Rakuten

• Free meals (Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner)
• The headquarters office in Tokyo is located in a nice neighborhood.
• Highly possible to attend an overseas conference once a year.
• Having a high chance to meet many smart people from different backgrounds, who may become your best friends through overcoming a crisis together at Rakuten.
• A good stepping stone to work in Japan.
• A perfect company for learning traditional Japanese working culture and inter-cultural communications.
• A lot of people earn money by doing nothing and the job security is extremely high.
• If your childhood dream job is a firefighter, Rakuten is a perfect company to fulfill your dream.

A finger-pointing culture is very deep-rooted at Rakuten. When something goes wrong, it is common for people to blame each other first, rather than helping each other to fix the problem.

A lot of employees at Rakuten fear making mistakes or losing face; therefore, they tend not to make any changes or improvements. To make matters worse, they prefer covering up problems to fixing or reporting them.

A quick and dirty approach is preferable to best practices and standards. As a result, most software developers at Rakuten tend to develop low-quality and unmaintainable software just to "get things done" by the deadline. Unfortunately, this approach causes technical debts to accumulate over time, and it is now impossible to repay.

People come and go, and nobody cares. Due to its reputation, Rakuten can attract a lot of talent from all around the world but cannot retain them longer than a couple of years.

English is an official language in the Tokyo office, but a lot of important documents are still written in Japanese only. Besides, most Japanese employees, especially senior managers, cannot speak or even understand English.

Below-average salary for experienced and educated engineers.

Rakuten wastes thousands of man-hours on a company-wide weekly meeting. Every Monday at 8 AM, all regular employees must attend this weekly meeting and listen to the narcissistic CEO bragging about himself and his irrational daydreams.

Toilets are occupied most of the time because some people use them to take a nap or play mobile games.

The top management should try challenging the CEO's illogical ideas/orders and recommend a feasible alternative.

Learn how to retain talents and grow their careers.

Stop finger-pointing and start collaborating.

Listen to employees more.

The "Always Improve, Always Advance" culture should be materialized, rather than just posting it on the wall.

Admit failures and start resolving issues, instead of covering them up.