Prós
- I entered with a great batch of diverse and talented colleagues, many of whom left within 2 years. - I was lucky enough to be placed under a supportive mentor albeit there were miscommunications due to language. - Good launchpad to work in other companies in Japan- exemplified by foreigners who were able to use their visa status to find other jobs
Contras
Lack of Englishnization/ globalization, mediocre senior management, egotistical upper management/CEO, lack of technological advancement, dependence on M&A to expand company while touting messages to cut cost in the forms of employee benefits, there were countless cons that I've witnessed in my 2 years there. However, I want to emphasize 2 major alerting signs that should caution prospective employees, especially professionals who take their careers very seriously and realizes that working is not a joke and should not be subjected to the whims of HR. 1) Horrendous placement of people that do not align with their interests and/or skills: It seemed as though HR does not give a hoot about your background prior to coming to this company, particularly true if you're a New Grad. Let's just say that if you're bilingual in English and Japanese, welcome to domestic sales where there are 0 chances to use English. If you have a master's degree in finance and looking to get into the financial sectors within Rakuten, hope you'll have fun sending out newsletters because you'll be on the marketing campaign team. If you studied marketing, I hope you also like public policy because that is what you'll be doing. Oh, I see you have an MBA from a top-tier school, how about I pair you off with a mentor who don't have a fraction of your professional background and invite you to meetings that are completely in Japanese even though you cannot speak Japanese and thought the company was "Englishnized". And isn't it a good idea to place a foreigner who has never lived in Japan before to be in charge of creating domestic marketing campaigns for Japanese people. I'm sure that doesn't hurt productivity and efficiency at all. (These are all true stories by the way.) 2) The company fails to get to the root of the high attrition problem and resolve their employee's dissatisfaction. Instead, the company aims to cover up their shortcomings all the while shoving it in our faces of how lucky we are to be there. Rakuten is looking to become a global company, but a global company is not a company where you're forcing your Japanese staff to get a certain score on an English Standardized Test and threatening them with demotion and pay deduction. A global company is not one where you recruit students from top schools throughout the world to prove that x% of your workforce is non-Japanese while failing to assist them to assimilate into a completely different work culture and country. A global company should offer training for not only managers but all employees on how to work with somebody from a different background than you. It should be open and accepting and not delegate the tasks of "English teachers" and "company mascot" to these foreigners.