Results of applying and interviewing (March-August 2023) for software engineering roles based in Japan: [https://imgur.com/a/fimkyB9](https://imgur.com/a/fimkyB9)
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Loads of extra details below.
Explanation of terms used:
* Domestic – companies which work completely in Japanese
* International – companies which work completely in English, even if their market is only in Japan (e.g. paypay, mercari)
* Hybrid – somewhere in between, such as moneyforward or exawizards
Those competing for global talent tend to (in theory) have higher bar for hiring. However ultimately the only offer I ended up with was for an international company. Personally the interviews were indeed easier at the domestic companies, aside from having to interview in Japanese. They did not ask a bunch of behavioral questions or tricky technical questions, but rather talked candidly about past experience. Some of them even waived a technical assignment.
My profile: generalist engineer in a reputable global company with mostly backend expertise, but also have done some infra, ML, and frontend. JLPT N1 and with PR. Previous title was team lead.
Here was my job search criteria:
* (Mostly) remote
* Minimum 10M annual salary (including bonus)
* Not related to banking, consulting, ecommerce, fashion, retail, or gaming
* Titles like backend/infra/cloud eng, SRE, tech lead, architect
* No leetcode/hackerrank type questions. I withdrew my application for this reason a few times
Also, not included in the visualization are roles for a wider region than Japan. I applied to a few remote roles for the APAC region (e.g. gitlab), and few more that are remote global. So the actual rejection percentage is higher, but I excluded them as they are not exclusively relevant to this subreddit.
Some observations:
* Job search takes way longer than expected, even if you’re currently employed at somewhere reputable
* I spent quite a lot of time reading and understanding the book Designing Data Intensive Applications as prep, but none of the interviews went that much in depth (I didn’t apply to FAANG level companies), but it did give me confidence when it came to the technical interviews
* Domestic companies cared more about AWS expertise
* Companies may reject you for being compensated way more than their pay range. My previous TC was 20M+, doubling their role budget, and 3 companies explicitly refused to move forward, even though I said their pay range is acceptable
Edit since people are asking:
The one offer in the end was tech lead, 11M ish + 10% bonus and some RSUs.
People commenting assume I accepted the offer despite not having mentioned it, so just to clarify: I did not accept the offer. Ended up going another route and found a contractor role based in the US (my country of citizenship) while remaining in Japan. The arrangement is more of a “hack” and is not exactly Japan-specific, so I’m mainly excluding it from this post. I may make a separate post on contracting for the US once I get the hang of it.
24 comments
Thanks for the information. I also found that around 30 – 40 applications would end up getting me a job.
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* No leetcode/hackerrank type questions. I withdrew my application for this reason a few times
Is this throughout the whole interview rounds including the one that made an offer?
What kind of technical questions were asked though?
TIA
Thanks so much for high quality Info
and Congrats!
I am also thinking of some certifications related to AWS
> No leetcode/hackerrank type questions. I withdrew my application for this reason a few times
I always take those. It’s basically a freebie 🙂
On the other hand I always reject take home assignments though.
> I spent quite a lot of time reading and understanding the book Designing Data Intensive Applications as prep, but none of the interviews went that much in depth (I didn’t apply to FAANG level companies), but it did give me confidence when it came to the technical interviews
I had the same experience that for most companies that book is way more in depth than anything they’ll ever ask. I found it kind of strange though, since a lot of what the book covers is directly relevant to my day to day work, and I would hope it would be relevant to whatever job I’m applying to.
Great data, thanks! What were some of the shittiest and some of the best interviews you had?
And AWS is easily some of the best things to pick up. Already got their Associate Dev, thinking of the other 2 associate ones next year after I do my tensor flow one.
Also, for the ones requiring Japanese, how comfortable where you with the jargon? Was it all just katakana?
out of curiosity why did you not include so many sectors?
Congratulations on the offer!
Interesting but also terrifying as someone learning to code.
