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Working In Bangkok - An Essential Guideline
Bangkok has been named the third best city to visit by Travel & Leisure magazine recently. It has plenty of first class hotels to accommodate visitors from overseas for both work and pleasure. You will find traditional Asian culture coexist with Western culture in harmony.
There are tons of amenities to make all visitors feel at home, from high speed Internet to convenient sky and underground metropolitan transit systems. You will find almost everything you want to eat, from an Italian bistro to a super large seafood restaurant. To top it all off, you get all these items at a very reasonable price. |
I emigrated to the US about 40 odd years ago; our family settled in Brooklyn, New York. I graduated from Pratt Institute in the late 70's and had worked in New York Upstate for a while. Then about seventeen years ago I came back to Bangkok, Thailand to work, and has been here ever since.
You are lucky if you have been transferred to Bangkok.
Most expatriates here would like to continue living and working in Bangkok rather than getting transfer to any place else.
Let's talk about a Thai information technology company I had an opportunity to work for. The company was headed by a very competent Thai entrepreneur. Its yearly gross income at one time was as high as 30 million USD. The company also had a wide breath of products as well as international visions.
I was placed in an information technology group and had 30 staffs. We came up with solutions for government IT departments; I had worked there for about eight years.
First and foremost, to work with the Thai staffs you need to be very polite in your manners, and more so with the boss (Thai). So no silly joke right off the bat. The line and staff relation for each department is not so bad, with the exception of the CEO, he cuts across all departments and needs not follow the rule.
Then, when you tell your staff what to do, expect few questions and feedbacks. They will usually not disagree even when they want to. So you need to sense the vibration coming from them. To your staffs you are expected to be a big brother, if that really happens, you will have their respect. As an example, when you take your staffs to lunch, it means you are the host and you will pick up all the checks.
Now going up the chain of command, it is a little more difficult. Your immediate boss (Thai) takes criticism with difficulties. If it is a technical issue, the boss usually can handle disagreement amiably. But if the disagreement relates to approaches then it can be sticky. So avoid approaches disagreement as much as possible, and you will be fine.
One way to get to know the Thai boss is to have an informal lunch or dinner with him, then find out what makes him tick. If he plays golf and you do too, then you are In Light Flint.
Meeting your customers can be interesting. Usually when you are talking to your customers, they are in the IT department, and you can be friendly with them. All technical guys like to talk about technical issues and new products. They love to see fancy demos. So, if you can show your customers some fancy demos/software, they will appreciate your effort. Secondly, they all love small prototyping efforts, especially when they are free.
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