Pros
- Free Lunch - Some very good people - A chance to live in Tokyo There are some excellent people in the company. Lunch is free which definitely helps because your salary will be very low. It's also a great chance to live in Tokyo if you have the skills they are looking for.
Cons
- Management - Culture - Compensation - Work-life balance - Very passive and risk-averse culture that stifles good ideas and people's passion - Revolving door of personnel - HR Department Management is extremely top down and completely uncommunicative. Nothing ever gets done because there is a culture of covering up problems. Data is not used to draw conclusions; it gets used to fit the narrative and agendas that managers want to present. This is true through all layers of management. On top of that, the CEO is probably the most narcissistic person I've ever met in my life. He does not listen to his management team (most of whom are too afraid to go against him anyway), and acts like a spoiled child when things do not turn out how he wants them to. On top of the awful management, you have an HR team that simply isn't doing it's job. They don't deal with anything. Problems like sexual harassment are routinely swept under the rug. When things to get out of hand, the typical way to solve the issue is to blame the victim and transfer that employee to some office out of the way where they can be ignored and forgotten. To compensate employees for having to work under such a dysfunctional company, you are provided a less than average salary and bonus. There are few opportunities for advancement. Pay grade is by and large determined by how long you have managed to tolerate working at the company. The only way up is to stay for years. It's no wonder that turnover in my department was close to 50% during the time I worked at Rakuten.
