(Japan HQ) Engineers: Okay for entry level to grow, but beware of bad management
Pros
(Japan HQ) A lot of open-minded and English-speaking people (outside IT team), and they are easy to talk to. The working pace is relatively slow, which is good for those who want a rather stable and less pressured type of work. It can be a good environment for new grads or entry-level engineers who need to experience and learn a lot of things. But other than that, only cons remain..
Cons
(Japan HQ) The upper management team is a very poor decision maker and not transparent, leaving both Japan and Philippines IT team members confused all the time. Unfortunately, the current IT team's upper management personnel are all non-technical guys with no technical background or experience, nor do they want to improve themselves in technical knowledge (they told me directly in the past). They will never understand when you talk deeply about your fancy technical work. In the past, the IT team was a global-minded and promising team with an almost 360-degree evaluation system. The so-called pioneers almost made it. But over the past years, key members left the company, mostly due to cultural fit issues and the company's view of engineers as a mere "support" team (you may want to read another review about the funny "DevOps" definition in Bizmates). With recent changes in managerial and upper key persons, such cultures have been fading, and they are now moving towards being a team with very traditional Japanese culture. Also, the management loves and trusts the 3rd party outsourced engineers more than their own (both JP and PH engineers). I especially feel bad for our Philippines team's counterpart, since they look like a step-son now. They are the ones who work the most as developers, and yet no proper appreciation for them. Not to mention low salary for engineers (as a comparison, my current salary is almost twice that of the same employment grade as I was in Bizmates). The moment before I left, engineers were being told what to do based on their time availability, not based on what they do best. I heard they are still doing that today. So, it doesn't matter what IT engineer you are; they will assign you to any work regardless of your expertise. This is a big red flag for every smart engineer in the world. Imagine this illustration: You are hired as a data engineer with vast experience in Python and TypeScript, but then they assign you to do a web application backend based on the ancient FuelPHP. Then, they evaluate based on your work on it, which you can't do well and not fast enough. Of course you are, because you're not the right person to do it, right? And yet, they will give you a bad score just because you can't do your job well based on your experience. That's how crazy the upper management on Japan side is. I myself was an engineer on Japan side, so I can say it's true. That's also how they evaluate the Philippines side. Another thing about Japan side is that engineers are required to have high-level Japanese skills, but are not required to have high-level engineering skills, which sounds funny to me (now you know why the quality of their products is getting worse these days). This remains true even though JP engineers work in an English environment 90% of the time (they work with the Philippines side daily, so). While other Japanese companies move towards a more global approach by facilitating and are more open to foreigners, this company does the opposite. I really doubt Bizmates can compete with their aggressive competitor until the upper management realizes how wrong their policies are.
