Me and My Thoughts about IT Career in Japan

Today is my first day on Note.com. 

Well, that does not mean that I did not know about Note. I have been visiting Note for quite some time, but the thought of writing something here never crossed my mind. The reason was simple the posts on Note are all in Japanese, and though I understand Japanese but cannot read and write Japanese. My bad ☹!!! However, today I decided to write in English because that also helps with diversity here. 

Who Am I - A short Intro

So well, my name is Himanshu. I came to Japan a long back for an IT project. I loved it here, but because of some professional reasons, I moved to Germany. It was a sleepy small town called Waldorf. The town of the Headquarters of SAP and just 15 minutes drive from Heidelberg. 

The life there was in sharp contrast to the life in Tokyo. Shops got closed very early during the evenings, and very few people on the road, and though I was enjoying my life there with lots of driving every week between Germany and Switzerland but Japan seems to be calling me. And then, I decided to move back to Japan. I continued with my journey in the information technology domain, facing all the challenges an IT guy faces in Japan while working with a foreign company - most related to the language and challenges of hiring bilingual tech talent in Japan.

The Birth of ReachExt

All the above experiences and challenges made me think that with my IT background and deep understanding of Japanese culture, and industry expectations, I can make some difference by changing my career to recruitment. And I jumped the ship. Well, it was more like changing my career to a domain in which I did not have any experience. This was a pure adventure to co-found ReachExt K.K. with one of my Japanese colleagues Naoko Takahashi.

Naoko was not sure whether the venture will prove to be successful or not. Me neither - but I was confident, and she became confident because of my confidence. This all started in 2019, just before COVID hit the world. Wrong timing to start a business, and that too something about which we didn't have a clue 😊. But, the way we succeeded was by not even realizing and accepting that it was the wrong timing to start something about which we did not have any clue. It was just the passion and confidence, and ability to smile for very small successes which suddenly expanded the business more than we ever had thought.

Competing with Ourselves

While we were growing with great velocity, we decided that it was time to compete with ourselves. In life, we all compete with others, but I believe that the ultimate successes only come when we dare to compete with ourselves. And here, the idea of EJ (EJable.com) originated. EJ is a job board for IT professionals in Japan and Japanese-speaking bilinguals in other countries. 

The huge demand-supply gap of IT professionals in Japan is one of the biggest challenges faced by the Japanese industry for hiring in Japan. On the other hand, the cost of finding such candidates is quite high for the recruitment companies - and that results in very high recruitment fees. We wanted to reduce the cost of finding the right candidate for the right job. We wanted to be a platform where both the companies and candidates could communicate with each other while reducing the cost of finding the right candidate. The idea of EJ was to provide such a platform. The other realization which struck us was that there is a huge demand for Japanese-speaking bilingual professionals outside Japan. All Japanese multinational companies need some bilingual talent who can be Kakehashi (bridge) between Japanese Headquarters or Japanese subsidiaries in other countries. Similarly, companies doing business with Japan or Japanese companies also need such candidates. And a platform like EJ could become a helpful tool for such companies and candidates to find each other.

Coming Back to Japan and the Future of the Japanese IT Industry

The Japanese manufacturing industry has always been leaving its mark on the global stage. However, even while Japan has no dearth of innovativeness, the country has been lagging in the information technology domain, especially in the international market. Be it Information Technology services or software products. One of the main reasons is the internationalization of software services and products, considering the global mindset and also language. And in fact, both of these go hand-in-hand. What the Japanese IT industry needs is more diversity which can help it make a footprint in the global market. 

The Japanese language is, of course, vital to work in Japan, but at times it is just the easy way out to reduce the pain of dealing with people without Japanese skills and an English-speaking work environment. However, there are no gains without pain. Japanese industry needs to dare take that pain to improve diversity in the workforce to have a more global mindset and also understanding of the expectations of users in other countries to take advantage of Japanese innovativeness to go global. And it's not just about being more competitive globally but about facing the future. The aging and declining population of Japan is a serious threat to the Japanese industry, and this problem would need years of preparation and action to face the day when it arrives. Japan has to look to hire more foreign talent, even at the cost of having some initial cultural and linguistic pains. Prevention is always better than cure - and the pills for the cure may prove to be much more bitter. Japanese work practices and work culture is changing for a better balance in modern tech companies; however, traditional Japanese mega-corporation should also focus on more diversity.

While we talk about the Japanese industry's need to improve diversity, let's not forget that the diversity of experiences is equally important for information technology professionals. Working in Japan adds a new dimension to the personal and professional profiles of IT professionals, and they should try adding those dimensions to their resume, even if it causes a bit of pain to do so initially.