"So many strong women are fighting for diversity in tech"

As a young graduate, Yuka Masuda wasn't attracted to the standard Japanese life path of staying in the country and diligently working for a large corporation. After studying and working in London, Singapore and Dublin, she has now plantes her roots in Paris and works as a frontend engineer at Sqreen. The food in France and her passionate colleagues have helped her feel at home.

Dreams of a life abroad

After graduating from university in Japan, I went to study English for a year in London. I was really curious about non-Japanese culture and had always wanted to live abroad. My parents are typical Japanese parents, they don’t speak English, so naturally they thought I was crazy. They probably still think so. 

In Japan, it is considered bad to have strong opinions, so the corporate culture is very different from that in Europe. Communication can be very ambiguous—you have to read between the lines. And working hard means working long hours; at my previous companies, it was common to stay at the office until 10 or 11 p.m., and take the last train home. You also don’t take long holidays; you have to apologize for taking one week off each year. I appreciate the work-life balance in France much more. 

Japanese society is difficult, especially for women. You have to be pretty, wear lots of makeup, and there are very rigid ideas about how you’re supposed to behave. I didn’t consider myself a feminist at the time, but I did sense that something was wrong—I just don’t like hierarchy. When I moved to London, I felt like I could finally express my true opinions for the first time in my life. 

It’s never too late to gain new skills

After coming back from London, I studied web-design and got my first job at a startup in Tokyo. It was fun, but I still dreamed of going abroad, so I moved to Singapore to work in customer support. My French boyfriend and I were doing long distance between Singapore and France, so I decided to move to Twitter’s Dublin office to be closer to him. Being a spam fighter was interesting, but I still had to commute to France every month, which was tiring, and the food in Dublin also wasn’t that great—too many potatoes! 

For a year, I struggled to get a job in France, mostly because companies were unable to sponsor my visa. So I made a radical switch and decided to study programming by myself, which paid off: I finally got a job in France. Sqreen was already on my list of English-speaking companies in Paris, and their blog-posts about diversity & inclusion really resonated with me, so I applied. I’ve really come to appreciate my colleagues—I’ve never had this much fun in my professional life! I get along with everyone, and some of my colleagues are as passionate about diversity & inclusion as myself. People also really care about the product. They’re not just in it for the money.

Becoming aware of privilege

The education system still hasn’t changed much. Many girls feel like STEM professions are not for them, and there’s also not many female role models in the media to inspire them to choose this career path. Some day, I would love to teach and inspire girls in front of a classroom. I want to tell them that, if they’re passionate, they should definitely go for a career in tech, because there are so many cool and strong women fighting for diversity in tech right now.

Tech can be an unwelcoming place, and it’s still very privileged. As an Asian minority, I’m more aware of this. But at the same time, I’m highly educated, cisgender and heterosexual, which is a different form of privilege. So I consider it my duty to raise my voice for other minorities, such as transgender or LGBTQI people. We need education to change this.