Pros
Catered breakfast, lunch, and dinner delivery. Corporate communications tries hard to create family events, speaker series, fun activities. There are talented people who unfortunately have their efforts squandered by bureaucracy. If you are a Rakuten-lifer this company is for you. If you want to hide and not do work, you can do that too. If you want to grow and have headhunters call you because you are valuable, this is not for you.
Cons
I can't say it better than "Black Hole for your career" with 160+ helpful clicks. It's apparent which voices are real and which are manufactured by HR. After leaving Rakuten, I found the discontent and nonsense I had to deal with everyday was actually abnormal in the Bay Area. I'm happy I left, and I am cheering on employees voicing their opinions and making moves to leave. While no one is forcing you to be mistreated or to accept low market pay as other reviews say, no one is also yanking you out when all the negatives put you down in spirit and energy, causing you to care less and less about your career. - Lack of mentorship with HR being enforcement only: I wish I could say there are mentors and counselors like the other large startups have adopted, but you're on your own to navigate politics, bureaucracy, and constant reorganizations until the only people left are politicians and administrators. Don't try to voice your real opinion, because that will just roll up to management who want to avoid conflict and not solve issues. - There is a sense of distrust between Japanese and American employees. One is there to run the show, and the rest of us just work there and have little say. This was the case in my frequent conference calls and Powerpoints back and forth. Department leaders did not want to take risks, and we are blamed for the lack of results from budget meetings. - Archaic and cookie cutter promotion and evaluation system. When you are told by HR during orientation that getting a 3/5 is "pretty good" and you are doing your job, it makes you wonder how low the standards are. - Alarming how many people leave but no one says anything and pretends that person was never here. So many from HR, recruiting, sales, IT have left because we're dealing with new names each time. I know a handful of employees who never made it past 4 months. At least the market forgives after reading the Glassdoor. - Lack of diversity and women in leadership. This may have changed but when I was there, women were not represented at the C-level or at all among the dozens of companies Rakuten owned - Too many managers and overhead and not enough individual contributors or people who did the real work. I never saw college graduates ever - Confusion about working hours and working from home: Is the work day 9 to 5 or is it 9 to 6. Different policies about working from home across various companies, to know what the real rule is. - Watching video recordings during morning meetings. It's more engaging if it was live. To Americans, it seems like 1984. Get with the times.