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What is considered good salary in Japan

FYI avaerage salary in Japan is about 4.5 million yen. Average, so older folks tend to make more and younger tend to make less. But the “average” salaryman with a 30 year mortgage on his mansion outside of Tokyo and his wife and 1.2 kids is earning less than 5.

Perspective.
 
Maxblack said:
FYI avaerage salary in Japan is about 4.5 million yen. Average, so older folks tend to make more and younger tend to make less. But the “average” salaryman with a 30 year mortgage on his mansion outside of Tokyo and his wife and 1.2 kids is earning less than 5.

Perspective.
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I think thats the average wage not the average salaryman wage. 4.5 includes people working in retail etc on 200k pm. Average salaryman is more like 7 Id say, and Id back that up by the fact that all the real estate firms targeting 'average salarymen' (they use this term in Japanese in their ads) to buy apartment buildings in the countryside are specifically targeting people on 7 million yen and up, people that assumed they couldn't do things like real estate investments.

ps dont invest in these schemes.
 
5M in early twenties seems good. Most college grad new hires make about that much. Monthly salary around 250k but there is the bonus and housing allowance. Typical Japanese companies still give the standard 5-6 months.

Most of the young people I’ve hired have been around 5M unless they have fluent English then might be bumped up in the 6M range.

I’m not in a big company so most staff in 40s are around 7-8M with everything. Department heads would make a little more than 10M.
 
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strangely depressing thread.
For anything semi-tolerable, then i consider anything above 5M (gross) a good salary. I have modest needs.

i won't consider any amount of salary sufficient, If i have to stay at the office 60+hours/week as is typical in Japanese workplaces. Yeah, i'm a 'spoilt' millennial. 40 hours/week is the limit for me.
 
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Durg50 said:
Wow, an average fund manager salary is 7 million? I want to know what funds are being managed by someone on that salary and keep investments well away!
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ETFs probably . They dont even need a human manager :D
 
Wasn't there some concept in Japan about baseball players making 10 million, becoming a benchmark for everyone to compare their salaries to...?
 
Nikkei Guy said:
Most of the young people I’ve hired have been around 5M unless they have fluent English then might be bumped up in the 6M range.
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Same here. I remember the surprised face of one particular college grad when I said the expected starting salary would be in the 5-6 million range, it was way above expectation apparently. But I've seem similar statistics as mentioned above about the average household income being around 5.5 million for a family of two plus kids. That must be the national average though, can't believe that would work out in Tokyo.
 
Sudsy said:
She's about 155cm tall, cute, curvy, and favours short skirts.....
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Well, she is a bit tall for me but otherwise sounds like a girl I would write COBOL for.
 
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Durg50 said:
These numbers are pulled out of the arse of hungover 23 year old recruitment consultants working at robert walters. They bare some semblance of truth but their methods dont hold up to much scrutiny.
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Well, I was not seeking for "exact" numbers. I needed guideline that would draw my understanding of situation. And I have received what I was seeking for.
 
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warubuta said:
Yes! A real treasure! I suggest you print it out, highlight all of the positions that you might want, and wave it in front of you bosses face. "Look boss! I like this job! This report says you have to pay me 10 million yen!"
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Well, not to that extent, but I have started preparation for something like that after I would pull another big project for my boss in next 2 months :cool:.
 
psd said:
I'd code COBOL in return for 円, my personal life is satisfying enough that I don't really need any particular job satisfaction.
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OMG-OMG-OMG! It happened that I also know COBOL to some extent. Actually I was knowing it really well (like 4 years ago), since my first 3 years of working after graduation was in bank on huge COBOL system. But after that I left COBOL since I wasn't able to find well payed job in my country with it. If you can tell me what is requirements for COBOL devs here (and estimate salary of course :sneaky:) and advice me where I can send my CV I would be utterly happy:cat:.
 
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MikeH said:
Well, she is a bit tall for me but otherwise sounds like a girl I would write COBOL for.
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Man, if you know modern programming languages and approaches than you shouldn't speak like that. COBOL to modern programming languages like ancient Egyptian writings to modern English. How that language is structured can easily mindblow modern developers. I was actually mindblowed for first 3 months in the bank before I returned to my feelings and started to understand that shit little by little. And that is considering that I was really familiar with some low level staff like pure C.
 
