Takeaways
Key Takeaways
- The median salary of respondents was ¥9.5 million. 42% of respondents made ¥10 million or over.
- Respondents working at an international subsidiary earned approximately twice of those working for a Japanese company.
- Women were paid less than men across experience levels, and also less satisfied with their job.
- Only 0.5% of respondents were unemployed, down from 2% in 2021.
- Remote work continued to be the norm, with only 4% of respondents being required to work exclusively from an office.
- Only 26% of respondents reported working over 40 hours per week.
- 39% of respondents used Python, making it the second most popular programming language after JavaScript.
- React.js solidified its lead over Vue.js, increasing its share from 48% last year to 57% this year.
- Flutter developers were amongst the best paid, despite having relatively low experience.
Demographics
Where were respondents from?
This survey was conducted in English. Despite this, the respondents were incredibly diverse, representing 72 different countries. The top three nationalities were American (21%), French (8%), and British (7%).
Nationality correlated with salary
Respondents’ nationalities correlated with their salary, with those from Oceania having the highest median compensation, while those from North America had the highest 75th percentile salary. The disparity in salaries extended across experience levels.
Salary by nationality and years of experience
Where do respondents live?
85% of respondents lived in the Greater Tokyo Area (Tokyo, Saitama, Chiba, and Kanagawa).
Residency status
59% of respondents had a residency status tied to their employer (engineer, highly skilled foreign professional, or investor / business manager).
Gender
The overwhelming majority of respondents described themselves as male. While we had respondents who identify as neither male or female, we didn’t get enough responses to further segment their data while maintaining the anonymity of the individuals.
Women had lower compensation then men
Women tended to be less experienced than men, having a mean of 5 years experience compared to 8 years for men, partially explaining the difference in compensation. However, even when comparing the genders across similar experience levels, this gap in pay remained.
Men were also more likely then women to have a high paying role: while 21% of men had a role that was among the top five highest paying, only 4% of women did.
Overall
Salary by gender and years of experience
Lower compensation for women drove lower overall job satisfaction
Women were less satisfied with their job than men, with a median overall satisfaction score of 7 compared to 8 for men. This seems driven by their lower compensation, as the median satisfaction of their compensation was 6 compared to 7 for men, while other measures all had a median of 8.
Age
79% of respondents were between 25 and 39 years of age.
Salary by age
47% of respondents in their 30s made at least ¥10 million.
Professional software development experience
The median respondent had 7 years of professional software development experience, up one year from 2021’s survey.
Salary by experience
Compared with the previous year, median salary increased across experience levels, the only exception being respondents with 4 - 7 years of experience, for whom it remained unchanged.
Years lived in Japan
Respondents lived in Japan for a median of 5 years.
The majority of respondents have not spent their entire career in Japan
59% of respondents had more years of professional software development experience than years lived in Japan, indicating that they have also worked abroad.
Educational background
88% of respondents with some sort of professional qualification held a degree in computer science or a related subject.
Educational background doesn't significantly impact salary
While respondents who had attended a coding bootcamp had the lowest compensation, this appears to be because they have a median of only 2 years of professional experience. Overall, after adjusting for professional experience, educational background did not appear to have a significant effect on salary.
Salary by educational background and experience
Language ability
Only 28% of respondents spoke Japanese at a fluent level or above.
Lower Japanese ability correlated with more professional experience
With the exception of respondents who didn’t have any Japanese ability or who were native speakers, lower Japanese ability correlated with more years of professional software development experience.
Years of experience by Japanese ability
Lower Japanese ability correlated with a higher salary
With the exception of native or bilingual speakers of Japanese, lower Japanese ability correlated with a higher salary.
Job
Employment status
Only 0.5% of respondents were unemployed, down from 2% in 2021.
Job search status
Respondents who were actively looking for a new job had a median salary of ¥6.5 million, whereas for those who weren’t looking, it was ¥9.5 million. Part of the difference could be explained by those actively looking having a median of 5 years of professional experience, whereas those who weren’t had 7 years.
How people found their jobs
34% of respondents found their job via a recruiter (internal or external).
Role
74% of respondents had a role with a back-end, front-end, or full-stack component to it.
Executives and engineering managers best paid, but also most experienced
Senior executives and engineering managers were the best paying roles, but respondents were also relatively experienced.
The designer role stood out as being particularly poorly compensated as it had the lowest median pay despite respondents having above average experience.
Years of experience by role
Respondents with the role Developer, QA or test had the widest range of professional experience, with the 25th percentile having 3 years while the 75th percentile had 22.5 years.
