15 Nov 【Yaraku-Jin】A Leap of Faith to Japan! – Insights from a British Developer on Collaborating with a Diverse Team and Remote Work Approaches

The eleventh volume of “Yaraku-Jin (やらく人)”, a series that focuses the people involved in Yaraku and YarakuZen, will introduce Jamie Cox, a developer of the app team at Yaraku.

Yaraku-Jin＜VOL11>

Jamie Cox
App team, Yaraku, Inc.
Born in: Birmingham, England

Please tell us about your career background.

I studied video game development in university and I got my degree in that. But there weren’t many video game development jobs in Birmingham, which is where I grew up. So I went into Technical Support with the hope of transitioning into full-time development because it was kind of a mix of actual troubleshooting and like using PowerShell for debugging. I did that job in my hometown for about two years.

*PowerShell…A task automation and configuration management program from Microsoft.

What made you come all the way to Japan to get a job?

I grew up watching anime when it was on TV like Dragon Ball, Naruto, Pokemon etc. I also grew up with a PlayStation 1 and Nintendo 64 so I developed an interest in Japan from a young age. 

Then I went on a holiday in 2018 to Japan. After about 5 days, I had this weird feeling –  just from experiencing Japanese life and I thought, I wanna try living here. I liked it here with a combination of convenience and safety. I never really looked at any of the other countries, because I kind of felt like Japan was a good fit for me. So while I was in a ryokan, I applied to a few teaching dispatch companies. And then less than a year later, I had all the necessary requirements and moved to Japan..

After I moved to Japan, I worked as an English teacher for just under 2 years. This was at Eikaiwa, then a private English class, then an international kindergarten. 

And how did you  come to join Yaraku?

After teaching for a few years, I was trying to get back into some form of software development. I kind of gave up on game development just because unfortunately it’s not an area that gets very well paid. So I looked into web dev because Web dev was obviously very sought after now, and especially back then. So I spent my free time studying web development, using my base programming knowledge from university to speed up the process. That was how I found Yaraku.

When do you feel rewarded while working at Yaraku?

Well, all I’ve experienced previously was my university work, and a little bit of debugging (*) using PowerShell and a custom language. So I started off small, eventually moving into planning and completing full projects. I am very grateful for how responsibility and expectations  slowly built up over the years. At this point, I can see my work basically everywhere in the app, which feels pretty cool. 

Also, I really like our emphasis on good solutions, not only in terms of for the user, but also in terms of the code itself. I would say we’re pretty strict on what actually gets into the final product and we very rarely just accept the first solution. And I quite like that mindset because it also lets you learn a lot more as well. There’s so much constant feedback and you’re constantly seeing other people’s work, so you can have a new perspective. And I just think it makes you a better programmer and makes you a better developer in general, and also makes the product better in the long run. 

*Debugging …The process of identifying and removing errors from software.

Is there anything you do to ensure smooth communication in this remote work environment?

Personally, I think the best way is to start the project with a big discussion where everyone contributes and lays out the plan. Especially for the UI design for the app, we always have a lot of comments every day. So I think in the planning stage, it’s very important to have a lot of communication and that can be mainly done through Slack. We’ve split all of the different sections nicely which makes finding information easy.. We also make detailed specification plans, as well as post mortems after a project is finished which helps split the work into manageable chunks.

I have friends who work in other tech companies and they say they have daily stand-ups, one hour meetings multiple times a week where very little is actually achieved. I feel like keeping a lot of the communication through text helps a lot. It forces people to be a bit more concise, and we can always refer back to it later. 

We also have a one-on-one meeting with the manager which is where we share coding related issues or any knowledge related issues in our projects. And then the manager answers the question or raises that higher up the chain, maybe asking another team’s manager. 

And then we have what we call coffee break meetings once a week for an hour, which is more of just a good way of keeping connected with the team.

*GitHub is an online software development platform where users can upload their source code, share it with others for collaboration, and manage projects.

What do you think about Yaraku’s diversity, with half of our staff coming from outside Japan?

I think the only thing it ever brings is a positive effect. The fact that everyone is from different countries, different walks of life. You’re constantly getting new perspectives that really help you reevaluate. Yeah, it’s great. And obviously being able to all speak in English is quite helpful because I know that the Japanese level is varied depending on the people including myself.

What do you think is a key point of working at Yaraku? 

I think the number one thing is the willingness to learn. And the acceptance that you’re probably going to make mistakes.. Making mistakes is not the end of the world, and the important part is to try not to make the same mistake over and over again. I think it allows you to learn quickly in any software job, particularly at Yaraku, because we’re always introducing new systems and frameworks. Taking responsibility is also very important. We kind of take ownership of things here. Once you are given a project, then that is your project.  At the very least, you need to be the one reviewing your making sure it all works well. It’s your responsibility. 

For the work relationship, I think being open-minded is also important. I think in a software engineer position, it’s very easy to get ego, especially when you get more experience, but here it’s quite a flat structure. We do have managers, but it’s more like,  just for splitting into teams. Everyone has an equal position to speak up, so you don’t need to be afraid to say anything, even something negative. We do take into account everyone’s opinion, so we always try to speak up to avoid anything becoming a problem in the long run.