Sitting here at 1 AM looking at job listings, and wanted some advice from those of you who have been in the IT sector but had to switch jobs to a different field.
I moved from Europe to Japan after my wife (a national) got relocated back here, and I have been living here on a spouse visa for 2 years now. Life was good up until February because I got to keep my developer job and earned around 12 mil a year, but budget cuts happened and now here I am.
I have done various meetups, contacted recruiting agencies etc. but I can see that the tech market here is just not that great anymore. It does not help that my Japanese studies has only reached N4, but with a full-time job for an English-speaking company and a 1-year old to take care of, I didn't have much time to study. I actually had to argue with my wife about it, because she thinks learning Japanese is a waste of time when we are going back to Europe to retire in the future, but it's hindering me a lot, so I push on with the limited time I have.
Anyway I need some form of income. I started a counselling service because I used to be a psychotherapist before getting into IT, but I am not seeing much traffic as there are already so many foreigner-focused psychologists here who can offer wider treatment plans due to their license. Also, I am not quite sure where to market myself. I tried in a private expat group and got some really nasty private messages from local (mainly American) psychologists here who apparently did not like me getting on their turf, which really surprised me, but I am getting off track here…
So I did what many others before me have done and started searching for English teaching jobs. I finally managed to get one through Hello Work. It only pays 90.000 a month, but it's still money and I don't wanna be a freeloader.
What worries me is how this will affect my future job hunting here. At some point when I have reached N2 or N1 in two or three years I wanna start reaching out to IT companies again, but I will be having a big gap on my resume that says English teaching. I am worried that this will completely lock me out of that market. So I was wondering if anyone here has gone down this temporary route and what your experiences were.
by DannyKata85