Stereotypes usually are not born out of thin air. Don’t forget the Confucian type authoritarian boss who BTW steals from your check, the fact that office politics and backstabbing are 10x worse than in many western countries, and the xenophobia. Exceptions exist but finding them is another matter. Money is the only way to go up or down in China society and money mostly comes from working. In nearby Japan, people drop dead from overwork so often that it is not news. Many Taiwanese emulate Japanese culture
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Depends on the company. I am a product manager and I work 8:30-5:30pm and have never stayed overtime at the office. If I participate in online meetings and webinars from home, I take the next morning off.
I have PM friends in other companies that go home at 10-11pm, but their companies have 500+SKUs while mine has 100+ SKUs.
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I’ve barely done any overtime ever in Taiwan. A lot of it is for show or to get the free biandang and the monthly bonus.
I was called into an urgent meeting yesterday and we all got free KFC.
They are scared to take holidays, scared of being fired.
It is, because they are no longer, just gone.
Play around on the internet all day and than do overtime?
ITT: people arguing about some whack shit
Pretty much.
I worked for two years for an international Japanese company that made an effort to project an “American-style” work culture. As it was my first office job anywhere, I didn’t have anything to compare it to and assumed it was normal. Now that I’ve worked a few years at several offices in the UK, I realise that Taiwanese work culture is very distinct to Europe’s and not what I’d call “normal” at all, but I’m really glad I experienced it before returning to the UK.
Based on my own limited experiences, I can make the following observations:
1) Taiwan: While your right for personal time off is respected, there’s still an expectation that you stay on top of office developments and respond to “important” messages. Typically, we’d take our work phone or laptop with us on holiday and designate a specific hour or so to check emails, etc. That or we’d just keep our work phone on-hand at all times outside of work.
1) UK: There’s no expectation that you should keep your work phone with you on hand during PTO. Your free time is expected to be yours so you don’t feel overburdened and return to the office recharged. The concept of taking your laptop with you on holiday and designating an hour to respond to emails is abhorrent.
2) Taiwan: If you leave work “on time” more than one day in a row, you’re considered to be lazy and not going the extra mile for the company. Typically, Taiwanese employees have to wait until their manager leaves the office before they can leave. However, because I had an American manager, I was never expected to do this. But I was conscious of the fact that I’d often need to stay behind an extra 10 mins to half an hour, even if I was just pretending to work, in order to keep up appearances.
2) UK: Staying behind 10 mins is normal, but only the most committed stay behind longer on a regular basis. There’s absolutely no stigma attached to leaving on time every day.
3) Taiwan: Although overtime (beyond “keeping up appearances”) wasn’t insane at my “American-style” company, it was considered a normal part of the job that you just have to put up with from time-to-time without moaning about or expecting compensation for. This included (rarely) going to the office on weekends.
3) UK: I don’t actually mind doing the odd bit of overtime without compensation if it’s called for, but in the UK I’ve probably only ever had to stay late at the office two or three times, and in each instance I was profusely thanked for it. I’ve never heard of somebody coming in on the weekend to do extra work in the UK.
4) Taiwan: We had a lot of team-building events during office hours and after-work socials that it would have been considered very bad form for me to not attend. In fact, there were so many team-building events to this activity or that restaurant (all paid for by the company, of course) that I was actually starting to get a bit tired of them. There was even an annual company “sports day” that we were obliged to attend which all the Taiwanese staff were very enthusiastic about and the foreigners just put up with. Also, I felt like you were expected to join colleagues for lunch every day. If you prefer keeping your own company in your down time (like I do), you’ll soon pick up a reputation for being anti-social.
4) UK: We have comparatively very few team-building events and company socials, but there’s a strong pub culture where colleagues go for a drink after work because they want to not because they feel obliged to. There’s also no stigma around wanting to keep to yourself during lunch breaks, although plenty of people also go out together.
Over all, I do miss the friendliness and camaraderie of the Taiwanese office, even if much of it was forced. I love the UK’s pub culture, but office chit-chat here tends to revolve around boring subjects like mortgages and family. This is probably a symptom of Taiwan’s ridiculous house prices and declining birth rates stunting the emotional growth of people my age, but those topics rarely popped up in the office chit-chat out there. In that respect, it was more fun and innocent.
