So I just wanted to share some of my thoughts on the market right now as we close in on 2025 and also gather thoughts from software folks here. (I'm Junior to Mid level I would say)
The market outside of the Japanese bubble has gotten pretty competitive with all the AI integrations and job cuts from what I'm hearing from friends back at home. I do feel that it has definitely affected the rate of hiring here too in some ways. YoY, although the Tokyo Dev Survey shows a pretty optimistic trend in Salaries, etc. My personal experience has been pretty off-putting.(obviously your mileage may vary based on your YOE)
During the months of July/August, I atleast heard back quite a lot from companies whenever I applied(all of them Japanese mostly) and 1 FAANG, I wasn't confident about my Japanese and stupidly ghosted on quite a few of these. The FAANG ghosted me after I solved their OA completely which was a bummer. And eventually I got to final rounds of two startups. Despite hearing my current pay, which isn't high by any means, these startups quoted pretty meager raises over my current pay and I let them know it wouldn't work and atleast one of them was understanding. I took a pause after this exp.
And since the end of Oct I've again started applying, and it seems I barely get a response now, also something I noticed throughout all of this, is that a lot of companies seek N1 – not sure if they explicitly ask for it but the Job desc mentions it. I thought Japan would become more english friendly YoY, I'm not sure if there's data on it but I'm skeptical of my prior presumption now.
As for the big names, Woven, Mercari, etc (FAANG seems to barely hire to be acknowledged), it seems they won't even take a look at me, perhaps because I have not yet crossed the 3YOE bar(soon I will get to test that too).
I mostly used career sites (HRMOS/Herp/Talentio) of respective companies to apply, and very few from LinkedIN. Anyways, I've decided to quit it and work hard on my Japanese whilst I prep to again get back to looking for a new job mid next year…
How has the market been to ya'll? Especially Junior to Mid level folks…
by OkImprovement7142