Mercari in Tokyo
Hello! Longtime lurker, first time poster. I have a programming test to do for Mercari (the Tokyo office, entry level), and I was wondering if anyone here had ever worked for them and could tell me a little about the company. I just graduated and I guess I'm a little nervous, any advice is appreciated too!
Hey, I work at mercari right now. What would you like to know?
Awesome!! First, I was wondering if you liked it. Everything I've read online sounds really great, but I feel like the opinion of a current employee is way more important that anonymous online reviews. Second, are you from outside the country? Since I'm applying from overseas, I was wondering if there would be any extra hurdles I should be prepared for. To be honest, the idea of working with Mercari really excites me and I want to know what I can do to best prepare.
Glad you're excited to join! I currently love it here, its a great place to be, definitely different from other Japanese companies. Despite giving up a higher salary in the US (it's going to happen no matter what, even if you're at Google Japan, Amazon JP, etc.), I don't regret anything.
I am indeed from overseas (US). There aren't any mercari specific hurdles to look out for. Everything is related to moving to another country/moving to Japan specifically. Most of which can be addressed by visiting /r/movingtojapan and /r/japanlife. If you have any questions about that, feel free to message me. We do have a whole global operations team which exists specifically to ease the move to Japan. They provide translation and interpretation and can really help you with anything. Some coworkers have used them to deal with phone calls about housing and stuff, so it doesnt exactly have to be work related to request something from them. Most teams are writing documentation in English and working in English anyways, so working isnt going to be a problem. Although, since you'll be in Japan if you work here, it might be good to learn Japanese. We also provide Japanese classes (in house), if you're interested in that.
I'm not OP but I'm wondering what the salaries are for software folks there
There's a lot of factors that determine that. I can only speak for new grad salaries (from myself and new grad coworkers). Even then, it will vary depending on where you're from. We tend to not negotiate (I tried), but the new grad salaries range from 5.5 million yen (applicants from within Japan) to 8.5 million yen (AI/ML, masters degree, from India).
To put it in context, average new grad salaries in Japan are around 2-3 million yen. New grad salaries for tech jobs are around 3-6 million yen.
I'd recommend checking out this site if you want to learn more about salary ranges at foreign-friendly tech companies in Japan.
Unfortunately, as nice as that site is to look at, it's definitely not that good of a resource. If you read how they get the salary ranges, they assume mid-career of ~5 years from public sources. Definitely not applicable to everyone.
A better resource would be this. As well as some of the other resources listed on there. For example, the Japanese equivalent of Glassdoor is Vorkers or JobTalk. You can also check out Hyouban. Unfortunately all of the resources I just listed are in Japanese, so you'll have to try and navigate it with google translate if you don't know Japanese.
EDIT: I just want to say if you're checking salaries with these sites using google translate, a lot of entries will be for non-engineer jobs. If you can't read the Japanese, it might be hard to differentiate which is which.
Wow, I might need to look into them too, as I’m currently working as a junior dev in Japan and want to think about the next step. Thanks for providing this info.
I have “business level Japanese” (JLPT N1). In your opinion, would that provide a pretty good advantage (especially since I’m still building up my programming skills), you think, or is that more of a “meh, but nice to have” sort of thing? No problem if you don’t know—just thought I’d ask.
From what I've gathered from my coworkers, applying from within Japan is going to be harder than applying from overseas. The business level Japanese would be a big plus from overseas, but applying from within the country kind of mitigates the advantage.
Interesting. I wouldn’t have expected that. Thanks for the update, though.
Yea, unfortunately it's a weird case. Most of the time companies in Japan will take N1 or N2 on your resume as the base minimum to apply. But since we have Japanese assistance and are moving to completely work in English, we care less about Japanese ability, and more about English ability. If you want to apply, I would stress your English ability.
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