Cultural Differences Experienced by a Japanese Engineer in an Australian Company

I was born in Japan and worked for nearly three years at an Australian company until around the middle of this year. The company was a local IT consulting firm headquartered on the Gold Coast in Queensland, with local Australian clients, and I was paid in Australian dollars. I was the only Japanese employee, so naturally all communication was in English. For people from other English-speaking countries, this may not be an unusual experience. But as someone from Japan—which is very much an island nation—it was quite a unique experience for me, so I decided to write about how I ended up working there and the differences I noticed compared to Japan.

How I Came to Work at an Australian Company

At the time, I was in my late twenties. Although I worked at a Japanese company, it was somewhat global in nature, and we used English to a certain extent at work. In that environment, I gradually developed a desire to throw myself into a truly global setting. I wanted to challenge myself by actually working overseas before I turned 30, so I began to explore options such as working holiday visas and jobs abroad.

While I was looking into overseas employment, I was browsing LinkedIn and, out of the blue, I received a message from the CTO of an Australian IT consulting firm asking if I could help develop a mobile app. I was really surprised, as I hadn’t even applied for any job at that point. Apparently, their previous developer had left, and they needed someone to finish and release a mobile app that was still in progress. The project involved about 10 hours of work per week, done remotely from Japan, with just me and the CTO as the development team. The app was being developed with a JavaScript-based framework.

I didn’t have particularly deep experience in mobile app development at that time, but I felt comfortable with the technologies and programming language involved, so I took on the job. I managed to bring it to release by consulting with friends who were knowledgeable about mobile apps. After that, they asked me to help with additional development and other projects, and offered me a full-time position. I was initially unsure about it, but I figured opportunities like that don’t come around very often and decided to go for it. In hindsight, I realize I was still quite young and ready for new challenges.

Incidentally, I initially discussed the possibility of having the company sponsor my visa so I could move there, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, those plans became indefinite and eventually did not materialize.

Working in Software Development Abroad

And so began my experience in software development in a foreign country. In reality, the nature of my work didn’t change all that much. You consider the client or user requirements, design a system that meets those requirements, implement it in a programming language, test to confirm it works correctly, and then release it to production. When you think about it, those fundamental processes don’t differ much between Japan and Australia, so there were not many surprises regarding the day-to-day tasks themselves.

In that sense, it was reassuring that my past experience was still very much applicable, even in a foreign country. I rarely felt challenged by the actual work. At the same time, however, this also became a reason I sometimes felt the job wasn’t entirely fulfilling.

For any Japanese software engineers out there worried about whether you can handle software development work overseas, I’d say that if you have a decent amount of experience in Japan, you’ll generally do fine. As I’ll discuss in later sections, the cultural differences will likely pose more of a challenge. By the way, I know another Japanese person who said they struggled to adjust to Australian food culture.

English

Because I worked at a local Australian company with local clients and colleagues, and I was the only Japanese employee, a certain level of English proficiency was naturally required. All interviews were conducted in English, and the employment contract was also in English.

Even now, I wouldn’t say I’m 100% fluent in English. I’m somewhere around TOEIC 800, which is just about enough to claim “business-level” English without too much pushback. But when I first started working there, my English was even weaker, so it did feel like a high hurdle to overcome.

I studied spoken English, but while I was reasonably capable of reading and writing, speaking and listening were tougher to master. Consequently, I made an effort to communicate as much as possible through reading and writing. Still, there were times I felt panicked when I couldn’t explain something clearly in spoken English, or when a word came up in a meeting that I didn’t recognize.

Even so, my English ability was never really criticized. In the end, I think they valued my skills as a software engineer above all else, so they were willing to overlook any shortcomings in my English.

So, there’s no need to give up on working abroad just because of your English level. Skills tend to be far more in demand. Of course, it depends on the job type, but this experience reinforced my belief in the importance of demonstrable expertise.

Working Hours

Once I started working, the first thing that surprised me was the difference in working hours. It’s often said that Japanese people work too much, and I found that to be quite true when comparing it to my experience in Australia.

You might be surprised to learn that Australia actually has fewer public holidays than Japan. Public holidays vary greatly by state, but in Queensland there are about 10 public holidays a year. Meanwhile, Japan has around 16. In Japan, taking time off around New Year’s is normal—December 31st is a holiday and people often take off until January 3rd or so. In Australia, however, people work on December 31st, and generally go back to work on January 2nd.

That said, Australia has fewer weekly working hours. In my contract, I was expected to work 36 hours a week, which breaks down to 7.2 hours per day. In Japan, a full-time employee typically works 40 hours per week, or 8 hours a day.

On top of that, overtime work is not really expected in Australia. Naturally, in software development, you might be asked to work extra before or after a release or if a bug pops up. But in normal times, it’s more about output than the number of hours you spend at your desk; as long as you get your work done, nobody says much.

Overall, even though there were fewer public holidays in Australia, the total annual working hours were lower than in Japan. Let’s do a quick calculation with 260 weekdays in a year:

• (260 - 10) × 7.2 = 1,800 hours (Australia)
• (260 - 16) × 8 = 1,952 hours (Japan)

That’s quite a difference in total hours. This was a definite plus for me. In Japan, I often felt my brain shutting down from too much overtime, but that almost never happened in Australia. There’s no doubt that overwork can cause real harm.

High Employee Turnover

Another surprise was the rapid turnover of personnel. From a Japanese perspective, it was astonishing how quickly people could be fired or hired.

To be fair, this could vary greatly depending on the industry or specific company. One of my clients, for instance, had employees who had been there a long time. But my own workplace was a small startup in the IT industry, which probably influenced this. Even so, the speed of turnover was on a completely different level from what I was used to in Japan.

The shortest stint I ever witnessed was someone being fired in less than a month. That individual was hired as a PM to oversee multiple projects, so I assumed they would be around longer. But they disappeared after a month, which really shocked me.

Given that atmosphere, I also worried in the beginning that I might be fired at any time. Perhaps partially because of that, I made sure my performance was never a problem. My contract continued, and by the time I left, I was actually the longest-serving employee aside from the executives—even though I hadn’t even hit three years yet.

The advantage of a high turnover rate, I suppose, is that it maintains a certain level of productivity. People seen as unproductive or unable to deliver results generally had their contracts terminated. On the other hand, it was hard to feel any strong attachment to the company. I always felt I had to remain somewhat detached, because it was obvious that if I stopped being useful, they would cut me loose.

That said, it kept my motivation for improving my skills high, which was beneficial in its own way. Still, it left me with mixed feelings.

Leaving the Job, and What’s Next

So, with all the twists and turns at this local Australian IT consulting company, there had to be an end as well as a beginning. This year, I decided it was time to resign. It was a relatively flexible workplace with remote options, not a huge amount of vacation time but not overly long hours, and I had seen some success on projects I worked on. I’d also maintained relationships with long-standing clients. In a broad sense, it was definitely a “good workplace.”

However, the sense of novelty and challenge I had felt when I first joined had faded over time. I realized I’d lost sight of what drove me to work in the first place. Even though it was in many ways a “good workplace,” it wouldn’t surprise me if I ended up wanting to leave again should I ever go back.

It’s something I always think about, but life is finite and you never know how long you’ll remain healthy. So, you should do what you want to do while you still can. The adventure I started at the end of my twenties was over by the time I turned thirty. Now that I’m in my thirties, I can sense my life entering a new phase. In that context, I feel fortunate to have had the chance to work abroad in an environment largely disconnected from Japan—it was a valuable experience.