My honest review after retiring from Mujin - Software Engineer Mujin Employee Review

I left Mujin after I have considered many perspectives and imagined many possibilities of what Mujin will become. I can only give a few reasons below. For job applicants and candidates, please make sure you understand how Public Relations and Human Resources work: they show you the best about a company. I strongly suggest you reach out to former/current employees on the biggest career websites to get more (hopefully objective) opinions. Reviews on platforms like this are selected to some extent, so you still need to get first-hand materials elsewhere and hear other voices by yourself. When you receive an offer from Mujin, do make sure to exercise your right to request your contract, employment agreement, and all relevant documents, and ask HR questions. Before you make your final decision to join, responsibly take your time to do your surveys, and organize your other interviews well. (1) I don’t see myself having a good future career here. My managers don’t talk about my career path and my place here. I don’t feel my effort and contributions are adequately valued. When I joined, I believed Mujin had some unique technologies and could expand greatly in the market in scale. As a competent developer graduating from top universities with a high degree, I did my job great and fast with my unique skills, and improved so much in Mujin’s system. After one year and two, however, my compensation and employee rank still did not catch up with my contributions. During my evaluations, I was told a few times by the CTO to delay my satisfaction for a future salary boost and promotion. I argued I did not agree with his comments in my evaluation sheets, because they downplayed my achievements and contributions. “We do so to help you become a better engineer.”, he said, “Do better in the next 6 months, and I guarantee we will give you a decent pay raise and bonus.” I trusted him only in the first time. (2) Before COVID19, I sensed some management flaws. Then the COVID19 situation exposed many more management problems. Not until Covid did I fully understand in what an outdated way Mujin manages its employees. It simply cannot keep track of and evaluate our work progress without us being physically inside the office, sitting in front of managers and teammates. During the state of emergency (more than 1,000 positive cases in Tokyo), the top management still strongly encouraged employees to commute to the office (those living within 20 minutes’ commute must come). Although top management made some policy to allow some to work remotely, they actually pressured team managers to demand their teams to come. One manager even refused to review work progress when his teammate worked remotely, forcing him to commute after one day. Top management set up some seemingly detailed emergency plans during Covid, but executed very poorly when emergencies happened, like, some people working in office were tested positive. They only allowed early off-peak commute (7 to 8:30am) but no late off-peak, because top management wants to see everyone show up in the 8:45am stand-up. “Those who show up at 8:45 in the morning meetings always perform better”, CTO explained, “This is why Mujin succeeds”. (3) Knowing more about the industry, I have understood the company’s competitive advantages are waning. The technology was indeed advanced 3~5 years ago when the logistics automation fields were not mature enough. But in the past two years, so many other companies are picking up fast (pun) and closing up the technology gaps. They receive a good amount of investment funds, wisely use them to accumulate human capital, and adopt a modern management style, business directions, and marketing strategies. Compared to them, Mujin is relatively traditional and power concentrated. It can do some specific, specialized tasks very well, but the business model is difficult to scale, and so is its technology and the company size. These manifest the limitations in the company’s culture and value.