Yes, there are yuppies in Taiwan—and the physical support facilities to coddle them—and Huang is one of their growing number. He even has integrated English slang and computer lingo into his everyday vocabulary, a product of dealing regularly with Western computer hacks.
"How're things running?" he says to his colleagues as he slips into his swivel chair; the reference is to the humming personal computers on each desk in the office. Eten specializes in computer software development, and Huang is a key member of the development team.
Huang takes a precisely itemized schedule from his briefcase and quickly scans the list to reset priorities for his morning's work. Most of his colleagues are as young, enthusiastic, and industrious as he is, making the office atmosphere lively and exuberant. But when they begin to work, the only sound in the office is from computer fans and the clacking of plastic keyboards. The focus of work is not group discussion, but experiments taking place on the glowing screens on each desk.
Even coffee breaks tend to be quiet, as each person relaxes and thinks on his own. The only exception in the office to this work rule is the software department manager. And even his role is different from the general concept of what a manager should be. There is none of the traditional superior-subordinate relationships here; it is instead more like the interplay between a senior professor and junior faculty members. Rather than an emphasis on status, there is pressure for group productivity or, in a word, teamwork.
"Office hours" is another concept rather alien to Eten's setup. Each computer engineer feels free to arrange his own schedule. While a 9 to 5 schedule is a basic expectation, in reality the hours often start at 10, and almost always go much later than 5. The key time-frame for Huang and his colleagues is the month or the quarter, for their production goals tend to be long-term and project-oriented.
The company's projects normally follow a set sequence of steps: data analysis, mapping, design, testing, installation, maintenance, and enhancement. Huang, who is the senior man in this section and the R&D department's manager, has matched his own organization of personal time with the office operation for which he is responsible. And just as he changes personal priorities, sometimes the same thing happens with the work plan followed by his colleagues.
"The way we work, everything is scheduled and under control—at least theoretically. Actually, in practice we have found that at times we can begin later steps even before we've fully finished the previous ones." Soft ware development involves some leaps of creative power, and his staff members often take those jumps.
Huang is pleased with his office environment because it mixes people of different talent, and puts them in close enough proximity where the strengths of each person can easily stimulate others. "Because of the teamwork aspect of R&D, sometimes an engineer who should be doing data-analysis might also do mapping and design; or a designer might add on some application tests on his own initiative. It's a fluid place," Huang says.
George Chou, a design engineer in Huang's department, illustrates the work routine: "Two thirds of my working hours are for thinking and writing. The rest I use for testing, installation, maintenance, and enhancement." All these tasks force him to spend the whole day exposed to computer screen radiation. He wears a pair of filtered glasses, but says that his eyes still "feel really tired" by the end of the day.
Huang has more time away from the screens because of his managerial role. "I handle the whole project that is underway. Beyond acting as an idea man, I've got to be involved in all aspects of the project, which means most of my office time is spent talking with my engineers, coordinating with other departments, making phone calls, or attending meetings," he says.
But Huang does not worry about the time he is forced to be away from the office. He has a hand-picked team of dependable and hard-working colleagues. "A good team must have strong members. And to be a strong member, the basic requirements are a cooperative personality, professional interest and capability, and intense devotion to the job." Any other key requirements? Local newspapers can give a general answer in their want ads. Computer company advertisements take a large amount of space, and there are recurrent themes for software engineer types: male preferred, aged 26-35, a college graduate with a computer science major; and industrious. Clearly a yuppie definition.
The number of ads for computer types reveals how desperate the local industry is for qualified people. Albert Lin, general-manager of Eten says: "In recent years, most of the Chinese-language computer companies have had an incredible annual growth rate—it's been between 100 and 200 percent. Even though the number of college departments offering information industry subjects has increased rapidly—and students have selected more computer-related majors—they still can't keep up with local demand. There is just too much expansion in the field."
