Experience
life in Japan

What is the best part of working at PayPay?

What I appreciated the most about PayPay is the culture of open discussion and knowledge sharing. PayPay’s whole system is more complicated than anyone can imagine. It is difficult to understand everything without learning from each other. Also, since we are working with people from different countries, it is interesting and exciting to exchange ideas and see multiple approaches towards the topic. Besides, if an incident happens, not only will we try to find the root cause to avoid it happening again, but also we will create the guideline based on the best practice to help new joiners or ourselves in the future.

I would say the impact that you created for Japan’s society. Every individual in PayPay is important. You might work on a very important feature despite being a new member. The feature will be published to millions of users. You are able to see the feature you developed in real life and everyone is using it everywhere in Japan.

It is an unique opportunity to work in a large scale company, whose product is used by millions of users in Japan, while having a startup culture. I would say no day is the same. Everyday is full of changes and challenges, because we don’t settle for what we have achieved and always aim for the next level. This environment allows me to keep challenging myself and developing further skills while working with a group of professionals. I think this is what I enjoyed the most working at PayPay.

What is the best part of living in Japan?

Being able to experience four seasons is one of the things I enjoy the most. Different from Taiwan, you are able to enjoy different scenes and activities based on each season, such as sakura viewing in Spring, fireworks festivals in Summer, leaf viewing in Autumn and hot spring in Winter. Besides, I am a big fan of Japanese music and culture. Living here allows me to easily access what I like and even explore further.

There is a policy called WFA (Working from Anywhere in Japan) at PayPay. I can choose to work from anywhere in Japan and it gives me a chance to explore different areas. For example, I chose to stay in Osaka for half a year. During that time, I was able to explore the local spots and its delicious cuisines. Also, I enjoyed strolling around to discover new places, because Japan’s roads are very clean and safe. Basically, I don’t need to worry about the crazy drivers (or scooters) as I used to have in Taiwan.

Japan is a country where you can experience a mix of unique traditions and incredible modernization. I have been living in Japan for more than 8 years and there is still so much more to explore. As someone who doesn’t drive, Japan allows me to travel around with its public transportation system to experience seasonal events across the country. Also, even if I stay in Tokyo, there are new things coming up every month, which I found interesting and inspiring.

How do you describe the Tech culture of PayPay?

We try to build a good system, which means we care about performance, scalability, maintainability and cost effectiveness. We utilize the tracing system and monitoring system to understand the operations and use that information to think about improvements. On the other hand, we put a lot of effort into creating guidelines and libraries, to make sure all the information is shared among the teams. We also encourage members to keep improving the guideline throughout the development, in order to build a better system.

PayPay has a Tech culture that encourages people to share new ideas and knowledge. If the proposal is good, we are going to use it in our app or implement it into the development process. Majority of the time, if a company considers the system is stable, they don’t want to change it anymore. However, we implement new things, while keeping good stability at PayPay. It is very rare to see a company of such scale is willing to change. We don’t stop and be satisfied with the existing code, instead we want to use new tools and aim for outcome of the next level.

What was your biggest concern before joining PayPay?

Before joining PayPay, all my images about Japan’s working culture are coming from Japanese dramas, which is relatively negative. Also, I have heard that most Japanese are afraid of speaking English. I was worried if I could truly work in a company without using Japanese and not affecting my performance. Luckily, none of the above happened.

The working culture at PayPay is similar to the US startup environment. There is less distance between managers and employees, and people are encouraged to open up to share ideas. Besides, we are having people from more than 50 countries in the Product division (which also means Japanese are actually a minority). It is a comfortable environment to work in English. Even if we need to communicate with business divisions, we also have interpreters to assist us. It totally changed my image of working in a Japanese company.

The cost of living was one of the concerns I had. Before moving here, I always hear that the rent and food are expensive. Also, you need to speak Japanese to conduct the government registrations. However, it is great that PayPay provides the support for ward office registration, phone number application, bank account opening and even introducing the agent to assist me renting a place, so I can settle down smoothly in Japan.

Another thing I was worried about is to use English at work, because I was not confident in speaking English. After I joined the company, I realized most of the people here are not native English speakers. Everyone is willing to hear and understand your ideas/suggestions with patiences. We respect each other’s voice and culture. This is something I learned by working in a diverse environment.

Surprisingly my biggest concern before joining PayPay is the full remote working environment. Different from my previous jobs that I got to meet people in the office and build relationships in person. I was worried if I could get along with my team members, as well as pick up the job and keep up with the speed while everyone is working remotely across Japan. After I joined, soon I realized that as long as I am proactively reaching out for questions and clarifications, I would be fine. It is because people here are all friendly and supportive. Everyone is willing to share their knowledge and cooperate to try out new ideas.