besides english proficiency, business connections back home, anything else?
Some companies like to think it makes them look more international if they have foreign staff
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For some companies building products with a lot of worldwide users, it is quite important to have a diverse team to actually design the product well. I know that most companies still just want to hire a foreigner for marketing/branding reasons, but itās better to stay away from these places.
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This is a bit controversial but western foreigners are more likely to be open to give and receive feedback to help continual improvement rather than keep doing the same things that arenāt working as well as they could forever
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Useful for a prisoner swap or something when the Chinese invades.
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In my personal experience, I would never give a sales or āinnovativeā role to a local (unless he has huge international experience and reasons unlike locals). This is because the way they think and reason here is very āstandardisedā, follow rails, and if an obstacle is on the rails, they derail. They canāt go around it and find an alternative solution.
Then I donāt find them able to sell, their only sales strategy seems to be giving discounts, thatās it. No convincing, persuasion, nice words. They donāt work the client basically.
On the reverse, they have an advantage for that in operational things, mechanical repetitive acts. Very good auditors, accountants, bureaucrats, secretarial duties are their thing.
So generally we foreigners are more flexible and can adapt, but then there are many grifters among us, I would not trust them at all for even the simplest thing.
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Diversity in thinking. Ability to break groupthink mould.
An ability to connect with markets close to and in the home country.
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Granted, they still built a rich and developed country with some of the most innovative industries on the planet so I do think there is plenty of innovation here. They have few natural resources soā¦ itās not like they struck oil and simply subsidise everyone with their ballooning sovereign wealth fund. I think this post was a bit harsh.
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I think the real advantage is education and upbringing. Westerners receive a lot more leisure time, play time with others (improving social skills), freedom of choice, and are often afforded the opportunity to pursue a variety of hobbies and recreational pursuits. Additionally, western education has revolutionized in modern times to focus on creativity, synthesis of interdisciplinary concepts and less structured/clear steps to accomplish tasks.
Of course this is untrue in the poorer/ more rural areas of Western countries. But for westerners who did have this type of upbringing, there are distinct advantages in the form of adaptability, enhanced social skills, leadership and management abilities, and time management. (In general)
So the advantage isnāt for all foreigners, but for those from certain backgrounds far less likely to be available in Taiwan
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TSMC is a world leading company. Then thereās also UMC, Mediatek and ASE Group.
Conclusion: locals canāt do shit.
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you forgot the fast career track in Starbucks, where they can bring out everything they learned in their 50K USD a year degree in comparative literature and minor in linguistics of middle ages Serbo-Croatian.
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Donāt forget gender studies or ā¦ funeral services. I think one of the University of Californias used to offer a 4 year degree in the later.
TSMC founded by a taiwanese who went to the US, as I said, if they have international experience, they are good. They are great workers, but often they donāt work smart, just hard.
Thatās my experience and my preference. My company is 60% local HK employees, the rest mixed foreigners, foreigners and international HKie have creative and client facing roles, locals are in operations, accounting and coding.
It works great. The few locals in client facing roles are only dealing with HK/mainland/chinese speaking clients.
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funerals is big business, everyone always recommends a trade, and this one is just as good.
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Sure in America where there is a glut of highly educated, highly trained innovators, this type of phenomen is pretty common.
But those people could still be an asset if they are able to adapt skills learned in those degrees (Qualitative inquiry, structured inquiry, in depth analysis) and apply them to other more practical domains.
In terms of what they COULD bring to Taiwan, I think the answer is a lot. But it also depends on the specific person and not broadly across all foreigners
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I think funeral services is a VERY necessary service, but you donāt need a four year degree costing 50k a year or what have you. I think you can probably learn by apprenticeship.
i think it depends on company culture and boss. Ive worked with Taiwanese, Korean, Chinese, Japanese and from skill set point of view, i cant say they differ much from one another.
TW companies are mostly āorder takersā, as such, there is no need to create something new, just follow the plan to the tee. Having the token foreigner on board wont change the company culture.
There are thousands of TW working in the states in innovative companies like Google or Apple, so its not a question of being Taiwanese or not, but a question of the corporate culture you are in.
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I think thatās a bit supremacist in my view. TSMC and other companies are more than just one person.
And many other companies still work great. Taiwan is not run by Chaebols and has a very diverse set of companies run by locals of whom are innovative in their own right. I am very doubtful to suggest that our way is superior. To suggest that you need to go to the US to somehow be taught innovation is kindaā¦looking down on the locals who built this country and to minimise Taiwanās contributions for no reason.
Remember that many western countries and companies benefitted from immigration and diversity of thought.
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Sure! But so do all countries. I just donāt agree with painting all the locals with the same brush.
āOh heās just the exception cause he spent some time in the US.ā
I canāt agree with that.
There are many, many things I think Taiwan does better than us.
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i beg to differ, very few are innovators, not just in America, world wide. most of the highly educated spend their degrees (at least their BA) copy pasting and synthesizing texts written by others, with very little research or profound thinking.