Rakuten

• Lots of cool people you will meet, and most of them become your closest friends or buddies that you can ever wish for in your life.
• Meeting all interesting people in there who make the work life more bearable.
• Free lunch.

I've tried to wait a while before writing this to get an actual perspective on what it's really like. This may not be the case for all, but it's what I experienced.

• Incompetent salary. Tax raised from 5% to 8% almost two years ago. The salary system stayed the same. Do you really care about employee welfare? On the day I left, I found out that I got a pay rise of less than 20 USD per month. I think that's enough said.

• Not enough retention for motivated people. I went into Rakuten with the intention to really improve. But after working with clueless management, I felt deterred from what I could actually gain. All there is are KPIs. Where is customer satisfaction ever considered?

• Work increase without pay increase. If you love your work, you should not care about the salary. That's a very common attitude expected here. Well, passion doesn't pay rent, does it? Enough is stated for this too.

• Bonus. A heap of it is actually stock options. Most of which you won't ever get as a foreigner, as you will be leaving in three years' time. It only activates after half a decade. Moreover, its decreasing as stock options are rising.

• Morning Tuesday meetings. The CEO is the savior of the company. Nothing stands above, and the Shugi book is the only thing that matters to the company. The only way to succeed is the CEO's way, no one else. Seems like a cult culture.

I think you know what the problems are. It's the persistency of not fixing it that causes such a turnover rate.