How bad is working in japan REALLY?

31 comments

1. As your comment suggests, it varies.

2. I’ve worked in the US, France, Japan, Hong Kong and the UK.

   Had great experiences in all those places. Had horrible experiences in all those places.

3. Pretty good if you are not in a black company. Not as good as some European countries in terms of vacation days, or not as good as American ones in terms of salary. But not bad at all.

4. It really does vary from person to person, company to company. Industry to industry.

   Personally I don’t see much difference working in Japan compared to working back home in the UK other than the language. Although, I’ve only worked office jobs.

5. I work from home and get my work week done by Wednesday and basically just respond to the odd email Thursday and Friday. No overtime.

6. Ultimately, I guess how good of a job experience you get depends on how well you can do your job and how well you feel you are contributing and being adequately rewarded.

   At my old job, when I had a decent job and assignment, I would work from 830 am to 7:30 pm (eating dinner at work) for a whole month and while I felt tired after the day, I did feel like I accomplished a lot. Plus I racked up a 50% increase in my monthly base salary in overtime.

   Unfortunately, that accomplished 40 hour overtime per month feeling wouldn’t last forever because eventually, our group got reorganized and I ended up with a boss that didn’t like me and micromanaged us and eventually work was more of a burden than a good work experience. I stopped doing overtime and started slacking and left the company after about half a year.

7. The wages? If you take the weak yen into consideration… aah, better don’t ask 😅😅

   Talking about the working environment heavily depends on the industry and the company. In case it’s a black company, people are less likely to speak up than in other countries.

8. Japan gets a bad rap from people that are secretly racist, dumb and entitled.

   ​

   Wait. Don’t down vote yet.

   ​

   Like any other nation, Japan has good and bad companies. The bad ones are far more likely to import labor because people already here know about their BS. Enter the internet using, English speaking foreigner. A person who is far more likely to complain online than a Japanese worker. The post earlier where OP was upset they weren’t coddled and handed a gaming laptop upon entering the company. Literally shocked that they got an average pc and were expected to produce work in a timely manner.

   Back to that first line. A large number of English speaking foreigners approach Japan like it’s a developing nation similar to Bangladesh or Cambodia. They expect to skate by on their skin color and nationality because they believe were they came from is superior. Ironic because most of them left their home nation because they couldn’t find work. You will see these people post over and over about how the guy at the 7 register is racist because he didn’t talk or how it’s unfair they are required to work a small amount of overtime during a busy part of the year. (average is four hours a week) Basically these people want to be charisma man and are upset nobody cares.

   Overtime? Americans work more. A lot more. Amazon (second largest employer) employees work an average of 55 hours a week. The 10 hour shift is now standard in most states.

   ​

   oh and…

   Japan is especially harsh on people with main character syndrome

9. >I hear mixed stories, some people claim they have plenty of free time, while some people say working in Japan is the worst there is

   This right here is the honest answer, but since you missed it I’ll interpret it for you. Everyone will have a unique experience irrespective of being in the same environment. What works for one might be an impossible ask for another.

   In terms of wages Japan is pretty much at the bottom end compared to other developed countries, but at the same time has a relatively cheaper cost of living

10. It’s horrible most of the time

11. All depends, friend. My work experiences in Japan have generally been quite a bit better than what I had in the US, but others in my same company even can see it differently.

    I hang around a bunch of lifers who tend to like or love their jobs, but it’s selection bias – the ones that didn’t probably fled some time ago.

12. It all depends on the culture and most importantly, your direct supervisor. I know gaishi’s that are still operating like a traditional Japanese company. I know Japanese companies that are whiter than gaishis.

    Some Japanese teams can be racist or have a superiority complex. For example, their general attitude when dealing with vendors from India.

13. Better than many places, worse than a few places. It also depends on the company that you work for. But in general, statistics speak louder than words:

    https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm

14. I mean, if you enjoy wasting time on pointless meetings for the sake of gathering up, taking minutes of meetings where nothing happened, doing endless reports, doing presentations, juggling excel files, browsing through hundreds of emails, filling in endless questionnaires, and have every of your step heavily micro managed, be expected to stay overtime for more of this on your boss’s caprice, all of that instead of your actual duties while being paid like a McDonald’s worker or a waiter and have your kids grow up without their father present at home – you’ll love it here.

15. I’ve generally had a positive experience

    The only real complaint I have is about how hard it is to actually get things done sometimes. Current workplace is having a lot of difficulty figuring out how to be a big company, with a lot of parallel projects with overlapping teams and everything is slow :/

16. Take home pay is 200,000 yen everywhere

17. I work a lot… Get out from home 7 am, get back at 19 pm, that’s weekdays and then on weekends I work from home as freelance.

18. I’ve worked around the world. I think there’s pros and cons working anywhere. There are also workplace bullies and very nice people anywhere.

    That said, it also depends on how you get your energy at work. For example, if you feel energized by insightful discussions/brainstorming/bouncing ideas, you won’t get that in Japan. I worked in a global company, my Japanese colleagues are from international background, bilingual. When it comes to workplace meeting, the culture is just different. So if you get your energy from those “stimulating discussion”, you will find your energy being sucked instead.

