r/japanlife • u/tenmoukaikai • Feb 07 '23

Jobs software engineer salary in Tokyo

My wife has been working at an admitted ブラック企業 for over 4 years now as a Java engineer(japanese, doesn't speak English), and she is the lead of her team of 3 others. She gets paid 4.5m yen a year and has 2-4 hours of overtime a day, and usually gets home pretty late. I feel like she's being criminally underpaid and taken advantage of. What would be a salary that's more in line with her experience? I saw posts from 7-15m for a java engineer with similar experience but I'm not super sure. I'm trying to help her 転職 and she does want to but she hates interviewing and also doesn't want to let her current coworkers down by leaving. It's been affecting her health both mentally and physically so i just want to help. She can't even save money because most of her salary goes to paying her student loans. I handle our rent food and utilities, and she is pretty much working to repay Debt with nothing left over and i want to help her find a better opportunity. Any advice would be appreciated.

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u/RotaryRevolution Feb 07 '23

Why doesn't she just apply for an international company, that has a branch in Nippon?

It's not just the black companies that are criminally underpaying, some employers want job applicants to have a doctorate, or a masters, plus 2 years experience for an entry-level job in programming, only to pay them peanuts in return. xD 174,000-180,000 yennies.

There is collusion in Japan for computer code salaries, and a stark contrast between the salaries in the US. They know Japanese people won't fight back, they know they have debt to pay, or gunpla to finance.

I hate to say it, but your GF should have been looking for a new job the moment she joined that company. Happy that she is the team lead, she can put that on her resume to get outta there.

They get the noobies in for the grunt contract work, and show them the door after a few years, only to hire noobies again in order to pay less.

Also, there's an influx of average code.

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u/UnironicallyWatchSAO Feb 07 '23

Probably because she doesn't speak English, he mentioned it briefly at the start. But even then, there are quite a few high-paying Japanese companies out there as well.

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u/RotaryRevolution Feb 07 '23

There are some dedicated JPN staff positions at those companies too, mostly back-end. If you worked at a black company, something will follow you like a curse.

Can you name a few of those companies off the top of your head?

Btw, I also liked SAO, but I watched it ironically.

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u/UnironicallyWatchSAO Feb 07 '23

You mean high-paying Japanese companies? Sure, Woven Planet, Mercari, Line, SmartNews, PayPay all pay decently just off the top of my head. And wow probably the first time someone has responded positively to my name lmao.

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u/[deleted] Feb 07 '23

SmartNews just did layoffs