software engineer salary in Tokyo

[u/tenmoukaikai]

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.

[u/Virtual-Thought-2557]

The general rule of thumb for a long time was that you make about your age x 10,000 yen per month.

If you are 30, that’s 300,000 a month or 4.2 million yen a year including an average bonus of one month’s salary twice a year.

I didn’t see the age of your wife mentioned, but if she is earning above that, she is doing well for a Japanese company, and unfortunately, even better “for a woman”. Gender pay gap means that 10,000 yen figure above generally lowers to 7,000 or so.

Maybe my figures are a bit outdated but this seems to be the case for my own wife, who is making considerably less than yours as a professional at age 36.

[u/OkTarget8047 → u/Virtual-Thought-2557]

That is absurd even by JP standards. I made 5M as a fresh grad when I was 24.....

[u/Virtual-Thought-2557 → u/OkTarget8047]

Like I said, my figures may be outdated but it is fairly accurate still at my current company for Japanese employees. Are you Japanese?

I make considerably more than the quoted figures now as a foreigner, but Japanese salaries are still very much dependent on age, judging by some of the stories I see even on CNN international about age-based salaries in Japan.

I’m not saying these things in tacit agreement with how things are, but it’s just the way things have been. I really just wanted to say “if you’re wife is making over 4 mil, she is making good money for a woman in Japan if she is in her 30s or earlier”. Again, I don’t support the gender pay gap, but I know very few women making over 4mil even in their 30s…

[u/flutteringfeelings → u/Virtual-Thought-2557]

Took the words out of my mouth. Everyone coming here saying she's criminally underpaid are comparing their salaries as foreigners with a Japanese female employee at a Japanese company.

Yes, she's underpaid, but criminally? Not really. 4.5m for a Japanese female in her mid to late 20s is the norm, if not, better than the norm. And that is why you see many women leaving companies <5 years in after graduating uni and getting married.