TokyoDev’s 2024 Recap: Challenges, Milestones, and the Road Ahead

In 2023, I scaled TokyoDev from a one-man operation to a team. The idea was to get some tasks off my plate, but while I’ve succeeded at passing off responsibilities to others, I somehow didn’t gain any more free time. This is because working with new people also created new ideas and opportunities, which I haven’t been able to pass up.

In 2024, we saw the first fruits of this collaboration, achieving things I never would have been able to pull off by myself. For instance, we started producing Japanese-language content teaching employers how to build international teams, had a sponsor booth at Japan’s largest Ruby conference, brought the developer community and our clients together through events, and built an editing process that increased the overall quality of our content, and found new contributors who have written some extremely popular articles.

As the year winds to a close, I’ve been reflecting on both these accomplishments and the challenges we’ve faced, and how they’re paving the way for what is to come.

65 developers got a job via TokyoDev

In 2024, we tracked 65 developers who were successfully hired after applying for a position on TokyoDev. This number was down from last year’s 71 developers. Interestingly, while the total number of hires decreased, the number of companies that hired successfully went up, from 29 to 31.

One reason for fewer hires was that several of our most successful clients shifted their focus away from non-Japanese speaking engineers in favour of fluent Japanese speakers. TokyoDev has always been most successful at helping companies with hiring talented engineers with little-to-no Japanese skills, and so with their change in focus, we haven’t been able to help them to the same degree as last year.

However, another factor was simply timing. We count successful hires based upon when we receive a fee for them. The time between when a company posts a job to when we receive the fee is typically 3–6 months, as it takes a while for a company to interview candidates, make offers, secure visas, and so on.

This means that, even though we currently have a lot of successful hires in the pipeline, they won’t be reflected in this year’s stats. For instance, while we had six successful hires per month in January and February 2024, we have nine projected successful hires in both January and February 2025

I’m optimistic about how we’re going to do next year.

60 articles written by 19 authors

One of our greatest accomplishments in 2024 was establishing a repeatable editing process that has allowed us to create extremely high-quality articles. The top five articles by number of visitors were:

How I Got a Digital Nomad Visa for Japan by Christian Mack
The English Paradox: Four Decades of Life and Language in Japan by Tom Gally
The rise and fall of D&D in Japan by Masaki Yanagida
How I obtained a J-FIND visa in Japan by Oguzhan Karagözoglu
Japan Needs International Developers by Rebecca Callahan

The cool thing is that four of the five articles draw upon external contributors’ unique personal experiences, which allowed them to share information with our community that no one else could.

Besides our English articles, we also launched a new sub-site that’s helping Japanese companies build global engineering teams. It’s still in its infancy, but we already have 18 articles for it, and we have some other great ideas for the coming year.

18 developer stories published

We write developer stories to highlight the experiences of employees at our client companies to give candidates a better understanding of what it’s actually like to work there. This year, we released 18 developer stories. The top five stories by number of visitors were:

814 developers answered our survey

Since 2019, TokyoDev has conducted an annual survey of international software developers living in Japan. The 2024 edition was the biggest yet, with 814 developers sharing details on their salaries, working conditions, and the technologies they use.

I’ve had people tell me how useful our survey is—some even used it to negotiate better salaries when applying for jobs—so I’m glad it has continued to grow and add to the community.

2,800+ people joined our Discord server

In 2024, over 2,800 people joined TokyoDev’s Discord server. This community has proved incredibly valuable. Not only has it helped people get their lives up and running in Japan, but it also has been a great source of inspiration for article topics, and a way to find potential contributors to the site.

7 events hosted

In 2024, we continued to expand the in-person meetups we held. Highlights included a pair of events in Okinawa during Ruby Kaigi, an excellent beer garden in collaboration with WAY equity partners (at least I hear it was good, I got COVID the day before), and the launch of our TokyoDev Talks.

5 organizations sponsored

TokyoDev owes its origins to the developer community in Japan, so it’s important to me that we use our success to give back to it. We have continued to do this through supporting the following organizations:

RubyKaigi: The main Ruby conference in Japan. Attending the 2010 edition was what inspired me to start blogging on this site.
Rails Girls Japan: Holds free workshops to help women pick up Ruby on Rails.
Tokyo Test Fest: The first edition of an international software quality conference in Japan.
Women In Technology Japan: A community that bridges the gender gap in tech and promotes diversity and inclusion in Japan.
Women Who Code: This one was heartbreaking for me, as they went bankrupt almost immediately after our sponsorship. That community was succeeded by Women in Software Engineering Japan, where I’m serving as an advisor.

9 people contributed to our team

Besides the contributors who wrote articles for the site or made illustrations for them, we have a number of people doing work for us on an ongoing basis.

Daniel López Prat improved the infrastructure that runs the TokyoDev site, including adding additional monitoring and keeping our libraries up to date.
Keiko Kimoto helped with translation and other administrative tasks, including helping us obtain a trademark for TokyoDev.
Mathieu Mayer helped with product design, UX, and frontend development, such as refreshing our articles index.
Michelle Tan conducted developer story interviews and helped with full stack development by building things like an admin interface for our clients to use.
Rebecca Callahan interviewed contributors, wrote articles for us, and led our editorial team and process.
Sacha Greif continued to refine the software that runs our survey, and helped with creating this year’s survey.
Sayana Takagi acted as our client representative and led the creation of our sub-site aimed at Japanese companies.
Scott Rothrock moderated our Discord community, wrote articles for us, and contributed to our editorial team and process.

Looking ahead to 2025

We have a number of exciting things in the works. We’re in the planning phase of several in-person events and have plans to sponsor more communities, and are also working on a new way of connecting international developers with Japanese companies that I hope to be able to talk about soon.

Thanks to everyone who has supported us this year. I’m looking forward to continuing to grow together through the next!