HENNGE: Where Global Talents Meet
Probably you are reading this article because you are a talented software engineer interested in working at HENNGE. If you are not from Japan, there is a good probability that you are a weeb/otaku interested in Japanese culture and anime. If so, in this article, I will share my experience at HENNGE and Japan, both as a talented software engineer and a person who has loved Japan so much since childhood.
This blog will address the following contents:
- Introduction
1.1- Who am I?
1.2- Why Japan?
1.3- Why HENNGE? - HENNGE
2.1 - Culture
2.2 - Engineers
2.3 - GIP - Japan
3.1- Books
3.2- Electronics
3.3- Anime - Conclusion
Introduction
Who am I?
Hello, I am Omar ElKhatib, a software engineer from Lebanon. I worked for a year and a half as a software engineer for a startup in Lebanon. After that, I joined HENNGE as a GIP. I have a computer science degree from the Lebanese University's faculty of science. Before that, I had been programming as a hobby since childhood.
My hobbies are reading software engineering books in my free time and watching anime ( a lot of them ). You can find me blogging about things I find interesting about software engineering on my website.
I am looking for a reallocation to Japan, so if you have any opportunities for me, please reach out to: elkhatibomar@outlook.com
Why Japan?
Japan has always been my dream country to live in, the country’s historical narrative, shaped by centuries of samurai culture, feudal periods, and the evolution of the imperial system, fascinates me. Japan’s commitment to preserving its cultural heritage while embracing innovation is evident in its modern technological landscape.
Students are instilled with a strong sense of responsibility and the importance of diligence from a young age. The dedication of the Japanese people to excellence and continuous self-improvement contributes significantly to the country’s achievements and its global reputation for precision and quality.
As someone who was born in a country that didn’t offer many growth opportunities, Japan is the perfect place for my personal and career goals and my future children will be able to seize opportunities and grow in a moral environment with better opportunities for them.
Why HENNGE?
The most noticeable thing when you visit the HENNGE website is the CEO (Ogura-san), I have seen many CEOs in my life but never met someone like him. He represents what I like about Japan, which is about moving forward while preserving your traditions and identity. So you can always see him wearing his Hakama/Kimono.
The CEO talks a lot about HENNGE, which will be the next part of my article.
HENNGE
Culture
As I said before, the CEO talks a lot about the HENNGE culture. To be honest, when I visited the website of HENNGE and read about all the blogs, my first impression was
hey that’s too good to be true.
that in the month I stayed there, each day proved that this is not only marketing material, it’s really how HENNGE culture is.
And I can tell you that the most important thing when working in a place is the culture because this will shape your professional career and your professional Identity.
There are a lot of events and Slack channels that have prefixes fun-within the company Slack to give a chance for employees from different sections to meet each other and have fun. So you will see the sales team sitting with engineers and so on.
Many activities are not restricted to the office. There are some activities where you go outside, like climbing or hiking ( if you can make it there without getting lost in the train station😉) also you can go to spicy food events.
People you will meet are from different countries and cultures so be ready for a very diverse experience where you can learn about different cultures and different food.
Also, HENNGE did a good job maintaining the spirit of the startup within the company; you can feel the spirit of the need to improve even more and more, and let all employees know about each other, so there is no separation between all people, including managers and CEO.
I had a couple of opportunities to have lunch with the CEO, vice president, and head of the people division. You can learn a lot from talking to them about how they managed to create a big successful company, and all the issues they faced. They are humble, down to earth, treated me as an equal employee, and answered all my questions.
Engineers
Okay, so after making sure about the culture, the next thing that we care about as software engineers are our colleagues that we will be working with each day and the growth opportunities that the company offers for their engineers.
Ogura-san himself is a software engineer, and he started programming at a young age, so that’s kind of a blessing he knows what is good for software engineers and what is not. So he knows how to keep the engineers motivated.
The engineers are free to pick the latest and most remarkable technologies, so they have the freedom to experience new technologies they like, which keeps them motivated and eager to learn.
During the month I stayed, there were a couple of conferences where the engineers attended. The one I can remember is a conference where Linus Torvald was a speaker! And there are educational resources available for engineers to learn at their own pace.
Coming to the colleagues part, nearly everyone was a talent there; you could easily tell that from talking to them and their passion for technology, so it felt like home where you could grow with your colleagues and work to be a better software engineer each day by learning from each other. More on this point will be discussed in the GIP section.
