Moving to Japan as a junior software engineer

6 comments

1. This is a copy of your post for archive/search purposes.

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   **Moving to Japan as a junior software engineer**

   I am a software engineer with 1 year experience, recently I got a job offer in Tokyo as a software engineer, I was offered 3 million basic salary + 0.5 million bonus per year, but the bonus is not written in contract and is based on performance, I will proceed with the assumption that I will only get the 3 million base pay.

   My question is: is 3 million an adequate salary for the position and is the amount sufficient for living in Tokyo?

   My own research: assuming the tax calculation in this [page](https://jp.talent.com/tax-calculator) is accurate, I will have about 2.4 million after tax, that’s 200k per month.

   The following are the expense numbers provided by the recruitment company:

   1. Network Fee: 7,900
   2. Utility & Water Fee: 10,000~20,000, let’s say it’s 15k
   3. Transportation: 4,000
   4. Meal: 45,000
   5. Health Care: 7,000
   6. Socialization: 13,000
   7. Others(Clothes, entertainment etc.): 20,000-30,000, let’s say it’s 25k
   8. Rent per month in Tokyo outskirts is 60k

   This totals up to 176.9k per month, so I will have about 23k left, but I am not sure how accurate the expense numbers are.

   Also, glassdoor states that the median total pay of software engineer in Tokyo with 0~1 year experience is 6 million, again, I am not sure how accurate that is, but is it possible that I am getting low-balled on this offer?

   Last but not least, my current salary in Malaysia when converted to JPY is roughly 2 million (although it might be worth noting that the conversion rate of JPY to MYR is at historical low, if it was 2 years ago after conversion it’s probably like 1.5 million?), but Malaysia has significantly lower tax and living expenses, and I don’t have to pay rent, so I can save about 70k per month, considering this, is it really worth it financially for me to move to Japan?

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2. It’s possible to live on that salary, but it’s a new grad salary and rather on the lower end. It breaks down to 250k/month base salary (before taxes) + plus 1*monthly salary as bonus in summer and in winter. In good companies your bonus multiplier will increase over they years and become a more substantial part of your salary.

   Bonus system is very common here, it’s not really for exceptional performance. Rather for not screwing up and the company must be doing really badly for you not to get at least one of the bonuses per year. Also note that often you also won’t get a bonus in your first 6 months at a company.

   For your first few years you should also consider living in a nice sharehouse, will save you money/will be more central/will help you socialize.

   Edit: From here answers to questions you didn’t ask, but I think are important for newcomers to avoid black companies:

   You should check if your contract contains any minashi zangyou, which means something like included overtime. Having a lot of minashi zangyou means your real base salary is lower. Preferably you should have none, 10-20 is somewhat acceptable, but anything beyond that means you should stay away from that place.

   Also check how many days off you have. This includes weekends and public holidays, but usually not your legal holidays, which are 10 days after 6 months at the company. Holidays will scale up every year until 20. Base is 120 days, but scummy companies will include your legal allowance and call it 110 + 10 = 120 (while it should be 120 + 10). I would probably not accept anything less than 115 days off, but you should really go for 120.

3. A job is a job, and if it works out better than your current one in even one area then it’s only a step in the right direction.

   However, while I get that you only have 1 year experience and markets are tough for entry level, that’s awfully low for Tokyo as an engineer. You’ll be making similar to ALTs. I personally think around 5/6 is acceptable. You also have to consider how much you will learn and develop yourself at such a company, and the environment.

4. That sounds about right. You won’t be eating out or going to drinking parties all the time but you should be able to manage.

5. Sounds like an opportunistic move by them to low ball someone from a developing country.

6. I’m also about to start as an entry-level software dev in Japan with a similar salary. The market for devs in Japan is somewhat split in two- on one side you have small, traditional Japanese companies who pay their devs a fairly standard office worker salary (2.5-4 million yen), and on the other you have larger, more international companies with more international salaries. The catch is that most of the international companies won’t take you until you have about 3 years experience, while the Japanese companies are more willing to take inexperienced people.

   Anyway it’s livable and the expenses given sound roughly accurate. Given that you clearly speak English, after a year or two in Japan it should be possible to job hop to somewhere that pays 6-8 million. That’s also my plan.