Why Go to Taiwan to Study Chinese?

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions
During the Christmas of 2014, I was starting to feel like I needed a change (see post). When I got back to work, it was increasingly obvious that I needed to make a move. But should I move teams/companies? Travel around the world? Go back home? It took me the next several months to figure out just exactly what I wanted.

Decision Making
Instead of trying to decide exactly what I wanted to do, (one decision with all the choices), I made a series of decisions with fewer choices. It not only made making the final decision easier, but it also prevented me from getting overwhelmed at any one stage of the process to not continue.

1. Seattle/US/North America: Stay vs. Leave 
The very first question I had to ask myself; did I want to continue working or go overseas? This one was relatively easy for me to answer. As mentioned in my previous post, I felt like switching teams or companies was only a temporary band-aid fix and so leaving US was the right decision.

2. Moving: Short-term Travel vs. Longer-term Move
The second decision in my tree was to decide if I would travel around the world or move to a new country and try to live there. Maybe it's because of my internships, but I really enjoy living somewhere (3+ months) and feeling like a local. I also felt like staying in one place would allow me to push myself to not get too comfortable as opposed to travelling where you don't stay long enough to get comfortable. Again, this choice was relatively easy and I chose to move longer-term and live in a new country.

3. Asia: China vs. Taiwan?
After I decided I wanted to do something longer-term, I knew that I wanted to live in Asia, specifically somewhere where I could use/improve my Chinese. Although I did have a 4-month internship in Shanghai, I felt I could have used it more effectively (a post for another time). I decided on China and Taiwan mostly because of familiarity; I had interned in China and my family was from Taiwan.

Choosing between China and Taiwan was the decision I spent the most time on (several months). I asked many people about their experiences both living, working and studying in both China and Taiwan. It felt essentially like there would be a lot more job opportunities in China, but living in Taiwan was more comfortable/Western-like. After talking with people and thinking about it for more than a month, I felt Taiwan was a better fit for me for a couple of reasons.

Culture + Chinese Characters
When I was in Shanghai, I felt very uncomfortable. It's not that everyone was mean, but there was not a lot of common courtesy. I remember waiting in line for more than half an hour as people cut in front of me or yelled louder than me. Another really annoying thing was that I couldn't go onto Facebook, YouTube or check my email without going through a VPN. Finally, China uses Simplified, which I have never learned when studying Chinese (another post?!); if I learned the Simplified characters before Traditional, I would have to re-learn a lot. Taiwan, compared to Shanghai, felt a lot more polite, friendlier, and I could actually recognize the Chinese characters.

Relationships
One of the biggest lessons I learned from Shanghai was the importance of relationships in Asia. I remember trying to find a badminton coach in Shanghai online was almost impossible. I ended up asking my coach from Toronto to email her friend in Shanghai who talked with a badminton coach not in my area who finally introduced me to someone who was; it took 4 people before I actually found what I wanted. China is very big and the city I chose would not necessarily have a good network of people I could contact. However, in Taiwan, I had already had some contacts (family, friends, mentees) that could help me out. It also helped that the city I wanted to live in, Taipei, is where seemingly 99% of Taiwanese people are from or know someone there.

4. Taiwan: Work vs. Study
After deciding Taiwan, I was faced with essentially my last major decision: work or study? While at Microsoft, I talked with the engineering manager for Taiwan and another from China; they both essentially said they would really like someone with international (ie: North America) experience (why? That's for another post). In the end, it boiled down to making sure I actually liked what I was doing. Moving to live in a new culture/country is pretty nerve-wracking. Add in trying to work and represent the "Western" workforce while also following the local working culture would be even more stressful. Instead of stressing myself out by living and working in Taiwan, I decided I would get used to seeing if I liked just living first by studying Chinese in Taiwan.

Final Decision: Move to Taiwan and Study Chinese
At the end of the day, instead of trying to choose from many options, I tried to break it down into more decisions. Stay or leave? Travel or move? China or Taiwan? Work or Study? At each decision, I had to go back and think about what I really wanted and be consistent. Even though I broke my foot just days before I going to Taiwan (another post for another time), the decisions I made were still sound. I ended up coming to Taiwan 6 months later than I originally planned, but feeling just as good about my decision now as I did before I broke my foot.

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.