What is the new process for the APRC?
Check the APRC thread.
wow! I am very happy to see that this thread I originally posted is having some success and other fellow forumosans are interested in it!
The development of the discussion is giving me a confirmation of what I already thought: Taiwan is great for students and enterpreneurs, good for those that are looking for a not-too-conventional career but nasty for those that want to pursue a more linear professional pathway.
I belong to the latter group and I really canât afford to just stop working as a designer and teach English for few years or start a business, as this choice would seriously undermine my employability in the future. In my field, if you donât gain substantial related work experience and learn the trade when you are young, your chances of building a career as a designer are pretty low. For this reason, I am among those that simply cannot afford to just drop their jobs and find other âsmarterâ ways to make some money in Taiwan.
I am sure many others are in a similar position; we studied and worked hard to break into our fields and we canât just give up on that because working as a professional in Taiwan sucks.
This thread highlights the key issues of being an employee.
Some have touched on it, but how would we rate the situation if we were employers instead?
Would bringing a decent, sensible set of lets call them western reforms to a Taiwanese team inspire morale and better efficiencies?
Iâd like to hear from the Foreigners who are bosses out here and how that works out for them?
[quote=âdinowilsonâ]I have been working for a local IT company since May last year. There are about 6~7 other westerners working here. They told me during my interview that they are looking at expanding and hoping to hire more foreigners in an effort to make the company more multi-national. I was hired to take up a PM position even though I have never been a PM before. I was told not to worry about not having the experience for the role as they would be able to train me. At the time I was on a working holiday visa which was about to expire and wanted to stay to live with my girlfriend so I accepted the job.
I only work 9 to 6:30 because we donât get paid overtime. I am usually one of the first 2 to leave in my department. Itâs crazy sometimes in the mornings when I go through my emails I notice some have been sent by some people at like 1am or 2am and I sometimes would get to work after them.
Even though I have been working here less than a year they have already moved me from PM to a Product Planner role and the marketing department tend to send a few things my way to proof read. I feel that I havenât got alot to do and wonder why they even hired me in the first place but I am more than happy to do this role as it is different to what I had been doing for 8 years previously.
If you work in a company like mine and donât know Chinese very well then there wonât be much career progress so my company is nice enough to offer to pay half of my costs to get a Chinese language tutor which I am currently in proccess of looking for.
I am earning less than half of what I was getting back home but it is not a problem for me because I am doing something different to what I was doing and gaining experience. The work environment is quite friendly and it seems everyone gets along. They are very generous with the amount of sick leave (you would have to be really sick to use it all up) but could give us a few extra days for labor leave but I can handle it.[/quote]
So since I posted this things have gone south pretty quickly. My manager and doesnât talk to me and my leader hardly says anything and before Chinese New Year my leader had told me that him and my manager have noticed that I havenât done alot of work⌠even though they are the ones that give me the work to do and plus I had only been in the new role for not very long. My leader has told me that itâs not good that I havenât made many friendsâŚeven though I have made friends with the people in the other departments I have worked with on the limited time I have spent on one of the projects I was given and it is a bit harder when locals donât know how to interact with a foreigner (I am also making the effort of going to chinese classes). One of my co workers started a conversation the other week at lunch saying to me that he heard from my manager that my contract isnât going to be renewed which was the first time I had heard about it. So now while I am looking for another job I am going to wait to see how long it takes for my manager to let me know that my contract isnât going to be renewed which is start of May.
[quote=âdinowilsonâ][quote=âdinowilsonâ]I have been working for a local IT company since May last year. There are about 6~7 other westerners working here. They told me during my interview that they are looking at expanding and hoping to hire more foreigners in an effort to make the company more multi-national. I was hired to take up a PM position even though I have never been a PM before. I was told not to worry about not having the experience for the role as they would be able to train me. At the time I was on a working holiday visa which was about to expire and wanted to stay to live with my girlfriend so I accepted the job.
I only work 9 to 6:30 because we donât get paid overtime. I am usually one of the first 2 to leave in my department. Itâs crazy sometimes in the mornings when I go through my emails I notice some have been sent by some people at like 1am or 2am and I sometimes would get to work after them.
Even though I have been working here less than a year they have already moved me from PM to a Product Planner role and the marketing department tend to send a few things my way to proof read. I feel that I havenât got alot to do and wonder why they even hired me in the first place but I am more than happy to do this role as it is different to what I had been doing for 8 years previously.
If you work in a company like mine and donât know Chinese very well then there wonât be much career progress so my company is nice enough to offer to pay half of my costs to get a Chinese language tutor which I am currently in proccess of looking for.
