Working Remotely with Mercari Japan

It has been a while since my previous post, things have gotten a lot busier since then because I have started working full-time again. I did mention getting an offer from a Japanese company in my last post but I did not mention which company that was since the contract had not been signed yet back then.

I have joined Mercari since September 2022. It has been three months since then, so I figure this might be a good time to write something about the company, the hiring process, the working experience, the team, and what is unique about working with them which I am excited about.

Getting to know Mercari

I don’t think many of you have heard about Mercari since I would be lying if I said I knew a lot about Mercari prior to joining them. I did hear the name here and there, but to be honest, I did not look much deeper into who they really are.

Mercari is a cross-platform C2C marketplace application that is famous for its great UX and its unique delivery system that allows its users to ship items anonymously. Its closet things in Thailand’s landscape are probably Pantipmarket, Kaidee, and Facebook Marketplace. Currently, they operate in Japan and the US which both have different versions. You can find the Japanese version here https://jp.mercari.com/ and the US version here https://www.mercari.com/.

As a quite frequent Carousell user back when I was in Singapore, I am quite familiar with how the application works so when I saw Mercari had an opening in TokyoDev, it did not take long for me to decide to apply for it.

Interview Process

After applying, it took only a couple of days for the company to get back to me with an invitation for a Hackerrank test. If I remember correctly, the test was just about your standard solving a few algorithmic problems. If you take this kind of test a lot, you are probably having an easier time for this. Otherwise, just google some of these to get some practice.

Curiously, I have taken these “Hackerrank” tests quite a fair bit from different companies sometimes on a different platform, somehow, none of these tests had a remotely similar problem to solve. This came as a surprise to me. Even back in 2016 when I was job hunting I also stumbled upon a few of these but I did not feel like I had solved any of the same problems before. Maybe I was a bit unlucky in this regard or there was some kind of tracking behind the scenes that prevented the same candidate to get the same set of problems.

Anyway, another couple of days after submitting the test, I was invited for a meeting with an HR rep. Here, I got to know the whole process which would include a few more interviews with Engineers, an Engineering Manager, and a VP of Engineering. This might not come as a surprise to you but a few companies failed to do this and asked you to directly join a technical interview with engineers or asked you to do a dreadful take-home test first which I think is very disrespectful to candidates. So, I was very glad that Mercari is not one of those.

The interview with Engineers was a couple of ice-breaking questions and a few technical questions followed by a 30-minute live coding test in CodeSandbox which the questions/problems will be given one-by-one for you to solve on the fly while being asked to rationalize your solution. I had mixed feelings about this live coding test, on one hand, it did not take too much of my time which I truly appreciate but, on the other hand, I felt like it did not test a whole lot of my skills since there is so much you can do within 30 minutes.

A few other companies that I interviewed during that time opted for take-home tests which were also not ideal. Candidates can show off their skills more but would also take a lot of time on both sides. Also, if the test was poorly designed, then it would be more of a waste of time than a real skill test. I could go on very long about poorly designed tests but that would be too out-of-topic for this post. So a few red flags that you might want to pay attention to is if you are asked to build something from scratch with no design, detailed requirements, or any context, that is a big red flag. In a real work setup, this would require a whole team to do it and it would take a lot longer than a few hours of work.

So the verdict is while I feel we can find the right balance between the two, for now, I prefer the live coding more in most cases although I wished it could be a bit longer in Mercari’s case.

After that, there were another two interviews with the Engineering Manager and the VP which you could get to know more about how the company works at a higher level. How it went for both were quite similar, there were a few aptitude questions, questions about your past works, and a few casual questions, which were not very different from other companies. I found the interviews were quite delightful. They were a bit casual but still professional. There were quite a few questions that felt “template” but I have seen a lot worse. One suggestion to someone has been on both sides of interviews, I suggest trying to answer the questions to show who you are not what you know now. The former takes time to change while the latter can change very fast. So show a good attitude, it is okay to do not know something and admit it rather than just try to guess the answer.

So as you might already be able to guess, I got the offer and accepted it, but, with a catch though which I will talk more about it in a moment. The overall process took about 2 months from sending the application to getting the offer letter (salary negotiation included) in total which could be a bit shorter if there was no Golden Week in-between. One thing that I want to explicitly mention is the HR reps were great along the process, they always kept me updated on the progress so I can feel assured that everything is moving and when I can expect the next milestone. I would rate the overall experience for the hiring process as stellar.

There is a summary of the screening process written on their website as well.

Joining Mercari as a remote subcontractor

Well, I joined Mercari but the catch is only as a subcontractor. Why? It is because the Japan border was still closed for new visa applications. So it seems I cannot be their actual full-time until then... Anyway, it is not the end of the world, there was not much downside so I decided to join them from September onwards.

Back in September, Japan just started relaxing its economic activities from the COVID-19 restriction, so a lot of people were still working from home. Mercari employees were also one of those. There was a doubt whether or not they would have to go back to the office once the Japanese Government lifted the restriction. I was also wondering that as well since this would affect my plan when I moved there.

