Mujin reviews

2.6

31% would recommend to a friend

(65 total reviews)

Issei Takino

93% approve of CEO

35% positive business outlook

Mujin has an employee rating of 2.6 out of 5 stars, based on 65 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an average working experience there. The Mujin employee rating is 32% below average for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

65 reviews
1.0
Dec 9, 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The only real pro is the product itself. As mentioned in the headline, Mujin makes a 21st century product, and it has been a challenging and interesting product to work on.

Cons

To begin, Mujin is a company that is inexplicably split in two. The product side and business side work in separate areas with separate leadership. This leads to a sort of odd distrust and disdain between both sides that, while never becomes the focal point for any huge problems or crises, still pervades the company in the background. It impedes growth and unity, and serves little overall purpose. After 2+ years of time at the company, I've seen miscommunications, petty arguments, and general distrust arise from this split time and time again. One may think that for a high-tech startup with high-tech products, the working environment and management style would match. This is not at all the case. Whether you're on the product side under the CTO, or on the business side under the CEO, the company is run like a traditional domestic firm from bygone eras. All workers must be physically present (no telecommuting, no staggered hours, even during a pandemic.) Daily reports are delivered in-person, standing up, in a line like schoolchildren. If you are not in plain sight, then you surely are not working, and certainly cannot be trusted to work without the CTO or CEO over your shoulder. The common response to requests for flexible working hours or telecommuting is that efficiency will drop, and people will slack off. One then must ask, have you been hiring children, or responsible adults? Have you made any positive effort to explore flexible working styles without completely dismissing it as a wasted effort from the very start? This is the prime concern among your staff, who are worried about getting sick and having to use their own paid leave days to escape an office where so much "traditional" face-to-face interactions must occur. Again, much of this results purely from a highly controlling management who tends towards distrust of their own staff. My advice for management: the two heads of this fractured, split-in-two company have only minimal experience working in other companies prior to Mujin. Please consider getting outside consultants in to evaluate your business practises. This can only bring about improvements for yourself, your staff, and the company. People would like to work in a modern, flexible environment - one that matches the type of industry you're in. The company is slowly transitioning from a startup to an established business, however this transition will be long and painful until the CTO/CEO start placing a bit more trust in their own workers and adopt modern ways of thinking.

2.0
Jun 26, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

There are some positives to Mujin of course. The staff overall is very intelligent and comes from strong education backgrounds. Mujin's products are interesting and competitive. Most people there are friendly and helpful.

Cons

I left Mujin for another company in the same field, doing similar work. I now wish I had done it sooner, because Mujin was my first job in Japan and I thought that the working style of the company was similar at other companies, but I learned I was wrong about it. I do not want to focus too much on the Covid situation, but for me this was really the thing that made me finally realize the company does not have our health as a top priority. At Mujin, the management did everything possible to prevent people from having any flexible working style during the pandemic (and this is still the case now from what I heard from colleagues). Only when the government in Japan issues an "emergency" status, the company would reluctantly send people home, but even then I could not do so without upsetting my team and my manager. Yes, some changes were made in the office to spread people out a bit. But honestly, when most other 'modern' startups (even in robotics) are strongly promoting and encouraging work from home, why would anyone want to stay at Mujin? How will Mujin expect to retain a top talent when their competitors have working styles that adapt to recent changes in our society. It's actually a little bit embarrassing when I tell my friends and family about this. They think I worked at a "black company". Even my spouse was concerned about me. I believe the HR and related departments had wanted to do more to improve the situation at Mujin as well, but the top management in the company has an unhealthy obsession with seeing everyone onsite and watching everyone and everything. I think this is ironic because Mujin designs autonomous robots, and one of their company mottos is to relieve humans of manual labour. I got it in my head that most companies are the same. After switching companies now, I realize that this is not "normal". My current boss, and his boss too place enough trust in me to work independantly, and employees are not pressured to come to office. Trust is a two way street, and I feel like giving 100% in my work thanks to the trust between us. Sorry for the very long "cons". But after changing companies, I felt like I had an awakening.

1.0
Oct 2, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- The controller system works and is deployed in many instances

Cons

- Everyone messages on internal IM instead of talking in person - Collaboration is the stated reason to require office attendance through typhoons, pandemics, etc - Avoiding posting anything that might broadly be misconstrued as 'trade secrets' or 'confidential', I will only say that I do not like the unconventional development practices, as they stray far from industry standard, and I cannot see how they will be sustainable - Government holidays are granted per quarter through the year, rather than the 'yearly' scheme they represented to me when I joined - There is no work from home policy, which leaves it to team 'managers' to say that upon their discretion it's totally, definitely allowed, and encouraged when there is 'urgent' or after-hours work required, rather than "whenever you need" as was represented to me when I was interviewing - There are dissonant policies and announcements regarding tracking employees' time - There is one small window in the office - Frequent construction noise with no notice - Scant building insulation - Engineers must leave the attendance-tracking office gates to access the toilets - "Visa assistance" means just the minimum actually required of a company to sponsor an employee, rather than providing a legal representative to process the immigration documents like at every other "foreigner friendly" tech company in Japan

Viewing 22 - 24 of 65 Reviews

Glassdoor has 72 Mujin reviews submitted anonymously by Mujin employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Mujin is right for you.