Pros: Good work/life balance. Convenient facilities. You can meet many interesting employees.

Cons: I was laid off after working there for two years as a Senior iOS engineer. Shortly after me, they laid off the other two experienced iOS devs on our team. The reason given by management was: "We now have enough iOS developers." It's ironic to mention that shortly before, they hired many new grads, and we got two new grads as iOS devs on our team. So, in other words, they throw experienced devs out and take inexperienced, low-paid new grads instead. The hypocrisy is strong at Rakuten. Rakuten also pushes the ridiculous "Diversity at all costs" scheme, like many other IT companies. What this means is that they choose employees based on ethnicity rather than skill or experience. And what many of these 'diverse' employees don't understand is that they are exploited as underpaid staff. As an example, one very experienced Chinese Co-iOS dev of mine earned far below what he should have earned by current standards. My own salary was below average for my experience. Some managers are biased against some of their managed employees. A large open office is very noisy and makes it difficult to concentrate on challenging tasks.

Pros: - Relaxed/friendly environment - Free breakfast, lunch, and dinner - Access to many resources, such as DevOps, etc.

Cons: - Work environment is completely dependent on team/department and manager - Slow career growth - Low pay

Pros: Big MNC stability. Decent salary and perks.

Cons: Japanese culture expects you to work like a humanoid robot. From requirement gathering to story creation to R&D and actual development to testing to DevOps and infra setup to UAT and go-live, you are the sole owner, product manager, and engineer of their products. No team structure, no help. If you're stuck, you're on your own. Managers are jacks of all trades and masters of none (let alone tech). They treat you like schoolchildren with strict timing and timesheet culture, and expect you to attend weekly all-hands, or else an email gets triggered to HR. IDK how to react to that. #lmao