{"id":46325,"date":"2016-04-11T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-04-10T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gengo.com\/uncategorized\/faces-of-gengo-toshi\/"},"modified":"2025-02-07T15:18:18","modified_gmt":"2025-02-07T06:18:18","slug":"faces-of-gengo-toshi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gengo.com\/translator-news\/faces-of-gengo-toshi\/","title":{"rendered":"Faces of Gengo: Toshi"},"content":{"rendered":"Toshi is one of our experienced software engineers who joined the Gengo engineering team in early 2013. He has contributed greatly to the company by helping develop innovative translator-facing engineering projects. When he\u2019s not coding or building apps, you\u2019ll find him sipping specialty coffee in a hip downtown cafe.\r\n\r\nNationality:<\/b> \u00a0Japanese\r\nHometown:<\/b> \u00a0Hyogo, Japan\r\nLanguages:<\/b>\u00a0Japanese and English\r\nEducation: \u00a0<\/b>Computer Science and Systems Engineering, Okayama Prefectural University<\/span><\/a>\r\n\r\nWhere have you lived before, and what were your previous roles?<\/b>\r\n\r\nAfter graduating from university nine years ago, I moved to Tokyo and started my career as a software engineer. My first job was working for an enterprise application integration company for three years. Here, I worked on several projects to help build enterprise applications for large companies. It was difficult to gain any user feedback from these projects as they didn\u2019t believe in a continuous improvement system, like we do at Gengo.\r\n\r\nAfterward, I moved to Navitime<\/span><\/a>, a GPS subscription service, because I wanted to learn more about user feedback and ongoing system improvements that help make users feel satisfied.<\/span>\r\n\r\nHow would you describe living and working in Tokyo?<\/b>\r\n\r\nTokyo is a great place to experience new things and meet interesting people. As a software engineer, I like that there are so many startups here and lots of meet-ups are held most nights of the week. It\u2019s so exciting to learn new things about technology and meet people who share the same interests. I can also join different communities to learn about programming languages and improve my skills.\r\n\r\nHow long have you worked at Gengo?<\/b>\r\n\r\nI joined the company three years ago when it\u00a0was based in a small apartment in <\/span>Sendagaya<\/span><\/a>. It\u2019s been a great experience so far and I\u2019ve learned how to continuously improve systems and determine actual user needs from data analysis.<\/span>\r\n\r\nWhat drew you to the company?<\/b>\r\n\r\nGengo CEO Matt Romaine got in touch with me after finding my profile and portfolio on <\/span>Github<\/span><\/a>. When I visited the office, most of the employees were foreigners and my first impression was that it was like a startup from San Francisco\u2019s Bay Area but in Japan. I remember being so excited to work with the team!<\/span>\r\n\r\nI really wanted to work for a small startup and had been longing to work for an English-speaking company to challenge myself as a software engineer. I also felt that a smaller company could provide more opportunities to improve and implement new technologies. For example, it\u2019s harder to propose a tool like <\/span>ChatWork<\/span><\/a> in a bigger company. At Gengo, teams are more open to trying new things and it\u2019s easier to implement new ideas.<\/span>\r\n\r\n\"FoG_gengons-Toshi_extra_01\"\r\n\r\nWhat do you most enjoy about your role?<\/b>\r\n\r\nI love learning about new technologies and using new tools. Our engineering team doesn\u2019t hesitate to incorporate new tools to improve our system and increase efficiency. I truly appreciate this core value, known as <\/span>kaizen <\/span><\/i>(continuous improvement) in Japanese.<\/span>\r\n\r\nWorking with engineers from different countries is also interesting for me. I\u2019m glad our team can be of service to over 18,000 translators worldwide who use the systems we have built when they work on translations. I enjoy helping them with their jobs and enhancing their productivity.\r\n\r\nWhat have been some of your challenges, and how have you overcome them?<\/b>\r\n\r\nWhen I joined the company, I didn\u2019t speak English at all. I spoke with my team members through an interpreter and had conversations via messaging systems, but the company encouraged me to take English classes. I\u2019ve since studied English and my communication skills are improving. My biggest challenge used to be attending meetings\u2014I started at Gengo as a front-end engineer and it was tough discussing with designers about the user interface.\r\n\r\nThere are also other bigger yet exciting challenges in the translation industry that have great potential to improve using technologies like application programming interface (<\/span>API<\/span><\/a>) and translation memory. With the upcoming 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games, there could be greater opportunities to collaborate with other businesses and industries.<\/span>\r\n\r\nWhat have been some of your favorite projects you\u2019ve worked on at Gengo, and why?<\/b>\r\n\r\nMy favorite project was the translator workbench<\/span><\/a>. It took nine months to build and we had a lot of challenges before launching it in November 2014, but it was a big achievement for us. We totally refactored our database and built the workbench from scratch using completely new technologies. I worked mainly for the front-end side and our internal translator API system to connect these layers.<\/span>\r\n\r\nHow has Gengo changed since you started working here?<\/b>\r\n\r\nOne of the major changes has been testing. After I joined the company, we started writing tests for our code of systems and implemented a cycle to run unit tests automatically and continuously when we push the code to the repository. This has since helped improve quality and efficiency.\r\n\r\nI\u2019m also glad we now have a QA team based in the Philippines. They make great test scenarios for web apps and API systems so we can now catch most bugs and fix them before delivering the system to customers and translators.\r\n\r\nWhat do you think makes Gengo a great place to work?<\/b>\r\n\r\nGengo is a technology-driven translation company. We develop new tools for translations, such as the workbench, translation memory<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>glossaries<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>automated validation<\/span><\/a>, and will continue to improve the translation environment to help our clients and translators.<\/span>\r\n\r\nThe company is also quite global. Our engineering team is not too big but we are made up of over 10 nationalities! I love discovering cultures and working with a diverse team because each one has specialized skills and expertise.\r\n\r\nIn addition, working at Gengo provides a good work-life balance and gives me time to enjoy my hobbies. I used to have a 12-hour workday, so working at Gengo is definitely much better than at a traditional Japanese company.\r\n\r\n\"FoG_gengons-Toshi_extra_02\"\r\n\r\nWhat do you do in your spare time?<\/b>\r\n\r\nI love drinking coffee. I usually look for great coffee shops in Tokyo and visit them on weekends. I particularly love specialty coffee<\/span><\/a>. It\u2019s interesting to learn where caf\u00e9s source or grow their beans, how they roast them and brew their coffee. It\u2019s amazing to know how the taste differs when certain processes are changed. My favorite coffee shops in Tokyo are <\/span>The Coffee Hangar<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>Onibus Coffee<\/span><\/a>.<\/span>\r\n\r\nI also love creating apps. I helped build Japan Coffee Map<\/span><\/a>, which helps me<\/span> to discover new caf\u00e9s. I highly recommend it if you\u2019re a coffee aficionado living in Japan.<\/span>\r\n\r\nWant to work at Gengo?<\/strong>\r\n\r\n