Also, the HENNGE culture helps software engineers to grow their soft skills through their events.
GIP
After completing the challenge, you will be contacted by the ETA team to move forward with the next steps. Usually, When applying to a foreign company, the hardest part of it is the onboarding process, but don’t worry about it because HENNGE has a specialist who will assist you from the moment you get accepted until the moment you get your visa. We stayed in contact until the moment I got my visa, so the hard part of preparing all documents is handled by HENNGE.
As a GIP, you will be treated equally to other employees, which means you will experience real workplace life. It’s not only about coding; it’s also about what your daily life as a software engineer will look like. I don’t want to spoil the experience for you.
For the assignments themselves, you will have the chance to work on building a full-stack application by following current industry best practices; it’s not only about building the application, but you will also have the chance to automate the deployment of your app. All of that is in one month, so be ready for an amazing time learning and building stuff on your own from scratch.
If you’re stuck, the mentors are always available to help you, so don’t worry, you’re not alone. Also, they will treat your code as if it’s going to production, so be ready to receive a lot of comments on your code. Those comments are usually on point and best practices, so you will learn how to write a highly quality production-ready code.
Not only mentors are your only source of knowledge but also the other interns! Don’t forget that other interns are also talented. I had a good connection with most of them and we created a telegram group containing all of us. It was a good friendship with them, and we were still in contact after the internship ended.
As GIP you will have many lunches funded by the company, and you will have the chance to go with different colleagues from different divisions, so be ready to meet a lot of people from different countries and different cultures. The lunches are very casual, so you can talk about anything you want.
On top of all of that, you will have the chance to give a talk in front of a lot of people from many departments with the monthly technical session MTS.
I had the chance to talk about my distributed game dhangkanna which I made especially for MTS. It’s a game web server that distributes by sharing its state over all backends, The same concepts used in this project are used in big distributed tools that all software engineers use around the world. you can find the source code at https://github.com/khatibomar/dhangkanna
Also, you will have a chance to play board games each Wednesday, don’t worry if you don’t know any of the games, I never played a board game in my life, Someone will explain how to play the game before starting. After trying it I became a game board lover myself, especially the skull game it was so entertaining, and the food was offered for free for those who participated in the game.
So the GIP is designed to simulate how your daily life as a software engineer will be and will enhance your professional career on soft and hard skill levels.
Japan
Japan is such a beautiful country. My phone is full of pictures and videos of Tokyo. Also, locals are very friendly with foreigners. This is a funny meme video explaining that Tokyo is easier for foreigners in 2023.
and with some pictures from my gallery.
Books
Okay, so if you are a books/manga lover, here is a list of places for you where you can find all kinds of books.
- Books Kinokuniya Tokyo — Foreign Books: This store specializes in overseas books. You can find all the English books, including translated manga.
- Kinokuniya Shinjuku Main Store: Here, you can find all types of Japanese books, it’s a big building with seven floors full of books, and you can find all the manga you want.
- Mandarake Shibuya and Mandarake Akihabara, Shibuya store is bigger than the Akihabara one, so you will find all your loved manga there.
- Books off Akihabara/Shinjuku
And finally, you can always find your favorite books used at Mercari online with good prices.
For me, I had to visit all of them to buy a complete set of my favorite manga.
I can’t read Japanese yet, but I bought them in Japanese to motivate my self to learn Japanese
Electronics
I wanted to buy some electronics to program and have fun in my free time, of course, when you think about Electronics, you need to think about the electronic city: Akihabara, you can find used devices for very cheap at books-off also new devices.
I got a couple of programmable devices from Akihabara. Unfortunately, I forgot the names of the stores, and it was hard to find them. Also, you can check online stores.
Anime
Here is a map where you can find all the places that sell anime-related stuff such as anime figures and souvenirs.
Conclusion
Here we came to the end of my article. I have a lot of stuff to say, and they can’t fit in a single article.
Japan was an amazing experience, and from now on learning Japanese and finding a job in Japan is my new life goal, hopefully at HENNGE, because HENNGE is truly a unique Japanese company with a very unique culture and a great place for talented software engineers.
Omar ElKhatib from Lebanon interned with the HENNGE Global Internship Program from November 13th to December 8th, 2023.
