Rakuten Employee Reviews
Out of 110 Rakuten employee reviews, 72% were positive. The remaining 28% were constructive reviews with the goal of helping Rakuten improve their work culture. The Engineering team, with 53% positive reviews, reports the best experience at Rakuten compared to all other departments at the company.
Briefly describe your overall experience at your company
What do you like best about the leadership team?
They listen and take ideas under consideration. You can easily message anyone in the company, including the CEO, if you need information.
Transparent, Intelligent, Visionary, Constructive and Futuristic
they are innovative and transparent
Always available and eager to help employees reach their goals!
They are well grounded thinkers with the vision of the business in mind
Review from Engineering Dept
What does the leadership team need to get better at?
Listen to your employee , stop using Japanese management philosophy when you hire 80% of employees are from oversea
Review from Engineering Dept
Treating people like humans and understand what they are actually doing. And not stab their co-workers in the back.
Review from Engineering Dept
Rakuten leadership figures are sorely lacking both at vision and execution. The first thing they should do ASAP is replacing most middle management and then working on improving the overall company engineering culture.
Review from Engineering Dept
Identifying employees' strengths. Expecting to just plug any person in at any random job, Japanese-style, destroys morale.
Need to modernize their means, listen to people and question decisions from above that might have issues
Review from Engineering Dept
What is the best part about your compensation package?
salary is good with add on
We are paid well and the benefits that we are offered are better than anywhere I have ever worked. We are very well taken care of at Rakuten.
Affordable coverage for me and my family
Low cost health insurance with a wide coverage
Stock vesting after four years is a good way to retain employees -- though more cash would be better
Why do you feel undervalued and what would make you feel better about your compensation?
An increment and quality employee benefits and services
Pay shud be proportional to the level
Japan as a whole is behind the rest of the market when it comes to compensation, and Rakuten has been making some efforts to take the lead in closing this gap, but they could do better.
Review from Engineering Dept
Not having team managers create a lawsuit against coworkers they don't like, and/or be stabbed in the back for coming with suggestions would be a good start
Review from Engineering Dept
I would like to be able to work from home full time, not just part time.
Review from Engineering Dept
What are some of the best things about your team?
Team Work. Helping each other in every aspects.
Collaborative, Knowledgable, Insightful and having clear technical expertise
Nice colleagues and teams very collegial
In the department that I work in, coworkers become friends and some of those friends turn into family We have some amazing people that all have unique gifts that come together in the best possible way.
Some of them are real helpful and open to network and communicate with
What do your coworkers need to improve and how could you work together better?
It's hard to imagine a company with more time spent in inefficient meetings than Rakuten's.
We would work better if we were allowed to do what's best for the stakeholders, instead of being forced to follow directions coming from a leadership team that has proved time and time again of not knowing what they are talking about.
People is the best thing of the company, but they tend to get lazy after a few months because nothing can be easily changed in this company
Review from Engineering Dept
What is most positive about the culture and environment at your company?
Respect each other and support other to Grow
Review from Engineering Dept
Team oriented culture and determination
We work with core values in mind: balance, commitment, change, passion, integrity, fun, and respect.
Open and sharing culture, promoting positive environment
You get given room to prove your ideas if you really believe in them
Review from Engineering Dept
What needs to change to make the company culture better?
Allow collaboration between teams instead of forcing teams to reinvent the wheel over and over. Require accountability and post-mortem improvements. Replace most middle management by promoting based on actual contributions, not based on connections. Keep the egos of leadership figures in check.
Review from Engineering Dept
Far too many long and boring meetings; decisions are always top-down.
What did you like most about the interview process?
Smooth and good, but this is just one of the hypocrisies from the company face
Review from Engineering Dept
The questions that are asked are relevant and aren't filler questions.
Good quality of interview questions
it was pretty short and straightforward.
They didn't ask typical questions. Questions were geared toward getting to know you as a person vs. skills and employment history
What would you improve about your company's interview process?
Standardize the interview process Make it more transparent (to both interviewers and non-management members who are involved in the process) Give more tools to interviewers for verifying skills
Review from Engineering Dept
What makes you most happy at work?
Rakuten actually trying to contribute to society and small businesses which is very valuable.
Actually helping people . Doing things that matter. Take a challenge
Feeling of actually doing something that helps society
I get to give away money. What's better than that?!?
Doing work that has an impact
Review from Engineering Dept
What's going wrong and how can it be improved?
Change the management and listen to your employee
Review from Engineering Dept
Engineering decisions are made by people that should have no saying in such matters. People are promoted based on connections instead of actual contributions.
Review from Engineering Dept
Mr. Mikitani preaches internationalism and the use of English in the workplace worldwide, but deep down this is another Japanese sweatshop.
There are SO MANY wrong things, and they take SO MUCH TIME to improve... everything is very slow...\nMost of problems come from Business side
Review from Engineering Dept
What would you most like to see improved at your company?
Pay attention to employee satisfaction and quality of life.