I met with Yuka Ohishi in the Pinterest office headquarters located in the heart of SoMa, the South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco, California. SoMa is home to several headquarters of major software and internet companies. Ohishi is a graduate of the International Christian University in Tokyo (ICU), and after working at both successful Japanese companies Wantedly, and DeNA, she became part of the tech startup Pinterest, in charge of the international product growth of the company. Pinterest is an application which allows users to collect and save various articles and ideas from around the web. The office itself, a renovated warehouse, featured an open space cafeteria with long shared tables and walls lined with vending machines as well as hot & cold food buffets for employees. I sat across from Ohishi at one of these tables, and after each serving ourselves with a bowl of salad from the buffet, I had the chance to ask her questions about her unique career path and her opinion of startup companies and culture in Japan as well as in America. I learned about the surprising ways in which one can develop and market their products, the differences in company cultures in the Unites States and Japan, the innovative Silicon Valley startup technology culture as well as the progression of Japanese companies such as Wantedly or DeNA.

In Japan, emphasis is placed on high school education, and in the US concentrate on building a decent working environment

In Japan the job hunting process is unlike that in the United States. In Japan, no matter what the higher education focus, it is possible for recent graduates to work in most divisions of any company. While this leads to numerous opportunities independent of field of study, there can be a resulting “jack of all trades, master of none” scenario. Once you enter the company the work environment also differs from American companies. Ohishi explains that in Japan employees tend to remain within the same company until they retire.

In American companies there is a mentorship type of management - the companies focus on creating a decent work environment so that the employees remain passionate about their jobs. There is room to change your career path through quitting and changing to a new company and it is easier to be fired - something rare in Japan. Both the employees and the businesses must be providing what is necessary to continue to grow the company. Ohishi describes that maintaining a positive work environment is important as essentially the employees will be dedicating a great deal of their lives to their company; a system that keeps both businesses and employees satisfied is important. “We are all humans dedicating time from our lives to be happy during our day jobs”, she said. When first entering work at a Japanese company the younger workers are often given less important tasks, and there is a system focusing on years of experience working at the company rather than skills. The entry level workers cover their bases in the beginning years to provide for the rest of their lengthy careers at the company.

How to make a job hunting success in Japan

After graduating in June rather than the typical time of April for Japanese college students, Ohishi took the next eight months before working to help with various startup companies as an intern and to explore her options rather than just settling into a regular Japanese job-hunting approach. Something that Ohishi says helped her a lot with her career path was the opportunity to take English classes at ICU so that her English skills, while already fluent, were still educated at a college level. She also believes that the option to graduate early provided her time to involve herself in projects and internships before settling down with a career.

Internship, first job, and career change

During her time before working at her first job Ohishi explored tech startups in Tokyo, where at one point she was an intern at Wantedly during the beginning stages of the online job recruitment company. She described the office as having just three computers in a small room with three people always on their laptops. Ohishi notes that she is impressed at how far Wantedly has come in a short amount of time and how the CEO Akiko Naka’s vision became a reality. Wantedly humanizes job recruitment in Japan, and provides users a space to find jobs more based around their passions and talents. Ohishi’s first job was at DeNA, a provider of mobile portal and e-commerce websites based in Tokyo. While a rather large, Japanese company, Ohishi says that the people at DeNA are driven and work hard at their jobs. “When I first started working I tried to observe anything that I can get,” she explains. Following this, Ohishi began working at Pinterest in the Japan office. The Pinterest office in Japan was much smaller than the one in San Francisco which allowed for more action to be taken and the small team would focus on bringing ideas to life quickly and easily. This would involve PR and educational events with people in advertising. The San Francisco office is the Pinterest headquarters with a far bigger team and more emphasis on development of the product.

It seemingly unrelated activities can help the company develop

Ohishi explains that startup companies allow people to be involved no matter what their entry level. She herself does not know how to code, for example, but has been able to help tech companies through her other abilities and has found that it can often be even surprising how some seemingly irrelevant activities can help the development of a company. Ohishi tells me that her current job at Pinterest deals with understanding the audience of the product. The idea behind Pinterest itself, the act of collecting and pinning ideas to a board, is largely based on American culture and does not necessarily translate well to other countries. Her job working on international product growth requires her to get into the mindset of users from around the world in order to better market the product to these varying audiences. One thing she did to get into the minds of various celebrities or high-profile social media users of the site was to start video blogging in her daily life, not necessarily about working at Pinterest or about tech startups but just about things which come up in her everyday- through this, she says, she has understood more about some of the higher-profile Pinterest users, as naturally the users of Pinterest have a wide range of demographics.

Japan can learn from the business culture of Silicon Valley

In Japan, Ohishi explains that there are a lot of young people invested in startup culture, but as it is still a relatively new business environment even for American companies there, it will take a lot of time before these types of businesses can affect the society there; however, she believes both countries can learn from Silicon Valley business culture of requiring an engaged mentality from employees to find whatever they can do to help progress and develop things within the company. The changing atmosphere of job recruitment and pathways shows that there is always room to shape and discover how various talents can assist with companies from around the world.