Day 266 of writing every day.
I took the risk of quitting my previous job as a localization quality assurance tester and translator for games and left it about half a year ago back in early spring of 2023. While my initial expectations for the job weren’t that high, things just weren’t working out in terms of how I felt I was being utilized without any consideration of my private life. As long as I didn’t go over 8 hours of work a day, it was basically within the right of the supervisors to set my schedule. It wasn’t a 9 to 6 job, but 10 to 7 was the standard, and 11 to 8 was when you knew you drew the short straw.
Some people might be fine with 11 to 8, but I don’t believe anyone in the English team wanted to work those hours at all. You’re getting to sleep in late maybe or have a slow morning start, but it’s not worth getting home late or getting off work too late to go and do anything afterwards. The reduced quality of life forced upon me wasn’t what I wanted and so I thought to myself I had enough after 3-4 months of that crap and left after I fulfilled my contract with them.
Trying to change careers in your thirties with minimal skills and experience in an entirely different field is a risky move especially when living abroad. I don’t have as much protection and support as I expect I might find if I was back in the US and living with family. I had some semblance of a plan for how to make this career transition work.
Using some money I didn’t deserve but was fortunate to receive from distant relatives, I enrolled in a programming course and tried to cram some knowledge in, hoping that it’d be enough to get my foot in the door for entry level positions. My impression is that foreigners still rarely hold anything besides entry level positions in Japan in the sense of never reaching the rank of becoming decision makers unless they ran their own business or worked at the Japan branch office of a foreign firm.
As long as I could find a job that offered me more flexibility with hours set by me or just more typical 9 to 6 hours, I would have been fine with most types of work, I think. But visa restrictions limit me from working only part-time and some jobs ask for permanent residence, so I placed my bets on programming since there’s seemingly a global shortage of workers in tech and it was a field where non-Japanese were more openly welcomed in Japan than regular office jobs.
I didn’t want to try and compete with other westerners whose selling point was being able to speak Japanese on top of their native English language. This category of people have saturated the market for translators and English teachers, and I suspect they are seen as disposable and replaceable more often than not. I wasn’t interested in relocating to Tokyo either.
So far my plan to become a programmer has been limited in success. After learning some frontend basics, I’ve managed to get hired as a low skilled worker available to be subcontracted out. I’m three weeks into my job and only had one interview for a project but that fell through. Until I get actual work, it’s hard to say I’ve “succeeded” in the mid to long run. My employer seems reasonable and everyone they’ve hired was all new to the industry, so I’ll keep my hopes up and see what happens in the months to come.
Thanks for reading!
One Chance Works 