I am earning less than half of what I was getting back home but it is not a problem for me because I am doing something different to what I was doing and gaining experience. The work environment is quite friendly and it seems everyone gets along. They are very generous with the amount of sick leave (you would have to be really sick to use it all up) but could give us a few extra days for labor leave but I can handle it.[/quote]
So since I posted this things have gone south pretty quickly. My manager and doesnât talk to me and my leader hardly says anything and before Chinese New Year my leader had told me that him and my manager have noticed that I havenât done alot of work⌠even though they are the ones that give me the work to do and plus I had only been in the new role for not very long. My leader has told me that itâs not good that I havenât made many friendsâŚeven though I have made friends with the people in the other departments I have worked with on the limited time I have spent on one of the projects I was given and it is a bit harder when locals donât know how to interact with a foreigner (I am also making the effort of going to chinese classes). One of my co workers started a conversation the other week at lunch saying to me that he heard from my manager that my contract isnât going to be renewed which was the first time I had heard about it. So now while I am looking for another job I am going to wait to see how long it takes for my manager to let me know that my contract isnât going to be renewed which is start of May.[/quote]
I am sorry to hear dinowilson. I think I understand your point of view very well as my situation at work is not that far from yours. I am just waiting for my contract to expire (July) and then I will leave Taiwan, mainly because of the professional scenario that I personally find very disheartening for a foreign professional.
[quote=âmarghiniâ]
I am sorry to hear dinowilson. I think I understand your point of view very well as my situation at work is not that far from yours. I am just waiting for my contract to expire (July) and then I will leave Taiwan, mainly because of the professional scenario that I personally find very disheartening for a foreign professional.[/quote]
I was officially told by my leader last Monday. So now I have no work to do until start of May when I leave. So I basicly am coming into work and surfing the net. Feels like I have wasted a year. Old habits die hard and I donât think Taiwan office culture will ever really change and as you say marghini the professional scenario for foreign professionals is disheartening.
[quote=âdinowilsonâ][quote=âmarghiniâ]
I am sorry to hear dinowilson. I think I understand your point of view very well as my situation at work is not that far from yours. I am just waiting for my contract to expire (July) and then I will leave Taiwan, mainly because of the professional scenario that I personally find very disheartening for a foreign professional.[/quote]
I was officially told by my leader last Monday. So now I have no work to do until start of May when I leave. So I basicly am coming into work and surfing the net. Feels like I have wasted a year. Old habits die hard and I donât think Taiwan office culture will ever really change and as you say marghini the professional scenario for foreign professionals is disheartening.[/quote]
Funny enough, it is the same for me.
Last summer my boss decided to try this experiment with foreigners and hired a bunch of us, but they all quit already so I am officially the last one. Clearly the boss decided the experiment failed (those lazy opinionated loud laowai!)and he reverted the whole office to Chinese only. This simply means there is not much for me anymore as my Chinese is not good enough. I am sometimes given some simple stuff to get done, but I mostly spend my days doing nothing and getting outrageously bored. I think my boss does not want to fire me because there would be some severance to pay, so I guess we are both waiting for my contract to expire so this awkward situation will be over.
I canât really quit before July because 1) as this is my first job I want to have a full year employment on my cv 2) I agreed with my boyfriend about leaving Taiwan in August and if I quit now I would spend the next 4 months alone at home just getting bored even more.
So you see, I am stuck with this bullshit 
May I ask what kind of jobs were you supposed to have in the office. Like where does your companies specialize in?
I work as an Interior Designer at a local architecture firm specializing in high-end residential developments.
The plight of the Foreign employee here could be a result of
-
TW managers not seeing the long term value you could add. Usually they like quick wins and paybacks or return on investment (ROI). In my case even though my ROI was high, they took the business I developed and then fired me
. How many global TW brands take a nosedive after the quick wins from rapid copycatting evaporate? How many build more long term focused businesses like the Koreans and Japanese? -
TW managers realized there was going to be no ROI.
-
Over competitiveness and margin compression that almost each business suffers from here.
[quote=âcyberguppyâ]The plight of the Foreign employee here could be a result of
-
TW managers not seeing the long term value you could add. Usually they like quick wins and paybacks or return on investment (ROI). In my case even though my ROI was high, they took the business I developed and then fired me
. How many global TW brands take a nosedive after the quick wins from rapid copycatting evaporate? How many build more long term focused businesses like the Koreans and Japanese? -
TW managers realized there was going to be no ROI.
-
Over competitiveness and margin compression that almost each business suffers from here.
-[/quote]
-
facetime culture that requires you to work crazy hours just to show how commited to your company you are;
-
poor HR policies that show little to no consideration to employeesâ happiness and satisfaction;
-
extremely insular and traditional business mindset which tends to make foreigners feel like outsiders at the office;
-
âŚ
⌠no respect and no âpatienceâ with your requests/complaints because you are like an âspoiled childâ, âyou are paid so much money so shut up! what are you complaining about?! we give you all these bills to stuff in your trap!â
We are treated worse than who⌠horticulture is the study of plants⌠It is not the money or the amount of money, though that hurts them worse than bleeding: the money hurts even more, like sliding naked on a slide made of Gillettes and landing in a pool of lemon juice and vinegar, because, from their perspective, the worst part is knowing they need you. If they realize that, they feel they have lost face, and hence, the hostility they show towards you is really hostility towards themselves: they should be able to do it on their own, they feel emasculated for having to use the atogas as a phone/fax machine -which is why they treat you as a phone/fax machine, simply because acknowledging you as a person implies humanizing you, and also being flexible enough to understand that, OMG, there are people in other cultures/parts of the world who actually communicate differently and it is not just the One Holy Han Way. And no, knowing the âEnglishâ alphabet does not count.
