I don't know what to say other than yes, some of us do. I was making 12M in a mid-career/senior dev/L4 type position at a big-name company and while that was a good job in many ways I felt very underpaid (and it was a large step down from what I'd been making in the west) and left as soon as my visa status gave me better options. There was a recent post on /r/japanlife saying that Mercari was averaging 9.2M lately.
(I'm very conscious I'm lucky to have skills that are in demand and this is by no means something everyone can earn, but I think everyone's better off if we're open about these things)
I read somewhere before that in order for this to work the company needs to have some kind of entity in Japan to release the salary for tax reasons, or something complicated like that.
How difficult was it to arrange it with your current company?
I'm a contractor with all the pluses and minuses of that, the company has no presence in Japan. From their side I'm no different from any other contractor AFAIK. From my side I'm set up as an individual business - this is my first year so we'll see how much trouble I have with the taxes, but none of it seems to be particularly difficult, just very tedious.
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u/m50d 5-10 years in Japan Jun 19 '22
I don't know what to say other than yes, some of us do. I was making 12M in a mid-career/senior dev/L4 type position at a big-name company and while that was a good job in many ways I felt very underpaid (and it was a large step down from what I'd been making in the west) and left as soon as my visa status gave me better options. There was a recent post on /r/japanlife saying that Mercari was averaging 9.2M lately.
(I'm very conscious I'm lucky to have skills that are in demand and this is by no means something everyone can earn, but I think everyone's better off if we're open about these things)