Engineering White Paper 2024: Japan IT Industry Annual Report 2024

Engineer White Paper 2024#

https://qiita.com/white_papers/2024

As part of understanding domestic engineer trends, we conducted a survey targeting approximately 2,000 Qiita users and published it as the "Engineer White Paper 2024."

Personally, I feel that the data in this report should only have a small portion coming from Chinese IT dispatch~~because Python and JavaScript surprisingly outperformed Java in this report~~.

In terms of development types, in-house development accounts for 58%, while contracted development accounts for 34%
*N=1695. Excluding students and unemployed individuals in development types.

For those who genuinely want to become developers in Japan, this is quite valuable reference material.

Technical Trends#

First of all, Python has finally topped the list of "Frequently Used Languages"!

Excluding some noise, Python's application in Japan is actually slightly broader than in China, not limited to artificial intelligence~~and selling courses to make a profit~~.

Last year, I was shocked by the number of sponsoring companies when I attended [[PyConJP]] for the first time—before going, I listened to a podcast by a snake catcher and learned about the difficulties of PyCon China, so I had some expectations, but upon attending, I realized I was worrying unnecessarily; the energy and atmosphere on-site were truly excellent! Many of the presentations at PyCon had specific business scenarios, and you can check out the recordings on YouTube's channel if you're interested.

As for Python's web frameworks, Django and Flask are on par~~unfortunately, FastAPI did not make the list~~.

In the front-end space, React, jQuery, and Vue.js seem to divide the market.

GitHub and AWS are both far ahead in their respective fields, reaching a level where "you may not use them at work, but you should understand them."

Salary#

In terms of salary, for those aged 18-24, 48% are in the range of 3-5 million yen, with only 1% earning over 10 million yen...

However, what's more interesting is the correlation between "experience and salary": among developers over 50, the proportion of those earning "below 3 million" is actually 10% higher than those aged 40-50; the proportion of those with over 20 years of experience earning "below 3 million" compared to those with 10-20 years of experience has also increased—this has a subtle difference from the online notion that "the older you are in Japan's IT, the more valuable you become"...

Overtime#

Less than 10 hours of overtime accounts for the largest share at 28%, while 0 hours of overtime is 9%
By age group, there are 0% of people under 24 working over 60 hours of overtime. Among those working over 80 hours of overtime, 85% are over 35 years old.

Sigh... From the actual data, it seems that serious Japanese companies do not have much overtime, but I personally am in the "flowing scene, ironclad overtime" (sigh!).

Job Hopping#

Now we come to the most interesting part: job hopping.

First, the larger the company, the higher the proportion of those who have not changed jobs.

Second, regardless of annual income, about 50% of people have 1-3 job-hopping experiences.

Next is the channels used for job searching during job changes—internal referrals account for nearly half.

Finally, "the proportion of those feeling dissatisfied with their business content exceeds 75% among those currently earning below 3-5 million yen"—hahaha, I feel that this part is mainly composed of SIers.

First, the channels for technical sharing: X ~~as expected~~ is far ahead!

Last year, I attended [[VueFes]] and was approached by a Japanese guy who asked if we could follow each other on X, but I could only awkwardly say, "I registered an account before, but I lost the password..."

As for the companies that Japanese developers perceive as actively participating in technical sharing in 2024, I must apologize; before this, I only followed the LINE Yahoo blog and was surprised to find that they only ranked seventh, with several companies in the top ten that I had never heard of before.

Taking this opportunity, I searched for their blogs:

Classmethod, Inc.
1. Mainly shares AWS
2. RSS: https://dev.classmethod.jp/feed/
Yumemi, Inc.
1. Focuses on event notifications, could not find RSS
Mercari, Inc.
1. Shares technical details about coal stoves, with many backend shares
  1. RSS: https://engineering.mercari.com/blog/feed.xml
  2. https://engineering.mercari.com/en/blog/
    1. The English version is not a translation of the Japanese version, but written by employees from other branches of coal stoves around the world (surprising!)
    2. RSS: https://engineering.mercari.com/en/blog/feed.xml
2. Mercari Design Blog: UX-related shares are placed here separately.
CyberAgent, Inc.
1. Mainly shares their business, but I am not very interested in games and IP adaptations.
Microsoft
1. Mainly focuses on new product notifications, with little technical sharing.
Qiita, Inc.
1. https://qiita.com/
2. Equivalent to CSDN, ah, no, it should be Juejin~~ but only ranked sixth, is everyone being too harsh on the organizers~~
3. Last year, I attended a Ruby sharing session at this company, but unfortunately, I had something to do and missed out on the free pizza after the sharing (sigh).
ZOZO, Inc.
1. A company specializing in selling trendy clothing, but the technical articles shared are quite solid.
2. https://techblog.zozo.com/ supports tags, and surprisingly, the most shared tag by this company is iOS233
  1. RSS https://techblog.zozo.com/rss
3. https://technote.zozo.com/ There aren't many purely technical shares here.
Cybozu, Inc.
1. Seems to be a company similar to Salesforce, and the blogs are written across different subsidiaries, too lazy to look for them.
LINE Yahoo, Inc.
1. Shares a lot of content, well organized, highly recommended. Additionally, after browsing around, I personally feel that in terms of blog quality alone, LINE should be in the top three.
2. https://techblog.lycorp.co.jp/ja Updated blog address after the company merger in 2023
  1. RSS: https://techblog.lycorp.co.jp/ja/feed/index.xml
  2. List of articles on techniques to improve code quality Weekly series, highly recommended! (Although I still don't understand Kotlin, but good code has a similar feel, right?)
3. https://techblog.yahoo.co.jp/
  1. No tags, but if you're interested in search engine-related technologies, you can still find relevant blogs from recent years by year.
4. https://engineering.linecorp.com/ja/blog
  1. Has tags, can choose what to read.
  2. https://engineering.linecorp.com/ja/blog/tag/NLP
AWS
1. Huh? Am I opening it the wrong way? I only found documentation, not a blog...

Learning#

If you persist in studying for 1 hour on weekdays, you will actually surpass 2/3 of Japanese developers. As for weekends, studying for 2 hours will surpass 2/3 of your peers.

As for learning methods, they are similar to those in China: reading articles online, reading books, watching YouTube (YouTube University? 233), and then paid video courses.