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How and why I built Japan Dev

japan-dev.com

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Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#161
post #160
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks a lot! Here's the basic stack: • Rails API • Vue SPA w/ ViteJS • MySQL • K8s on Digital Ocean • Cloudflare worker + caching • Bento for emails • Algolia for search / filters I wouldn't recommend using a client-side rendered application for a project like this though... that was a mistake. Tons of headaches with SEO, social media sharing etc.

Can you explain more about these headaches? So far i'm still convinced of client side SPAs :D

To see your page content, crawlers need to load your JS and wait for it to hydrate the page.

Google does this (but it's still not ideal). Most other crawlers don't. That means they won't see your rendered content.

This becomes an issue with sharing on social media, because your meta tags won't be read properly. If you share a blog post on Twitter for example, it won't be able to fetch your og:image, title etc so it won't look good.

To fix that, you have to use prerendering or server-side rendering. I'm doing hacky stuff with prerendering inside a Cloudflare worker where it detects that it's a crawler and prerenders the page if so.

SPAs also tend to have slow initial load times, which is becoming increasingly important for SEO. You can't avoid at least one additional network call after loading the initial HTML, and if you're not careful you can end up with chained requests for different components etc.

For sites like mine that rely on SEO and social media, it's a pretty big annoyance.

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#162
post #3

I'm getting a blank page. Looking at the source, there is no static content on it, only JS. I have JS turned on, but it seems CORS is blocking loading of JS. Cross-Origin Request Blocked: The Same Origin Policy disallows reading the remote resource at https://static.cloudflareinsights.com/beacon.min.js/v652eace1692a40cfa3763df669d7439c1639079717194. (Reason: CORS request did not succeed). None of the “sha512” hashes…

Same issue, looks like some uBlock Origin filter list is blocking it.

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#163
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really interesting. Here in the UK you can set up a limited company (i.e. if the company goes out of business, you are not personally liable for any debts) in about a day and there's no collateral requirement at all.

a lot of people overlook the UK - in terms of the simplicity of doing business. from favourable taxes etc. however the biggest con in the uk, is unmotivated people.

In what sense? I've worked with people around the world from a base in the UK and to be honest, don't find staff in other countries are much different. Certainly the quality of output doesn't seem any better.

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#165

Japan has the highest income tax bracket, horrible working culture (confucian hierarchy, ijime, overtime expected to be norm), no mental health support and to top it off a non-competitive corporate taxation. All of my native Japanese engineers who can speak modicum of English is leaving it to work abroad. I know many startups and companies have pulled out due to the inflexibility of the government (you need to be pro…

[deleted]

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#166
post #155

I really enjoyed reading this and I hate reading. How did you go from 12 months of no revenue to actually generating revenue? Did you provide your service for free w/o any payment options? I imagine job seekers were free to use the board but companies were required to pay to post on your board. Did it basically take 12 months to gain enough traction with job seekers to entice employers to post on your board instead o…

We made it free to post jobs, and then charged a fee upon successful hire. So that made it a win-win for companies. We promote your jobs for free, if you don't hire anyone you've lost nothing, and even if you DO hire someone, it's for a lower fee than you're used to paying recruiters. So the hard part was actually attracting applicants. Ultimately we used SEO + blogging, our email list, a bit of paid advertising and…

Ah ok, thank you for the response and congratulations on your sucess!

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#167
post #5

People interested in this article might also like this list of salary figures for japan. https://opensalary.jp/en/

Good to see the Japanese are in line with western society's unreasonable job expectations.

This first one was pretty typical of the job market and it's complete disconnect of what these positions truly pay.

* Additional Information

* Gender: Male

* Education Level: Masters Degree

* Age: late 20s

* Wage 31k annually

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#168

Thanks for helping surface these. The sad fact, though, is that Japanese IT salaries even at the "good" companies are still a fraction of the global market rate. I was recently approached for an engineering management role at the innovation wing of $JAPANESE_MEGACORP (and I see they're one of your customers!). Alas, the top of their range was around half of what I'm getting paid in Singapore, and that's before accoun…

Japan's tech job market is not similar to other countries though. I can bet you that $JAPANESE_MEGACORP you speak of is well known for paying below market rates. The salary bands in Japan are the following- gaishikei (FAANGs) > Japanese Startups > Japanese Software tech Megacorps > Japanese non-Software tech Megacorps > Everyone else (basically minimum wage)

So basically they're in line with western society and it's disconnect to real wages

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan's tech job market is not similar to other countries though. I can bet you that $JAPANESE_MEGACORP you speak of is well known for paying below market rates. The salary bands in Japan are the following- gaishikei (FAANGs) > Japanese Startups > Japanese Software tech Megacorps > Japanese non-Software tech Megacorps > Everyone else (basically minimum wage)

So basically they're in line with western society and it's disconnect to real wages

In normal high-tech countries the domestic software megacorps match or exceed FAANG salaries. Spotify & Booking in Europe, RazorPay & Flipkart in India, Gojek in SEA all match or exceed FAANG salaries but not in Japan

Re: How and why I built Japan Dev

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically they're in line with western society and it's disconnect to real wages

In normal high-tech countries the domestic software megacorps match or exceed FAANG salaries. Spotify & Booking in Europe, RazorPay & Flipkart in India, Gojek in SEA all match or exceed FAANG salaries but not in Japan

Which is incredibly odd, makes you think what was compensation like during Japan's early tech boom of the 80s and 90s?
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