-Free meals but the # of employees exceeds cafeteria capacity, so it almost feels like you're in a third world sweatshop when eating meals. If you go during peak hours (12:15-12:45), it'll take you a good 10 minutes to get your food and another 10 minutes to find a seat. I should mention that Rakuten is so stingy when it comes to electricity bills that the cafeteria is barely air conditioned.
-Low pay. Your monthly pretax salary is 300,000 yen. 300,000 yen x 12months = 3.6 million yen. With the current exchange rate of 120yen=1USD, we're looking at about $30,000/year. I should mention this is pretax, so post-tax, it'll come down to around $25,000. With living and social costs in Tokyo so high, you'll barely be saving. It's disheartening to see Ivy League and Stanford grads making less than what a HS janitor would make back in the US. Rakuten also does not have any retirement funds, so all our friends back in the US and Europe who have a head start on their 401k's will have a lot, LOT more money than you guys in retirement when you return to your respective country. I should also mention that the two bonuses for your first year, at least for the Ichiba department, will be 140,000yen, or about 100,000yen post-tax each, regardless of performance.
-Going off on the previous topic, possibility for a pay raise is nonexistent. Second year, your monthly salary increases to a measly 310,000yen, and it'll take another 4-5 years until it bumps up to 370,000yen. Assuming you enter at 23, you'll be nearing 30 and your salary will still be at $37,000.
-Long hours. I understand that overtime is a necessary evil. In any industry, there are busy seasons which necessitate crunch time. However, at Rakuten Ichiba, at least for the MDD (client acquisition teams) and the ECC teams (account management teams), overtime is expected. It varies by department, but it's extremely difficult to leave work before 7:30p. Your Japanese colleagues will oftentimes stay till 10:00p. For no damn reason. They pretend to do work, but they go on frequent unproductive smoke breaks, chat amongst each other, spend hours making powerpoint presentations that only take about 30 seconds to present, etc. If you're going into a sales role at Rakuten, make sure you establish the "I'm going to leave at 6pm no matter what" persona early on. Your team will guilt-trip the hell out of you, though.
-Abundance of meaningless tasks and KPIs. If you're an English native, there's a good chance that you'll be translating documents for your Japanese boss. If there's a Rakuten Eagles baseball game coming up, your boss will coerce you into buying 5 tickets out of your pocket. If you're in MDD, you'll have a KPI of making 80-100 phone calls a day. If you're an ECC, you'll be pressured to sell tens of thousands of dollars worth of Ichiba advertisements to your merchants. I should mention that ECC's aren't allowed to provide analytical feedback of the effectiveness of the ads - only vague comments like "it was good" "it was okay" "it didn't work."
-Low retention rate. 30% of your douki's will quit in the first year. Another 40-50% will likely leave by the end of the second year. This company is not the best at retaining talent because it doesn't take too long for employees to realize that there are better companies out there for foreigners in Tokyo that pay double, even triple the salary (Google, Amazon, Criteo).
-Narrow minded management. The CEO claims Rakuten to be a global company, but 95% of management in Ichiba, the largest department in the company, does not speak a lick of English and have no clue what to do with the foreign new hires.
-Incompetent HR. HR is aware of prevalent issues like sexual harassment, forced overtime, low retention rate, etc, but do absolutely nothing to address the issue. They host seemingly meaningless interviews with employees but provide no feedback whatsoever.
