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The taxi drivers in Japan take their profession extremely seriously and they are very good at their job.. Interestingly, I’ve heard one profession that is not

The taxi drivers in Japan take their profession extremely seriously and they are very good at their job.. Interestingly, I’ve heard one profession that is not very well respected in Japan is software.

steve_adams_86 6y ago
I’ve heard this as well. Both from westerners who worked in software in Japan and from Japanese people (all men) who worked in software in Japan. I also work with someone who worked in design in Japan for 7 years, who has been a great insight into the working culture there. Can anyone elaborate or clarify why software developers might not be valued in Japan? I recall one person on HN explaining it as a problem of the market being saturated and software not being as huge of a market as it is in the USA. I can’t speak to that, though.
- hogFeast 6y ago
  Ironically, based on the original comment, the issue is that East Asian countries (like Germany, which was the archetype industrialisation model for East Asia) are largely run economically for the benefit of large corporations. So developers are hired en masse like every other employee (in particular, skilled labour is hired once after graduation), there is a stigma against switching jobs (even if you could find somewhere to move), employees are essentially interchangeable, and there is almost no innovation. The original comment is hard to understand. Germany and Japan are two of the absolute worst places on earth to be a consumer/worker in the developed world (the IMF even produced a paper on this in an attempt to put pressure on Germany to improve standards for workers). The US is nowhere close to having a management aristocracy because the system is open. Even in the UK, which has a similar economic model, the low-level of competence among managers is actually a major factor behind weak productivity growth. People just long for systems that aren't like the one they have, low levels of employee turnover are not a panacea, they led to heavily rigid management and are often linked to a high proportion of unproductive, family-owned business that are managed by birthright...professional management is, innately, open. If you look at Denmark, high levels of employee turnover actually lead to higher wages because it creates so much more innovation (most countries that have any other model, including Japan, are trying desperately to get away from it). Afaik, France is the only country that has the aristocracy model: it is usually literally impossible to be promoted into management if you didn't go to grandes ecoles, and most of the top jobs in govt and business are just rotated through this group of people. Unlike the US, the curriculum of related courses often has no relation to reality, and is designed to be as complex/abtruse as possible so entry to the higher reaches of society can be limited. It is difficult to understate how envied the US system of management is compared to this...it isn't just that the US does this slightly better, it is that the US is at 100, and everyone else is at 10. It isn't close.
  - bernulli 6y ago
    I’m curious, which part of 36hrs/wk work, a legal cap at 40hrs/wk, 6 wks of vacation, 2 yrs of parental leave, socialized health care, college (essentially) for free, etc, is the most horrendous part for you about being a worker in Germany? Which makes it “the absolute worst place on earth“?
    - hogFeast 6y ago
      Health care isn't socialised, it is a mixed-system (almost nowhere has a "socialised" system...even the UK, the most effective systems are mixed like the US system...Germany, in particular, is known for having fly-by-night private doctors who will do all kinds of crazy shit if you give them enough money, it is one of the only places in Europe where you can get stem-cell therapy for example...it is a very odd system). I am not sure what you mean by "legal" cap, if you want to work more or less hours you can. Other similar countries do not employ slave labour. And education is very cheap in the US (cheaper than most countries in Europe) if you go to a state college...at private universities, the fees in Germany are still very expensive (the US has better colleges, so private colleges in the US are always going to be higher than everywhere else)...you aren't comparing like to like. And presumably, you don't come from Germany because all the reasons why it is bad are reasons that wouldn't occur to most people who don't live in that system: unions that are essentially non-functional/run by companies, staggeringly low levels of consumption relative to income (Germany runs a trade surplus worth 10% of GDP, which is all funded by savings...this is as high as China when China was at peak inequality), the average wealth of German citizens is equal to Greece...an economy that isn't functioning and doesn't have the large number of billionaires that Germany has (who largely got rich in the 30s), non-existent levels of competition, non-existent levels of innovation, closed banking system that pays nothing to savers and funnels free money to bankers/large corporations who have (historically) lost it all in short order, sometimes shockingly low wages (I believe this has changed but German apprentince wages were sometimes 2 or 3 euros/hour). Again though, read about German history (or even Northern European countries, generally bar the UK)...the economic system was designed by large corporations, that is who it is for. It isn't for consumers (or google "IMF Germany report"...if you don't believe me).
- fomine3 6y ago
  IMO most worker is not valued well and just IT engineer in non-IT corp isn't an exception.
keiferski 6y ago
This little abstract documentary is about a Japanese taxi driver / photographer. Really cool: https://youtu.be/iiGEy6YX2tk https://youtu.be/iiGEy6YX2tk
TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
I've picked this up through consulting work. There are several large Japanese companies that located to this area about 30 years ago, and a few Japanese suppliers have sprung up around them. In dealing with them on side jobs and through friends, it's become very apparent that they are FAR less willing to spend money on IT than American companies. (One supplier, doing many millions of dollars a year in sales, is still running their company on Excel spreadsheets.) Which is a shame, because, from what I've seen, they're so far behind, they're smack-dab in the middle of the biggest-bang-for-buck area of the IT spending curve.

