BigByte Education Reviews

- Hourly pay only for teaching hours only with poor bonuses. There is no longer any admin allowance or pay for training. Admin allowances were removed and hourly pay increased, but this actually made entry-level employees worse off. - Work outside of the classroom including lesson planning, grading of weekly homework, weekly quizzes, monthly test papers, weekly bookwork and monthly writing projects is unpaid or supposedly is' paid in a higher hourly wage.' In addition to this, you also need to do progress reports for students and input all the marked grades into the LMS system. This actually makes an educator working at the company today worse off than an educator two years ago in both pay and workload. - People are only moved up in tier if they complete the 'extra projects' currently and the extra effort inside the classroom on a day to day basis is not acknowledged or respected. If you want to work 40+ hours a week, then you will get paid more. If not, it is unlikely your contract will be renewed at the end of the year because you "aren't a team player." - A CEO who appears nice at first appearances and can mean well (can be generous with gifts, is very nice if you are making her money and working 40+ hours a week), but breaks promises, has made the contracts vaguer in the past three years, so she can demand more without paying more, does not understand her own curriculum and the reality of the current ESL classroom, and is prone to anger issues and disrespecting her employees. - No paid vacation/ Difficult to ask for leave. So you want to return home for a wedding for a week? Not going to happen. Unless you only take leave (unpaid) in the breaks between semester, leave requests have been very harsh and declined on multiple occasions to my ex-colleagues. - No longer Western Management. There has been no Director of Studies for two years and this has led to worse contracts than two years ago and educators, Taiwanese staff and interns being exploited by doing extra work which is unpaid or often working late into the night. The CEO says it is a fairer approach, but staff who have worked for the company longer than three years remember how it used to be. Unfortunately, they are becoming just another Taiwanese buxiban and have lost the company culture which made me choose them over other better-paying opportunities in the past. - The 'extra projects' are vague and paid by the month for a reason. What could be a good development opportunity for some people ends into people being sucked into working on things or having to attend meetings which aren't part of the project. For instance, one can be told a project will only be six hours work and 3000NT. It can then really turn into 12 hours of work or more with no extra pay. - Unpaid training and the two monthly training workshops aren't really of benefit to most staff. Teaching quality isn't helped here, and I felt I went backwards at the company due to a lack of interest in developing teachers inside the classroom. - Poor or inconsistent sickness policy. In my case the procedure was followed, the sub was arranged and I was ready to return to work the next day. I got an email from the CEO of the company saying if I was sick again for the same reason, it would be a violation of the contract. - In the two summers I re-signed with the company, I saw several of my good passionate co-workers, (some who had worked for the company for 3 years or more) not having their contracts renewed. This is because they challenged the faults of the current structure and saw the direction the company was heading in, and knowing BigByte can do better. Don't assume this is a job for life, whereas a few years ago, it could have been a solid steady job for 5-10 years. I chose to leave rather than be pushed out as promises had been broken, a project contract was unpaid and I was threatened with violation of contract despite following the correct sickness procedure. - No reference from head office/ "You are dead to us" attitude after you leave by Taiwanese management and some colleagues. Some of my ex-colleagues did not receive their final paycheck or tax documents required to file taxes when their contract was not renewed. Messages were ignored by HR and requests for documents needed for future jobs/visas were also ignored. - In the past, mispaid salary and fallouts with the CEO also led to both Taiwanese staff and educators leaving mid-semester and some educators a few years ago had lawsuits against the company demanding money be paid back to them which was subtracted from their paycheck by error. In my case, I received my final pay packet which was correct after my previous one was incorrect, but am still awaiting my tax documents and personal files, they are withholding after a month chasing them. I was lucky enough to be friends with some parents who demanded I got paid what I should have.