Why is the general consensus to “gain YOE in your home country” before moving to Japan?

5 comments

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

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   **Why is the general consensus to “gain YOE in your home country” before moving to Japan?**

   From what I’ve read throughout the years on this subreddit it seems everyone likes giving advice along the lines of “first gaining experience in your home country” before moving abroad to Japan, if you’re working in tech. In my experience (I’m a fresh newgrad from an American university), I’ve already landed multiple offers in IT positions from companies in Japan with more than lucrative enough salaries to be satisfied with moving to Japan. I’ve searched for new-grad positions in both America and Japan, and honestly I had more success with companies in Japan as a new grad.

   Is the whole “you must first work a few years in your home country” consensus blown out of proportion? I really think getting a decent paying new-grad job in the tech industry in Japan is not as impossible as some make it out to be on this subreddit, so I’m just genuinely curious as to why everyone preaches the same thing.

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2. There are generally a couple reasons for this, outside of FAANG / Tier 1 tech in Japan, entry level salaries tend to be significantly lower. The average salary of entry level in Japan being in the 3.5 – 4M per year which is roughly $28000 USD, which is honestly well below anything youde get in the US.

   A second point is that, again outside of the tier 1 companies, Japan tends to lag behind in its tech, so youll not be gaining as relevant of experience if you ever moved back to the west.

   And there is the fact that career progression / salary increase tends to be very slow in Japan, so getting raises etc and promotions tends to take longer, the few years experience in the west tends to lead to being able to come in at a higher level, commanding a better salary.

   If you are landing a tier 1 company job offer that pays very well, then the advice is less relevant, it still may apply to the career progression part, but less so to the commanding a better salary part.

3. So u/GibbonDoesStuff covered a lot of the finer details regarding the tech industry.

   In a more general context the answer is, well… Generalization.

   Yes, it’s *possible* to get an entry-level job in Japan fresh out of university. Just like it’s possible to get the “10 YoE” visa path with less than 10 years, or many of the other things that prompt “well *ackchyually*” responses. But doing those things requires going “out of the box”, and that’s something that doesn’t always succeed in Japan.

   More importantly: We don’t say “Get some experience at home” just for tech. We say it for *everyone*. The traditional Japanese hiring structure isn’t really set up to handle fresh graduates outside of the shinsotsu system. There’s an odd nebulous grey area between 0 and 3 YoE where you’re no longer a fresh graduate but not considered experienced enough to be a mid-career hire. If you’re in that grey area it’s frequently difficult to get companies to consider you at all. So we recommend getting the YoE necessary to get into that mid-career hire bracket.

4. How did you get CS positions in Japan when you didn’t have a Japanese visa or didn’t know Japanese (I’m assuming)? Were your interviews in English?

5. You managed to receive IT job offers in Japan without experience? What? How? What certifications do you have? What does the pay look like? Do you know Japanese fluently?