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Forget it, says Kazuo Inamori, entrepreneur, management guru and Buddhist priest. Spend your time making staff happy instead. Huh...and here I thought Kyocera

Forget it, says Kazuo Inamori, entrepreneur, management guru and Buddhist priest. Spend your time making staff happy instead. Huh...and here I thought Kyocera had a reputation in Japan for being a terrible place to work. (sorry, no luck finding links in English, but search for 京セラブラック企業) and you get a fair number of links. https://www.google.com/search?q=京セラブラック企業 https://www.google.com/search?q=京セラブラック企業 EDIT: (ブラック企業 = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Company_%28Japanese_term%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Company_%28Japanese_term...)

Nadya 11y ago
To be fair, a lot can change in a decade, which seems to be what most results are centered around (a whistle blower from 1999 who wrote a book). But it isn't exactly ranked high by employees [0]. Also may want to explain what ブラック企業 means. I can take an educated guess but I'm not 100% certain I'm right. [0] https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://www.vorkers.com/company.php%3Fm_id%3Da0910000000FrTH&prev=search https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://...
- patio11 11y ago
  A "black company" is one which abuses employees in such a manner as to shock the conscience of a Japanese salaryman. Normal company: Work Monday to Saturday, Sunday off. Black company: two Sundays a month off... but you have to work on them anyhow Normal company: 70 hour workweek involving 20+ hours of paid overtime. Black company: the overtime is uncompensated ("service" overtime)/ Normal company: underperforming employees are ostracized or criticized. Black company: underperforming employees, or performing employees, are subjected to "power harassment" or physical violence. Incidentally, salaryman loyalty counsels that one's own company is never a black company... I mean sure, there might be some disreputable firms in Tokyo, but we are just going through a crunch period, Tanaka-buchou is well-known to be demanding, that project is over budget so sacrifices must be made, etc. Many Japanese salarymen of my acquaintance would identify the core underlying sin as "failing to uphold the company's end of the bargain all of us know we're making" and would say "It's mostly a thing at tiny SMBs who don't have the economic resources to consistently treat employees correctly." If it isn't completely obvious, I have strong reservations about salarymanhood as a system and how the discourse of "black companies" is designed to and functions as insulation for that system.
  - nikatwork 11y ago
    My outside impression of Japan and Taiwan is that they're horrific places for corporate work across the board. Is this a stereotype fuelled by the black companies, or is it largely accurate?
    - patio11 11y ago
      I have no personal experience of working in Taiwan, but anecdotally, it has a Japan-esque work culture. Full-time employment at a traditionally managed Japanese company -- i.e. being a salaryman -- is, largely, not an experience I would recommend to someone I loved. There exist some startups or e.g. foreign-owned firms which would be far less odious options. Living in Japan is wonderful. A++ would totally immigrate again. A substantial portion of my present happiness is having created a job which means that I am 99.8% insulated from Japanese megacorps.
  - anon4 11y ago
    Tangentially, I keep seeing those figures, but can't figure out how it happens. I mean, how is there enough work for every single corporate drone to work 70 hours per week, plus an additional 20? What the heck is it that all those people do? Not trying to be derisive, I'm just genuinely curious if it's actual work, or if they clock in, spend 5 hours playing Fate/GO and 5 hours adjusting the spreadsheet a bit.
    - patio11 11y ago
      It's not highest-and-best-productive work -- if you actually try that, like a stupid young American, you will quickly be taken aside and told to stop making your teammates look bad. You'll spend lots of time on meetings, meetings to schedule meetings, corporate rituals, meetings to discuss improvement of corporate rituals, reading the newspaper, and doing a solid 6 hours of work in a 14 hour day.
      - anon4 11y ago
        Fewer hours at work and no dress code are never on the table, I suppose... On another tangent, is there no japanese analogue to Scott Adams's Dilbert? People must be self-aware of the system, right?
sdrothrock 11y ago
It does have a terrible reputation. "happy" is being used unconventionally. > [Inamori's] brand of happiness comes from working harder than anyone else. It’s infused with the Buddhist idea of “shojin,” elevating the soul through devotion to a task.
- sdrothrock 11y ago
  Also, since it's too late to edit: Kyoto has a reputation (anecdotally, a well-deserved one) for having a large number of black companies.
hardwaresofton 11y ago
So I don't think Kyocera is one of the top "black companies". At the very least, anecdotally, they haven't made the lists mentioned by some of my friends. Generally I found that the "black"est companies in Japan happen to be the ones that pay the most (that aren't foreign held). IMHO, most "pure-bred" Japanese companies vary from a shade of gray to black. A lot of the things that are part of work life there would be probably pretty off-putting to us, starting from recruitment (during college).
euske 11y ago
It's worth noting that the term ブラック企業 is now a kind of buzzword and a general slander that carries little meaning. I can see why people like using it because the sound it makes in Japanese is mildly shocking and tarnishing.
- hardwaresofton 11y ago
  Nope, it definitely carries a lot of meaning still. Many younger members of the japanese work force (those are the only people I can claim to have talked about this kind of thing to), have a pretty clear perception of what makes a "black company": - Unreasonable hours - Distinct social pressure to not leave before your boss - Non-optional drinking after work - Absurd drinking rituals (ex. when you cheers, your cup must be below the more senior employees, a senior employee's cup near you should never be less than 80%) - Threat of being randomly reassigned to a distant town if you get on someone's nerves - list goes on...
  - plonh 11y ago
    I thought that is normal salaryman culture, not the extra bad "black company"
    - hardwaresofton 11y ago
      Well this is what I meant in an earlier post about most companies going from grey to black -- I think it's well understood that black companies have AT LEAST these issues (and I'm sure more that I don't know about), but this is definitely not the case at every japanese company I think... I think one of the only exceptions I know of is Nikon, I've heard they don't have such strict/crazy practices. Trying hard to think of more exceptions, but I can't, so maybe you're right :\

