As a foreigner coming to work in Taiwan, I have a lot of things to commend about Taiwan, Taiwanese culture and Taiwanese.
But two things about my present Taiwanese workplace are a bit bothersome, and I was wondering if other people here experienced it and what you did to overcome/deal with it.
Conformity. From everyone being yes-men, not stating their own opinion, being afraid to take risks, to take an initiative or to stand out.
Little Imperious Emperors/Empresses. Small people, but by virtue of their position, decide to show how important they are by making unnecessary demands or micromanaging someone who is quite senior in their career.
Yes, people like this are in other cultures too. But Taiwanese conformism and unwillingness to tackle a problem head on means the Little Emperors are left to reign. In my case it is the secretary to the big boss. Fortunately I have only come across one at the workplace so far.
Depends how much you need the job. If they were being assholes, I would tell them to go fuck themselves and walk away. 90% of the time they’ll come crawling back to you with some face-saving bullshit like “Oh we must have had a misunderstanding”.
yes, its like this, in many places and many settings.
Conformity: i found that if i have 1-on-1 meetings instead of a team meeting is better in getting people to open up and provide genuine feedback. Team meetings is usually just me talking and updating everyone.
This is confucionism, basically your boss is always right no matter what, and if he makes a mistake it is your duty to hide it so he does not lose face. Even in larger corporations it’s your immediate boss that decides what your evaluation looks like.
You will find this all over, in China, Japan, Korea, whatever. 996 is not an accident in China.
Because this strategy is necessary since if you don’t do this, you will be given more workload than 10 full time employees can handle, and hard work is basically detrimental to your health and well being, and if you show yourself to be a hard worker, you will be exploited to the fullest extent.
As far as conscientiousness is concerned, all you have to do is follow the threads on Taiwanese driving and you’ll get a good picture of what it means here. I’m not sure how to post a link to it.
