Thank you for all of your responses. It seems that his options might be limited to teaching or starting a company. Someone did mention the possibility of obtaining a supervisory position- he does have experience as a foreman on major commercial projects. He also has gained extensive experience in marine electronics and underwater demolition/ projects during his 8 years in the Navy. I don't know if this would open other doors/ opportunities?

His own company supervising Thai's to install maintain to standards westerners want or expect might be an idea- I am sure there are others doing this but given the housing situation the market might be contracting (asi in getting smaller).

Learning Thai would put him in a better position.

i always wondered about the teeching aspect. dont you have to speak guud thai to teech em english.......lol. i dont think teling thai electrician can or cannot is enuff t o get jobs done.

cum on guys what can he expect to make if he did get a job. im sure it would make him not want to cum here if he knew how little he would make.

i always wondered about the teeching aspect. dont you have to speak guud thai to teech em english.......lol. i dont think teling thai electrician can or cannot is enuff t o get jobs done.

cum on guys what can he expect to make if he did get a job. im sure it would make him not want to cum here if he knew how little he would make.

To teach English you do not need to speak Thai - i have heard it said it might be better not to speak the local language in class while being a ESL teacher.

However, for technical subjects at tradesman level I would have thought thai was a requirement - unless of course you have translators in class.

When we trained Japanese on one of our IT systems 3 translators were employed for the classroom of 4 as they only did a certain amount of time each per hour or day (forget which). These might have been used to EU timings though as they came from the same agencies the EU used when they needed extra freelance support.

Things are not great for blue collar farrang professionals in Thailand...

He might be able to create a business doing general maintanence work in heavily farrang places like Pattaya or BKK... working for farrang who don't want to risk death every time they make a cup of coffee, but remember that most live in condos, so the bulk of the work is handled by the manager, and the reason they moved to Thailand is because they want to live like a king on hardly any money, so they won't want to pay 100 times the price just to get it done by a 'whitey'

He may be able to get a job in construction, but mostly those jobs still don't pay very well unless he is 'sent' by his US company...

10 years ago there seemed to be a drought of well trained Thai labour and it was a bit of a free for all for foreigners... now the Thai's have upskilled and the rate of development has slowed... some of the big contruction companies still like to have non-thai in middle manager/supervisory roles, but now that there is a lot more supply of people looking for those roles than there is work, because so many people want to live in Thailand, they know that they don't have to pay a premium for those people... expect a wage drop rather than a rise...

Almost any role unless he is sent by an off-shore company is giong to be illegal as it would be almost impossible to get a legit work-permit to work as an electrician...

Almost all of my mates who spent years in Thailand working on big projects are now in the Middle East, earning huge money...

Cheers,

Daewoo

I don't understand all this negative reactions ... how many jobs does he need ? not hundreds, right? just 1 !

if you have your mind set to it, do good research and with a bit of luck you can surely find a good job here

the least you can do is trying, never mind those who would already give up, before trying

no doubt that all of the really trained, professional electricians in this country are all farang who get paid very well

of course those kind of jobs are not for grabs, but it's surely possible !

someone wrote that he hired somebody to do very specific work on his machines, there's a huge industry here and I'm sure that many of them are in need of a professional, instead of those really, crappy guys who have some tape in their pocket and therefor call themselves electricians, they're not