I agree about the travelling stress and lack purpose generally. Not having your home setup and packing and moving with your luggage. Check out days always stress me the most. It’s not an ideal situation. Ideal would be choosing that place to stay long term, but then there will be visa concerns.

Great video man, i am 3rd year CS student pretty descent at web dev with PHP planing to apply to work in japan ,should I learn node instead what are your thoughts.

going to restaurants is really overrated. going 2 times a week?XD thats crazy to me.

You are doing a great job. It is really helpful.

As someone who is working IT for a company in Japan, I’ve been looking for something like this to earn some extra income. Upwork and fiverr are trash due to competing with people from lower income countries for scraps. Thanks for the info.

Cool

In a way it is understandable why corporate would pay less. Once project is finished, the work isnt really going that fast, there is not much left to do for backend or frontend but maintenance and refactoring. New features wont be coming up that much. In a freelance world it is "bye bye" for you and company wont need to keep the costly guy anymore, just maintain the code w/ some junior dev. At the same time corporate will have to come up with an idea what to do next, thus you wont be needed as much and they can cut the average pay to include the days when you dont have much to do. At least this is how I imagine it. Keeping engineers full of work is hard sometimes. This problem is not exclusive to the IT field. Freelance is a true solution to optimising the workload, I guess. Thats a complex and annoying topic, though.

Great content! You give hope that, after a while, it will be possible to get remote gigs even in Japan. But obviously, we need to climb the ladder first, having the first work experiences, some references, completed projects, and experience with Japanese culture. No book/theory/videos can prepare us for that.

Just wondering what is your plan after age 40?

I get the same in cybersecurity + bonus + RSU and full remote, far from over-tourism infested Tokyo or Osaka. Also, why Japan ? if you are freelance, you don't need to live in Japan....

Extremely motivating!! Yep, I agree with you on all points. excellent information as well. Current plan is getting an entry level job and grind my ass off for 2-3 years, then I can consider freelancing

quite invently you have.

I wouldn't call these a freelance jobs. It's a contractor job. Sometimes these contractor companies will have the whole projects or sometimes just lease single people to the projects to large corporations. This sector is really big in Poland. The argument that you raised about how much they actually charge, how much cut they get as a middleman is invalid because as a freelancer you can't access the large corp projects because they can't be bothered with dealing with individuals. They go to a contractor companies like Levtech to get their people.

i wonder if there are any jobs i could do in IT. I've about 10 yrs exp working with Unity and c# but I come from a game dev background, have skills with 3d modelling, coding, graphic design, collaborating on github.My wife is Japanese, I speak it fairly well (doubt it's good enough for business communication) so I have a pr visa. We live in Fukuoka. I'm already 46 yrs old though so my guess is that it would be not ideal. Have you met people with a similar background in your journey?

The question is, how many years of experience in Japan do you need to be hired as a senior ninja??

Interesting! Looks like one of the few markets that are still holding up. It seems that the competition to get jobs are getting insane in most of the western world, I've only seen better in central and eastern europe. If you are trying to live a good life than these countries seem a better alternative than the western counterparts.

I'm still in university so I have a long way to go but for future reference it's really interesting to see that there are these kinds of job options in Japan

3k-5k a month in japan 😂😂 you definitely chose to pay more than necessary

how to get visa if you working as a freelancer?

I was here for DogeDoggggg!

very interesting, ill be moving to japan in about 3 years, and will have about 7 years of software engineering experience by then. This gives me some hope at finding some freelance work while I get settled in. what area in Japan do you live in?

Do you have a portfolio that you can link? I'm an individual but I have a website idea and am considering options.

Please include website link?

Great Video! Keep it up!

Hello Sir, I am a 20-year-old student from India, currently pursuing a degree in commerce. I would like to know if there are career opportunities for me in Japan after I graduate.

