I’m curious about the ins and outs.
What’s your position?
What’s the pay like for a entry level junior developer?
How was the interview process ?
What is the Japanese level for your specific work environment?
Do you have a degree or self taught?
EDIT: I have a BA , I’m attempting to self teach myself through freecodecamp at the moment as my main material. I use YouTube for specific videos if I find myself having trouble. Im also aware of The Odin Project. If you have any suggestions for materials , please mention. Im aware of CS50 but once I started one course, I’d like to finish it first before going to another.
I’m looking to make a career change from teaching English and I’m really enjoying the resources I’m using at the moment. I feel confident in what I’m doing even though I just started. No projects yet, just learning the material.
I always thought about going back home to the US or trying to live in another English speaking country but what’s it like here?
15 comments
Position: back-end
Pay: a lot of the entry positions were offering 2-3 million yen per year. I job hunted for a full year and managed to get lucky with 4.5.
Interview process: a lot of them required a coding test. The job I accepted had a group interview, then an interview with the team they’d put me in, then one-on-one interview with CEO.
Japanese level: I have N2, but I think the minimum requirement was N3.
Degree: I have a bachelor’s in an unrelated field, and a master’s in IT. Got the master’s via an online program based in the US while I was working as a teacher here.
> What’s your position?
I’m an individual contributor, and I have no plan to transit to the management track.
> What’s the pay like for a entry level junior developer?
This varies A LOT depends on the company. When I first came to Japan, I was pretty much entry level and earned around 2.2~2.3M anually. On the other hand, my current employer pays junior level devs around 10~12M anually. Most other companies fall somewhere in the between. Although if you are entry level I would say around 3~3.5M is not a bad start.
> How was the interview process ?
This also depends on the company. In traditional Japanese companies, you can expect mostly soft skill and behavior questions. In gaishikei and more modern Japanese ones, you should prepare for the usual leetcode and systen design interviews.
> What is the Japanese level for your specific work environment?
In the last 4~5 years, I’ve been using zero Japanese in my jobs.
> Do you have a degree or self taught?
I have a CS degree, but my university is from a 3rd world country and not well-known internationally.
Full-stack webdev.
Starting for my field and time was like 4.8-5M, I started higher due to my specific skills and the style of work at the position.
My company’s was different, but I’ve been through many different styles. Expect and prepare for everything.
I’m required to have business conversational for my role, I have N2, but others have lower and work in English teams. Regardless, it’s brutal at the start–and most people with N1 would agree.
Self-taught.
Honestly, I’d rather work in the US, but I have a life here. I make more than double any other eikaiwa/ALT makes, have a far more enjoyable job, and whatnot. But if I was single and had the choice, I’d be aiming for back home or elsewhere. Opportunities would be far greater as well without visa/language/culture issues.
I was full stack, change to graphic engineer and gpu optimization (mostly adreno, snaps,ex), later I became engineer management and now I’m full TA and GPU R&D(I enjoy most).
Self taught, degree in arts.
No Japanese , I would say self taught? Never took Japanese tests can’t read. But i did some gpu talks in tech events in Japanese
Interview were mostly the same. piece of paper with questions about programming and algorithms. Also it was minimum 4 interviews each one 2 weeks apart.
In US dollar I start around 30.000+ and bonus year , now already 9 years later I’m around 100.000+ and bonus, also lot of benefits like free air planes tickets for all my family an year and others , bonus are good and almost 30 days off a year.
In those 9 years I change jobs more than 4 times, I always got headhunters? Idk how to say in English, but they approach me. Never quit if u don’t have an offer sign from another company.
Companies are all Japanese , not counting the first one all other were 99% Japanese (im the only foreign guy) . I didn’t like working in foreign companies , Japanese treat me a lot better and more ¥¥.
Btw the first time I went to interview at Japanese company I was almost crying of stress. 😂 but I knew if I don’t change jobs I will be stuck with bad salary. I put in my mind, go in, go out . Forget about it.
At first: small start up (5 people) doing full-stack / whatever was needed. Was my first programming job in Japan, had a low salary of 3.5m yen ish. Did that for a year, got a year of experience on my resume, applied for a major (listed) company, got through easily, currently make 6.5 – 7m
Would recommend a similar approach if you are starting from nothing.
I am a software engineer I guess. I create libraries, add-ons and fix bugs reported by customers for a computational simulation software. Without revealing where I work, but Cadence Software is a company that makes similar software products to what I am working on.