Anyway guys, thanks for a lot of information. I didn't expect to receive so much useful replies actually.
 
ShikkokuNoSenshi said:
OMG-OMG-OMG! It happened that I also know COBOL to some extent. Actually I was knowigt it really well (like 4 years ago), since my first 3 years of working after graduation was in bank on huge COBOL system. But after that I left COBOL since I wasn't able to find well payed job in my country with it. If you can tell me what is requirements for COBOL devs here (and estimate salary of course :sneaky:) and advice me where I can send my CV I would be utterly happy:cat:.
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Sorry, I'm speaking hypothetically. I have no contacts in programming, certainly not in COBOL, although I do know a guy programming in RPGIV.
 
ShikkokuNoSenshi said:
Man, if you know modern programming languages and approaches than you shouldn't speak like that. COBOL to modern programming languages like ancient Egyptian writings to modern English.
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Dude, you are speaking to a guy who started with assembler because nothing else was not available. And at the time I finally went to university they taught COBOL as the language to learn.
 
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MikeH said:
Dude, you are speaking to a guy who started with assembler because nothing else was not available. And at the time I finally went to university they taught COBOL as the language to learn.
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I didn't expect you to be that ancient :ROFLMAO:. And assembler is actually more logical than COBOL as for me. But it actually SO SLOW to develop in it and you have to think literally about everything. But COBOL itself is so strange if compared to any currently popular language....
 
ShikkokuNoSenshi said:
Well, not to that extent, but I have started preparation for something like that after I would pull another big project for my boss in next 2 months :cool:.
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Great. Let us know how that goes. But rather than those suspect salary figures, your weapon of choice should be a detailed spreadsheet showing exactly what the value of your project is to the company plus few ideas for similar but even more profitable projects. That’s the carrot. The whip: In an indirect and unthreatening way, give him the idea that you might be looking for another job. A good way to do this is wear a suit to work on a day when you have requested an afternoon off. Looks like you might be going to an interview. Or think up something similar. Whatever you do, don’t be stupid about it. I know. It’s a lot to ask.
 
ShikkokuNoSenshi said:
I didn't expect you to be that ancient :ROFLMAO:.
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I am both ancient and lucky to have started when I was just a tiny person. I got access to a real computer when I was about ten and that was a time when even the TV games were not yet in existence.

It helped later as my first ever paid job in Japan was developing an operating system in assembler. Full disclosure: I never have worked in paid position coding Cobol. There is a limit for every person, even for me.
 
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User#8628 said:
I'm missing the joke here, whats the horror about Cobol?
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Jokes, especially nerd jokes, should never be explained as it just reveals how bad they were in the beginning. :p

Cobol is an ancient programming language that originates from 50's. It's designed by a governmental committee and the syntax is English-like and very wordy. Basically what you could do in some other languages in few lines would take Cobol several pages of writing; or at least that's how it felt.

However it was used by many big corporations like banks and insurance companies to build their whole systems. When the new languages run circles around Cobol the number of people who were proficient in it went down but the systems still needed maintaining. And being huge systems that were run 24/7 making changes and fixing errors were tough; thus everyone was happy to avoid any of that.
 
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MikeH said:
Jokes, especially nerd jokes, should never be explained as it just reveals how bad they were in the beginning. :p

Cobol is an ancient programming language that originates from 50's. It's designed by a governmental committee and the syntax is English-like and very wordy. Basically what you could do in some other languages in few lines would take Cobol several pages of writing; or at least that's how it felt.

However it was used by many big corporations like banks and insurance companies to build their whole systems. When the new languages run circles around Cobol the number of people who were proficient in it went down but the systems still needed maintaining. And being huge systems that were run 24/7 making changes and fixing errors were tough; thus everyone was happy to avoid any of that.
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Executive Summary.
It was invented by a woman so it's rather "wordy".
 
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Durg50 said:
I think thats the average wage not the average salaryman wage. 4.5 includes people working in retail etc on 200k pm. Average salaryman is more like 7 Id say, and Id back that up by the fact that all the real estate firms targeting 'average salarymen' (they use this term in Japanese in their ads) to buy apartment buildings in the countryside are specifically targeting people on 7 million yen and up, people that assumed they couldn't do things like real estate investments.

ps dont invest in these schemes.
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then it also includes the other side of highly paid non salarymen
 
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