As a result, Taiwan firms are full of people who come from academically unrelated fields, people with related training, or those who have essentially taught themselves. This situation contributes to the seriously high circulation of computer personnel in the market. Companies must pay dearly to hire professionally trained people, and then worry about keeping them, for other firms are always stealing engineers away with offers of higher salaries.
Taiwan's yuppies are a different breed from Western counterparts lifestyles are Stoic, not Epicurean.
In a typical medium-sized company, a beginning computer design engineer can expect to start at roughly US$600 to US$675 per month. This is still low compared with other, less skilled professions, and is not as attractive as working for a foreign-based company as an application engineer, where the salary is over US$ 1,000 per month. In both sorts of companies, engineers usually receive annual raises amounting to US$100 to US$150. "Of course, salaries differ greatly," Huang says. "The difference lies in whether you can keep up with the pace of the business."
Oftentimes the upwardly mobile lifestyle has its disadvantages, for while an engineer's wife, children, and extended family might profit from his hard work and salary, he might have little time himself to enjoy much life outside the office. But the local so-called yuppies are not quite like those in the West. The Taiwan version has risen from much more humble origins; after expending impressive effort he achieves a level of success far different from earlier generations of his family. The rise in status, however, more often leads to a Stoic lifestyle rather than an Epicurean one, as is more common in the West.
This philosophical orientation certainly seems to permeate Huang's office. The engineers work a five and a half day week, and generally are not party animals. Dark suits, not sport coats, are the uniform of the day because they are expected to be ready for formal meetings at any time. On weekends, they are with families at home, or with them at the movies or on shopping trips. There is no golf, and usually no vacation to plan. "It's not that there's no vacation sytem; but I'd rather sacrifice my vacation for more work. I feel guilty if there's too much play and not enough work," Huang says. His attitude is actually quite typical. He adds: "You work, you get paid. But if you work harder, you get rich. In this business, the rewards for workaholics are promotion to administrative positions and holding some shares in the company."
Lin explains the local computer industry scene further: "Taiwan's computer industry is very special. Most of the companies started their business by pirating Apple II. And most of them are medium-or small-sized. Surprisingly, after the government cracked down heavily on counterfeiting, they still survived because by then they had already started their own R&D work. Now many have the ambition to stand out in the international market with their own brands."
If these companies are to survive in the intensely competitive international information market, they need first-class employees; the key capital in this industry is brainpower. "And the best ways to attract brainy personnel are by promotions and shareholding," Lin says. This is especially true with the small- and medium-sized companies as they try to compete with large corporations with greater resources.
As for big companies, there are also promotion and shareholding possibilities. Besides these benefits, large companies also offer better channels for obtaining the latest technological developments, and have stronger financial power and more modern management than smaller companies. With size comes greater flexibility—and job security.
These are some of the reasons why the big and still fast-growing local companies, such as Multitech Industrial Corp., have begun to pose a threat to the foreign-based companies in both domestic and international markets. In past years, foreign companies have helped upgrade the standards of local computer products and improve their competitiveness in international markets. Their high-tech transfer has also helped the Republic of China on Taiwan in various aspects of national defense and in raising the general standard of living.
Now local companies are reversing the high-tech transfer now, in part because of the engineers of Huang's quality and dedication. One particularly productive area of R&D locally, for example, has been in Chinese-language computer software, which has applications to other languages and fields.
Wilson Tsai of Mentor Graphics Taiwan Ltd., an American- based company, says: "Computers should be fully-integrated into daily life. No matter if they are operating in English or Chinese, they should be developed to give the speediest responses to the simplest commands. The engineers and the companies that can work out the best and most convenient programs first will win the battle in the marketplace." Huang, whose own team at Eten is working on a Chinese-language R&D project, agrees with the assessment: "The local market is already developed. All kinds of computer companies, be they foreign or domestic, can do a lot of business here." And as business and the field itself expand, there are certain to be even more software yuppies of the Stoic variety driving their cars home late from the office.