Why Would You Want to Stay and Work in Taiwan?!

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.

After a Year, Quitting Microsoft and Coming to Taiwan: Right or Wrong?

One Year After
So it's been a bit more than a year since I left my job at Microsoft (link). In that time, I've broken my foot, adapted to Taiwan and started working on a mentoring program (posts for another time). Since it's been a year (6 months recovering from the broken foot and 6 months in Taiwan), I thought it'd be a good idea to reflect and see if the decision to quit my job and take a risk to come to Taiwan was "right" or "wrong"/how do I even know?

Tradeoffs
As mentioned previously, one of the key determining factors in me leaving Microsoft was that I was not pushing myself out of my comfort zone. I also wanted to come to Taiwan and see if I could adapt and create a life for myself. However, when I made my decision I knew that there were definitely tradeoffs with making my decision: from Microsoft, losing a ton of money not just in current salary but also career growth, to Taiwan, where I would really have to figure out a lot of things without much help.

What's Happened
Over the past year, Microsoft as a company has done extremely well. Based on my actual salary with benefits and potential career growth, I probably lost 2.5+ years worth of salary for the 1 year I took off (which will continue to grow until I go back to work).

On the other side, coming to Taiwan was a struggle, mostly trying to adjust to a new country with minimal support (a post for another time) and experiencing a lot of culture shock (another post). Even though I've been in Taiwan for half a year, I am still learning to adapt to some of the culture.

Hindsight and Reflection
Based on the above, it might be easy to say I made the "wrong" decision, that if I had stayed at Microsoft and continued to work, that my life would be nice and comfortable. However, that is exactly the reason that I quit in the first place; to stop being complacent. Coming to Taiwan was about pushing myself; if I didn't struggle, I must be doing something wrong. So the real question shouldn't be whether I made the right or wrong decision, it should be whether sacrificing money and stability of working at Microsoft was worth the growth and knowledge I got from coming to Taiwan.

Worth It? Right Decision?
Although I did lose a lot of potential earnings and definitely have found it challenging living in Taiwan, just the fact that Taiwan is such a different environment has helped me learn about myself and push me further. In my 6 months here, my Chinese has gotten significantly better, I've started to understand local Taiwanese/Asians mindsets and culture more, and I've also managed to answer a lot of the "What if I...?" questions that I had while I was working at Microsoft. If I could redo my choice, I would not change my decision. Although I might have not pushed myself to the fullest extent possible, looking back, quitting my job and coming to Taiwan was (and still is) worth it and the "right" decision for me.

Quit Microsoft and Move to Taiwan?!

Why?

So many people have asked me what made me decide to leave my job at Microsoft and go to Taiwan. The main reason I made this decision comes down to two words: Comfort Zone.

Work

After graduating in 2013, I moved to Seattle to start working at Microsoft in the same year. Over a little bit of two years, I have been through major and minor re-orgs (post for another time) and grown a lot as an engineer. However, as I came back home for Christmas in 2014, after a year and half at Microsoft, I realized that I was learning things that were no longer interesting to me. When I got back to work, it became abundantly clear that my career and what I was learning would take multiple years to fully master and I wasn't passionate enough to put in that much time.

Life

Outside of work, I had also started to stagnate. Although I had a great group of friends, again, I felt too comfortable. I very rarely, if ever pushed myself to meet new people or proactively tried to develop the relationship. That's not to say that hanging out with my friends was a bad thing, but there were a few instances that it was painfully obvious just how bad I had got at developing new relationships (stories for another post).

Options

So basically I knew I needed a change both from a work and a life perspective. Thinking about it, I came up with a couple of solutions:

1. Changing teams at Microsoft
2. Switching companies in Seattle
3. Moving to a different part of Seattle
4. Moving away

Although the first 3 were all appealing, I felt like they would only be band-aid solutions; it would be too easy to fall back into the same patterns in work and/or social life. Thinking about the last option was the scariest and most exciting; I would naturally have to break out of my own comfort zone and push myself in a new environment (why specifically Taiwan are for a future post).

Timing

Once I had decided I was going to leave, I started to think about the timing. At the time when I had the idea to move away, it was Christmas of 2014. After coming back and a couple of milestones at work, it became clear that barring any financial concerns (which I will get into another post), there were two major breakpoints that I could leave: 1. Windows 10 (July 2015) and 2. Windows 10 Update (October 2015). As it got closer to the first date, I realized that I should stay until the second one; the reason being that there were loose ends and still a bit more to learn. I formally quit my job at the end of October 2015, 10 months after I first had the idea of leaving.

Finishing

Even though I knew I was leaving, I wanted to make sure I left the team in a good state: I completed all my tasks to a high standard; I wrote better docs so that handoff would be smoother; I talked with my teammates about anything unresolved and then summarized in e-mail. So when I finally told my boss I was going to leave, I left feeling like I had left the team in a good spot and not just that I bailed on my responsibilities. Visiting my old team before going to Taiwan 6 months later, I was really happy to hear that they managed to integrate my work without many problems.

Conclusion

In all honesty, what it all boiled down to, was that I got too comfortable. I started noticing I wasn't pushing my comfort zone both in work and in my social life. After making the decision to quit and move away, I worked hard to make sure I left in a good state. Even after breaking my foot and staying in my bed for basically 6 months/half a year (story for another time), I still felt that leaving my job and moving away was the correct decision and the reason I am in Taiwan now.