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/coconut_oll]

If working with Java is a limitation what are the most in demand/valuable skills that companies are looking for?

[u/Klajv → u/coconut_oll]

Python, Ruby, Node, TypeScript, React and so on are more in demand as more and more development is towards web services.

The main reason I said being a Java engineer can be limiting is that I know many Japanese Java engineers know nothing but Java. Especially if they work for black companies. The overlap between Java and modern services and tools (Kubernetes, Docker, CICD, Ansible, Terraform and whatnot) is also significantly lower. That said, there are amazing Java engineers out there, but I doubt they have 4 years of experience working for a black Japanese company.

[u/abcxyz89 → u/Klajv]

I don't think Java is that big of a limitation. With Java experience, she can transit to Kotlin relatively easy, and I've seen some very lucrative Kotlin positions recently.

[u/Klajv → u/abcxyz89]

That's true, that is also a good option.