Why do English teachers need to learn to code when they can get a gold card by cutting a rectangle out of a sheet of gold paper from the everything store?
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The whole assumption is idiotic.
First of all an English teacher doesnât need a gold card, they can get an ARC at the drop of a hat and there is still a big demand for English teachers.
Besides how many typical English teachers would like to be programmers ?
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This.
30 years ago Taiwan did pretty well by hopping on some bandwagons that had a comfortable learning curve (low-end electronics manufacturing, for example). It was possible to enter the industry knowing only the basics, get some cash from some rich chums, buy some machines, and learn on the job (while making a bit of a pigâs ear of the customerâs orders). You canât do that these days. Things are changing so rapidly that you need an IQ of 180 and a prescription for Ritalin to keep up. You canât just fake it until you make it, not when the likes of Google are throwing containerloads of cash at it and hiring the worldâs best engineers.
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Cause they spell things like colour wrong. 
jokes.
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I think Taiwanâs main interest in AI is in sacking people. So for example replace a team of radiologists with an AI engineer and a cloud service.
But I could think of so much more low hanging fruit in terms of technological restructuring in Taiwan that doesnât require high-falutinâ AI solutions. Just bloody I donât know, replace the admin staff at school with a web page so I can pay my school and excursion fees online?
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Most of the American tech giants concentrate their regional AI research in Taiwan.
Here is a white paper:
Teach legally at any cram school that correctly reports your income to the taxman for five years, get an APRC, work any job in Taiwan you want (and are qualified for skills-wise) for any salary for as long youâd like.
I do know a few people who are English teachers who have taken up coding as a hobby and potential future career, but by the time they have enough skills to make enough money for the gold card, theyâll be way beyond the time necessary to get an APRC. That doesnât mean they wonât be making a lot more money in the future, but theyâll have the legal ability to be here already
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Donât you know they have school admin so they can create jobs?! Someone needs to be paid to pick their nose for ten hours a day so they can spend ten minutes a week making sure everyone has paid up.
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And whoâs hiring someone for a coding job with just a bootcamp? The only folks Iâve heard of getting jobs this way is when some company is involved in some job training / redevelopment thing, and those typically run longer than the bootcamps you see advertised. The bootcamps are useful if you need some coding skills to help with your current job.
Itâs not that difficult (most people coding are doing relatively routine things⌠itâs not like everyone is developing complex algorithms or kernels). (Iâve been a volunteer high school cs teacher, including at an arts charter, so not exactly stem track kids)
That much?? No way!
My company hires programmers from Bangladesh and pays them $100 per month.
Weâve got someone in the country who, every once in a while, picks up a kid from the streets, shoves him in a coding bootcamp, and then gives him a job as a software developer for us. It doesnât take that much.
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Are you kidding? Chase hired my little brother as an app developer after a boot camp. His degree was unrelated (mechanical engineering).
It wasnât some job training charity thing.
You think you know this, because⌠That they have jobs, or even centers in ai in Taiwan doesnât mean their ai work is concentrated there. What has come out of Taiwan in this area?
Alright, fine, an engineering degree and coding skills will get you an entry level job. Ha.
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Is his obtuseness on purpose. Asking for a friend. 
Itâll be fun for him, for a while, while he learns all the tech. Why did he not pursue a role in mechanical engineering?
Heâs already worked for four years now and is currently at a tech company.
He did something mechanical engineering related for an internship and decided it wasnât his thing.
Many IT folks start with degrees in others areasâŚIn fact the majority that I know started out this way. They even did free conversion courses to pick up coding skills. Few are at the top of the game by they have made a very good living. I had a chance to follow that path but decided it didnât interest me enough.
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Iâm interested in knowing more about this.
Is this a Taiwanese company?
I read somewhere online that a software engineer in India makes the same as one in Taiwan. If I can confirm this, then so much for attracting Indian talent.
Iâm sure he was an English teacher with an engineering degree before he learnt coding.
Fify