jan giese | Employment Information | Colorkrew

Challenge yourself

Colorkrew is a bit different from the traditional Japanese company.
The traditional company normally has a rigid hierarchical structure and you may hear of things like not being able to make suggestions easily or people staying longer without working on anything.

With its open structure and flat hierarchy Colorkrew is quite different.
At Colorkrew it was identified, that traditional companies with their rigid structure, cannot change in time or miss out on good opportunities.
There are many different projects in Colorkrew with different demands and technologies.

At Colorkrew, as long as you focus on business, everyone can make suggestions.
Depending on the project you can choose your tech stack and also try out new things.
It is actually recommended to do so and challenge yourself and the company to push further and find new markets.

My Job at Colorkrew

When I joined Colorkrew, I started in the Payment System team as full stack engineer.
The team handles and is responsible for online payment in games or other services.
The payment system is the core of any service, so the costumers expect the system to work perfectly at all times.
Working in payments can be challenging but rewarding.

After I worked at Colorkrew for a year, a new project, Mamoru Push, was started.
Mamoru Push is an authentication service allowing passwordless login, using push notifications on smartphones.
At the time there were no Android engineers in Colorkrew and I was asked to write the Android app.
I never developed an Android app before, so I quickly learned about Android app development and we could release the service on time.

In 2017 we started another service, Mamoru Pay.
Mamoru Pay started out as in-company payment service for employees.
Proving myself in other projects, I got to be lead engineer for Mamoru Pay.
This was the first time I got to lead other people in Colorkrew. A new experience!
Now Mamoru Pay is growing into a tool of various areas of company management.

These are not all the projects I worked on.
With a flat structure you can help out other teams and work in many different areas.

I like it this way because you can always take on new ventures and continuously learn.
It does not get boring easily.

There are also industry events.
Working heavily with the game industry, Colorkrew goes to the Tokyo Game Show every year.
According to the Colorkrew spirit of challenging new things, I also went to SXSW in Texas with two other colleagues.

Working in Japan

When I joined Colorkrew my Japanese was still not very good.
But everyone was welcoming and helpful.
Speaking Japanese every day in a Japanese company helps you get better very fast.
Although reading is still difficult I can now speak fluently in most situations.

The other way around, I can help people with my English and tech skills. There are not many chances for Japanese to speak English.
For the same reason it sometimes takes a while for new information or technologies to be available in Japan, which I can help everyone with.
So everyone is happy to talk to you and I taught and learned a lot after joining Colorkrew.

When working in Japan or any other country for that matter, you are able to bring skills that are looked for and other people cannot easily do.
English is only one of them, and other areas of knowledge can be too.。

Colorkrew has some traditions that make it easy to join and learn about the company.
Everyone has a coach, that can be your internal guide to the company. The coaches have coaches, too.
Additionally, there is something called Yuki Lunch (Brave Lunch), where you can ask anyone out for lunch once and the company pays for the lunch.
Both customs helped me a lot to meet the company, and the people.

While it is very different from the west, living in Japan has been very fun so far.
Japan is a country with many facets and much to see.
From northern Hokkaido to southern Okinawa the land and even the culture can be completely different.

If you want to experience Japan, Colorkrew is a good place to be in!

Our message to you

If you want to work in a modern Japanese company and are prepared to challenge yourself, Colorkrew is the place to be!