Tech Industry
Yesterday
848
Feeling sad to leave the team
Tech Industry
Yesterday
1841
How did Sundar rise so quickly to become Google's CEO?
2024 Presidential Election
17h
440
Trump, intends to special forces to assassinate kingpins in Mexico drug cartels
AMA
9h
855
I own a 100oz of gold and 1000oz of silver. AMA
AMA
Yesterday
5877
Cheated on husband
☝️ It’s depressing how low the TCs are here in #japan Examples: https://japan-dev.com/blog/software-developer-salaries-in-japan-the-ultimate-guide
Would be nice to have some more context and data points.
Edited with reference
HCOL by Japanese standards absolutely. You can save so much money moving to just about any other city in Japan, if your job is remote or something That said if you look at average rental prices it’s dirt cheap compared to say NYC, for example $2400 average rent for a 3LDK. Food and services generally pretty cheap outside of central business districts too of course, any lower CoL is intimately related to lower earnings potential. Big American cities are expensive because the average person bidding on a rental makes a shitload of money. And in turn this drives inflation on local costs of goods and services because your food workers and such need to afford to live there too.
SWE isn't a thing there - handful of companies pay higher but not comparable compared to the US, maybe it beats London. For COL - yes it is. Rental and food surprise surprise. If you don't mind sharing apartments then that cost goes sharply down. Depending on your office location (and if they let you remote work at all). You could stay at outskirts of Tokyo (near Saitama) and only come to town for important meetings. Some locals stay further and come in for the week, and then shinkansen back on weekends.
SWE not being a thing - not respected as a career choice. Don't expect a silicon valley welcome or package! If you hang around circles that's interested that's what you'll find but the TC shows a lot.
Being a SWE won’t impress girls. In fact people will think you are an underpaid nerd who eats cups of ramen daily and jerks off to Hentai. That’s the stereotype of a SWE in Japan. In contrast, being a SWE in America and everywhere else is considered cool. People will think you are smart and loaded.
You live in a big city dude, one of the biggest for tech. Fwik, US and Japan are the only true technology countries. Will move there in a heartbeat any day when I get an opportunity to do so. Germany is good, but Asian working style is more compatible with me coming from India. I am a vegetarian, that’s one more consideration that dissuades me from moving to Japan but you guys have already done it all!
HCOL means "high cost of LABOR", not "high cost of living" . This is how the term is used by HR/ compensation teams. The key difference is that it doesn't matter if a city is expensive, what matters is the average wage paid for a particular profession in that city/ locale. And while Tokyo is undoubtedly one of the costliest cities in the world, that is not necessarily the case with wages. There usually is a positive correlation between costs and wages, but in many places it's not a 1:1 correlation and more like a .3 correlation (for example), or not high enough to match the high wages paid in HCOL cities in the US or elsewhere.
Japan is more of manufacturing, finance etc. there’s no google/meta equivalent hence no software job
Japan is probably the worst among 1st world countries in terms of CoL and TC ratio.
So bad😂 wonder where would be a good place to be in APAC? Singapore vs Sydney?
Give examples
Edited with reference