Hi all,
I recently received an offer for a Robotics company in Tokyo to work as an Information Security Specialist. It is a multinational robotics company, so not traditionally Japanese. They have employees from 26 countries represented. Offer details:
Me:
5 YOE working in Information/Cyber Security Engineering
26M, Single
Base salary: 7.56M yen
Bonus potential: 10-20% annually
PTO: 10 days (accrued) + 12 Japanese national holidays (can be used when you like)
WLB: 9 hours M-F in office. Need to request to work from home
Perks: Free lunch, coffee, gym. Free flight to Japan, home returning support (130000 yen/year) Housing contract negotiation support and rent can be deducted tax advantage from salary.
Initial thoughts:
I am coming from a HCOL city in the US, so obviously the salary is a huge step down for me, but expected. But doing my own research, it is quite common for infosec professionals to make 10M+ in Tokyo.
I understand that the current offer is totally livable in Tokyo. I would still like to negotiate.
https://www.erieri.com/salary/job/cyber-security-engineer/japan
Would love to hear this community’s thoughts on this offer.
5 comments
>I would still like to negotiate.
You should be aware of the fact that salary negotiation isn’t really as big of a thing here as it is in the US. It’s certainly possible, but there’s generally not nearly as much flex in salary bands.
You can certainly *try*, but asking for a 33% salary increase is not particularly likely to be successful.
At your YOE ur already making an insanely good salary for Japan. I doubt there is much room for negotiation. Let me guess one of the robotics startups ?
I guess it will be worth the experience anyways or?
Live a few years there and have a new interesting part within your curriculum vitae
The only times I’ve seen people successfully negotiate have been when they had another offer from a different company, so basically “this company is offering xxx so I’m going to go with them unless you can compete” though it didn’t always work
Yeah I wouldn’t risk haggling myself in Japan.
**TLDR:** haggling might not only **not** work, it might cost you the offer
I didn’t receive a job offer from a company because they thought I wouldn’t accept a lower offer than my expectation. There was actually a miscommunication (their side) that I wouldn’t accept less than x base salary, when I said x total package. The company got all bitter and gave awful feedback that I was bad in the interviews and not suitable for the role etc. I gave up, told the recruiters my side of the story and wished them well. The recruiters fixed their side of the mistake and when they realized I would have accepted their offer the company came straight back to me like “oh no that was all a misunderstanding, you’re amazing, we want you to work here”. Ridiculous. I did take the offer though..