“Anyone Here Speak English?” — The Day I Was Thrown Into a Hellish Global Finance Project

Whoa… sometimes, your future begins in the very place you were trying to avoid.

By my eighth year at the company, I had been living what looked like a relatively peaceful engineer life.

Well… not exactly.

There was one thing I had been avoiding for years.

That was — a power-harassment sales manager.

He yelled.
He cornered people.
He made unreasonable demands.

He controlled the workplace with pressure and fear.

So I kept my distance from him whenever possible.

But one day, everything changed.

Suddenly, I was ordered to join one of his projects.

“Because nobody else can handle English.”

…What?

■ Engineers Who Can Actually Work in English Are Rare

At that moment, I was the only participant from the development team.

Even from the application team, I was alone.

The reason was simple.

“Because you can at least read English.”

This is actually a surprisingly controversial issue in the IT industry.

Many engineers can build systems.
Many can write code.

But very few can survive in a world operated entirely in English.

And this project was far from ordinary.

A brand-new financial service was about to launch in Japan.

The problem?

The service itself didn’t even exist in Japan yet.

Which meant—

We were importing the business model itself from overseas.

The system.
The operations.
The business logic.
The mindset.

Everything.

■ A London Financial System Lands in Japan

The platform being introduced was a globally used financial system centered in London.

Naturally, every single document was in English.

Specifications.
Architecture documents.
Operational procedures.
Meeting materials.

Everything.

In English.

And on top of that, financial knowledge was required.

At the time, my understanding of financial systems was still immature.

But I had started to understand systems themselves more deeply.

That was exactly why they told me:

“We want feedback from the application team perspective.”

Easy for them to say.

I was suddenly thrown into a world-class financial system environment.

The project controller was a legendary figure from the primary vendor.

On the client side, only executive-level coordinators existed.

And there—

Was that same power-harassment sales manager.

Along with the people surrounding him.

The atmosphere on-site was constantly tense.

■ The Uncomfortable Truth About High Performers

This part will probably spark debate.

I disliked that sales manager.

Even now, I don’t believe his methods were right.

But still—

He managed to win a project of this scale.

A project that imported an entirely new financial service into Japan.

And somehow, he made it happen.

…Maybe his abilities were real after all.

Of course, I’m not defending harassment as an organization.

In fact, that sales manager was later demoted not long after the project started.

But the experience left me with a difficult question.

“The people who produce results”
and
“The people who are healthy for an organization”

are not always the same.

I still feel Japanese corporations haven’t fully answered that question.

■ This Was My Gateway to the World

But eventually, I made a decision.

There was no point in being afraid.

This was the doorway that could change my life.

I decided to give everything I had.

I would learn financial systems.

I would earn finance-related certifications.

I would stop running away from English.

This project was obviously going to be brutal.

It might explode.
It might collapse.
I had no confidence at all.

But even now, I still remember the feeling of trembling back then.

Was it fear?

Or excitement?

Probably both.

And then I realized something.

The moment that changes your career
doesn’t come when you’re fully prepared.

It comes when there’s nowhere left to run.

I can do this! Tomorrow, I take the first step forward.