Hi, in the long term I’m looking to move to Japan but I’m unsure on the best way to proceed. This is a medium term plan, think 3-5 years in the future.
A bit about me:
* 21, currently a student. Secured a role working in IT at an American investment bank in London. Will be graduating with a BSc in Computer Science from a top 10 British university this year.
* Plan to take N3 by the end of 2024.
* Have decent savings to make it happen.
* Did a study year abroad in another East Asian country and I’m desperate to get back to East Asia, but this time I’d like to go to Tokyo.
* Only citizenship is British.
Possible routes in order of preference:
1. Internal transfer in my company, comes with known quantities.
2. Secure an offer from a company that will sponsor my visa. I don’t know how hard this is to do from abroad.
3. Get a working holiday visa and move to Japan, live on savings whilst looking for a job. Huge amount of risk, will use up some of my savings and I’d rather not put my career completely on hold without a decent chance of success.
4. I don’t really want to go for JET as although I’d get a visa its basically career suicide.
What I would like to know:
* Does anyone have experience working in the big international banks in Japan in IT (JP, Morgan Stanley, Goldman etc), or big Japanese firms like Nomura? If so, how is the salary and visa process? Do these firms even have IT operations in Japan? I can see a few do but I’m not really sure on what scale.
* How’s the work life balance in these firms? Obviously both Japan and finance have horrible reps for work life balance. I’d love to move to Japan, but I don’t want to move across the world just to work myself to death and not see any of it. I’m aware I’ll probably be taking a significant cut from my current 33 paid days off, but what can I realistically expect in terms of paid days off and working hours? I currently work 9:00-5:30, sometimes 6, I really don’t want to push much further than this.
If theres anything unrealistic in my plan please let me know because I’m not too sure if this is even a good plan or not. Just pretty desperate to get out of the UK lol. Thanks in advance for any help 🙂
ETA: Forgot to ask, hows the job search in this field? Are there a decent out of openings or are people fighting for scraps? Afaik sites like Indeed are pretty good for Japan so obviously I’ll look there, I also know of JapanDev and TokyoDev but I feel like bigger international companies are less likely to be on there.