I interned at a large company in Japan and got a return offer, but the return offer is less than what I was paid as an intern. If you take into account the rent support I received, my return offer is basically a 1.6m pay cut. Its also lower than their lowest salary reported on opensalary, but I’m not sure how accurate that is. I’m confident in my skills and they were happy with my attituded and performance, so I’m kind of confused. The company isn’t super traditional, do they want me to negotiate? The offer is between 5m-6m for a mobile position and I have 1 year of experience. Despite what I’ve said, that’s still a good offer, right? Before this I didn’t want to work anywhere else, but I’m kind of disappointed that they aren’t paying at least what I was paid before. Maybe I am being unreasonable.
If I’m understanding it correctly, the same company is offering you a full time position for less than what they paid you when you interned with them? That is quite strange.
Now I suppose regular employment vs an internship isn’t quite comparable. For instance, I’m assuming while you were an intern they didn’t pay for your social insurance. When you become a regular employee, they do need to pay this (50% is deducted from your salary, with the rest paid by the company).
It could also be that business conditions have changed, and they don’t have the same budget as before.
But still, they should have at least told you that.
While OpenSalary can give you an idea what a company may pay, but I think the accuracy is limited. For instance, Rakuten, the company with the most data, has only had 4 people with one year’s experience post their salary within the last year. I’m sure they’re employing hundreds of developers with that amount of experience.
You’ll have to wait a month or so before the 2022 edition comes out, but in 2021, I found the median salary for devs with less than 2 years experience to be 4.5M. By that benchmark, the offer is okay but not exceptional.
I think there is nothing wrong with expressing how you feel to the company. If I were in your position, I’d tell them something like what you told me:
“Thanks for the offer, but to be honest, I’m a bit disappointed by it, as it’s lower than what you were paying me as an intern. I had thought you were happy with my performance and attitude, but this offer doesn’t reflect that. Until I got this offer, I couldn’t imagine working elsewhere, but now I’m having second thoughts. Could you explain how you decided upon the amount in the offer? Maybe there’s some other benefits or something that I was missing.”
Thanks for your reply!
Yes, same company, same everything. I had things deducted from my paycheck as an intern, but I don’t recall if any of it was social insurance.
Maybe there is some explanation. I will discuss it with them like you mentioned in your post, but if they won’t give me at least what I got as an intern, I think I may look elsewhere, or even work in my home country for a couple more years and try to get hired in Japan again later.