What international companies did you apply for and how would you rate their interview processes? In my experience the Japanese tech companies that use mostly English (PayPay, Smart News, Mercari, etc) have awful interview processes.
Where did you search for jobs? I know of Japandev, Tokyodev, Wantedly.
So, what was your offer in the end? What sort of role, roughly speaking, and what salary level?
You excluded a LOT of industries (banking, consulting, ecommerce, fashion, retail, or gaming), what were your reasons for that?
I don’t really understand the visualisation, does it mean that none of your application to domestic companies passed the CV screening step?
Do you mind sharing the final offer’s TC?
> * Not related to banking, consulting, ecommerce, fashion, retail, or gaming
So, um basically probably 70-80% of the hiring job market.
Edit: Not to mention many of THOSE are the higher paying, though you are a team lead, so 10M is like kinda meh pay.
No wonder job hunting is so depressing. The graphic looks exactly like online dating.
I’ve done a similar process as OP (applying for tech/software engineering jobs in around the same time period this year), however I did not exclude any particular industries right off the bat and had no issue with DSA interviews , but I did have a higher compensation bar (20m/year).
My experience is that once you get to more senior roles, international companies offer a simpler (or at least a much more straightforward) interview process. Domestic Japanese businesses were extremely finicky and difficult to deal with, adding multiple ad hoc interviews (including meeting the CTO and the CEO at the last minute), withdrawing offers due to “culture fit” (which I assume to mean that they’ve found someone cheaper) or closing roles entirely late into the interview process.
Overall, after about 6 months of searching I got 3 offers out of ~60 applications and ended up accepting one of those for a senior manager role with a US-based company.
> Not related to banking
I’m curious as to why. Is it just because you find the industry distasteful? If so, more power to you, and a completely respectable position to take.
But if it’s because “it sounds like it’d be stressful”, I used to think the same way too, but then my friend got a job working for a bank and it’s the least stressed he’s ever been about work. Everything is so buttoned-down, planned out in advance, and risk-averse that there’s always plenty of time to get stuff done. Punch in at 9, punch out at 5:30.
Of course I know it’s not the same everywhere, but it really showed me that working for a bank can be a lot different than I’d assumed.
I was running a lot of interviews from April to September this year. Then I left my job, and hopefully that company has at least been looking for a new tech lead. Maybe I interviewed you!
To all the people flat-out rejecting leetcode, hackerrank, and take-home test style interviews: As a moderately senior level person in the field, I really advise that you open your heart to them a little more. I personally hate them, however I can also say that in my career I have been asked to do a rather large (4-6 hours of work) take-home project twice, and both of those companies ended up being the best professional experiences of my life (the first I left for salary purposes and regretted it, the second I am currently employed with).
If you have interviewed at a company and like it and think its a good fit, there is no shame in sucking it up and doing their filter work. Employers need to filter potentially hundreds of applicants for a single position. I can tell you that its hard to find somebody who is actually as technically capable as you need them to be.
Why the hell people would report this?
thats really on the low range for a US company in that role, hope you can find a better offer soon. good luck
I am curious, why did you leave your previous job especially if you were on that kind of compensation package? Your company let people go as part of the massive tech layoffs?
I’m also curious if you interviewed with Indeed. I guess not (no FAANG, no leetcode) but do you happen to know if they are still fully remote?
Did you end up getting a job?
Do you have experience in the gaming/social casino side of things?
thank you for the detailed explanation. Could you share the process of applying for international companies? Did you use something like LinkedIn or did you apply via the home page.
How’s your VISA status now that you work remote for the US while still in Japan ? I always thought you needed a company based there , who could sponsor the VISA , and that remote work was not enough . Thanks !
Would love to hear more about your current contracting route as I’m considering that in the near future! Specifically about: how taxes work for you and the company you’re working for, the range of rates to expect, what working hours are like. DM would be appreciated too. Thanks.