steve_adams_86 6y ago

I’ve heard this as well. Both from westerners who worked in software in Japan and from Japanese people (all men) who worked in software in Japan. I also work with someone who worked in design in Japan for 7 years, who has been a great insight into the working culture there. Can anyone elaborate or clarify why software developers might not be valued in Japan? I recall one person on HN explaining it as a problem of the market being saturated and software not being as huge of a market as it is in the USA. I can’t speak to that, though.

hogFeast 6y ago
Ironically, based on the original comment, the issue is that East Asian countries (like Germany, which was the archetype industrialisation model for East Asia) are largely run economically for the benefit of large corporations. So developers are hired en masse like every other employee (in particular, skilled labour is hired once after graduation), there is a stigma against switching jobs (even if you could find somewhere to move), employees are essentially interchangeable, and there is almost no innovation. The original comment is hard to understand. Germany and Japan are two of the absolute worst places on earth to be a consumer/worker in the developed world (the IMF even produced a paper on this in an attempt to put pressure on Germany to improve standards for workers). The US is nowhere close to having a management aristocracy because the system is open. Even in the UK, which has a similar economic model, the low-level of competence among managers is actually a major factor behind weak productivity growth. People just long for systems that aren't like the one they have, low levels of employee turnover are not a panacea, they led to heavily rigid management and are often linked to a high proportion of unproductive, family-owned business that are managed by birthright...professional management is, innately, open. If you look at Denmark, high levels of employee turnover actually lead to higher wages because it creates so much more innovation (most countries that have any other model, including Japan, are trying desperately to get away from it). Afaik, France is the only country that has the aristocracy model: it is usually literally impossible to be promoted into management if you didn't go to grandes ecoles, and most of the top jobs in govt and business are just rotated through this group of people. Unlike the US, the curriculum of related courses often has no relation to reality, and is designed to be as complex/abtruse as possible so entry to the higher reaches of society can be limited. It is difficult to understate how envied the US system of management is compared to this...it isn't just that the US does this slightly better, it is that the US is at 100, and everyone else is at 10. It isn't close.
- bernulli 6y ago
  I’m curious, which part of 36hrs/wk work, a legal cap at 40hrs/wk, 6 wks of vacation, 2 yrs of parental leave, socialized health care, college (essentially) for free, etc, is the most horrendous part for you about being a worker in Germany? Which makes it “the absolute worst place on earth“?
  - hogFeast 6y ago
    Health care isn't socialised, it is a mixed-system (almost nowhere has a "socialised" system...even the UK, the most effective systems are mixed like the US system...Germany, in particular, is known for having fly-by-night private doctors who will do all kinds of crazy shit if you give them enough money, it is one of the only places in Europe where you can get stem-cell therapy for example...it is a very odd system). I am not sure what you mean by "legal" cap, if you want to work more or less hours you can. Other similar countries do not employ slave labour. And education is very cheap in the US (cheaper than most countries in Europe) if you go to a state college...at private universities, the fees in Germany are still very expensive (the US has better colleges, so private colleges in the US are always going to be higher than everywhere else)...you aren't comparing like to like. And presumably, you don't come from Germany because all the reasons why it is bad are reasons that wouldn't occur to most people who don't live in that system: unions that are essentially non-functional/run by companies, staggeringly low levels of consumption relative to income (Germany runs a trade surplus worth 10% of GDP, which is all funded by savings...this is as high as China when China was at peak inequality), the average wealth of German citizens is equal to Greece...an economy that isn't functioning and doesn't have the large number of billionaires that Germany has (who largely got rich in the 30s), non-existent levels of competition, non-existent levels of innovation, closed banking system that pays nothing to savers and funnels free money to bankers/large corporations who have (historically) lost it all in short order, sometimes shockingly low wages (I believe this has changed but German apprentince wages were sometimes 2 or 3 euros/hour). Again though, read about German history (or even Northern European countries, generally bar the UK)...the economic system was designed by large corporations, that is who it is for. It isn't for consumers (or google "IMF Germany report"...if you don't believe me).
fomine3 6y ago
IMO most worker is not valued well and just IT engineer in non-IT corp isn't an exception.

keiferski 6y ago

This little abstract documentary is about a Japanese taxi driver / photographer. Really cool: https://youtu.be/iiGEy6YX2tk https://youtu.be/iiGEy6YX2tk

TheRealDunkirk 6y ago

I've picked this up through consulting work. There are several large Japanese companies that located to this area about 30 years ago, and a few Japanese suppliers have sprung up around them. In dealing with them on side jobs and through friends, it's become very apparent that they are FAR less willing to spend money on IT than American companies. (One supplier, doing many millions of dollars a year in sales, is still running their company on Excel spreadsheets.) Which is a shame, because, from what I've seen, they're so far behind, they're smack-dab in the middle of the biggest-bang-for-buck area of the IT spending curve.