True that.

I can't speak for every center - Chengdu here - but this is the fourth company I've worked for in China (after DingDong, a private kindergarten, and WEB), and it's the only one I bothered to renew my contract for a second year with.

There's naturally going to be a degree of office politics at any job, minor annoyances in day-to-day life. But in my experience of working here for a year and a half or so now, I've never known anyone to "cheat" any of the foreign teachers or break the contract.

They basically bend over backwards to help you get settled in, and deal with most of the logistical hassles for you. It's honestly the nicest job I've ever worked, and after a while, you get to the point where you know the textbooks so well that prep time is basically zero (don't tell the head teacher. O_O ).

Like anywhere, it's the people who make or break it, not the system itself, but I've never had a bad experience here. Just throwing that out there.

The scoring system is a bit unfortunate in a center as large as ours (10 foreign teachers and about as many local ones competing for one prize ... meh), but it's just for a nifty bonus. I've never heard of anyone being fired over it (and the default score in the system is 5 anyhow; in practice most teachers get anywhere between 4.85 - 5 I've seen, and it's other things like meeting attendance and what not that actually tend to make and break it, rather than student ratings, which are only actually weighted at 5 points of a 25 point score but I digress). There's a fair amount of downtime, and most students are cool. A fair number I actually consider to be my friends outside of the school too.

Honestly this whole thing strikes me as someone being bitter over personal drama rather than any objective problems. METEN tends to be quite fair to the letter of the contract. It is what it is; but why complain about something you yourself signed unless you didn't bother to read it?

I'll vouch for METEN too. Best job of my life thus far. To anyone interested, if you choose to work for us in Chengdu, let me know and maybe we can meet up for drinks or something and I can show you around. Could always use new friends.

~ Tim