Be extremely wary when signing on with DK.

I worked for DK for one year. Day to day, my job was a good one. I got along well with my coworkers and had great students. DK’s administration, however, made my year hellish. I have been teaching for several years now, both abroad and in the United States, and I have never seen such incompetence, unfairness and outright dishonesty in an organization before. I have some regrets in writing this because there are good people working at DK, but my coworkers and I were severely mistreated, and those responsible were never called out, despite our official complaints. I write this with two goals in mind: to warn prospective DK employees against signing on with an abusive company and to call out certain administrators for their mismanagement and dishonesty.

DK promises the moon to prospective employees. According to the contract, prospective employees can choose where they will work. Upon completion of the contract, DK reimburses them part of the cost of their flights. DK also reimburses the costs associated with getting a visa. This all sounds great. In reality, DK will do its best not to deliver on those promises, stooping so low as to “retranslate” the Chinese version of the contract. The quarterly bonuses, which are hypothetically calculated objectively, based on an employee’s job performance, are ultimately decided by a petty administrator who has no idea of what is going on in the classroom. I was not the only DK employee who was cheated. Over the course of the year, I spoke with several coworkers (and it is not large company) who had similar experiences.

The greatest complaint I have about my time at DK was the disrespectful way DK administrators treat their employees. I was given little support and a difficult teaching task—teaching three courses that had no useable curricula or materials and that I had never taught before. I got along extremely well with my students, my fellow teachers and the administrators at my school, and they gave me high scores on my evaluations. We built a good working relationship based on mutual respect. DK’s administrators, in turn, gave no support and no respect. Half of the time they ignored me entirely. For instance, it took more than a dozen emails and four months for them to correct a mistake they had made in one of my paychecks. They take constructive criticisms as if they were personal attacks. The other half of the time, they criticized my coworkers and me unfairly. It is very hard to take insults from an incompetent person. In short, the administrative culture at DK makes working there almost impossible.

There are lots of great companies in China hiring foreign teachers. DK is not one of them. Be extremely wary when signing on with this company.