You’re likely confusing Taiwan and Thailand. I lived in Taiwan for eight years, but left about a decade ago and haven’t spent much time there since. Young people know English, but are generally shy about speaking it because they don’t get much opportunity to practice, and are mostly reading/writing it. But I expect in the software arena, it would be fine especially as most communication would be asynchronous.

But salaries in Taiwan are very low for graduates, with a lot of graduate unemployment. (A lot of Taiwan graduates moved to China for higher salaries, but now China is also suffering from high-unemployment amongst graduates that will likely push salaries lower.) And, without looking up labour laws, I don’t think Taiwan companies would get away with the 9-9-6 culture of 72-hour work weeks that are common in China.

For anyone wanting to work in tech in Taiwan, the government introduced a very flexible visa program in 2018. To quality, software engineers need to be on a current monthly salary of NT$160,000 (currently US$5,200) or qualify under one of 12 other conditions. It’s very flexible in that you can bring your wife and kids, work for any company (in or outside Taiwan), and get permanent residency after three years.

Getting back to the main subject, I’d be surprised to find companies in Taiwan using Elixir. And if they existed, they would likely be paying much lower salaries than you would expect. But Taiwan has great quality of life with amazing food, lots of culture, and great public transportation. And, yes, it’s fair to argue that Taiwan has preserved more of traditional Chinese culture, since it didn’t reset itself in 1966.

You can apply for permanent residency in Japan after working as a highly skilled professional with 80 points or more for one year. However, I would advise against moving to Japan just for a job, the culture shock is too great. You have to have other motivations, and the job follows.

Disclaimer: I run this website.

Sadly there are not many opportunities for elixir jobs in general and now with crisis in europe, it is even worse, there are a lot of discussions on forum about this and it seems that this problem was persistent from long ago.