    One more thing, unfortunately I’ve known of more cases of harassment in Japan. But that’s based on cases I personally know through friends and colleagues, so take it with a pinch or salt. Heard less of such things when working in other countries.

19. You should try the experience yourself.

20. It’s impossible to say, because Japan is not a monolith. Different industries have different norms. Different employers have different norms. Different *departments* have different norms. Recently IT has become an industry where working standards have improved a lot, though definitely not universally across the board. Teaching is an industry infamous for awful working conditions, but even within education, there is nothing that can be said for certain.

    As much as people with an axe to grind or an agenda to push about how work in Japan is (and as a result, how Japan appears overall in comparison to other rich countries), we should resist the notion that everything in Japan is the same. If not because it’s just factually incorrect, if not because tedious trolls use disagreements about how Japan universally “is” as an excuse to attack everyone who holds an opinion they don’t like as morally inferior, we should resist the urge to generalize Japan because giving any credence to the idea that there is a Japan-norm and a rest-of-the-world-norm gives people permission to dismiss any push we make to improve a bad situation in Japan as just a misunderstanding of Japanese culture. “Oh, you think hours of unpaid overtime every night is an overall drain on employee wellbeing and as a result our productivity? Look at you with your silly non-Japanese ideas!” “Oh, you think it’s unfair that the boss bullied your team member to the point they suffered a mental breakdown? You must be mistaken, that doesn’t happen in Japan anymore. They had a mental breakdown on their own, because they were weak.”

    The moment you acknowledge a Japanese norm, you give permission for abusers and exploiters to abuse you and exploit you under the fallacious argument that you just don’t get “real Japanese working life”. The best argument those of us in toxic working conditions have to get things improved is to demonstrate that not all Japanese companies have to be toxic (we can demonstrate by pushing our orgs to emulate the non-toxic employers or we can leave our toxic employers for the non-toxic ones). And the best argument people in non-toxic companies have for keeping their companies on the straight and narrow and not chucking all their worker benefits out the window the moment a greedy CEO comes along and wants to “improve efficiency” is to acknowledge what that looks like in toxic Japanese companies.

21. Humble brag thread? Got it. I’m so detached from normal people, what with my business and all. What is wageslave? Why wage? How wage?

22. The problem is this, a lot of companies are different.

    You can find a Japanese company that is amazing to work for, and you can find international companies that are terrible to work for.

    At least from what I have gathered, it feels like the lines of communication international companies is a lot clearer and feels more progressive.

    When I was working at a Japanese company before, they did a lot of outdated workflows, had a lot of downtime, and the CEO didn’t listen to a word anyone said and was surprised when no one spoke up at meetings.

    So it can really depend, but there are a number of companies that are taking advantage of their employees.

23. Some people have a bad experience in Japan and interpret it as Japan as a country or collection of people being somehow bad. I wouldn’t be too influenced by anything you read on here, and especially posts like that.

24. It depends.

    /thread

25. I work for a very standard mid-size Japanese company.

    CONS
    . Feels like kids playing business. Pretending to be busy for no reason.
    . Pointless meetings literally every day.
    . Focus on the process as opposed to the result. Like a weird fetish for all the meetings and stuff in between and little care for the actual result
    . People stay late in the office for absolute no good reason. They just smoke and open/close emails.
    . Overall just really, really weird and unproductive.

    PROS
    . As well as an okay salary, two decent bonuses a year is nice and benefits are great. Health insurance, pension, unemployment insurance
    . Very hard to be fired. Unless you do something majorly wrong then it’s hard for companies to get rid of you. Job security is good.
    . My company is full of nice people, but I’m sure like anywhere this just depends on luck
    . You get to live in Japan

26. It just depends on the type of work you do and who you work for. I spent my first couple of years in Japan working for an eikaiwa chain and I hated it. I enjoyed teaching English to the students but the company itself was no joy to work for.

    I was later invited to become a partner in an international trading company through some contacts I had made and that allowed me to escape the eikaiwa. As a partner, I have a lot power within the company, so I have a lot more control over my work, the staff, and my schedule.

27. It depends.

28. I think all of the comments and stories you’ve read/heard *are* an honest reflection of working in Japan, because there are a million different ways for a million different people to experience something.

    Heck, you could narrow down an experience as specifically as possible, and each person would still probably have very different answers. Ask me “Sayjay, what was it like going to rural high school in -insert small hometown name here-” and I imagine me and the other 100 classmates I had would give you vastly different answers

29. Depends where you have worked and in what other countries.

    If you have worked in the Big 4, finance, or at a mid to senior level in big corporates in the English speaking world then you are probably good to go.

    If you have worked for governments, hospitals, universities anywhere, or any type of job in continental europe then it is a step toward the feral.

30. i can say it even depends on which dept you are from… if you are in the back office it’s pretty much chill, but if you are in client services or front offices where you generate revenues there’s a big gap

31. I’d say Reddit has a bigger representation of people not working in a normal local job where they need to chase 営業.

    All my younger friends who have to do this, hate it. Main way to move up in a competitive society where uni grads are everywhere