I’ve been looking up a lot online, but there have been many mixed results.
I plan on getting a degree in economics, while studying programming.
Is this a legitimate career path in Japan? Recently I’ve been worried as I’m already locked into an economics degree (stupid how Japanese colleges work) but I don’t see many jobs getting close to 1000万円.
(I have options in America as well. I understand that Japan may not be the best thing for my future, but I am considering both Japan and America.)
2 comments
I think it varies with which company you can get into.
Data science jobs could be in Google or Apple which would easily pay that amount while requiring significant skill, or it could be some no-name company doing copy pasting and vlookup in excel which wouldn’t pay that much.
You can check [opensalary.jp](https://opensalary.jp) to get an idea (although not that many data points). Depending on what kind of data science you want to do, you might also check salary quotes for ML-specialized software engineering or product analyst. Salaries above 1000 man are realizable at companies of a certain size and past a certain seniority level.
What I got from my conversations with DS people in Japan is that, compared to America, Japan has less money in DS, fewer opportunities (especially a lower career ceiling: it’s harder to become director of DS in Japan than in the US) and fewer DS people (so a smaller community to interact with and learn from), and that if working for American corporations in Japan the big decisions are still taken in the US on US time (so some late night meetings for people in Japan).
With all that said, I’ve met quite a few happy Data Scientists in Japan, experiencing growth and interested in their work, so it’s not the career suicide a lot of people make it to be.