The true reason for Japan’s critical developer shortage

It's a great time to be a programmer in Japan. Everyone is hiring and there simply is not enough talent available.

But why is that?

The truth is that until about 10 years ago, programming was considered kind of a blue-collar, low-skill job. It was OK to start your career as a programmer, but if you had not moved into management by the time you were 30, clearly you weren't that bright.

The startup boom has changed that, and developer salaries (and respect) has improved significantly.

But the education system has not caught up, and far too few people know how to code.

Today we sit down with Masa Kato, founder of Progate, and discuss how Japan got herself into this situation, and what Progate is doing to fix it. The problems run deeper than expected.

It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it.

Show Notes

Why Japanese elementary students are learning Javascript The problem with computer science in Japan Why Japanese universities resist change - even when they know they need it The flaw in most online programming courses Can online education ever really be global? Why B2B edTech companies have trouble in B2B markets How English skills are holding back Japanese startups

Links from the Founder

Everything you wanted to know about Progate Friend Masa on Facebook Follow him on Twitter @cmasad43

Leave a comment Transcript Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs.

I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me.

You know, I spend a lot of time talking with startup founders in Japan. I also spend a fair amount of time talking with policymakers and academics, and even executives of large companies who want to support startups in Japan.

Two of the most concerns I hear revolve around the lack of qualified developers in Japan and how the Japanese education system doesn’t really prepare students for a world that demands that they innovate.

Well, today, we’ll be tackling both of these issues head-on. In a few minutes, I’d like you to meet Masa Kato, the CEO of Progate. Progate is an online platform that is teaching young people to code, and yeah, yeah, there are a lot of startups doing that, but these guys are onto something.

As Masa will explain, he actually started Progate when he was majoring in computer science at the University of Tokyo, and he didn’t start Progate as a side project, he started it because even though he was majoring in computer science, he wasn’t learning how to program in his computer science classes.

Now, all of this will make much more sense when Masa explains it to you, but this foundation might be why Progate has seen so much success so quickly. Progate is now being used in high schools and elementary schools all over Japan, and they have expanded into overseas markets as well, but things didn’t work out exactly as they plan and they had to change their business model to survive.

But you know, Masa tells that story much better than I can. So, let’s get right to the interview.

[pro_ad_display_adzone id="1404" info_text="Sponsored by" font_color="grey" ] Interview Tim: So, I’m sitting here with Masa Kato who wants to teach the world to code. So, thanks for sitting down with me.

Masa: Thanks for having me.

Tim: Masa, you are the founder and CEO of Progate. I explained it a bit in the introduction, but why don’t you tell us a bit about what Progate is?

Masa: So, basically, we are a company that teaches programming and we teach it online. The content we teach is mainly web-related, so it’s about teaching people how to make websites, make web services.

Tim: So, HTML, CSS, this kind of –

Masa: JavaScript and Ruby, Ruby on Rails, and all that, yeah, and we started this company five years ago.

Tim: Okay, so is Progate, is it an app, is it a video?

Masa: So, we do have an app as well, but we started off as a web service, and instead of using videos, we used slides to teach the students, and we also have an online coding environment, so the users can actually test out their knowledge on the browser without any like, pre-setup.

Tim: And, is it just sort of like, basic courses or is it basic to advanced?

Masa: So, it’s basic to intermediate, I’d say. So, we teach the fundamentals of these programming languages and eventually, lead them onto programming frameworks, and then yeah, we lead them to develop their own services.

Tim: So, is the primary interface the app or is it the browser?

Masa: The browser.

Tim: Yeah?

Masa: Yeah.

Tim: Yeah, I can understand that. I mean, trying to code on a smartphone would be kind of challenging.

Masa: That’s true, that’s true, but we do have a special keyboard to make that easy.

Tim: Yeah? People do that? I mean, really?

Masa: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tim: Wow, I can’t imagine that! Maybe it is a generational thing, but for them even like, laptop screens seem kind of small. I can’t imagine doing it on a smartphone.

