Rakuten

These are the pros:

1. No need to have management or technical skills to be an executive or manager.

2. If you are hired in Japan and assigned to the US, with 100% of managers here in Crimson House West, you have additional benefits:

   • They rent a luxurious house in popular places like Redhood City.
   • They pay your car loan. Believe me, they can sell the car and get the money if they are assigned to return to Japan.
   • In Japan, HR does not verify your credentials, like if you really have Scrum Certification.
   • Managers do not need to care if the project will fail because you will never get fired, and you can always blame your team. This is because they only care to meet the schedule. If the project is wrong or the tasks are unrealistic, it is not the manager's fault since their bosses know that they do not have technical or business skills. The fault always lies with the team members. So you are 100% safe if you are from Japan.

You will not be promoted if you are an MBA from good schools or a competent engineer. I will explain why. (MBA means graduated in administrative courses)

1. The projects are mostly technically wrong. If you try to correct them, you will be bullied by the managers. This is because you will show the president that the project is wrong, impacting all US management. So, if you try to correct them, you will be excluded from the team.

2. Since the project is wrong and will fail, the MBA and engineer will be blamed. So there is no way to escape.

3. MBAs must approve all the wrong decisions because all the legacy of current problems are caused by the actual managers and leaders, and they want to hide this from the president.

4. Again, employees with MBAs will be blamed. And you have to confirm that it was your idea and you were incapable of finding the problems.

5. The managers are bullies because it is the only way to make people respect them (by fear). In case you do not do what they tell you to do: a) If you were assigned from Japan, you will probably be assigned back to Japan and never again assigned to the US. b) If you are a US employee, you will be fired or invited to leave very quickly. After you leave the company, all the current problems will be assigned to you. This is how they survive and hide the problems. So they are always hiring new employees.

6. Evaluations. They evaluate your performance on a 1 to 7 scale. Here is the problem: you work very hard to try to meet impossible goals and, of course, you will fail in something like a deadline. They will give you a 1, no matter how many times you worked until late or at home.

7. The only way to be promoted is to enter their circle. This means you have to support them and act like them. If you cannot be like them, you will probably be targeted for their bullying and get fired, blamed, etc. Therefore, competent people do not fit under their management.

Unfortunately, Rakuten manager profiles are:

• Bad education backgrounds or education not related to the business, like graduation in education, philosophy, music school, or ex-pilots (yes, pilots).
• Dubious credentials. When they were employed at Rakuten (5 years ago), HR did not check the authenticity of their credentials. For example, they will believe you if you tell them in the interview that you graduated from Harvard or have Scrum Master certification.
• Not ethical and honest.
• They do not hesitate to blame someone for their faults.

PS: Japan Rakuten Card is the worst. They are the source of current management in Card US. This means the source of the issue may be on the Japanese side.

These problems explain the high turnover of very good employees and also why US employees have low salaries.

It also explains why the president thinks US employees are lazy. But I do not know if the president does not know this. (If he knows, then something is very wrong).

Advice to the president.

I think you need to solve these problems as soon as possible. Please, fix Japan and US management.

Only permitting managers from one team to another does not solve the problems; it only hides them because the current team managers, group managers, and department managers are the ones causing all these problems. This is my last review in this company.