Hi all, I’m Kevin and I’ve been lurking around TokyoDev here and there over the years.
A little on my background:
I am an American computer science undergraduate student and I have studied Japanese for about 9 years now. I would say I’m around N3 in JLPT if I were to try to test for it.
I’m planning on graduating in a month with a B.S. in Computer Science from a university in California, USA. Despite COVID-19 affecting the job market (especially abroad), I managed to get an internship and a full time offer that I accepted as a Machine Learning Engineer for a small company in Tokyo. Though they gave me such a small offer of 220,000 yen/month, I felt that the work seems exciting. To top that off it’s very close to the university I did an exchange semester, so I would be able to return to that area in Tokyo.
However, I took this job seeing it as a foot in the door to a visa and experience with ML. I was thinking that this was quite an opportunity considering that most ML engineers have an M.S. or PhD. Though my goal is to eventually live comfortably to own a home outside of Tokyo someday (seems more realistic than owning a home in California). This does seem to be quite a traditional company in terms of how one would progress in a company though. I accepted the offer intending to leave within 2 years, is that a reasonable timeframe to progress in my career for higher opportunities at a bigger company like LINE or Google? I’m worried being at this company for that long might stunt my growth since the development seems a little different from the scrum methodology I’m used to. Also, would trying to achieve JLPT N2 in that first year in Japan be that much of an edge for jobs? I do intend on trying for N2, but I’m just curious.
Somewhat of a lengthy post, but I appreciate any input!
Assuming this is the only compensation, and there isn’t something like a fixed bonus biannual bonus, this is incredibly low.
Normally I wouldn’t advocate quickly jumping ship after a company brings you over to Japan, but in this case, given at how poor the compensation is, I think it would be worth immediately applying for other jobs and engaging recruiters once you get here. There’s a lot more opportunities available to people living in Japan, and finding a company that’s willing to pay you 50% should be fairly easy.
Now, if it does turn out that this company is an awesome place to learn, and you enjoy working there, perhaps it is worth staying for a while. But given that they’re paying so low, it seems likely that they don’t value developers so much, or they’re working in a really inefficient way that prevents developers from contributing much value.
Certification itself doesn’t matter as much as actual ability with the language. While obviously having more Japanese abilities opens up more opportunities, think about if they’re the kind of opportunities you want to go after.
Considering this is my first job, I think I should stay for at least a year for the sake of my resume. Also, would you say most companies gauge your Japanese in the initial interviews? If that’s the case, maybe I should study JLPT for the sake of learning. I noticed there were so many technical terms I would never have learned in Japanese without actually working in tech in Japan.
For a resume, you get to decide what story you tell. If you were concerned that joining the current company, and then a couple months later joining another one would look bad on your resume, you could just not list your first company on your resume. No one’s going to bat an eye at a couple months gap between when you graduate and your “first” job.
Job hopping can potentially be an issue if you make a career of it. If you’re ten years in, and have never worked for more than six months for a given company, it will certainly make a prospective employer question why.
So from a strategic perspective, I think it makes sense to hop only if there’s a significantly better opportunity. The people who get in trouble with it is because they’re chasing only slightly better ones.
If you join the company, and you really enjoy working there, and are learning a lot, by all means stay. But if it turns out to be a crappy place to work, you’ll be doing yourself a disservice by toughing it out.
At most, having a JLPT certificate can help get you an initial interview. It shows you’ve had the dedication to pass it, but due to the nature of the exam, doesn’t reflect your actual ability to communicate. So companies will want to judge your Japanese ability themselves. From my perspective, the exam is most useful as a motivational tool rather than being a practical certification.
How and when a company will test your Japanese ability will depend on the position. If they’re expecting you to speak Japanese as the main language you’ll use on the job, the interview itself will probably be in Japanese. If it is just a “nice to have”, they might just ask you some simple question in Japanese, not even necessarily a technical one.
Hi guys, it’s been some time and I wanted to do a quick update.
So in March I received my COE after starting it around early October and to my surprise its good for a 3 year engineering visa. I was pretty stoked about it, but I’ve been waiting ever since to enter Japan. Things don’t really look good in terms of entry at the moment. Not saying I want to throw in the towel, but its been pretty discouraging on my mental health.
I was kind of put off when half my job is just updating html pages for a university (I wasn’t told that I would be doing this when I took the offer). It wasn’t until recently that I’ve been introduced to working with a coworker other than my boss. Sure I’m working with ML development and learning more, but I’m starting to feel discouraged with how little I’m really growing nearly 8 months in. I recall asking one of my professors for career advise when I graduated in December, he told me his main concern was the language barrier stunting my growth. Although its my first job in the industry, the development progress is very different from the agile development I was expecting.
Although this is my first experience, I’m a little put off with how being an engineer for a company in Japan has been. I tend to question if this industry was really for me, it’s not as exciting as I would have hoped for.
In your original post, you said you accepted their small offer because you felt that the work would be exciting. It sounds like it didn’t turn out to be what you anticipated.
Given the low pay and learning potential, it seems like the only remaining thing the company has for it is the possibility of relocating to Japan, though even this is uncertain when and if it will happen.
It seems like it would be worth investigating what other opportunities are available to you. You were initially wondering if you should tough it out for at least a year, but in this case, I don’t think there’s any reason to, and any potential employer is going to be understanding of the situation (and perhaps even impressed that you’ve stuck with it so long).
Machine Learning is an in demand area in Japan, and so once the border opens up again, and you have a couple of years of experience, I think it should be relatively easy to get a position here (especially because it sounds like you’ve already been working using Japanese).
It’s been some time since I posted. I actually wanted to say I left this company a few weeks ago. After a year and 4 months of being strung along with the borders, I just had enough because I didn’t see myself lasting much longer considering how weak the conversion rate is. Unfortunately the timing just couldn’t have been worse and it seems a lot of foreigners have been entering.
Since December I had been looking for jobs here and preparing for interviews, but I haven’t gotten any offers here yet. I have been getting a lot more interaction from recruiters with my experience though. Considering I would probably have to go through the visa process all over again, what do you think of the idea of still considering jobs in Tokyo now is like? I still have interaction with recruiters on LinkedIn, but it goes cold every time I tell them I’m not in Japan.
That’s a shame to hear. Developers are getting into Japan, including those for smaller companies.
I think there’s still a fair amount of uncertainty though. As there’s still quite a backlog of people waiting to get in, and there’s still a chance of another border lockdown, companies are still a bit more reluctant to hire people from abroad.
I don’t know enough about the whole visa process if you’re back to step 1, or you could reuse the COE you previously got if another company made you an offer.
Recruiters are less enthusiastic to work with overseas people because:
companies prefer people already here
it takes longer for overseas people to get here (and longer for them to get their fee)
there’s a higher risk someone flakes out, and decides not to come to Japan, or quickly leaves the company
I have heard of people getting hired by recruiters from abroad, but they’re usually already working for a FAANG type company, and getting poached for one of the major Japanese ones.
So about reusing the COE I currently have, it seems that the expiration was extended again until July 31, 2022. Although it says my former employers name, do you have any stories of other developers reusing a COE like this? Even though I’m looking for work, I am still open to doing that graduation visit I never got when COVID-19 started 2 years ago. Even if I could come visit on a tourist visa to see friends, do you think that this would potentially be a way to find work in person?
Sorry, I’m not so familiar with this topic. But my understanding is that you need both a COE and Visa to enter Japan.
I have heard of people coming on a tourist visa and finding work here. I’d say it slightly increases your chance over applying completely remotely, but isn’t as big a boost as if you were actually living here.