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Programming Jobs in Japan and general travel questions - dizmox - 2014-05-30
Never, but I'm only in my early 20s, so I don't know many older people...
Programming Jobs in Japan and general travel questions - Womacks23 - 2014-05-30
john555 Wrote:I'm just curious...in the time you've spent in Japan have you ever come across a Caucasian born in North America or Europe who is now a Japanese citizen?There is a senior programmer working at my company fitting this exact description. Even changed his name to a Japanese one.
Programming Jobs in Japan and general travel questions - Womacks23 - 2014-05-30
Danchan Wrote:Interesting to hear about Rakuten changing due to pressure from foreign staff. When you say foreign staff though, what do you mean by this? Do you mean non-Chinese, non-Korean "foreign"? I have difficulty imagine Chinese staff speaking up about the poor working conditions when their status in the eyes of the company is often so low (skilled or not).You are hinting at some really big issues that the company is coming to terms with. Rakuten literally went from a company almost 100% staffed by Japanese people to a company with 15% foreign staff in 3 years. You can imagine the huge cultural shifts and organizational psychology effects of this. It's not always pretty but it's very interesting IMO, and completely unique and revolutionary in Japan.
And you're right. The western staff do speak out more about things compared to the Chinese and Korean staff. There are various cultural reasons for this. I would say, however, that Rakuten doesn't treat the foreign staff any "lower" than the Japanese staff. We have our problems but that's not one of them.
Danchan Wrote:As for the professional incomes only starting to reach a decent rate of pay by the time they hit 30 or so; if you are assuming that your new hires are all fresh graduates, and while at university they mostly bucked around and you will need to train them up from scratch, then I can almost understand a beginning pay of 300,000 + bonus. But how can this system fit with hiring more people from other countries who are used to a different system? Or for that matter the increasing 転職率 domestically. Something has gotta give surely.300,000 salary is only for new graduates with bachelors degrees and little or no work experience. After the first year, which is basically a training year, the salaries start diverging based on skills and performance.
The salary may not be very competitive with the US, but it's certainly competitive in Japan and in Asia in general - our primary markets.
Danchan Wrote:Then again, maybe this is how the system is supposed to work. You get your foreign specialists over for a few years, extract some value from their labor, then let them quit out of frustration/exhaustion and go home so they don't clutter up the place.Specialists are hired in mid-career tracks with varying salaries based on skills and experience. 99.9% of new grads are not really specialists and usually have zero practical development or business experience.
New grads come in at the opening rate, do a year of OJT and start building their skill sets, and then break off on their career paths with increasing responsibilities, and bigger salaries, and bigger bonuses.
Programming Jobs in Japan and general travel questions - vix86 - 2014-05-31
john555 Wrote:Is it because you'll get specialized experience that you can't get in North America or Europe, so that when you come back home you can get a better job than otherwise possible?The reason for the difference in immigration is mostly due to politics and society alignment. The government and a lot of the voting public are still quite conservative and they are not wild about the idea of a huge influx of immigrants into the country. The only kind of immigrants that Japan wants right now are skilled labor and even then, the incentive to go to Japan isn't great enough. In fact, I believe in a recent article, it was mentioned that Abe said he only wants skilled laborers to come to the country for 2-5 years and then go home. They don't want permanent citizens. And the current deals for skilled laborers don't grant an easy path to naturalization, they just get slightly better visa durations compared to other people and a quicker path to permanent residence visa (Note: PR Visa's open up better opportunities [easier bank loans, etc] and have quite long visa renewal periods.)
Honestly there isn't a lot of incentive for people to want to work in Japan really, from a unique-skills-that-you-can-only-learn-in-Japan point of view. Mostly the incentive comes from things you get from the society, stuff like dizmox pointed out.
Programming Jobs in Japan and general travel questions - MaG3Stican - 2014-07-30
dizmox Wrote:Hey there, sorry for the SPAM, but I am currently moving to Tokyo with my wife and I will have to find a job over there. I am an experienced programmer (3 years) and it pretty much interests me to talk to you or anybody else who wants to chat about programming in japankitakitsune Wrote:Bonus and stock option packages that are not typically listed in job postings would bring the Japanese companies more in line with US practices.International financial companies pay their staff pretty fairly compared to overseas remuneration packages given the local price of living. There's plenty of coding opportunities there (and not just back office).
A mid-level manager in Japan making a base salary of 550,000 yen or so would probably recieve an additional benefits package worth 1.5-2.0 million every year.
And foreign companies in Japan wouldn't necessarily pay more either.
You just need to aim for companies that have a definitively international culture. Look into start ups and small companies too since big companies are generally too bound by rules to change their pay structures for outlier candidates.
BTW, sorry to hijack but if anyone wants to talk about programming (or working in Japan or otaku hobbies or whatever) send me a message.I'm always doing this kind of stuff by myself (trying to really improve my C++ level right now) so it'd be nice to have someone at a similar level or a mentor figure...
. I cannot PM anyone for some reason, but regardless, my email is magestican.visualkei@gmail.com, hope you send an email
Programming Jobs in Japan and general travel questions - bertoni - 2014-07-30
vileru Wrote:In the US, everyone knows that pink slip day is coming whenever holiday bonuses are near.Have you ever actually worked in the US? That's not been true anywhere I have been employed as a software engineer.