I’m trying to understand if I’m being completely low-balled or if that offer is actually fine. Background: I’m 45 years old, have no degree but twenty years of experience as a software developer, and currently live in Germany.
I have offers from German companies for around 85k€ per year if I wanted to move to a city I do not want to live in, and 65k€ if I stay in Berlin. In Tokyo, I’d earn 533万円 in base salary plus various “allowances”, and an additional 192万円 is listed as “fixed overtime” for 46 hours/month, so I’d arrive at a total of 725万円.
From what I understand, the tax regime is comparable and I’ll end up paying around 25% in taxes, same as now, so this would be a step down in global buying power, with fewer holidays (30->20) and expected overtime, so my initial instinct is that this is a bad deal, but I’m trying to look at the whole picture here.
The numbers I see thrown around in expat circles are also significantly higher, but I’ve also found statistics that suggest that this is around average, e.g. [PayScale](https://www.payscale.com/research/JP/Job=Senior_Software_Engineer/Salary), so I’m unsure what to use as the basis for comparison, and whether I should calculate with the “fixed overtime” payments or without them.
This is a Japanese company with a few, but not many, foreigners, so if that is about average for Japanese employees and I can reasonably expect this to rise by 8% every 16 months, and be augmented by bonuses, then this might still be a good offer, but I can’t immediately tell.
From what I gathered, employee retention there is good, and the people I’ve interviewed with have been in the company for over ten years, so they seem to be doing something right. Overtime seems to happen around product releases (where it’s unavoidable given the nature of the business), but not generally, so the “みなし残業代” seems to be used as intended by the government, as an incentive to finish work quickly and not stay longer to get a higher salary.
The main upside of moving to Japan for me would be that cost of living would actually go down, buying a house in ten years would come back into the affordable range for me even at that salary, while it is completely utopian here, and there would be a few quality-of-life improvements (Berlin is pretty car-focused, so air quality is bad and the city is noisy all the time, and pandemic management is mostly absent, so the cultural offerings are more theoretical in nature these days).
So, main questions:
– does this sound reasonable at all?
– if yes, should I negotiate something here, like trying to go for a higher base salary or getting raises or bonuses in writing?
– what are people’s experiences with “fixed overtime”? Searching through the subreddit only gave two results, that suggests to me that it’s uncommon?
2 comments
> what are people’s experiences with “fixed overtime”? Searching through the subreddit only gave two results, that suggests to me that it’s uncommon?
It’s extremely common, but usually people don’t translate that to “fixed overtime”. Search for “minashi zangyo” instead. And search on r/japanlife too (but don’t post there).
Its going to depend honestly on what level youre going at etc.
If youre going as an IC senior engineer then the total comp isnt outside of the ordinary range for earners in Japan – people earning way above this are usually working at large MNCs, think companies like Indeed, Stripe etc that have teams in Japan these companies pay significantly more but are significantly harder to get a job at.
with your experience etc id say you should really be at a Lead / Principal level, so salaries should be higher than what youre looking at, but if youre just going for senior level roles then around 7 – 10M is usually around standard.
As a general rule, Japan pays worse than EU in salaries, and EU pays worse than US of course so youde usually expect to take a pay cut to move to Japan from the EU honestly.
A little aside – cost of living and affordability around Tokyo compared to berlin in terms of living may be hard to directly compare, given a UK example of London vs Tokyo, Tokyo is generally cheaper for rent, but places are also generally smaller, so price per sqm isnt actually cheaper. Also bear in mind that in the EU, when you buy a property its value increase, in Japan it decreases so investments in Japan tend to depreciate over time. I mean that really depends on your long term plans but yeah, what seems cheaper at first glance, may not be cheaper in the long run.