Tips and tricks for succeeding as a developer emigrating to Japan (Ep. 510)
If you’re a developer, your skills are transferable across borders. If you’ve ever thought about relocating to Japan from outside of the country, you’ll find that there are some awesome job opportunities there. Finding a great opportunity, however, can be a needle in a haystack. It’s this pain point that led Eric Turner to create Japan Dev, a job board that curates handpicked tech jobs in Japan.
Eric, himself, is American—a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh. When he relocated to Japan, he needed to find a job, apartment, and all of the other things that come with moving to a new country. In today’s podcast, he talks to Matt about the experiences that led him to co-founding Japan Dev.
Episode notes:
Eric explains that great jobs are available for developers in Japan, but it can be tough to find these opportunities.
We talk about interesting startups that are gaining traction in the Japanese tech sector (like Visual Alpha, Treasure Data, and Exawizards, to name a few examples of companies on the Japan Dev platform).
Matt is impressed to learn Japan Dev generates an estimated $60,000/month in revenue, on average.
Eric reflects on starting Japan Dev as a side project while he was employed full-time as an engineer.
Eric elaborates on why he doesn’t think venture capital is a good fit for Japan Dev.
Night owls unite! Eric says that his most productive hours are between midnight to 4AM.
Tags: Exawizards, Japan Dev, the stack overflow podcast, Treasure Data, Visual Alpha
2 Comments
Free speech about finding work in Japan by middle-aged Japanese.
Most of Japanese companies need software and tech guys like in the stack overflow. However, the bosses are xenophobic and/or alphabet haters. Most of the time, they don’t listen to what young elites say. They are either arrogant or/and overbearing; think of the things they don’t understand are not useful.
The best way to make them understood is to make a demo and show what it does.
– not to show the perfect demo, they shrink.
– put wrong Japanese translations intentionally; make them think of doing something about it.
But I don’t really recommend working in the Japanese company, it differs completely from western companies. Damage to your mental health. And I thank you for your service. If they are more and more, the Japanese companies are going to be better in many ways.
Yes, please work in Japan! Everything here is archaic. Japanese, by nature, do not take risks because failure is a huge thing in Japanese culture. Any Japanese will not take the risk of trying new methodologies and new development practices because they fear failure. So expect that you will work in an environment where the development stack is NOT modern. There will most likely be NO automated testing and non-standard software design processes and, on top of that, nobody here understands English. God! The Japanese care more about your grammar and punctuation than the architecture or modularity of the software that you are developing! Save yourself and stay out of Japan.