Yeah, on a weekly basis I've been making anywhere from 40% to 200% of my weekly entry level dev salary I get from the Japanese company by doing Shopify stuff on Upwork in my free time. To clarify, I'm comparing my weekly income from my full-time job vs. my weekly income from Upwork freelancing. This has been continuing for about a month now. Contrary to one of your opening statements, I'm wondering if this surge in Upwork freelancing contracts is just a boom or if it's viable in the long term. If the growth steadily continues for the rest of this year I might have to reconsider my entire life lol

Any foreigner wont be making anywhere near close to $40k usd, especially in the first year.

I am 41 and still doing it :) (as a freelancer for the past 13 years).

Is it possible to start part-time freelance? Already a freelancer abroad and I'll get there to study with the 28-hour-per-week limit. Dollar > yen, BUT that won't get me connections and possible jobs for after the study visa.

Luke smith :fire:

What I learned from this video is that I’m not mentally tough enough for the 3 months thing for sure… I already get too much anxiety just from imagining the senior dev being disappointed I couldn’t remember something 😬 The “freedom“ sounds nice but I also like the stability and sense of belonging of an office, also why I couldn’t do fully remote. Plus it makes doing taxes easier (since I’m American I would have to file those too even in Japan 😒)

did you know get permanent visa?

Love your videos! Keep it up!

I love this content!

There's a reason why most Japanese IT companies don't allow 副業 (side jobs), even though it's perfectly legal for employees to do so. They're asserting control over you and to stop you from realizing your real market value.

yes i did find this an informative video but do keep your dog in your lap for future vids like at the end lol

As a lost 23 year old, you changed my whole perspective on working. thank you.

Interesting hearing about the age thing. I know a lot of companies get new blood on board to burn out with less friction or opinion (revolving door hires). Keen to see this new community thing. In agreeance with all said, especially having itchy feet and the fulfilment aspect of grinding towards your own personal goals. Imo, Golden handcuffs are good if you have a plan on how to utilise the money you make and the gig is short term. I've seen a lot of coworkers go through redundancies with no plan and it's pretty hard to observe. Freelance is definitely the harder route but like you said, you are more in control of your life.

yeah people in Japan, all of the japanese engineering youtube channels I watch they talk CONSTANTLY about free lance engineering lol. After i get experience in a company for a few years I will look into these sites and start doing freelancing, I heard from them even backend languages such as Golang work for freelancing. at first I thought it was only for frontend dev but I was wrong.

You're referencing to a sense of purpose and direction. I have been doing that (but sadly not in Japan) and I share the perspective. Good sharings. Thanks.

awesome video. totally makes sense. company drama is next level in Japan. 11:12 I feel attacked lol.

Only 1k views. You fell off.

I would also ask my question, have you heard anything about the Semiconductors or Compilers industry in Japan? I know that Semiconductor firms are usually hiring Compiler Developers which is my specialty. I am wondering if it's possible to get a job in Japan doing Compiler Development. An additional question, is it possible to work remotely in a Japanese company, and live in a rural area? If you have an internet connection? The reason why, I want to grow my own vegetables and live in a rural area. Living in a big crowded city is not good for my health. I prefer to live in a rural area. I have heard of old houses in Japan being sold. However I do not know if this is feasible? Can a foreigner buy a house with some land in a rural area? In general I feel drawn to Medieval Japanese culture vs Western culture. I mean, if I ever moved to Japan I would convert to Shinto, and wear wooden shows on raised platforms.

Just commenting on "I can't get a mortgage". While you can't get a cheap mortgage from a major bank, you should be able to qualify for a FLAT35 based on your last 12 months salary. It's backed by the government with very flexible rules, although it's not the best rates (like last year FLAT35 would be 1.5% while banks offered as low as 0.5%)

oh great i am vietnamese. are u living in japan or vietnam now?

I dont know why u speaking always negative i already got IT job in Japan from India.

I don't get the context of this video 😅

reason 7. Japanese work culture suck.

reason 6. you can't work

So generally speaking is this the end for most western developer's chance to get to Japan? (Unless you become a manager, super specialized, or work for a big western/faang company?)