Which is why at the earliest convenience they dump atoga and do things their own way, The âChinese wayâ -which it is not, it is actually whatever the boss says goes- and as a result we have the translations that are worse than Google copy paste⌠and Taiwan becomes an international laughingstock but as it was done by Taiwanese non native foreign language speakers it means it is better because it is the REAL meaning in ChineseâŚ
*sorry for the rant, but sometimes it does get too muchâŚ
Hi all
New to the forum.
Am looking to work in Taiwan media industry, was doing booking coordinator for a sports brokerage company in Singapore (singapore native btw)
Should I take a chance applying or stay in Singapore?
[quote=âgaoxingdcfâ]Hi all
New to the forum.
Am looking to work in Taiwan media industry, was doing booking coordinator for a sports brokerage company in Singapore (Singapore native btw)
Should I take a chance applying or stay in Singapore?[/quote]
I flipped a coin for you and it came up take a chance (heads) so come on over.
[quote=âthe bearâ]
I flipped a coin for you and it came up take a chance (heads) so come on over.[/quote]
LOL !!
For anyone who is still interested in a current assesment of the professional environment for foreigners in Taiwan, I just published a long detailed post on my blog about this topic. I will be leaving my job and this island in a couple of months, but before doing it I decided to share my experience about working as a foreign professional (Interior Designer) at a local Taiwanese firm in Taipei. I thought it may be useful for others with a similar background who are considering the move to Taiwan.
In case you want to check it out, this is the link theloveblender.com/working-i ⌠-the-ugly/
Great blog post. The one thing I would add is that the working language in many businesses here is Taiwanese, not Mandarin. Of course this point does not undercut any of the conclusions you have reached.
In any case, congratulations on your decision. And good luck making the jump to the next step in your career!
Guy
[quote=âafterspivakâ]Great blog post. The one thing I would add is that the working language in many businesses here is Taiwanese, not Mandarin. Of course this point does not undercut any of the conclusions you have reached.
In any case, congratulations on your decision. And good luck making the jump to the next step in your career!
Guy[/quote]
Thank you very much Guy! You are right, Taiwanese is still widely spoken in many businesses. In my own office not as much, that is why I didnât write about it, but I know other situations where not speaking Taiwanese could be a problem (for example construction site workers speak mainly Taiwanese, so Mandarin alone wonât cut it).
Gonna toss in my 2 cents as an ABC(ish) whoâs bounced between the US/overseas and TWâŚ
I work in tech, so Iâm either about tech support, or programming/software engineering. The latter usually pays more but only in the software industry. The former is more customer-centric so there are more soft skills involved with less barrier of entry (pretty much any relevant experience and/or a few certificates will land you a decent job to start) but with less pay/growth.
Iâve worked in electronics, consumer products, finance and the software industry. So while I havenât worked these jobs in both TW and the US, Iâve interviewed for both in both countries.
I think it really boils down to the money. The key point is that most TW companies donât really make their money overseas, and given how low the average salary rates are - there isnât really much money to be made. Those who do make their money are also hesitant to take risks in investments so you donât find many risky ventures here that last long. Traditional business models still propel the economy here. As such, even if youâre bilingual itâs really a ânice to haveâ unless youâre working for a multi-national firm that actually works often with overseas offices. Otherwise theyâll just behave like a local-office branch with local work culture and needs.
This brings us to the problem of TW work culture - long hours, low pay, high face/desk time (and facebook time lol). Iâve been in a company where I got docked pay for being 3 minutes late despite staying in the office till 11pm last night. Iâve interviewed once where the HR director said âomg, how do you make this salary, what do you do? What do they pay you for?â Of course, problems like this are all really just dependent on the company/management and very anecdotal. Just keep in mind it happens. What Iâve noticed now at least is that they usually use âpartial flex-timeâ arrive between 8-9. Leave whenever your work is done (this is really hard to say, some bosses just have to much work). Those that still pay attention to the 8 hour work day still count the 1 hour lunch as a break.
Note that the nickel-and-diming âcost downâ cost cutting haggling approach that many Taiwanese have when they shop is what some Taiwanese bosses do - they just try to wringle every last cent of perceived worth out of their employees. To be fair, Iâve also worked with some really bad coworkers. Managers who have the work ethics below a dishwasher in a chain restaurant. Canât blame bosses for not putting more faith in the people.
This translates to not-so-happy work times. Find a boss whoâs actually chill, communicate with him/her and it wonât be too bad. The salary? Itâll never compare to overseas - be it in $$$ to the US or the 3 month vacations that Europeans get.
Unless you work in a startup or in some crazy high-margin industry, itâll probably be just a job. If your skills and job duties work with the locals - youâll have things to do and learn. Otherwise itâll probably be tough here, not so bad if you have good coworkers, but thatâs about it.