TokyoDev Developer Survey 2024

Those who were employed as a permanent employee had a median compensation of ¥9.5 million, while those as contract employees or temporary workers had a median compensation of ¥6.5 million.

The less a respondent could work fully remotely, the more likely they were to be looking for a job. 39% of respondents who could not work remotely were looking for a job, compared to 10% of those who could work fully remotely.

The total compensation of respondents varied significantly by role among junior respondents but less so among senior respondents. For respondents with 1-3 years of professional experience, full-stack developers had a median compensation of ¥4.5 million, whereas data scientists or machine learning specicialists had a median compensation of ¥8.5 million. For senior respondents with 10+ years of experience, the median compensation was ¥10.5 million for full-stack developers and ¥11.5 for data scientists or machine learning specialists.

61% of respondents who were born in Japan worked at a company where the majority of their engineering colleagues were Japanese, compared to only 19% of those who were not born in Japan.

Respondents who said all of their engineering colleagues were Japanese had the lowest compensation, with a median of ¥5.5 million.

When all of a respondent's non-engineer colleagues were non-Japanese, 97% worked on an engineering team where all their colleagues were non-Japanese. The reverse wasn't true though. When all of a respondent's non-engineer colleagues were Japanese, only 29% worked on an engineering team where all their colleagues were Japanese.

Given that only 40% of respondents said they spoke Japanese at a professional level, it's not surprising that only 32% of respondents said they frequently or always used Japanese with their colleagues.

Respondents who frequently or always used English had the highest compensation, with a median of ¥9.5 million. Those who never used or rarely used English had the lowest compensation, with a median of ¥5.5 million. These respondents also had the lowest median years of professional experience. However, even when controlling for experience, those who never or rarely used English had the lowest compensation.

The gender of engineering colleagues wasn't correlated with the gender of the recipient.

72% of respondents regularly worked 40 hours or less per week.

Those who were not looking for a job reported aspects of their workplace as being positive at a much higher rate than those who were actively looking. For instance, while 82% of respondents who were not looking for a job said they were satisfied with their working conditions, only 48% of those who were looking for a job said the same.

Those who had to attend an office were more negative about their workplace than those who could work fully remotely on every aspect we surveyed except job security. Company culture was especially negative for those who could not work remotely, with 53% saying it was a negative aspect of their job, compared to 20% of those who could work fully remotely.