Language usage
Japanese language usage correlated with Japanese ability, with native / bi-lingual speakers using it 80% of the time, whereas those with conversational abilities used it only 22% of the time.
Years at current employer
The median number of years at the current employer was 2.
Employer
Employer type
63% of respondents worked at a company headquartered in Japan.
International subsidiaries pay significantly better than domestically headquartered companies
The type of employer had a significant effect on compensation. While the compensation at companies headquartered in Japan remained stagnant, with a median of ¥7.5 million. Respondents working at an international subsidiary earned a median ¥14.5 million, up from ¥11.5 million the year before, significantly increasing the divide between those working for purely domestic employers.
This difference in compensation was found across experience levels, and the gap became more pronounced with more experienced respondents.
Salary by employer type and experience
Employer industry
SaaS, Finance, and E-Commerce were the most common industries.
Developers working in the HR industry best compensated
Developers working for companies in the human resources, blockchain, and advertising industries were the best paid.
Employer size
39% of respondents worked at employers with 20 to 499 employees.
Salary increased with employer size
With the exception of the smallest employers, salaries increased with the number of employees at the employer.
Nationality of colleagues
Engineering teams tended to be highly international, whereas it wasn’t uncommon for non-engineers to be mostly Japanese.
Engineers
Non-Engineers
Working Conditions
Salary
Developer salaries continued to increase. The median salary was ¥9.5 million per year, up ¥1 million from last year’s survey. This may partially be explained by respondents tending to be more experienced than the previous year.
Respondents earning ¥10 million per year or over increased from 35% of respondents in 2021 to 42% in 2022.
Remote work policy
70% of respondents either worked at a company that worked fully remotely, or who gave employees the option of working completely remotely. Only 4% of respondents were required to exclusively work from an office.
Hours worked in a typical week
55% of respondents worked 40 hours in a typical week, and only 26% of respondents reported working over 40 hours.
Days worked in a typical week
97% of permanent employees worked a five-day work week.
Paid leave policy
50% of respondents reported they received the legal minimum for leave: 10 days after 6 months, increasing by 1 day per year of service, to a maximum of 20 days.
Additional types of leave
Having national holidays off is not guaranteed under Japanese law, but 97% of respondents did receive them off.
How comfortable are you with asking for time off?
While most respondents said they were comfortable with asking for time off, perhaps this question was too vague to give meaningful data, as someone may be comfortable with asking for a day off while not being comfortable with asking for two weeks.
Satisfaction
Satisfaction
Respondents reported how satisfied they were with their current job on a scale of one to ten. The median score was 8 for all measures of satisfaction we asked for, with the exception of compensation, which had a median score of 7.
Of all the measures of satisfaction, the highest percentage were completely satisfied with their colleagues, at 24%.
Respondents making under ¥6 million less satisfied with their job
Respondents with a higher compensation scored themselves as being overall more satisfied with their job.
Unsurprisingly, the respondents satisfaction with their compensation was highly correlated with the compensation itself. While respondents with a compensation under ¥4 million had a median compensation satisfaction of 5, respondents earning over ¥16 million had a median of 9.
The weakest correlation was with colleague satisfaction, with even respondents making under ¥4 million per year having a median colleague satisfaction of 8.
Satisfaction by salary
How employer could improve job satisfaction
53% of respondents said their job satisfaction could be improved by increasing compensation. Among respondents who rated their satisfaction with compensation as 10 out 10, respondents were looking for more interesting or higher impact work.
Tech
Programming languages
Python usage increased by 4% from last year, making it the second most popular programming language. Rust usage also notably increased, from 3% to 6%.
Databases
75% of respondents used PostgreSQL or MySQL (or both) as a database.
Web frameworks
React.js solidified its lead over Vue.js, increasing its share from 48% last year to 57% this year.
Other frameworks and libraries
.NET appears to be considerably less popular in Japan than internationally. While StackOverflow’s 2022 developer survey reported 35% of respondents used it, our survey found only 15% used it.
Developer tools
With 75% of respondents using Docker, it was by far the most popular tool.
Developer environments
Visual Studio Code was respondents’ preferred IDE.
Salary by technology
Although respondents using different technologies were paid differently, this correlation seemed likely caused by their different levels of professional experience.
However, there were some standouts. Objective-C respondents were amongst the most experienced, but worst compensated, and Flutter developers were amongst the best paid, despite having relatively low experience.
Years of experience by technology
Laravel was the technology with the lowest median years of experience.