My Thoughts on Employment for International Students in Japan

After looking at some information and data, I found that the employment rate of international students in Japan after graduation is currently below 50%. The Japanese government plans to raise the domestic employment rate of international students to 60% by 2033. My own feeling, however, is that the attitude of Japanese society and companies does not yet match that goal.

The Current Hiring Reality

Take the IT industry, where I work, as an example. Many companies want candidates whose Japanese is business level or native level, whose technical ability is strong, and whose cost is low.

Such people certainly exist, but there cannot be many of them. Let me break this down a little.

The Cost of Hiring

Hiring in Japan is expensive for companies, especially when it comes to regular employees. A company must bear the salary, bonus, benefits, pension, and other costs of a regular employee, so the burden is relatively heavy.

Some people who work at Japanese companies say regular employees are paid much less than dispatched employees. To me, this is a bit like people with stable public-sector jobs back home saying their salary is lower than many private-sector salaries. It is fine to listen to such comments, but do not take them too literally. Otherwise, you may escape one cage only to walk into another.

Knowing Technology vs. Building Products

Take writing as an example. There are many people who can write well and have beautiful prose, but many of them cannot write a full-length novel.

Most people can understand this fact. In the same way, there are plenty of people who are technically good at coding but do not have the ability to independently build a relatively large system or piece of software. If even building it is difficult, making it practical and pleasant to use is even harder.

But many companies still assume that strong technical ability naturally leads to good products. In this sense, their understanding is still far behind that of the publishing world. When the understanding does not match reality, the supporting systems become chaotic, and mismatches in talent become inevitable.

Oppenheimer has now been made into a film, so perhaps more people have a concrete image of him. In his era, were there no people smarter than him? Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, worked under him. But Oppenheimer could organize and lead thousands or even tens of thousands of scientists and successfully develop the atomic bomb in a short period of time. That kind of ability is truly rare.

Work and Language Learning

As for language, I have noticed that some people who have firmly settled in Japan and understand Japanese society quite well feel that Japanese society offers foreigners very few opportunities to practice the language.

So the common advice is either to find a Japanese partner, or to honestly watch dramas and practice by yourself. If you expect to improve your Japanese by casually talking with random Japanese people in daily life, I personally find that a bit unrealistic. Do not treat individual examples as universal truth. You can also find people fluent in around ten languages, but does that mean most people have even mastered their own native language properly?

Some people say: do not be afraid of mistakes, just speak boldly with Japanese people, and you will naturally improve.

Because I have studied Chinese deeply, I understand this issue. Mistakes made in the foundation stage can take enormous effort to correct later, and in reality many people never fully correct them in their lifetime.

Unless you do not care about learning well, do not let others casually invent excuses for you, especially in Japanese society. If you learn Japanese in that way and feel that you have “mastered” it, you may still not meet the standard for white-collar jobs that genuinely require strong Japanese. Later, trying to reach that level will become much harder. It is like building a house: if the foundation is weak, you cannot add many floors on top.

My Current View

After saying all this, what I really want to express is that, based on my current understanding of Japan, the mindset of wanting everything at once is not sustainable for companies. Many people cannot understand why Japan can produce so much comfortable, thoughtful hardware, while its software often fails to match that quality.

I have gradually realized why many Japanese internet products are hard to use. I do not think Japan lacks ability, or that the software industry is simply hopeless. The problem may lie in the original expectation of wanting everything at once. Where can companies find so many people like that? There are simply not that many. In the end, the people actually doing the work may just be foreigners who are good at Japanese.

I have seen many posts and videos about humanities majors successfully entering the IT industry. I am not especially optimistic about this trend. Many things require long-term immersion and a matching way of thinking. They are not necessarily things you can do well after changing careers halfway. When humanities majors become common in Japan’s IT industry, the current state of many Japanese software products becomes easier to understand.

I do not mean to look down on humanities majors. Lu Xun abandoned medicine for literature and became a great writer, and there are also outstanding programmers from non-technical backgrounds. But for an industry as a whole, such examples are very rare. To understand the industry, we still need to look at the professional quality of the majority.

Japan has one of the most friendly and developed environments for part-time work in the world. But when it comes to formal employment, do not automatically think of yourself as a local. You need to be clear that you are a foreigner, otherwise you may not understand why you experience so many grievances. It is also worth thinking from the other side: in your own country, do most companies employ many foreigners? What kind of work do foreigners do, and how are they treated?

After graduating from study in Japan, here are a few of my current thoughts:

1. If you want to enter a Japanese company but cannot get a regular-employee contract, you can first consider a contract-employee role. It is normal for companies to have concerns about hiring foreigners, so there is no need to overthink it.
2. If your English is strong, foreign-capital companies may be a better first choice. You may face fewer unnecessary struggles, and it is better not to give yourself too many setbacks at the beginning.
3. You can also consider dispatch companies. Although dispatch companies usually require both strong language ability and technical experience before offering regular employment, it may still be worth trying. If you can become a regular employee there, that is also quite good, and you do not need to worry too much about the anxiety of being on standby between dispatch assignments.