Software Engineers in Japan: Not What You’d Expect
Engineer: “I’m a software engineer. I collect requirements and manage our offshore development center.”
Me: “So, how much development do you do?”
(Maybe not really an) engineer: “Oh, I haven’t coded in about 4 years ever since becoming a software engineer.”
Me: “??”
Unfortunately, this is a very common, and awkward conversation I keep finding myself having. Working in the tech industry, I enjoy going to tech events and meetups to get to know the latest trends and having the “who’s moving where” conversations. Engineers who already work at startups tend to actually be developers in the truest sense of the word, tasked with actually building out new features for their product and working on side projects on GitHub. But when you encounter engineers from larger enterprises or systems integrators who are vying to get into the more exciting and fast-paced world of startups, there’s a gap in understanding of what “software engineering” means in the two vastly different worlds of business.
Software engineers, programmers, developers, coders — whatever you call them, you’d be faced with a rude awakening if you decided to hire one in Japan without understanding how the software development hierarchy works here.
Software Engineer: Coding Skills Not Required
Engineers are unfortunately not as respected or well paid in Japan compared to the US. Perhaps because those in charge don’t know what goes into their craft, but their place in an enterprise is similar to that of a factory worker — sure they’re an important part of the process, but they’re expected to just take what requirements are thrown at them without question, and work through spec changes at the drop of a hat.
Now, the three main kinds of “engineers” you will meet in Japan will call themselves Software Engineers, Developers, and Web Developers. Knowing the differences in what they mean, and what they specifically mean in Japan, will save you some heartache and help you avoid wasting time with the wrong kinds of people.
Disclaimer: We’re using very broad strokes to describe these categories — you will no doubt find people outside of the borders we draw in our descriptions, but you’re probably smart and already knew that ;)
Software Engineers
Software Engineers, of SEs (people tend to pronounce them phonetically as “ehsu-ee”) as the Japanese like to call them, are NOT the kind of engineers you’re probably looking for. They are project managers who understand technology enough to relay messages between the business counter parts at HQ and software development teams, often located in offshore centers. They tend to do zero development while listing a whole host of programming languages and IT skills to their resumes. Ask them a FizzBuzz question and watch them squirm.
These Software Engineers work at larger enterprises and systems integrators where they themselves don’t do the work of a developer, and the work is passed on to a smaller dev shop that can take care of the actual work of building at a cheaper price.
Unfortunately this process has created a situation where Japan is now lagging in Software Engineering skills, while countries with former “cheap labor” offshore centers like China and India have cultivated amazing talent and tribal knowledge in the digital economy of today.
Developers
If you’re looking for software engineers in Japan, look for people who call themselves a developer. While often from a humanities background in school (as opposed to STEM in the US), these are people who picked up programming as part of their first job out of college, and stuck with it. While they may lack deep technical knowledge of data structures and garbage collection, they’re much more excited to learn new skills and google their way out of bugs compared to their more “elite” career tracked “Software Engineers”.
Developers are usually either a young crowd with excitement for their new gigs in the digital economy, or half-way jaded after working for those smaller dev shops working at the behest of Software Engineers who throw work at them. Look for the former.
Web Developer
Web Developers in Japan have found themselves in a strange spot of actually being considered the most technical in the developer circle — backend Software Engineers don’t really code as I’ve described above, and Developers are either very young or only take staff augmentation work, whereas Web Developers use both their creative side and logical side to create new products and services wielding the latest open source tools.
In addition to developing, they also tend to be decent designers, having picked up a few books after mobile apps started seriously hitting the market and UX became all the rage.
Extra Reading
If you’re interested in understanding what software engineering in Japan is like, or you’re maybe even looking into working in Japan as a Software Engineer, check out the following links.