I have been a fan of working from home for a lot of reasons, reduced commute time, flexible working time, and work environment arrangement are a few of those. Admittedly, I felt the most productive when I worked from home during the quarantine time in Singapore where I could be in the most comfortable attire and be in the most comfortable posture without concerning others. So I was looking for remote work that would also allow me to relocate to Japan but unfortunately, there were not many of those. I would really love it if Mercari were to allow us to continue working from home although it was not the main reason that I joined them.

Surprisingly, on the day that I joined Mercari, they announced Your Choice working arrangement whereby you can decide whether you want to work from the office or from home… Can you believe that? I guess I just used up my 2021 luck for this announcement.

There are so many things that you could do with this. Being a digital nomad in Japan while working in a stable full-time job? I would never think that is possible if you asked me a few years back. I don’t want to say that I am thankful for COVID-19 accelerating the working-from-anywhere adoption since it was doing more harm than good in the big picture but I have to say at least this is a silver lining for the whole situation.

Working with Mercari

It is has been three months since I joined. You could say that it is still too early to judge the experience of working here but let me say that so far the overall experience has been better than I expected.

I thought the language barrier will be a big struggle working with others since I have close to zero knowledge of the Japanese language. Although there are some teams that are still using Japanese as their main communication language, the majority are able to speak English so communication within the Engineering team(s) has not been an issue.

For other meetings like onboarding meetings, all-hands, meeting with teams from other departments, some are still in Japanese but the company provides translators for those meetings so we were able to communicate without much issue. And I have to say these translators are very good, the translation feels natural, easy to understand, and I don’t feel there is anything lost in translation so I really appreciate them.

There are a few other cool things that I do not see much in other companies that I have worked with. One is bukatsu system which translates directly to (school) club activity. Basically, it is a hobby club in the company that mirrors how the school clubs work. People with similar hobbies can join together to do some activities with the given budget from the company. I really like the idea but I could not join many of those now since I am not physically in Japan yet so my participation is very limited (there is a few online activities but I cannot say I am a fan of those). So I am really looking forward to joining some when I move there.

Engineering Teams in Mercari

While I cannot share the exact number of engineers here and it may not be the biggest one I have worked with, it is definitely the most diverse one so far as there are engineers from 40 different countries working here!

I am not sure how much I can share about the organization chart here but roughly from top to bottom there are a few different “Camp”s that focus on different product groups, for example, the C2C application, internal tools, and logistics. Each Camp has a few teams that focus on a different individual product, for example, the Android / iOS / Web version of the C2C application. Each team has the autonomy to decide what technology stack they want to use and how they want to be managed.

Although, the team is able to decide about the technology they want to use, mostly it is recommended to use the established architecture laid out by the Platform Team for various reasons like security and ease of management. The platforms here are using mainly Kubernetes in GCP so if you are from the AWS side of things you probably have a few things you have to learn and get used to here. Apart from that, you are quite free to decide what you want to use in your project.

As for management, the team is also free to choose whatever methodology you see fit within the team. Teams here are mostly managed using Scrum but there are quite a few teams that just use simple Kanban as well. The company also provides you with a scrum coach if your team needs one to help you improve the process which is really helpful.

Trust and Safety Team

So I think I failed to mention that there was another interview after one with the VP which they called team matching interviews. You would attend interviews with a few different teams that are looking for a new member. I got interviewed with two teams, one that build the C2C application and another one that build an internal tool in a Trust and Safety (TnS) domain.

My most comfortable development is front-end so my obvious choice would be joining the C2C team to continue doing what I do best which is building web applications. There is something enticing about the TnS team. It is a cross-functional team that involves some machine learning development which has been a topic that I have always wanted to try. It is not so easy to just start developing some machine learning application by yourself, at least not with my current knowledge. I have had quite a few side projects but none of those really touch or go deep in this vertical. So, I felt it was a good opportunity and that is why I decided to join the TnS team in hope that I could start something different.

So the team consists of three Machine Learning engineers, two Back-end engineers, 1 Front-end engineer (me), 1 Engineering manager, and 1 Product manager, however, the team expects the engineers to be cross-functional and can cover each other domains.

In the past few months, I have done a few basic Machine Learning tasks. It may be not as many as I want to but I feel this is moving in the right direction and I have been enjoying it so far. So hopefully, in a year, I would be able to comfortably start working on a legit Machine Learning project.

Now and Future

Apart from learning Machine Learning, I have so many things I want to try in Japan, and given that I could work from anywhere. I want to try living in a few different cities while I am there. Ideally, I want to hop around to different places every month although I am still not too sure if it is financially viable or not but I would figure something out when I am there.

At first, I am supposed to relocate to Japan by mid-January 2022 but at the time of writing this, it seems like there is a new COVID-19 variant and Japan decided to close the border again. So now the big question is when they are going to open it again. I try not to be too hopeful but I really wish the whole situation gets better very soon, we have lost so many good things to this virus already.

Anyway, another team I want to give a shoutout to is the relocation team that works tirelessly to support us subcontractors waiting to enter Japan with all the paperwork and dealing with external parties. If I have to do this all by myself, I would probably give up by now. You are awesome.

TLDR

I joined Mercari in September as a subcontractor until I move to Japan. Teams here are diverse, autonomous, and operate remotely. There are great supporting teams for both language and relocation.

I don’t think there are many companies that are both willing to relocate you and let you work remotely so there are a few openings left, grab your chance now!

https://careers.mercari.com/job-categories/engineering/