Masa: Yeah, that’s true. We do provide Progate to high school students and junior high school students, and actually find it easier to learn on the mobile app.

Tim: Really?

Masa: Yeah, because some of them don’t even know how to type emails to register on Progate because they are so used to clicking on their smartphones. They can’t type. Even if they can, they struggle with finding how, with Japanese and English, they have to convert.

Tim: Right, right.

Masa: Yeah, so the accidentally type in Japanese and they’re like, “Ah, it’s not working.”

Tim: Oh, okay, so in that case, like having a really controlled environment, even with a tiny screen?

Masa: Yeah.

Tim: Alright, that makes sense.

Masa: And even for adults because a lot of Japanese people travel on trains and stuff. They can use that time to review the content they learned on the web version and try it on the app version.

Tim: Alright, cool. So, the last time I checked, you had something like 600,000 users now, right? So, tell me about your customers – who are they? You mentioned like, some are high school students, is it mostly younger programmers, older

Masa: Okay, so our main target is people in their 20s, I’d say – 20s to 30s, so people who already have a job not in IT and who want to look for other jobs in IT or something IT-related, but recently, over the past two years or so, many teenagers are starting to learn on our platform as well, so that’s starting to change a little bit, yeah.

Tim: Okay, so it’s really people who are looking to move into IT jobs. They are not like, hobbyists.

Masa: Both, actually, like university students, especially in Japan. It’s becoming a trend to learn programming just as a skill, not to get jobs, but people are starting to think that it’s really important to be like, programming-literate.

Tim: I think that makes a lot of sense, really. I mean, programming today is like, I don’t know, knowing how to use the email. It opens so many doors in business.

Masa: Exactly, yeah, so technology is all around you and it’s becoming very important, especially since programming will be a compulsory thing to learn in high schools and junior high schools, and even primary schools in Japan in two years.

Tim: Really? I didn’t know that.

Masa: Yeah.

Tim: So, the Ministry of Education has said all students are learning programming?

Masa: Yes, that will be included in the actual curriculum. Even parents are starting to get more interested in learning to code.

Tim: What language are they going to be teaching in schools?

Masa: So, I guess JavaScript.

Tim: Yeah, I kind of had the feeling.

Masa: Yeah, yeah, but Python is starting to get more attention, and yeah.

Tim: That’s really encouraging. Actually, you mentioned university students and you started Progate back when you were studying at Tokyo University, right?

Masa: Yes, yes, exactly, yeah.

Tim: So, was it a hobby project that just got out of hand or did you start it knowing you wanted to make a company out of this?

Masa: So, I guess it was a little bit of both. When it first started learning programming, it was at Uni in my third year of Uni, so that’s when people started to choose their major is at Tokyo University, so I chose computer science and that’s my first experience of programming, and I wanted to learn how to make web services and iPhone apps because like, five years ago, everyone started getting iPhones and I thought it was really cool. I thought programming was really cool, so I wanted to learn that, and I majored in computer science with high hopes, but what I actually learned there was not quite what I expected. It was more academic.

Tim: Yeah, let’s dig into this because this is something I thought has been a little odd about computer science in Japan. So, what were they teaching you?

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Masa: So, they were teaching me like, the history of programming, like how it was first made.

Tim: Like the Babbage engine and things like this? Okay.

Masa: Yes, yeah, yeah.

Tim: I mean, that’s interesting.

Masa: That is interesting, yeah. I mean, I’d love to learn it now, now that I’m an actual programmer, I’d like to learn deeper into it, but back then, I wanted to know more like practical stuff, but all the professors of there didn’t really teach me that, and that is understandable because they aren’t really doing the latest web stuff.

Tim: I mean, honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever met a computer science professor in Japan who has ever had to deliver a project to a customer.

Masa: Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, exactly, yeah. So, I didn’t know that before, but after majoring in computer science, it just didn’t feel right, you know?

Tim: Yeah, so is that a common feeling among your classmates, that you just wanted to build something?

Masa: Not really.