What should I learn to get higher salary in Tokyo as a web developer?

1

Thank you for reading this.

I am a full-stack web developer from China, and mainly using Vue, React, PHP. I started web development 3 years ago, before that I was a mobile game developer.

Earlier this year, I accepted a offer which provided 350K (JPY) per month in Tokyo. The Dev team of the company hired me is leaded by a Chinese, so Japanese is not a requirement in my daily work environment.

Currently my skills:

  • English Language
    • Daily use level
  • Japanese Language
    • Almost none
  • PHP & Vue & React
    • Medium level
  • Java Web Development
    • Basic use of Spring Boot

I am 28 years old this year and I want to live and work in Tokyo for a long term. So if I want get a higher salary(let’s say about 500-600 K per month), what should I learn to achieve that as soon as possible?

My Options:

  1. Learn Japanese to business level (get Japanese N1/N2 certificate)
  2. Learn English to business level (get TOEFL/TOEIC certificate)
  3. Mastered another technologies like Ruby on Rails or Java
  4. Improve my current web full-stack skills to expert level

Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated. :grinning:

2

Read some blog posts on this site, I’d say these ones are good for your concern:
How to Survive and Thrive as an Engineer in Japan
Marketing yourself as a developer

It sounds like you already have a good chunk of experience in Software Development, and you already live in Japan. These are perfect preconditions for you to start going to conferences and networking events. Go there and meet new people and companies that will hire you. With this I’m sure you’ll also get higher paid jobs.

1 Like
4

thank you for your suggestion. I’ll look into that.:grinning:

5

Hi, you’re so good, I’m not good at English but I have well skilled Chinese because I’m Chinese, haha, do you have any remote work opportunity?