Eric Turner ⛩️

US-born software dev / entrepreneur in Japan.

Tokyo? Hit me up ☕ 😁

[Eric Turner ⛩️ @_etdev]

I'm on the @IndieHackers podcast! 🥳

🇯🇵 Moving to Japan & starting a business
💰 The long road from $0 to $80k a month
🤝 Learning to sell as a developer
🚀 Playbook to grow a job board in 2022

https://t.co/fLAQvaMLna

[Eric Turner ⛩️ @_etdev]

@marckohlbrugge Plus how dumb I must sound talking about topics I'm NOT an expert in

[Eric Turner ⛩️ @_etdev]

For anyone with TS/JS + Rust experience:

Seems like a great opportunity in Japan ⤵︎

[Christoph Nakazawa @cnakazawa]

It appears that I’m hiring. DM me if you want to work together.

https://t.co/carGR6rkoR

[Eric Turner ⛩️ @_etdev]

@cnakazawa Awesome 💙

[Eric Turner ⛩️ @_etdev]

@marckohlbrugge Nice. Next step: Steam for AI games

Host your own games. Provide tools to help others build + publish their games

Free or paid. Leaderboards, sharing features and stuff

Wonder if anyone's built that yet... feels inevitable with how good AI is at games now

[Eric Turner ⛩️ @_etdev]

For decades, everyone dunked on Japan for "missing" software.

"They're too obsessed with hardware..."

"They rely too much on System Integrators..."

mfw everyone in SF is either pivoting to hardware or hiring SIers (*they call 'em FDEs).

[Eric Turner ⛩️ @_etdev]

@theHarpratap @oh_smr_ Good point! Agreed.

You can ask about this in interviews, but it would be nice to know earlier in the process.

[Eric Turner ⛩️ @_etdev]

Japan job-related things foreigners think are red flags 🚩but aren't:

1. Saturday and Sunday listed under "holidays"

Means nothing, just how employers write JDs. Holdover from when Japan had 6-day weeks (rare now)

A template. Doesn't mean they're "proud" of giving weekends off

[Eric Turner ⛩️ @_etdev]

@oh_smr_ No, pretty much every tech / knowledge work-focused company here gives Saturdays and Sundays off.

A long time ago it was more common to work on Saturdays, so companies still write "Saturdays and Sundays off" in job descriptions.

It doesn't tell you anything about the company.

[Eric Turner ⛩️ @_etdev]

@biophysical_agi Agreed!

[Eric Turner ⛩️ @_etdev]

I'm not saying bad companies don't do these things.

I'm saying they provide no signal. You shouldn't NOT apply for a job because of them.

And to find actual "black companies" you need to look a lot deeper.

[Eric Turner ⛩️ @_etdev]

3. Late example work hours in job descriptions, e.g "10:00 am to 7:00 pm"

Doesn't mean everyone works until 7. It means "you'll work 8 hours + 1-hour lunch"

So if you start at 10 (late), you end at 7.

That's what it's meant to communicate, not "they think 7pm is early" or w/e

[Eric Turner ⛩️ @_etdev]

@davidstosik That would also work!

But I just made a folder and had Claude build an extension that did what I wanted

When it finished, I enabled Developer mode in Chrome and loaded the unpacked extension

Now I just ask Claude to add more functionality to that extension and it auto-updates

[Eric Turner ⛩️ @_etdev]

Underrated AI use case:

Maintain a personal browser extension.

And just... change websites whenever you feel like it.

Takes no time at all. AI updates the extension, which auto-refreshes

E.g I added an Old/New Toggle to my Reddit and a "Resolve all" button to my Github.

[Eric Turner ⛩️ @_etdev]

@jcinjpn

[Eric Turner ⛩️ @_etdev]

@ADHD_Options @simohosio Super subjective of course but

Outlier salary at a good company in Tokyo is a top-tier lifestyle worldwide imo

[Eric Turner ⛩️ @_etdev]

I've met a few Bloomberg engineers in my Tokyo travels.

Thought "Oh the news website, that's cool I guess!"

Meanwhile they pay more than Google and Indeed apparently 😂

(h/t Levels⋅FYI)

[Eric Turner ⛩️ @_etdev]

@simohosio No doubt! Even with a kid or two in インター you should be ok

[Eric Turner ⛩️ @_etdev]

@konichivalue Definitely! Forgive me my ignorance 🙏

I had never really interacted with the brand outside the news outlet + didn't understand the extent of the business

[Eric Turner ⛩️ @_etdev]

@seamlik Yes definitely! I really underestimated the company / didn't understand the extent of their business