Nice to meet you. My name is Katsuya Yamashita.
I joined Asilla in February this year, and as the title says, I am still a new graduate as of February 2021. My previous job was as an electrical engineer at a plant engineering company called JGC Holdings Corporation.
Aside from the reason why I quit after 9 months, this article describes what kind of person I am and what attracted me to Asilla and why I joined the company. I hope this article will give you an idea of the kind of people who work at Asilla.
Mar 2020 Completed Graduate School of Engineering, Miyazaki University
April 2020 Joined JGC Holdings Corporation
December 2020 Retired from JGC Holdings Corporation
Feb. 2021 Joined Asilla Corporation
My background is described above, but let me briefly tell you about me.
Since June 2020, I have been teaching science online to high school students in a country called Zambia, independently of my previous job, by creating a Facebook group where I share chemistry and physics problems and give explanations via Messenger and WhatsApp. It may sound like "international cooperation," but I never intended this activity to be international cooperation. I see the value in the potential of their smarts and humanity as a catalyst for making the world a better place in the future. They are many times smarter than I am, eager to learn, and sensitive to social conditions, and I believe that they should have more opportunities to demonstrate their abilities. I am doing my small part to create a foundation for them to be more active in society.
I have never set foot on the African continent (laugh). I have always wanted to go, but I ended up becoming a working adult without having done so. I became interested in Africa when I was a university student, because of an African student who came to the laboratory next to mine. I was not directly involved with him as a tutor, but we had lunch together and participated in events on campus.
Because of his influence, I felt close to Africa, and from that time on, I vaguely felt that I wanted to do something in Africa in the future.
JGC Corporation, which I joined as a new graduate in April 2020.
In addition to my activities in Africa, I also participate in OneMM (One Minato Mirai), a voluntary group of companies headquartered or based in the Minato Mirai area of Yokohama, to do interesting things together, in parallel with my main job! (One Minato Mirai), a volunteer group of companies headquartered or based in the Minato Mirai area of Yokohama that get together to do interesting things (I'll advertise that lol), participating in the management of an event organized by an even larger volunteer group called One Japan, doing an internship at a company called An-Nahal, and many other things. After trying many different things, I concluded that the grass looked greener on the next lawn (laughs). I wanted to see a wider world, and I wanted to challenge myself in a place with more momentum in the industry and the company. Of course, I was very worried about my decision to leave the company. I listened to many different people and read more than 100 books in nine months.
I can't tell you how many times I googled "three years on a stone" (laughs).
We spend a third of our day at work, and one does not have enough time to live that time with doubts and fears. I had low enthusiasm for work in a life of constant worry, and I had a dim sense that it was just not the same. My work at JGC was interesting, and there were many people on the staff whom I respected. But more than that, my desire to venture out into the outside world won out. By the way, here are some words that inspired me to take the final step. (Laughs)
"Fun comes first."
This is the work ethic of Ma Yun (Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba). If employees don't have fun, customers don't have fun either," so he says, "Employees first, customers second.
I want to take off on a positive note, not a negative one! I think anything is possible, as long as it is a retirement that you want to think about. That is how I left a large company.
I have no knowledge of AI, and my weak subjects at university were programming and other information-related subjects and mathematics. The development base is in Vietnam, so I communicate with them every day, but of course I don't understand what they are saying (laughs). (Laughs.) It looks like I will continue to study hard every day. On the other hand, just like the name of the company, the president, Mr. Kimura, and the other employees are very pleasant. It is refreshing and very stimulating for me to see people around me enjoying their work. I spend my days in a congenial atmosphere, just like in a university laboratory. However, there is no such thing as a startup that is just fun. To borrow a phrase from Mr. Wakasa (a former JGC employee), who is my senior at both JGC and Asilla, "The difference in the environment I felt after changing jobs was, from the perspective of a young employee, the aforementioned required mindset and the other is "the speed of growth required of employees. The other is "the speed at which employees are expected to grow. At my previous job, the employment system was still based on lifetime employment, and the culture was to nurture young employees over a long period of time. As a startup, Asilla does not have that luxury at all. Therefore, everyone, newcomers or not, are immediately thrown into the front line of the battlefield, and are required to instantly grow up to be able to fight in that battlefield. And even after overcoming that battlefield, they are immediately thrown into the next new battlefield (laughs). (laugh). I have felt firsthand that this is not a job that can be done with a half-hearted attitude.
It feels like a mission statement to me to expand the world for young people in Africa. I am putting on a cool air, but I have no basis for it and no chance of winning (laughs). I am the type of person who doesn't talk too much, but in my heart, I am always glistening.
So, while my life is centered on Africa, I am excited about the adventure that is about to begin in Asilla. Generally speaking, leaving a job after 9 months is certainly a negative. It is often said. But I think it is up to me in the future to decide if this was the right decision or not. I will first devote myself to becoming the best in the world at Asilla so that I can say that my decision was the right one.
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