Seeking career advice for a 23-year-old lost IT engineer in Japan
I am a 23-year-old engineer I am working in Japan but now I feel really anxious and want to get some help for my next step.
I work in Japan for a visa so I would have the chance to take the exam for universities in Japan without any Proof of Funds for Visa Application (I was born in a really poor family).
But for some reasons, I have to delay my plan for studying in Japan and decided to find a good job at first.
Now I actually have work experience for 1 year ,but I did not even learn anything from these there actual work experience. I worked in hakken: an IT filed in Japan where it just needs low skills. Most of the time ,I just edited documents and wasted the time because I can not download and do anything on customers' computer. I think I have gone the wrong way which is useless to my life, I want to change this situation and work in a normal company to do some coding work. I finally want to work remotely for a US company in Japan after I get the Permanent Residency of Japan.
I exaggerated my resume a lot, to pretend to be a 3 years experience backend developer, and I got some chances from headhunter s(include rakuten hakken), but I would never pass the interview because I actually have no real work experience both in backend and frontend, but just did a lot of CRUD work for personal projects and use some UI framework to make some websites.
What should I do as my next step? Now I have N1 and toefl iBT 86 scores but both of my conversational skills are lower than business level. I want to work in 外資系(foreign-owned company), is that possible? What should I do? Should I give up everything about work and study for a master degree ,if I do this I have to work constantly because my parents can not pay for my living expenses , the only thing I can learn from my company now is Japanese.
I can accept any suggestion, whatever about my resume or my next step, it is welcome to dm and discuss with me if you want.
Posted Jan 31, 2026, 1:16 PM UTC