Rakuten reviews

3.6

71% would recommend to a friend

(3,542 total reviews)
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Hiroshi Mikitani

78% approve of CEO

56% positive business outlook

Rakuten has an employee rating of 3.6 out of 5 stars, based on 3,542 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Rakuten employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Tecnologías de la información industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

4K reviews
2.0
Mar 12, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- free meals (this can also be a con, since they use it to coerce you to stay in the office longer) - new office building - great peers, genuinely talented and good people

Cons

- high turnover rate (especially of foreign employees, probably due to the points listed below) - within the building, all vending machines and convenience stores require payment by Rakuten Edy card. - inadequate onboarding and "mentoring" for mid-career hires (I was left to my own devices for almost two weeks because no one else on my team even knew what I was supposed to be doing, also I was never informed of my team watching Asakai from our own floor and not the 4F conference hall. I've heard of similar accounts from other foreign co-workers) - mandatory weekly Asakai (morning meeting) which is mostly meaningless because it's required to be in English with 1-2 minute robotic presentations done factory-line style. Look around every time and you'll see about 1/3 of the people around you are asleep. - the company's outward image does not match the experience from within. The company boasts about being a global innovation company but is still very much a traditional Japanese work environment. Lots of rules which make you feel like an elementary school student (if you're late to Asakai, you'll be placed in a "Tardy Room" as punishment), bureacracy, heirarchy, and company politics, tons of useless meetings, any attempts to bring about new changes will either take months or will be denied. Business units use very outdated processes and methods (like using Excel as a word processor, or to track project status) - bizarre cult-like worship of CEO Hiroshi Mikitani. Meanwhile he uses his weekly Asakai speeches to brag about his famous "friends" while in Silicon Valley - frustrating elevator scheme. Mornings mean long lines due to the lack of flex time, with elevators that only stop at certain floors. The rest of the time, the elevators will only stop at even or odd numbered floors depending on the month - no sick days, and the CEO regularly dodges any questions about introducing them

2.0
Mar 10, 2016

Works hard at keeping appearances

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The closest you can suffer to a Japanese company without suffering a Japanese company. Free food.

Cons

Lures you to stay at the office for longer hours with free food. Since you won't make enough money to pay for anything, you have to take whatever scraps they give you. Hours of pointless meetings a week. "Attendance" - is this middle school?

2.0
Dec 16, 2015

Decent place (Not Recommended for Foreigners)

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

People are exposed to different businesses with good and various working opportunities inside the company.

Cons

Want people to do too much work at a very less pay. Englishnization is a big myth and english is neither spoken nor written in some of departments. Management has no idea of what is going on in their departments and listen, promote only japanese employees.

Viewing 220 - 222 of 3,542 Reviews

Glassdoor has 4,194 Rakuten reviews submitted anonymously by Rakuten employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Rakuten is right for you.