On starting a tech blog at WealthPark
Hi! I am Taka, SVP of Engineering at WealthPark.
I’m excited to announce the launch of our tech blog titled “WealthPark Engineering”.
Allow me to share a brief message about our company and organization as we launch this blog.
What Does WealthPark Do?
WealthPark is a Japanese startup in the PropTech and FinTech areas.
We are running several businesses.
From an engineering perspective, we primarily develop products in two domains:
- WealthPark Business offers products (SaaS) and services for real estate management companies and property owners.
- WealthPark Alternative Investments provides products and services offering fractional assets investment products in the financial domain.
For further information on the origins of our company, please check out the article written by our CDO, Yuki, regarding the story behind WealthPark’s logo.
WealthPark’s Engineering Organization
You might wonder why we have written our tech blog in English.
The answer is that WealthPark’s engineering organization is incredibly diverse and global. While still relatively uncommon in Japan, about 80% of our engineering team consists of international members, and English is the working language. Our team is not only fluent in English but is also composed of members from a large variety of countries (more than 15 countries). There isn’t an overwhelming majority from any particular country. As such, it is natural for our communications to be in English.
As a side note: Our business is primarily centered in Japan, so we have product managers and some engineering managers who are proficient in both Japanese and English to bridge the gap between business and engineering.
Why a Global Engineering Organization?
Some might question why WealthPark has a global engineering organization. Let me share my thoughts.
Being a global engineering organization is not an end but a means to deliver better products and services.
Programming is fundamentally in English, and at least much of the primary information is provided in English. In the West, working in English is natural, but due to several reasons, English proficiency remains low in Japan. Furthermore, Japan is facing a critical turning point with a declining population and a shrinking market.
In the software engineering industry, which already has a high demand surpassing supply, the above circumstances pose a challenge. That’s why several large Japanese companies have been actively working on globalizing their engineering organizations. I used to work in such an environment myself. While I believe this trend is essential, I also sense an oddity.
Is having a global engineering organization special🤔?
Personally, I don’t think there should be any particular reason for being a global engineering organization. I want our organization to show, through product development and problem-solving, that being global is an one of the natural choices for creating the best products through software engineering.
The reason I arrived at this way of thinking is probably because I am not someone who grew up in a global environment. I was just a Japanese person who really loved Japan🇯🇵.
When I was a child, I didn’t have any desire to go abroad. I disliked English in school, and I could hardly speak English during my student days.
However, I was someone who enjoyed communication.
As I entered society, I started having friends who were not Japanese.
Fortunately, I became close with some of them, and as I enjoyed talking with them, I gradually lost my hesitation to speak English. It wasn’t that I felt a strong need to learn English, but through talking with friends and learning programming, I naturally became able to speak it (though I did study).
Therefore, it’s not that I have an extremely strong sense of purpose to lead a global engineering organization, but rather, I just want to create good products in this organization as one of the natural options, and I want to solve various technical challenges without putting on airs. However, I believe there should be various diversities in an organization. It’s perfectly fine if there are Japanese people who want to improve their English skills in this environment, people who have a sense of mission in globalizing, or even people who want to see with their own eyes whether such an organization can really function.
Currently, being a global engineering organization distinguishes the WealthPark engineering team in Japan. However, I hope that in the future, products and problem-solving take precedence over the engineering organization itself.
I don’t believe it’s necessary for all engineering organizations in Japan to be global. But, I’d be happy if we can serve as an example that companies naturally build great products with such an organization.
Reality
On the other hand, there are certainly challenges in creating a global engineering organization in reality here in Japan. Many of our customers are Japanese companies, as well as Japanese users. We need to empathize with the challenges they face and provide solutions and improvements through our products. Naturally, it’s necessary to listen to the voices of our customers and understand the real estate and financial domains, which have many structures unique to Japan. For this, it is essential to convey information and context to the engineering organization as freshly as possible.
Also, there may be cases where technical discussions in Japanese with customers and partners are necessary.
There are many efforts and challenges to make a global engineering organization function efficiently in our business and domain. We are considering sharing our initiatives and organizational stories on how an organization like ours can be established in this domain.
Establishing a Tech Blog
What personally sticks in my memory regarding tech blogs is Netflix’s Tech Blog.
At the time, when I read old Netflix articles and came across articles about microservices and Chaos Engineering, I felt as though they were solving challenges that were far ahead of my own, and I enjoyed reading the articles as if I was learning about the future.
With the emergence of LLM, ChatGPT, and others, searching the web for simple technical solutions may not be as common in the near future.
On the other hand, various challenges and case studies that we have undertaken will never be known by everyone unless we share them through a tech blog.
Although the phases and scale are completely different, we hope to share the amazing challenges of WealthPark’s engineers through our tech blog.
Through our articles, we can convey what kind of phase and challenges WealthPark was facing at that time. If this information can be even slightly useful for you or your company when facing similar challenges in the future, I would be delighted.
Takahiro Fujii
