[Dunan]

Thanks for this very informative post! Here in Japan, salaries are much more Europe-like, whereas hours are (I suspect) US-like -- the worst of both worlds!

My pay as a non-software-engineer doing a lot of Excel monkey work in the back office of a fintech company. I'll use yen for consistency; today the exchange rate is about 110 yen per US dollar.

1999-2001 3.6M base

2002-2006 3.6M base + 1.0M (night shift bonus)

2007-2008 4.2M base + 1.0M (night shift bonus continues)

2009-2015 4.5M base + 700k bonus + 1.0M night bonus

2016 4.5M base + 300k bonus + 500k night bonus (rotating shifts; fewer nights) + 200k vested stock options (issued 2012, vested after 4 years)

2017 4.4M base + 300k bonus + 500k night + 200k stock

2018 4.4M base + 300k bonus + 1.0M night (worked nights all the time again) + 80k stock (stock value plummeted)

2019 4.4M base + 300k bonus + 90k stock (no night shifts anymore)

I'm not a native speaker of Japanese, and have no desire to go into middle management, so I suspect things will continue as they are now indefinitely. There's a lot of pressure to reduce salaries and we have onerous KPI demands: five to seven every half year, all of which must be met to maintain salary. It gets harder and harder to keep coming up with ideas for them as the years pass, and I'm thinking of giving up my full-time hard-to-fire status and becoming a contract worker. Bonuses and stock options would disappear but stock options earned in past years would continue to vest. And my stress level would drop by quite a bit!

[throwaway234321]

I'd say tech salaries highly depend on your company and even the type of position you're in.

At foreign FAANG (which means Google and Amazon here) and investment banks traditionally you can expect upwards of 10M JPY/y (total compensation) for moderately senior engineering positions and even over 15M for more senior positions. But it's not just foreign companies. Some Japanese companies like Mercari and Fast Retailing are now in an engineer hiring craze and they're offering highly competitive salaries.

My personal history in Japan: 2015-2016 8M JPY 2017 12M JPY (renegotiated my salary) 2018 13M JPY 2019 14M JPY

[Dunan]

That's a pretty impressive bump you negotiated! Same company, or a different one?

I'm in fintech too, but I'm not an engineer; more like a dime-a-dozen Excel monkey. Most people I know doing programming are terribly paid (<250k per month); they make even less than generic office workers, who make over 1600 yen per hour.

Having entered my 40s and not being in management, I suspect that my chances for a pay increase have long passed. I went to graduate school in my spare time (when I was working nights) and might try going into academics if I can't take company life any more.

Do you expect to see increases beyond that 14M or do you think that's the cap?