Why are Japanese programmers so poor (5 photos)

It is generally accepted that being a programmer means not needing anything. And in India, many people want to "enter IT". But Japan is a completely different story, where programmers live almost from hand to mouth. Why?





I wrote that Japanese student programmers have cafes with little girls who study with them and are happy about it.

How much does a programmer earn in Japan

Young programmers in simple positions work for 100,000 yen a month. The average salary in Japan is 330,000 yen, by the way. That's why they often live in dormitories or rent shared apartments, and eat very poorly. And this situation is not only with programmers. Salaries among technical personnel in Japan are also among the lowest in comparison with other countries.



It turned out to be more difficult for Japanese programmers to break into the global market, and not everyone wants to

For example, Japanese systems engineers right out of college, namely from 200,000 to 300,000 yen per month. This salary is significantly lower than salaries in the same USA. And not only if you compare with the USA, compare with other Asian countries. In China, for example, Huawei offered 400,000 yen a month to fresh college graduates — twice as much as Japanese companies were offering at the time.

Why are programmers so sad in Japan





A strict corporate culture forces programmers to dance to its tune too

Firstly, this is a common problem for the entire country. In Japan, wages are indexed very poorly, especially in large companies. So it turns out that sometimes hourly work in a cafe is more profitable than a permanent job in an office. But only without career growth, of course, but Japanese youth do not really believe in it now either. In many industries, Japanese salaries have not changed for 20 years. The second reason is the Japanese hiring system. They do not know how to hire IT specialists in Japan and do not consider it important to build up competencies in this. For example, in the US they often look for specific specialists - in big data or game design, this is a narrow specialization that you have to hunt for. But if you need to find a specialist, he will be productive in his place. In Japan, they hire for the general position of "programmer", and his salary will always depend not on the stack, but on the length of service in the company.



To program normally, you need to know at least a little English. But the Japanese can't bring themselves to speak it

And thirdly, not all programmers can find foreign freelance work. As is known, the Japanese have huge problems learning English. They don't know how to communicate in it, and their modest upbringing makes them ashamed of their pronunciation, even if they have studied at least something. Therefore, it is much more difficult for Japanese programmers to enter the competitive market, unlike the same Indians. It turns out that the Internet has made the world without borders, but the Japanese language and complex writing still left the Japanese inside their "isolation cage" on the islands.



Jokes about a typical programmer are not shared in Japan.