Fourth job: IT company

After working for 1 year in Steak Restaurant, by this time I had completed my computer related Vocational School and was applying for full time job in one of the IT firm in Japan. The work force was low, and everyone could find work if they applied properly. I myself had received work confirmation in 3 different IT firms. I selected one among them with the suggestion from teacher in vocational school. From April of 2015, I joined as Programmer in an IT firm of Japan as proper employee.

At first there was few trainings where we studied some algorithms. Then we were asked to develop one system meant for project management to be used especially for inhouse development. It was quite difficult to most of us. Some of the colleagues were even new to web development. The office hour was till 18:00 but due to not understanding of the programming concepts, some of the members stayed till 20:30 in the evening. This is rare for freshers. I also stayed till that time a couple of times. Sometime the programming wouldn’t go well and would continue to think of the logic even after getting back home. When everything went as per expectation, it was the best feeling during that time. For 3 months, we did the training. After that depending upon our skills (was what I heard), we were assigned to different projects. I was expecting that I would be assigned to Tokyo. I had requested the interviewer during job interview about my desire to go Tokyo for the job. The company had their branch in Tokyo and the Tokyo member were not enough was what I heard. Furthermore, most of the freshers wanted to stay in Osaka. With all these conditions I was pretty sure that I would be given what I asked for. But to my surprise, the result was just opposite. I was assigned to Osaka project and the ones who didn’t want to leave Osaka were assigned to Tokyo.

My first year was challenging. Though I was assigned to programming based projects rather than documentation which was not my strong point due to language barrier, the job was difficult. Sometimes, I stayed till midnight doing the job as it wouldn’t complete as per schedule and in morning also used to go job at 8:15 since the task in the previous day would not complete. But some how in the end I was always on schedule. Therefore, my evaluation became good and I was transferred to another department where there were more highly skilled technicians. My first year was work centered life and the second year began and department change followed with it.

I got one junior under me. The second year was supposed to be easier than first year. At least I expected this to happen. But the situation was opposite. My new manager needed everything perfectly. I was asked to do documentation which was my worst skill. Japanese language was also not to the level. Since my documentation always had lots of errors, I was asked to do the same thing till I was perfectly doing it. And this never happened in my second year. Since I was doing documentation the whole time, programming knowledge was decreasing. Manager sometimes used to ask technical question to which I couldn’t answer. I was now forced to learn books related to technology also so that I could answer the manager whenever he would ask random questions. My company also had made “Fundamental Information Technology Engineer Examination” a mandatory exam that technicians should pass. There were lots of Japanese language that I needed to learn before even starting to learn the book related to this subject. Slow reading skills + limited time frame = not possible. I was asked to do all the above task along with regular work. Sometimes I worked till 36 hours and received only half day holiday after that. This was the longest time that I had done anything till that point. The end result was obvious. With all the above pressures I couldn’t stand up to the expectations of the company. (Still wondering about what they were expecting out from me.) Department change followed. Now I was assigned as a dispatch employee who went to another company for work.

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