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Rakuten can best be described as "pretending to care."

Front End Engineer
Current Employee
Has worked at Rakuten for 4 years
January 8, 2018
Tokyo, Japan
1.0
Doesn't RecommendNegative OutlookDoesn't Approve of CEO
Pros

Very decent free breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the cafeteria.

Breakfast ends 30 minutes before work hours, and dinner starts 1.5 hours after the end of working hours.

There is a gym in the building with a decent membership cost.

There are two Rakuten Cafe stores for buying coffee and two Crimson Stores (Rakuten's convenience store), but you have to pay with a Rakuten EDY or Rakuten Pay; they don't accept cash or card.

Cons

There are so many things to put here; I'm not sure where to start.

  • They started playing loud classical music in all of the hallways (24/7) and the bathrooms. If your desk happens to be anywhere near a hallway door, you will hear it all day long.
  • Every Monday morning, the entire company comes into work an hour early for the most boring meeting of your life, called "Asakai." You will need to come to the office and scan your badge on a special tracking machine because if you don't attend this meeting every week, it can be used to prevent your salary-grade promotions.
  • Speaking of tracking machines, every day your badge scans when you enter and exit the building, and it inputs that information into the attendance system. If you work less than the required hours in a day, your salary will be deducted. This is the polar opposite of flexible working hours.
  • Everything is based on how something appears. Management cares more that something appears good than if it is actually good. It's hard to give an exact example, but it's something you will quickly pick up on if you work here.
  • The evaluation systems here are very poor. They are set up in a way that your manager will essentially be looking at "why you shouldn't get a salary increase" as opposed to "why you should." The evaluation criteria work against you.
  • Speaking of salary increases, they will be slow. Don't expect a good salary at this company. That's why all of our great engineers leave the company for others.
  • You will need to take dozens of these tests called "E-Learnings" in order to get a salary-grade promotion. They are essentially a test which consists of between 40-100 PowerPoint slides with a test at the end. They will often have nothing to do with your job.
  • When you have a job title promotion, it does not come with a salary increase. More work, no extra money.
  • There is a greater emphasis on hiring people without skills and training them rather than hiring employees who are experts in the field. This probably has a lot to do with how much employees cost.
Advice to Management

Set up a system for employee feedback, and actually listen to it.

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