It's been over a year since I came to Taiwan and I recently came back from Canada and the US. Going back and catching up with friends, especially my old coworkers, has really made it clear how bad I am at updating people. So long story short: after quitting my job at Microsoft almost two years ago (!), breaking my foot (!!) and studying Chinese in Taiwan for the past year, I have decided to stay in Taiwan and work. (!!!)
"Why" Stay in Taiwan?
When I tell people that I will be staying in Taiwan to work the reaction from a lot of people is: "Why would you not want to go back to work in the US??" Although I do understand there reactions, I do have a reason (that's good enough for me) why I chose to work in Taiwan as opposed to going back to work in the US: to push myself and make an impact.
A bit of backstory; my initial plan was to stay in Taiwan for 6 months (2 study terms) and then decide what to do next. After studying Chinese for 6-7 months, I realized that I really enjoyed the life and convenience of living in Taiwan (another post?!). The only negative I had heard of living in Taiwan was working. A lot of people said the salary was low, hours were long, and the employees are treated as if they were mindless machines.
All of these things really intrigued me; obviously the work environment sounded terrible, but there had to be reasons behind it and how it actually came to be. The thing that made me saddest was that the Taiwanese people I talked to had so much potential to be happy, but a few things made it so that they were unhappy. I felt like I had the skills necessary to come up with what I thought were the reasons why and maybe some ways to improve it based on my work experience in other places (thanks Waterloo!). But those were just theories and initial broad thoughts, the best thing was not just thinking but verifying by doing which is why I decided to work in Taiwan.
Picking the Right Job
So after Chinese New Year, about 9 months in, I decided to look for a job. But what type of job at what type of company? Hearing some firsthand stories of certain types of more traditional companies, I knew there were some that I wanted to avoid the experience. At first I interviewed with any company that was interested in hiring me. After about 7 or 8 interviews (in Chinese), I started to understand what type of job and value I wanted to bring. I got a bit tired of interviews and just tried to pick those that I felt met my needs and a few through headhunters. It became clear that it would be easy to find a job, but it would difficult to find the right one.
After the copious amounts of interviews, I knew what I wanted: to see if there was a way to use or take parts of the western ways of thinking to improve the work situation in Taiwan. The first thing I had to keep in mind was do something I was good at (programming/software). After, I ideally wanted to go to a more traditional company's experimental/new product division where they were looking to innovate but might have some of the more traditional mindsets still in place. That also meant I de-prioritized "American"-style companies or companies that were relatively high paying but maybe very traditional and conservative in their process.
The job and team I finally picked was in a new technical area that I have never dealt with before. The manager I talked to three (yes, three) times and he was a real leader (not manager) with a lot of ideas, but he was struggling to implement them effectively. The way I positioned myself was that I wanted to be a role model of what a good employee and mentor is in the US. I told him that because of the background of the employees, there would have to be a balance between the way things are done in Asia vs. the US and that we could work together to figure out what that balance was. Needless to say, I was very happy that I found a manager that was willing to listen and work together to create an even better team.
What If It All Goes Wrong?
A lot of people have basically asked "What if it turns out working in the US was the better option?" The way I look at it is that I have a lot of very interesting questions that I want answered as well as expectations of what it would be working in Taiwan that nothing but real experience would answer. Even if I'm wrong, that gives me a lot a great information and experience of what not to do in the future. It's like having a mental model of what I think/believe, test it by having experiences, then update my mental model and come up with new assumptions/questions and do it all over again; it's an iterative learning process (ie: the scientific method).
And that's where I am now. I have chosen a team that should be technically challenging and a manager that is culturally open to change and is trying new things; I have a real environment to put my theories into action. Instead of planning every small step along the way, I have only decided my next step: do my best for the first 3-6 months and just be open and learn the Asian work culture and process. Maybe after that I realize I need to continue learning or make new relationships, maybe I can start taking a leadership role, maybe I realize writing blogs like this (in Chinese?!) would be beneficial. After those first 3-6 months (basically when I feel comfortable at work), I'll plan out my next step.
For me the vision and the path of my future is still unclear. However I believe I can bring a unique perspective and unique skill set to Taiwan; a person who is culturally western but can understand both the Asian and Western (US) ways of doing things and thinking. I think that this will be very valuable in the future, but who really knows. If it turns out not to be the case, I will be fascinated to know why.
