From Silicon Valley To Tokyo, As A Data Analyst in Mercari

What is the difference between working in Silicon Valley and Tokyo with your technical background? Many people are interested in working in different countries. Working across borders not only challenges your limits but also opens your mind. However, the working environment might be the new challenge when working across the boards.

Working Culture In Different Countries

In Silicon Valley, people could be very individual and competitive, they promote themselves as a brand instead of attaching to the company. Of course, the company names could shine on their background, however, building a personal connection is more important than which company they are working with. People love to share their career journey and are willing to provide their resources. On the other hand, Japanese working culture tends to be more focused on the collectivist. The decisions are usually made after the group discussion. You might have heard that the working culture is notorious in Japan. However, Mercari's working culture in Japan is different from what people think. Here is a comprehensive table of the differences between working in the same company but different regions from my point of view.

Work Environment Comparison between two regions

Working Culture In Different Mercari Team

Mercari (メルカリ me-ru-ka-ly) is a special working culture in Japan. It is the largest platform in Japan for matching buyers and sellers of goods and the related ecosystem services. It has Mercari US market with a different logo, but the same business models. To match the core value (Go Bold), Mercari is a fast-paced working culture. In Mercari Japan, we see the working culture is similar to the Western style. The exec’s decisions are mostly transparent so that we could review what has been covered in the discussion. Proactive in optimizing the products day by day. Both organization structures are flat, not hierarchical like other Japanese companies. However, we still could see slightly different cultures between Mercari Japan and Mercari US.

Time Management

We often hear about work-life balance in the US, however, the truth is the condition excluded from the Tech world. Working in Mercari US data team and Mercari Japan team are similar. The small difference is the time management. For example, Friday is usually the day for wrapping the weekly tasks and working on side projects. The US team tends to not schedule meetings on Friday except for some emergency cases. The wrapping up procedure gives the team additional time to review and reflect the connection between their current analysis and the big picture of the company goals. The crystal task management from bottom to top provides each individual to be proactive on their current tasks. 

Task Management

On task management, the overall task dashboard is a great optimization example to manage the time. The overall to-do lists, working, and the reviewed tasks on the dashboard is easy for other team members to cover or to follow up the request status and issues. The analysts are individually working on specific projects. However, the situation caused the gap in information if the team lacked a well structured management plan. Therefore, each big team usually will assign at least two analysts, so the pair understand the same domain knowledge and are able to troubleshoot or cover the issue more efficiently.

Additional Benefits From the Difference

The task management also allows the team to work on side projects for new company business insights. The team members know their tasks and required time, so they could react to the issues more proactive, even able to provide the creative pre-analytics. To bring creativity to the data analytics team, the US team hosts the “BI Go Bold Day”. The goal is to provide a different perspective to the company and their current business status. This could inspire the team to become more proactive and also improve the storytelling skill. For instance, each analyst will select atopic they want to focus on in the quarter. During the daily analyses, they might notice something interesting, but no one is aware of the situation yet. The topic includes optimizing products, improving internal data tools, or providing management proposals. The activities are open to the whole company to relate back to core value, Go Bold.

To achieve the core value of ‘Go Bold’, we are encouraged to brainstorm or bring up new ideas to meet the business target. In Mercari data team, we gathered talented data analysts and data scientists from different countries. People with different backgrounds and cultures could bring up additional perspectives. Moreover, The team carried their knowledge and skills to convert data into business insights to meet the core value, ‘All For One’. The company environment encourages team members to continually advance their technical skills. The working environment encourages us to ‘Be Pro’. The working environment is the combination of an eastern secured culture and a western flat organization structure. Working in Mercari is the best decision I have made in my career.

Writer Background:
A Taiwanese Tech girl worked in multiple countries, Taiwan, America, China, and Japan. Lived in the US from 2014 to 2022. Moved to the Japan in 2023. Joined Mercari US during COVID from 2021, and relocated to Mercari Tokyo in 2023. Before joined Mercari, I worked as the customer account manager and PdM in B2B companies. I transferred my career path in the late 20s. I appreciate Mercari gave me the opportunity to become PRO like the the company value.