njwi332
We’re building the biggest bike shop in the world.
Upway is the leading marketplace for refurbished e-bikes across Europe and the United States.
In 3 years, we grew from 0 to $200M GMV. The tech team grew from a small senior core to ~12 engineers in 2025, and we plan to grow to ~30 engineers in 2026.
We also raised a $60M Series C at the end of last year to support the next phase of the company.
This is not a SaaS. We operate warehouses, handle real inventory, and build software that connects logistics, product, and marketplace dynamics at scale.
We work with a Shape Up–inspired methodology that gives teams real ownership: shaping problems, building solutions, shipping, and learning from real-world impact.
Stack: TypeScript | NestJS | React | Shopify | PostgreSQL | GCP
Learn more:
- Tech & Product subjects we’re working on: https://like-piper-15f.notion.site/tech
- Open roles: https://careers.upway.shop/
- Contact our tech recruiter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maeg-horeau-28445b72/
But regardless, no, there is nowhere near as much violent death here in Japan. It is one of the safest countries in the world. The high death rate is due to the aging population: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_of_Japan
It's great as long as you work for a US tech company. The selection is pretty limited though. As far as companies with 'US adjacent salary bands'* you've got Amazon, Google, Indeed and now Doordash/Wolt (disclosure, I lead the eng org for DD/W in Tokyo). Also Stripe, I guess.
There are a number of Tier 2 companies which are pretty foreigner friendly but don't have the same level of pay - Rakuten, Line, etc. So if you're willing to compromise a little then there are a lot more options.
*By US adjacent, I don't mean literally as high as in the US, but maybe within 70-90% of a similar role in the states.
Do you refer to Daikanyama here? Easily my favourite neighbourhood of Tokyo (so much so that I just bought an apartment to move there in two weeks!)
I was told in no uncertain terms by my real estate agent "Do not move company until your loan is approved. You're already impacted by the fact you work for a foreign company, and you will probably get declined if you start somewhere new."
The fact that I'd likely be looking at a substantial raise and therefore be in a better position to pay off any mortgage is irrelevant, the bank just cares about stability.
(I'm sure you already understand this, this story is for the benefit of other curious thread-readers)
See also: ad hominem, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/character-attack/
You're right about paying people differently based on life circumstances - but this generally happens in the form of substantial tax cuts for couples with a non/part time working wife (e.g. [2]), rather than by paying them more (although there are some government benefits like a child allowance).
Mostly nitpicking here! Appreciate your contributions to this thread, you're right on the money for the most part
[1]: https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h00759/ [2]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-JRTB-17152
> none of us are safe - not the random grad student with a Twitter account making fun of bad science
From that I assumed that the sort of people being referred to are those who are debunking or criticising work by already established scientists. I'm speculating here but I would guess it hurts their chances because those who do the hiring don't want to risk taking on someone who might criticise their science in future.
However it's only happened once in a year of living here and never in Tokyo, only a ruralish city, so I don't take it as an indictment on Japanese people. I'm sure there are plenty of bars in rural America or Australia (where I'm from) that would have been equally unfriendly to someone of Asian ethnicity. At the end of the day you just have to decide not to let it ruin your day that there are some bad eggs in the bunch, no matter which country it is.
*Caveat though that I've heard it is much worse here for people from China than it is for white foreigners such as myself. If it made up a significant portion of my experience it would be hard to live here comfortably.
That's a myth. Source - worked at AWS for four years, but also common sense. If you rent out all your surge capacity to customers then what happens when the holiday season comes? You kick all your customers off and shut down their business for a while? Not a business model for happy customers and not what happened in real life.
[1] https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/185815973623/does-r-d-...
For another one - bubble tea. A year or so back it went from not popular at all to lines over an hour long outside most bubble tea places, and the word 'tapiru' from tapioca and suru - roughly 'to bubble tea' was one of Japans hot phrases for the year [1]
[1] https://japantoday.com/category/national/nominees-for-japan%...
I think the one that best applies here is 4 - 技術や製品などが、その登場から十分な時間が経ち、すでに問題点が出尽くし、解決も済んでいる。最先端のものではないが、不測の事態が発生しにくく、安定して動作することを意味する。
This definition is roughly "Enough time has passed since a technology, product, etc, debuted that its flaws are well known, and development has settled. It means it is not cutting edge, unexpected situations (usages) rarely occur/are difficult to create, and the usage is well understood/stabilised."
I tend to see much richer and more precise definitions from a Japanese-Japanese dictionary than from Jisho.
If you went to university, not only did you learn in your free time but you _paid_ to learn in your free time.
Why should the calculus suddenly flip when you get a job and all of a sudden you should only have to learn when someone is paying for you to do it?
So thanks :)
Tech stack: primarily Java and Ruby
I'm not sure if the big tech co's are allowed to post here. I'm a hiring manager for AWS in Sydney, growing my team here in Sydney. More information on the role is available on the public listing here: https://amazon.jobs/en/jobs/715276/software-development-engi...
If interested, feel free to apply through the above link or reach out to me at nawil at amazon dot com if you'd like to chat about the role.
To offer some data for Sydney, Google has of course been around a while, Google Maps is based out of Australia. Atlassian is hiring as much as ever. Amazon has been growing at a rapid clip here in Sydney (I wish I could disclose numbers publicly!) and we have offices in Melbourne and Brisbane, and Microsoft is in the process of opening a dev centre in Sydney right now as well. Still a long ways to go but it's much better than even a few years ago.