I don’t know of any entry level workers in the group I am in but a 3 years experience engineer with masters degree in a similar department gets about 6M/year.
Mostly technical questions, describe my skills previous experience and also a discussion about what I could do if I were hired.
Degree in material science but I did have some C++ programming experience during my study.
this site has some interesting info imo [https://opensalary.jp/en/roles/software-engineer](https://opensalary.jp/en/roles/software-engineer)not sure how accurate, but you can see that the range is absolutely massive depending on the company. You might have a company paying 5 years experience around 5mil and then another company paying 5 years experience 15mil.
It sucks but the range is so massive that I don’t know if you can really get a good idea of what you can get, especially if you are just entering the industry, although I suppose that means you might get the lower end of the range.
Really interesting, thank you
What’s your position? Fullstack dev, but mostly doing frontend.
What’s the pay like for a entry level junior developer? We don’t hire juniors so no idea. I am the 4th dev now.
How was the interview process ? Job-relevant interview questions, which is always a +1. Multiple rounds, several technical, and talking with people about my previous roles and experience.
What is the Japanese level for your specific work environment? I work and worked only for USA companies in my last roles so no need at all.
Do you have a degree or self taught? I am self-taught, but have a slightly relevant degree of Industrial Engineering.
PS, relevant, this and my past roles were for foreign companies with presence one way or another in Japan, salaries in Japan are both capped at the high end, and lower for any level than in the USA. I did receive 10+ offers in Japanese companies over the last few years but they were all a lot lower and only one included a tiny bit of stock options.
For a company I left a while back there’s 3 routes:
Convert from contractor. Contractors might be at 3.5M and join at like 6M.
Fresh from university. Will do about 6 months training at 2M, then if no problems can probably convert to full time at about 5M.
Mid career hire. Depending on the role probably between 6-12M.
No Japanese required and a couple people joined with unrelated degrees – though this was rare and is less likely now.
Interview is standard whiteboard technical interview. Many people who pass had practiced leetcode extensively. Though if you’re already a competent dev this wouldn’t be necessary to pass.
Salaries went higher than above (up to maybe 20M), but that was mostly through promoting from within.
> What’s your position?
Currently I am site reliability engineer
> What’s the pay like for a entry level junior developer?
Don’t know these days, when I started working it was around 10-12M JPY in my area (kernel developer, systems programming) and around 2M for web/game devs as there was simply large market. Guess wages shifted but there’s still this proportion. My first job was with local branch of US company.
> What is the Japanese level for your specific work environment?
My current and previous jobs were 100% English (for Japanese employees as well, note both were/are local branches of US company)
> Do you have degree or self taught?
I have degree in applied mathematics and also systems programming and software engineering. Funny thing is that what I did most (kernel and userspace development + compiler development) I mostly learned by hacking on Linux and gcc for non-linux platform. Degree indeed helped not only with immigration.
What’s your position?
Senior software engineer. I work in games and I’m a generalist focusing on gameplay and AI, but I also do other areas sometimes.
What’s the pay like for a entry level junior developer?
Not great in games but my company pays around 3.5-4 million
How was the interview process ?
Typical Japanese company interview with very little focus on actual programming questions, lots of questions about my background.
What is the Japanese level for your specific work environment?
Everything is in Japanese, not sure if anyone speaks English.
Do you have a degree or self taught?
I have a bachelors in computer science but most of my game programming knowledge was self taught through books and making my own projects.
Very interesting. I’m currently using the Odin Project to learn to code. I’m hoping with my portfolio from that, and being able to pass N2 maybe I can get out of the English teaching industry
Not a programmer anymore (I got so tired of looking at code 8 hours a day, not feeling like I got any better). Now I realize I was just in a sink or swim environment and I was actually pretty decent, haha.
I got a job with no experience in the countryside for a small design company 2.4M. They hired me with zero experience (although I did show some training stuff I did online). They taught me a lot, but it was a revolving door. I got lucky with a person above me who graduated Osaka University and was half decent. Had to train two people to replace me when I left. One who graduated from Kyushu University.
Through a detour at another company where my position is difficult to explain, I am a manager now making around 8M. Pretty okay for the boonies.
If u rly have the skills then jus remote work for US or smthng lmao and still get to enjoy Japan.The pay is more than double whatever u can get in Japan.