TokyoDev Developer Survey 2023

78.5% of respondents lived in the Greater Tokyo Area (Tokyo, Saitama, Chiba, and Kanagawa), down from 85% last year. While respondents in Tokyo went from 65% to 60.5%, the percentages for other respondents were largely unchanged.

Just over half of respondents moved to Japan with a job already lined up, be it they were hired from abroad by a Japan based organization or sent to Japan with their existing employer.

Respondents who were sent by their employer to Japan had a median salary that was 70% above the overall median.

Those sent to Japan were also far more likely to be working for the subsidiary of an international company: 45% of such respondents said they did, compared to 19% of respondents overall.

59% of respondents had a residency status tied to their employer (engineer, highly skilled foreign professional, or investor / business manager).

Despite the survey being conducted in English, the respondents were quite diverse, holding citizenships from 68 countries or regions.

The majority of respondents were in their thirties, and 81.9% were under fourty.

Women respondents tended to be younger than men, with 44.3% of them being under 30, compared to 28.7% of men.

The overwhelming majority of respondents described themselves as a man. While we had respondents who identify as neither a man or a woman, we didn’t get enough responses to further segment their data while maintaining the anonymity of the individuals.

The median respondent had 5 years of professional software development experience, down from 7 years from 2022’s survey.

Male respondents had a median of 8 years professional experience, while women had a median of 2 years.

Respondents lived in Japan for a median of 5 years. Despite the considerable differences in professional experience between male and female respondents, the median time lived in Japan was the same.

89.4% of respondents had an undergradudate or graduate degree.

17.9% of respondents reported they had no professional qualifications related to computer science.

Coding bootcamp grads had the lowest median professional experience at only 1.9 years.

Women respondents were much more likely to have attended a coding bootcamp then men. While 11.6% male of respondents had graduated from a coding bootcamp, 32.4% of female respondents did.

89% of respondents had a fluent or above English ability. A higher English ability correlated with a higher salary.

Only 33% of respondents had a fluent or above Japanese ability. Higher Japanese ability correlated with a longer time living in Japan, with the median stay of those having no Japanese ability being 0.5 years, whereas those who were fluent having 5 years.

While the majority of respondents heard about the survey through their peers and developer communities, we also advertised it on Reddit and Facebook.