Nadya 11y ago

To be fair, a lot can change in a decade, which seems to be what most results are centered around (a whistle blower from 1999 who wrote a book). But it isn't exactly ranked high by employees [0]. Also may want to explain what ブラック企業 means. I can take an educated guess but I'm not 100% certain I'm right. [0] https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://www.vorkers.com/company.php%3Fm_id%3Da0910000000FrTH&prev=search https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://...

patio11 11y ago
A "black company" is one which abuses employees in such a manner as to shock the conscience of a Japanese salaryman. Normal company: Work Monday to Saturday, Sunday off. Black company: two Sundays a month off... but you have to work on them anyhow Normal company: 70 hour workweek involving 20+ hours of paid overtime. Black company: the overtime is uncompensated ("service" overtime)/ Normal company: underperforming employees are ostracized or criticized. Black company: underperforming employees, or performing employees, are subjected to "power harassment" or physical violence. Incidentally, salaryman loyalty counsels that one's own company is never a black company... I mean sure, there might be some disreputable firms in Tokyo, but we are just going through a crunch period, Tanaka-buchou is well-known to be demanding, that project is over budget so sacrifices must be made, etc. Many Japanese salarymen of my acquaintance would identify the core underlying sin as "failing to uphold the company's end of the bargain all of us know we're making" and would say "It's mostly a thing at tiny SMBs who don't have the economic resources to consistently treat employees correctly." If it isn't completely obvious, I have strong reservations about salarymanhood as a system and how the discourse of "black companies" is designed to and functions as insulation for that system.
- nikatwork 11y ago
  My outside impression of Japan and Taiwan is that they're horrific places for corporate work across the board. Is this a stereotype fuelled by the black companies, or is it largely accurate?
  - patio11 11y ago
    I have no personal experience of working in Taiwan, but anecdotally, it has a Japan-esque work culture. Full-time employment at a traditionally managed Japanese company -- i.e. being a salaryman -- is, largely, not an experience I would recommend to someone I loved. There exist some startups or e.g. foreign-owned firms which would be far less odious options. Living in Japan is wonderful. A++ would totally immigrate again. A substantial portion of my present happiness is having created a job which means that I am 99.8% insulated from Japanese megacorps.
- anon4 11y ago
  Tangentially, I keep seeing those figures, but can't figure out how it happens. I mean, how is there enough work for every single corporate drone to work 70 hours per week, plus an additional 20? What the heck is it that all those people do? Not trying to be derisive, I'm just genuinely curious if it's actual work, or if they clock in, spend 5 hours playing Fate/GO and 5 hours adjusting the spreadsheet a bit.
  - patio11 11y ago
    It's not highest-and-best-productive work -- if you actually try that, like a stupid young American, you will quickly be taken aside and told to stop making your teammates look bad. You'll spend lots of time on meetings, meetings to schedule meetings, corporate rituals, meetings to discuss improvement of corporate rituals, reading the newspaper, and doing a solid 6 hours of work in a 14 hour day.
    - anon4 11y ago
      Fewer hours at work and no dress code are never on the table, I suppose... On another tangent, is there no japanese analogue to Scott Adams's Dilbert? People must be self-aware of the system, right?

sdrothrock 11y ago

It does have a terrible reputation. "happy" is being used unconventionally. > [Inamori's] brand of happiness comes from working harder than anyone else. It’s infused with the Buddhist idea of “shojin,” elevating the soul through devotion to a task.

sdrothrock 11y ago
Also, since it's too late to edit: Kyoto has a reputation (anecdotally, a well-deserved one) for having a large number of black companies.

hardwaresofton 11y ago

So I don't think Kyocera is one of the top "black companies". At the very least, anecdotally, they haven't made the lists mentioned by some of my friends. Generally I found that the "black"est companies in Japan happen to be the ones that pay the most (that aren't foreign held). IMHO, most "pure-bred" Japanese companies vary from a shade of gray to black. A lot of the things that are part of work life there would be probably pretty off-putting to us, starting from recruitment (during college).

euske 11y ago

It's worth noting that the term ブラック企業 is now a kind of buzzword and a general slander that carries little meaning. I can see why people like using it because the sound it makes in Japanese is mildly shocking and tarnishing.

hardwaresofton 11y ago
Nope, it definitely carries a lot of meaning still. Many younger members of the japanese work force (those are the only people I can claim to have talked about this kind of thing to), have a pretty clear perception of what makes a "black company": - Unreasonable hours - Distinct social pressure to not leave before your boss - Non-optional drinking after work - Absurd drinking rituals (ex. when you cheers, your cup must be below the more senior employees, a senior employee's cup near you should never be less than 80%) - Threat of being randomly reassigned to a distant town if you get on someone's nerves - list goes on...
- plonh 11y ago
  I thought that is normal salaryman culture, not the extra bad "black company"
  - hardwaresofton 11y ago
    Well this is what I meant in an earlier post about most companies going from grey to black -- I think it's well understood that black companies have AT LEAST these issues (and I'm sure more that I don't know about), but this is definitely not the case at every japanese company I think... I think one of the only exceptions I know of is Nikon, I've heard they don't have such strict/crazy practices. Trying hard to think of more exceptions, but I can't, so maybe you're right :\