However, considering how low the pay is and how few holidays Taiwanese office workers receive, I wouldn’t be willing to go back to that kind of life again.
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Oof. You should get extra hazard pay for those kinds of “perks”.
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Oh, come on.
You compare a civilization consisting of some earthen mounds, and another consisting of several pueblos with London and Paris?
Give me a break.
You sound more like the Chinese than me in this respect.
Ok this is entertaining.
Does this look like just a couple pueblos to you?
Populations that exceeded the biggest cities in Europe and trade networks that spanned thousands of miles with seashells found in the desert and crops from south America while the European serfs could barely trade with the neighboring village or get clean water.
Man some people and their cultural superiority. As if we should be thanking you for steak tar tar or fish n chips.
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I am still in California and we recently got switched to “unlimited” paid time off at my US-based large company. This is becoming more common and helps people who recently joined the company, since paid time off used to increase each year. It used to start at 2 weeks and top out at about 6 or 7 weeks, which is where I was when we switched to unlimited. But it is unlimited only to the extent that you are brave enough to ask for and your manager approves. Anything over 3 weeks requires 1-up approval. I try to take 2 to 3 weeks of at a stretch once a year, plus a few days to a week here and there. But I rarely go a day without at least checking email, and my work laptop doesn’t left at home if we travel.
Aside from vacation, actual holiday kind of sucks–only 6 days. Disability covers a certain amount of maternity leave, maybe 6 weeks?
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I am also in the US now. I get the 10 US Federal holidays off as an employee in the US Federal Government. I get 4 weeks of vacation per year and in 3 years it will increase to 5 weeks per year which is the maximum for my position, so essentially 7 weeks per year if you include the holidays throughout the year. I am allowed to use my leave pretty much as I like, however, there are many work places in the US that discourage people from using their hard earned annual leave.
I’d say my situation isn’t the norm in the US and it does sound better than what one would expect to get in Taiwan from what I’ve read on this thread and others. That is part of my hesitation in moving to Taiwan, I’d be giving up an awful lot in terms of work related quality of life I think. Can anyone chime in about the work culture for healthcare providers in Taiwan?
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Healthcare providers are usually over worked in Taiwan, you can google it.
Its interesting that broadly, Taiwan and US and European and even Japanese work culture are quite distinct .I’m family with our Japan colleagues office routine and they put i far longer hours than in Taiwan. In our Taiwan office of an international org there is no expectation to do overtime and many remote workers now. Less so in Japan, only with covid could some colleagues start doing remote.
I’ve worked in Taiwanese companies and Alankaz has explained the typical situation very well. One good thing in Taiwan is that the work environment is usually very informal and if it the atmosphere is good you’ll be invited to some regular social activities . Also colleagues weddings or when they have a baby where you have to give them a red envelope. I’ve also worked at some places where I was not invited to lunch or much of anything. YMMV.
Taiwan is obviously challenging if you don’t speak or read Chinese at times and there are usually very few foreigners working in Taiwan. The chances are you will be the only foreigner and maybe the only non ethnic Chinese n the office quite often. This is a significant difference compared to the UK and the US that is often over looked. If you are Asian looking you can blend in more but there will still be a distance from locals.
UK offices , again there is a wide variety in co culture but I do find them more formal. Except certain topics get discussed more such as football and sex!
I knew a Japanese salesman. He said the manager from Japan Left wife and kids in Japan and every night he would go to dinner, get drunk, talk about the same thing every night, and junior staff had to go with him every night. He said this is very very common. Almost every Japanese manager, same situation. It was Working OT, unpaid babysitting. The junior salesman said he had a Girlfriend in TW ( besides his JP gf) but it would be 100 percent impossible for him not to marry a a Japanese, one chosen by his parents.
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It’s not just yamiao. You ya the miao and then you spend half an hour eating breakfast and doing your makeup.
I’ve always been the opposite. I get to work early and leave exactly at clocking out time. In fact I’ve been told off for clocking out at 5.30 since it means I’m leaving my desk early.
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Eastern employee meets Western work culture
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