1. Mental training (This should be more useful than meditation)

2. Back muscle training (because the bed is extremely hard)

3. Engineers' debugging skills (The App Team wraps shells all day and only learns debugging skills. If you complain to the PM, they will only tell you that they are training you to debug.)

Point 1 - Working hours and bonuses:

When you first arrive, they may tell you that people here mainly make money not through their base salary + overseas assignment allowance, but through bonuses. At this point, you may think that this overseas assignment sounds pretty good (because there is an extra bonus). If a surge of excitement suddenly rises in your heart, I can only apologize—I am about to deal you a heavy blow. You think it sounds good because you do not yet know what the working hours are like. Most people probably have an expected value for working hours, namely: the hours should be about the same as in Taiwan, right? If a workday in Taiwan is a certain length, an overseas assignment should be about the same, right? However, the working hours for this position are not similar to those in Taiwan. The working hours here are at least 12 hours. That's right! Your eyes are not deceiving you, and you did not read the number incorrectly: a genuine, solid 12 hours or more, every day. Moreover, the schedule here is six days on and one day off, and national holidays are not days off (previously, there were no days off at all, and the overseas assignment was based on a three-month period). Therefore, to put it nicely, the bonus is a bonus; to put it bluntly, it is overtime pay (for additional overtime pay, please refer to this website: https://labweb.mol.gov.tw/). Furthermore, the bonus is not fixed: sometimes you receive more, sometimes less, and sometimes you receive nothing. The PM may then tell you that your performance is not very good. Yet the ridiculous thing is that the projects are making a lot of money..... So what standard are the bonuses based on? Nobody knows at all.

Point 2 - Job responsibilities/content:

At first, people with no work experience will indeed learn some things. However, after you have been here for one or two months, there is generally not much left to learn, and you may spend a lot of time on standby (standby status = doing your own things). Doing your own things requires extreme caution, because if the employer sees you, you may receive a return flight ticket at any time. Yet at the beginning, they also say that once you have completed a certain amount of work, you can do your own things. I know these two points are quite contradictory, but this is the situation with overseas assignments.

Let us first talk about the App Team. The App Team wraps shells all day, and wrapping shells is equivalent to debugging, so you learn absolutely no technical skills and cannot make use of your own strengths. When you complain to or explain this to the PM, they will only find ways to brush you off, saying ridiculous things such as, “The most important thing for an engineer is debugging. I am training you.” As for the Web Team, they are frequently rushing to meet deadlines and working overtime, because the employer continually urges them to implement features. Whenever a major feature comes up, they are often given an extremely short deadline to complete it. At this point, readers should be wondering: What about the PM? Isn’t the PM there? How can this situation still occur? Your mind may be filled with doubts. Don’t be mistaken: the PM here stands on the employer’s side. They will not tell the employer that the deadline is too short or anything like that; they will only tell the people beneath them to work overtime and see whether they can deliver as quickly as possible.

A brief summary of Point 2:

1. The App Team wraps shells and debugs all day, learning nothing.

2. The Web Team frequently works overtime to meet deadlines, and sometimes cannot even take holidays.

3. The PM stands on the employer’s side (Readers, do not doubt your eyes—I absolutely did not mistype anything).

4. You learn very little, while the hours are long, and the bonus is unstable or may not exist at all.

Point 3 - Days off

Many people probably hold the idea that time off belongs to them and no one can interfere with it. However, this does not apply to overseas assignments, because you may still be called while you are off. Some people may say that this is generally how things are for engineers, right? However, regardless of your position, with an overseas assignment you may be called in during your time off. Sometimes, even in the middle of the night, the PM will tag you on LINE and tell you to change this or that by the next day.

Finally, to summarize, I think you should take an overseas assignment if you want to achieve the following accomplishments or meet the following conditions~

1. Have mental strength beyond that of ordinary people. (Because the long hours and lengthy work will wear down your mental strength, eventually leaving you like a walking corpse.)

2. Think your heart is not tough enough. (For the same reason as above: extremely long hours and frequent late nights for repairs.)

3. Feel that your life is not fulfilling enough. (Because here you are guaranteed to spend a solid 12 hours or more working; there is no lack of fulfillment, only too much of it.)

4. Feel that you have too much freedom. (There is almost no time here for you to wander around outside.)

5. Think you are fresh and juicy. (Because you will be exploited.)

6. Want to break your record for working continuously with almost no rest.

7. Want to experience a life of poverty. (Because when you convert your money into working hours, the amount you receive is extremely small.)

For those who have already submitted their résumé or accidentally pressed the submit button, here is one final sentence: “Be careful and cautious, and fend for yourself.”