaking English are actually friggin fluent in English when they talk to a Japanese customer.
My wife said: But we only talk English to other Asians, becaue YOUR pronounciation is different.
Yeah… yeah …
When I have nothing to do, I usually surf the Internet for Star Trek news (wov, Shatner sells his kidney stone), study how-to computer pages (now learning Linux and upgrading my firewall skills) and am watching the cute girls around me who only smile to me, never talk. Wov, J… is reading the underwear cataloges with pictures again. 
Please, I need to learn more …
Today they had a bra in company and passed it to each other to check it out. Pink with some beeads stuff attached to it. But who of them needs such a big thing?
[quote=“DtRWoS”]what “irishstu” said.
I live life so bored about 90% of the time and in a life and death rush the other 10% cause no one can plan. And im sitting around in Neihu to boot.
Ah well.[/quote]
Well, booting is a good hobby.
Let the boot times roll
Chorus: F5 F5 F8
Let the boot times roll
Chorus: But sometimes it is DEL
Let the boot times roll
Hey! Yeah! Let the boot times roll!
feel me baby! Come on, boot times roll!
come on and let me fill your RAM,
hey, let the boot times roll
…
I envy you guys… at least you can work at a tech writing jobs (and be able to “prove” you can speak english just cause you look white) and be able to go back home with better salary and stuff. Me, I am stuck in Taiwan, can’t get a teaching job because I have Taiwan passports and don’t look white therefore I can’t be an english speaker. I dont know if I can do tech writing because I dont have the years of experience needed, and I dont know where to get them either. Therefore I am pretty much forced to work a minimum wage job (like 90NT per hour) at a convienence store.
You can do tech writing, even without experience. Just don’t ask for a very high salary. You could get a tech job for around 50,000 - 55,000 quite easily - if the opportunity crops up. Some companies just want to hire someone that is almost suitable that is cheap.
Don’t be kidding yourself about rolling into some high-priced gig back home based on your position here, dude.
I went back in 2000, after working for 6 years as a TW, including a Team Manager at what was then Taiwan’s biggest IT company, after 2 months in Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver, I had exactly 2 interviews, and neither of them amounted to anything.
The prevailing attitude pretty much amounted to
- Taiwan? Never heard of it
- We need a dedicated manual OR brochure OR marketing writer, your resume shows you’ve been doing ALL of those, we don’t think you show the requisite focus
- You’ve been working in (choose one) hardware/software/systems, we need someone who’s been working in (choose any other one).
I myself have never met anyone who managed to parlay experience here into a TW gig back home.
I totally agree with the chief, at least about tech writing. Don’t know about other professions though.
So do you think it’s worth me coming to Taiwan to get some technical writing experience or not? Because it seems all the jobs here at home (New Zealand) want two years experience. And it’s got to be good experience with stuff like Framemaker or Robohelp. Can I get that in Taiwan?
In short, yes. This is actually a good place to get experience doing technical writing. They’re usually more interested in the fact that you’re a native English speaker, and therefore will still accept you without much, or any, experience.
Bear in mind that you need to produce “documents showing 2 years related experience” to apply for a work permit in Taiwan too.
Oh…erm… I guess being married to a local does have advantages. Sometimes I forget about all that “stuff”. 
By the way, chickenwhen, the 2 years thing is a legal thing, not an… erm… experience thing.
I mean hell, if an Irishman can do it…
“Sure an’ its square, see? With the corners at each side. So when yiz push it, she rolls along with no more care than a fiddler’s fart. Yiz can use this for all kinds of things. The technical term’s `wheel.’”
Oh…erm… I guess being married to a local does have advantages. Sometimes I forget about all that “stuff”.
By the way, chickenwhen, the 2 years thing is a legal thing, not an… erm… experience thing.[/quote]
I wasn’t going to be the one to suggest such a thing, but you’ll noticed I chose to write “showing” rather than some other word, say for example “proving” 
Gotcha! I’ll try fiddling with the dates on that last brochure I wrote. See if I can turn a fortnight into a couple of years!
I’d like to ad an update to this thread (You can look back to see my original post outlining my initial experiences here).
I’ve now been in my job for more than 2 years and things have changed a fair bit. Here’s what I’ve found.
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At the beginning, there wasn’t much work for me, so I spent a lot of time surfing, etc. Oh, how that has changed. I’ve got a feck-load of work now (although I somehow still manage to log into forumosa.com a little bit too often).
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My salary has hardly increased at all. I got a 2000NT$/month increase after the first year, and a 2500NT$/month increase after the second. HOWEVER, my bonuses have increased dramatically, especially after I wrote a long email to my boss just after my second joke salary increase.
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I am asked to do work for lots of different departments in my (HUGE) company, so I need to be able to produce documents in all sorts of formats, like Word, Pagemaker, Framemaker, InDesign, Quark, Illustrator, Photoshop, to name just a few. I didn’t know many of these when I started, but it’s amazing how quickly you can learn when you really have to.
So, although there are many things that frustrate me here, I have to say that I have so far learnt a lot, my net pay has gone up quite bit and I am treated with a fair bit of respect. All in all, not bad.
So they’re no longer amusing themselves by giving you wedgies and putting superglue on your chair?