First, some background- I am a foreigner who was working at the Japanese HQ in a business unit, not an engineer. I was a mid-career hire (not a new grad) who came in with about 5 years experience in my field.
Rakuten has a miserable company culture. From insane levels of micro-management, expected and unpaid overtime work, extremely low pay with barebones benefits (the legal bare minimum of paid time off, zero retirement benefits, no work from home, etc.), to being given responsibilities that actually amount to a step backwards in your career, spending the working day at Rakuten was a very negative experience. Oh, and when you join the company, you get absolutely nothing- no garbage can, no notebook, not even a single pen. Rakuten takes zero effort in making new employees feel welcome, and it's no wonder the turnover is so high.
At the beginning of my career there, I was told to, "Be sure to stay overtime a few times a week, just to show your manager that you are engaged in your job." In this way, results don't matter at Rakuten. What matters is just sitting at your desk, and being there physically (even if, like a majority of the company, you are simply wasting time chatting with other coworkers on Viber). You aren't promoted for your efforts, but are instead promoted every six months (by an insulting amount of around 8000 yen a month) simply for staying at Rakuten.
Rakuten is such a bloated organization with so much redundancy that large numbers of the workforce don't do anything all day (except Viber, Facebook, etc.). If you want to do nothing all day, Rakuten may be a good place for you. It is not a good place for people who are motivated to develop their careers and gain new experiences. Additionally, you can't move up because the clueless middle managers don't support you, don't give you initiatives to evolve your career, and really don't give any direction at all. They are only managers because they have been at Rakuten physically for several years. Upper management, on the other hand, is almost always hired externally. Employees will almost never move up in the organization, and this is even more true for non-Japanese employees.
You are never rewarded for doing a good job, but are scolded to almost laughable amounts if you make a mistake. As one example, I forgot to lock my desk once before going home. My superior then felt it was appropriate to: 1) message me on Viber on a Friday night telling me I forgot to lock my desk, 2) bring it up at the morning team meeting on Monday, 3) send an email to me, CCing my team members and boss, saying that I forgot to lock my desk, and 4) place a piece of paper with "CLOSE!" written in red letters inside of my desk. All for one fairly benign mistake. Just one example of how Rakuten treats its employees like children, does not trust any of their employees (security cameras ALL OVER the office spaces/cafeteria/everywhere), and makes working there miserable in general.
Lots of gossip, slander, and backstabbing at Rakuten. Managers will steal your ideas so that they get credit. One lady in upper management openly talks about employees' salaries, brags about her own salary and how much her MBA cost (she told me $200K USD), spreads rumors about other employees, and engages in name calling regularly.
I could go on and on with more examples, but this post would become much too long. And among all of this, they tried to implement something called the "Smile Project." Indeed, the CEO thinks that all of the problems at his company can be solved by getting employees to greet each other by fist bumping. This is not a joke! They even have reminders in the elevators to please fist bump each other, but in elevator-friendly silence.
The real icing on the cake is listening to the CEO at the Tuesday morning asakai meetings. While Rakuten's employees are getting paid far, far below the industry average, employees are "privileged" enough to watch live streams of the CEO's unfocused, meandering, broken-English reports from and bragging about his home in Silicon Valley, his suite in New York, etc., etc.
A terrible company that I can only recommend as a stepping stone to joining a better company after putting in 6 months to a year of enduring this awful place.
