Build@Mercari 2024: Held Offline for the First Time Since the Pandemic! A Look at Mercari’s Software Engineering Training Program for Minorities in the Tech Industry

Hi, everyone! I’m @Pyon, an intern at Mercari. I was involved in organizing this year’s Build@Mercari program together with the New Grads Talent Acquisition Team.

Build@Mercari is a free software engineer training program that Mercari has put on every year since 2020. The program particularly emphasizes support for groups that are underrepresented in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and tech fields, including women and members of the LGBT+ community. This year was our fifth time holding the event, spanning from February 17 to March 2.

Ever since its start during the COVID-19 pandemic, the program has been held entirely online, but this year, we were able to host a kickoff event at our Roppongi office. In this article, I’d like to share with you all scenes from this special kickoff event!

Welcoming high school students and overseas participants with the aim of driving I&D in Japan’s tech industry

At Mercari, “Unleashing the Potential in Diverse Talent Worldwide” is one of our five material topics (the most important issues that Mercari has to resolve through its business activities). Mercari carries out various initiatives to promote Inclusion & Diversity (I&D), because we believe that I&D is a must in order to achieve our Group mission. In January 2023, for example, Mercari became the first Japanese company to obtain “EDGE Assess” level certification, a globally recognized standard that evaluates gender equality in the workplace.

At the same time, it is an unfortunate fact that in Japan, women still make up only about 23% of software engineers1. Underrepresented minorities in STEM fields like women and members of the LGBT+ community tend to have fewer educational opportunities in the field due to a lack of role models and the gender gaps present in STEM. In this way, progress with I&D remains an issue among the Japanese tech industry at large.

The Build@Mercari program and Mercari’s other I&D initiatives are an effort to play a small role in resolving these issues facing our entire industry. This year, which was our fifth time holding the program, we provided free online training programs to about 70 participants. It was also the first time in two years where we were able to welcome participants from abroad, which made this year’s program extra special. We also made a few changes, like moving the program from May to February to make it easier for students to attend, and securing about ten spots specifically for high school students (16 years and up) in order to encourage an even younger generation of talent to explore tech as a career path. Like in previous years, we also invited some of the trainees to apply for our Build@Mercari internship program starting in July 2024, and we are going through everyone’s applications as we speak!

1. Japan Information Technology Services Industry Association’s Information Services Industry Basic Statistical Survey 2022 (March 2023; only available in Japanese)

Holding the first offline Build@Mercari event since the COVID-19 pandemic

As I mentioned, the Build@Mercari program has been held entirely online since the pandemic broke out. However, now that the emergency of the pandemic has passed, we wanted to bring back some of the in-person elements—after some discussion, we decided that in-person communication would be especially effective at the beginning of the two-week program. For one, during the initial onboarding, offline communication would help participants get to know their mentors, and make communication easier for the rest of the program. The first “Building an Environment (Go or Python)” session also tends to require more support from the mentors, because the process differs depending on each person’s development environment. Our thought was that having this session offline would allow participants to more easily and casually ask their mentor questions, no matter how small or trivial.

With these points in mind, we decided to hold the initial orientation of the Build@Mercari program offline at the Mercari office in Roppongi. For the participants based in Japan, we had them join us at our office for Day 1 as much as possible.

On the day of the event, we were excited to see participants from all over Japan and of diverse backgrounds, from high school students to people already in the workforce. Participants based overseas attended the event virtually and learned the basics of engineering together with everyone at the office.

Since many of us were at the office, we also held a party at the end of the day, where program participants were able to meet and mingle with existing Mercari members with food and drinks in hand. There were also a few interns from last year’s Build@Mercari program who joined us and shared their own Build@Mercari stories with the new group of participants, presenting some of the knowledge and technical skills they were able to learn through the program.

Breaking the ice with in-person communication

Voices of participants

Hear from some of our Build@Mercari 2024 participants!

On the last day of the program, there was a hackathon event. It was my first time joining a hackathon and also my first time using Git for backend implementation, so I was a bit nervous, but I ended up having a lot of fun with my fellow team members. This year’s Build program also had an offline kickoff event where I was able to meet other members in person, which made the online communication a lot easier during the rest of the program as well. Overall, I thought it was great how there was a diverse group of participants—there were not just students majoring in programming, but also high school students and even medical school students. I learned a lot from them, and meeting everyone also motivated me to work even harder. (University student, 21 years old)

I happened to be browsing through Mercari’s website, and that’s when I found out about the Build@Mercari program. I’m a regular user of the Mercari app, so it was cool to see how it works from the inside. I learned a lot, and it was also a great opportunity to think about applications to my own field of interest, which is agriculture. In the future, I’d like to use what I learned from this program to further incorporate technology into the agriculture industry and solve food-related issues in Japan. (High school student, 16 years old)

Voices of mentors

Below are also a couple of comments from the Mercari mentors who supported participants!

When I joined the Build@Mercari program in 2022, the program was held entirely online due to the pandemic. This made it easier for people who live far from Tokyo to participate, but just due to the nature of online communication, it made it harder to get to know Mercari members and other participants. This year, since the kickoff event was held offline, everyone was able to meet in person at the beginning of the training. I think this helped break the ice and allowed participants to work more closely with their teams to solve problems together. Overall, I felt that it made the online communication go more smoothly for the rest of the training. (@momom / Backend Engineer / Joined Mercari as a new grad in 2022 after participating in Build@Mercari)

Compared to when the entire training was held online, I felt that the participants were able to get closer faster. For me as a mentor, it was also easier to jump in and help people whenever it looked like they were having trouble setting up their development environment. Everyone seemed a little nervous at first, but that also changed once they went out to eat lunch with their teams. I guess breaking bread really is the best way to bond with people! Afterwards, everyone was chatting, having fun, and working together on the tasks at hand, which was nice to see as a mentor!
(@kuu / Software Engineer / Joined Mercari as a new grad in 2020 after interning at Mercari)

Overall, it was a fruitful and eventful two weeks, and I’m glad that it looks like everyone had fun! We’ll be posting updates about next year’s Build@Mercari program on Mercan, so keep an eye out if you’re interested!