Writing as someone formerly based in Tokyo, Japan.
TL;DR - EPAM is far behind its competition in terms of employee focus, benefits, compensation, management, growth, projects, and clients. Find work elsewhere if you can.
Compensation - Whether you compare with tech industry or consulting (Big4/MBB), EPAM is simply far behind. Especially considering they try to hire bilingual JP/ENG staff, the pay they offer is laughably low. Also there's no signing bonus nor year end bonus.
Benefits: PTO - EPAM gives the MINIMUM number of days off required by Japanese law, while other progressive/international firms offer 20+ or even unlimited. There are also only 5 sick days (no COVID leave) - during the entirety of the pandemic. If you get the COVID vaccine and have a fever the next day, that'll be a sick day deducted. Lack of benefits problem was raised to senior management and HR by multiple employees numerous times with comparison to competitors' offerings. The result: absolutely nothing was done.
Benefits: Retirement, Medical, Misc - Aside from the basic pension required by law, there are no retirement saving plans; the firm has no 401k, nor defined contribution (DC), nor defined benefit (DB) plans. While other firms have reimbursements for out of pocket costs paid on medical services, EPAM has none. It goes without saying that they also don't offer tuition reimbursement nor financial support for professional development.
Culture - Colleagues are supportive and nice depending on team and projects, however management and HR simply do cheap virtue signaling without any substance. Instead of creating a good workplace by creating a good culture to motivate employees, they focus on telling the employees how awesome the workplace is. Example 1 - newjoiners were invited to a MANDATORY day long hackathon starting Friday evening after work, as if that's what people want to spend their weekends on. Example 2 - senior leads/regional heads schedule coffee chat sessions, to "get to know" the teams. They proceeded to talk the entire time, ironically about fostering employee growth, while not directing a single question to attendants nor giving any chance for anyone else to speak.
Management - makes it clear that you're valued as a resource first and not as an individual. They do not try to get to know you, your motivations, aspirations, etc. In my 1 on 1, the manager does most of the talking, will answer my questions if I have any, but hardly ever genuinely checks in to see how I'm doing. There's a manager based in Singapore in particular that dangles promotions and pay raises in front of people (confirmed with multiple colleagues), e.g. during the interview process. When the time comes however, there are inevitably delays, complications, some kind of pathetic excuse that essentially translates to the original bargain not being fulfilled. Then a new promise is dangled in front of you and the process repeats.
Promotions - ridiculous and opaque. The official promotion criteria is extremely vague, so you end up needing to clarify with your manager, at which point the criteria becomes whatever your manager says. You prepare according to the manager's criteria, then make your case in front of a panel of reviewers. Plot twist #1! The review panel evaluates you on a criteria different from the one told by your manager. Having prepared different information to present, the panel thinks you're not up to par. Plot twist #2! The panel is made up of wise people that know your capabilities right? Nope. They are absolute strangers whom you've never worked with before and judge you on a ppt rather than on how you engage with clients, work in a team, and deliver projects. Furthermore, the seniority of the panel are people who just got promoted to that rank recently. It's like having college sophomores deciding admissions for incoming freshmen.
Work Life Balance - bad during project time, emails after 10pm and on weekends etc, as is the norm with consulting. Upside is that there is lots of bench time, due to the lack of clients that work with EPAM Japan, so it somehow balances out.
Clients - the list of clients that work with EPAM are extremely small compared to its competitors. The project scope is also not so impactful.
