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I live in Bangkok a year already; now with a student visa that should end in about 3 months; I study Thai language and can have basic conversation and basic reading and enjoy learning the language (as evident from some of my questions in Linguistics Stack Exchange). I like Bangkok and I know its transportation quite well (I take buses almost daily and visited many parts of this vast city).

As a webmaster since 2010 and also an amateur programmer since 2015 coding primarily with (vanilla) Bash-HTML-CSS-JavaScript-Wiki-Markdown and doing lots of Drupal and MediaWiki webmastering and some regex (and as one who have asked more than 1,000 questions here in SE) I can at least give vast IT support;
Although, I don't limit myself just to IT; I believe I could do many other jobs requiring near-native English and the love to learn new things.

Why I seek employee visa

I understand that currently the best visa with which its most easy to stay here with is an employee visa (work permit?) because then 90 days report is usually done by a company and a worker has to go to Soon Ratchakan to extend a visa just once a year.

I don't have any plans to marry someone (marriage rules just became stricter here anyway) and no plan to become a 49%-51% partner with a Thai citizen.

My problem

I have no experience as working as a webmaster as an employee, rather only as freelance and I have no experience with looking for a job as an employee globally.

As I avoid registering myself by email to web applications in general, I didn't register to Human Resources agencies via their numerous websites.

My question

What job could I do in Bangkok as a near-native speaker of English webmaster and what is the best way to find such a job?
I expect a salary of at least 30,000 Baht NET Salary a month.

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  • A few immigration-related things: 1. There is no 'work' visa. There is a 'business' visa, but you still need a work permit in order to be allowed to work in Thailand. 2. In order to stay longer than 90 days you would need an extension of stay, on top of the visa that you use to enter the country. 3. With a salary of only 30,000 THB/month you would not be able to get an extension of stay based on employment, even with a work permit. There is a minimum salary requirement before an extension can be issued. That means that each time you enter Thailand you can stay for only 90 days. – Scott Earle Feb 28 at 4:29
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I'm afraid your job options will be extremely limited. You can have have a look at expat-oriented job forums like ThaiVisa to see what's out there, but in general:

  • You will not be hired by the vast majority of Thai companies, because they want native/fluent Thai speakers.
  • You will not be hired by the Thai offices of multinationals, because they generally want bilinguals and you don't appear to have any unique/rare skills that they need.
  • You're not a native speaker of English, so you probably can't find work as an English teacher. Even if you do find some smaller, sketchier school that wants to hire you, the job is poorly paid and a career dead end.
  • You could do freelance work, particularly for overseas companies or small expat-run companies in Thailand, but without a network you're competing against a lot of people and it's not going to get you a work visa in Thailand.

In my opinion, you're probably best off either becoming a digital nomad for a while and trying to build a network of remote work from your home country (hard and will require hopping around on tourist visas), or returning home and trying to kickstart your career there before moving back as an expat or remote worker (will take a while).

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  • Hello, what is "Thai offices of multinationals"? – user19176 Feb 12 at 3:20
  • You're not a native speaker of English, so you probably can't find work as an English teacher Do you know how many Tagalog-native speakers I met teaching English here? I would change "you can't" to "it can be hard for non native speakers of English to..." and then it will also cancel a logical contradiction with the rest of the passage --- Even if you do find some smaller, sketchier school. – user19176 Feb 12 at 3:20
  • You're probably best off either becoming a digital nomad for a while and trying to build a network of remote work from your home country (hard and will require hopping around on tourist visas), or returning home and trying to kickstart your career there before moving back as an expat or remote worker (will take a while). You have invented a reality in which I am not so already ; well, I am, but I didn't ask about working as a freelance ; furthermore as of the moment it is quite illegal but Scott Earle explained why it will (likely) would no longer be in 2021. – user19176 Feb 12 at 3:22
  • "Thai offices of multinationals" refers to local branches of large international companies (IBM, P&G, Accenture, etc). And Filipinos are hired as English teachers because the Phils are nearby, English is widely spoken there, and they'll accept low salaries -- but you're asking for 30k+. – lambshaanxy Feb 12 at 9:01
  • And I realize you don't like my answer because it doesn't offer you a silver bullet that solves your problem... but the unfortunate truth is that I don't think your problem (wanting a high salary and a Thai work visa without the qualifications for it) is solvable, and nobody else has offered a solution either. – lambshaanxy Feb 12 at 9:04

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