Rakuten

Talking points attract some good people who still had ideals, soon to disappear after joining.

Lots of great people with lots of fun diversity. The people are the best reason to be here: there are a lot of people, all with different backgrounds, or similar backgrounds if that's what you are looking for, so you can probably make some good friends.

Lots of varied businesses: if you look really hard, you may find something somewhat interesting. Want to work on a matchmaking service? You can! Want to work in diaper delivery? You can! Want to work on a travel website? You can! Want to cold-call credit card sales for 15 hours a day and not get paid for almost half of that? You can!

Japanese people who live here and don't have families, living with mom and pop until their mid 40s or married and don't have their own bills to pay, may find some interest here as opposed to other "Japanese companies."

Free meals, though two of those three meals are actually ploys to get you to come earlier and stay later, just enough to work the maximum legal amount of overtime that they don't have to pay you for.

If you want more responsibility, you can probably take it on after you swim through layers of bureaucracy. The mass of incompetent "salary thieves," those who just act like they're working at a bare minimum to receive a paycheck, will generally not try to stop you deliberately.

If you just want to come to Japan and stay here, you can do so.

(Disclaimer: The work environment is fairly decent if you're used to the suicide-inducing death-by-overwork Japanese standards. If you've ever heard about how terrible places like Nissan or Dentsu are, then this is miles better than that even by Japanese standards.)

I endorse everything said in the review, "Black hole for your career." Please read that first.

• The company's upper management are like terrible politicians, just interested in spitting out talking points so they can continue to make up fake data for internal performance reviews to prove how "well" they are doing.

• They speak a lot about "always improve, always advance," yet they are only interested in sitting in their comfortable position without actually changing anything.

• They sell themselves as having a "startup feel." At times, it may feel like that. But if you are ever going to continue receiving funding, you are going to need to jump through hoops of bureaucracy to collaborate with other departments.

• HR is awful. Absolutely the worst HR I have ever dealt with. Fire them all. Between interviews, months on end went by without a peep. HR also actively tries to hire people for positions in departments that no longer exist, simply because they are so incompetent that they have no idea what is going on. I hope you know Japanese so you can explain their mistakes to them. I have long wondered what causes such incompetent HR.

• The way to move up here is to fail badly and pass that blame onto others so the blood is not on your hands.

• Interested in attracting foreign talent but not interested in treating them well enough to stay. This results in three categories of non-Japanese:

  • Anyone who joins here essentially comes in with the expectation to leave soon because they want to stay in Tokyo, or learn quickly that they should do so.
  • People who do not have the courage to leave or feel comfortable, because they have worked up the internal totem pole (though that does not translate into money).
  • People who are too nice for their own good, in that they care too much about if things spiral out of control.

• Buying sports teams and sponsoring FC Barcelona and buying tons of new services and calling it "innovation," when the only difference is that the company has injected its inefficient bureaucracy into the company acquired.

• The company has succeeded in crushing the ambitions of many young foreign people truly interested in a career doing something interesting in Tokyo because of all the incompetence, too much bureaucracy, and the weekly "improvements." If you fall into that category, I suggest another company: there are many in Tokyo who will take you.

Bonus Cons:

• People sleep in the bathroom stalls. Once a week, people come in one hour early to listen to presentations unrelated to their work. The disrupted sleep schedule causes people to sleep in the bathroom stalls. You can hear them snoring. I hope you do not have to use the bathroom.

• There is only one company in the building, but over 2,000 security cameras for some reason.

Not enough pay to keep talent long. Not enough talent stays long enough to make everyone feel motivated because the real drivers always leave before the product is delivered.

Stop the bathroom sleeping; people need to use the toilet.

Give up the "global" shtick. Stick to domestic talent and the domestic market, or at least strictly vet your Japanese new grads so you don't have droves of trained seals coming in to screw up all the processes and drain money from the employees who actually take charge of the things that need to get done and from the processes that you need to be pumping money into.