7 ms·

This is very interesting. So a person can raise a larger family on an engineer’s salary and be happy in Japan? An American expat.

hardwaresofton 5y ago
At many Japanese colleges, graduating with ~$40k/year at an office job is considered success after undergoing "seishoku katsudou" which the junior year college hunting process, as long as the company is of good repute. As japan is very homogenous culture wise relative to other countries, it's very common for people to generally start families before ~25/by the end of their 30s. $40k is a salary under which doing this is tight, but not impossible. Japanese companies also give pay bumps eventually of course, and are very loathe to fire (worker rights are strong in japan), with an engineer's salary of "only" 100k (which honestly was being paid to interns at FAANG 10 years ago) you could raise multiple families here. There is something called a "super salaryman" which is for salarymen who make ~$100k (1 million yen IIRC). Achieving this status is recognizable and makes a lot of things (getting loans, etc) easier -- that should say something about the mindset. It's still unclear if engineers in American are ridiculously overpaid, or if engineers in Japan and the EU are ridiculously underpaid. I lean towards the latter. [EDIT] - forgot something, it used to be common practice in Japan to pay people according to life circumstances (getting married, children, etc) or other things (lots of info here[0] though it doesn't directly cover this was something I learned studying in Japan in some undergrad Japanese management course). It would be naive to think people aren't paid slightly differently because of their life situation here though -- it's very easy to rationalize paying someone more because they have more "responsibility" at home/in society, and maybe arguably even morally correct. [0]: https://www.ilo.org/ifpdial/information-resources/national-labour-law-profiles/WCMS_158904/lang--en/index.htm https://www.ilo.org/ifpdial/information-resources/national-l...
- nsonha 5y ago
  > if engineers in America are ridiculously overpaid, or why do you only compare to Japan and EU? American engineers get paid more than anyone else (except for EU outliers). I make slightly above 100k in Australia, it's a bit tight with the housing situation and cost of living but it's liveable. Cost of living in the US is lower except for maybe healthcare but engineers get companies pay for them anyway. I don't have insights into other engineering, but I think software engineers are overpaid. Would I enjoy being overpaid? Of course, but it's hard to say it's fair pay considering what people in other professions are making.
  - hardwaresofton 5y ago
    > why do you only compare to Japan and EU? American engineers get paid more than anyone else (except for EU outliers). I make slightly above 100k in Australia, it's a bit tight with the housing situation and cost of living but it's liveable. Cost of living in the US is lower except for maybe healthcare but engineers get companies pay for them anyway. Well those are just the biggest/most relevant tech labor markets I could think of, roughly by GDP. I don't know much about Australia but couldn't comment there, thanks for the insight. > I don't have insights into other engineering, but I think software engineers are overpaid. Would I enjoy being overpaid? Of course, but it's hard to say it's fair pay considering what people in other professions are making. I don't think comparing pay across professions makes sense -- why compare a plumber or doctor to what a software engineer does? the outcomes are completely different, the risks are completely different, the upside/profit potential is completely different. I lean towards considering software engineers as underpaid because the power of automation (whether software or hardware -- because you generally need some kind of soft/firmware to make robots move) is insane. If software engineers were ever paid a percentage of the revenue impact they generate (which is not how markets work, but I digress), software engineers would be paid much much more. I think it might be possible to compare across professions if you think of % of value creation captured let's say but it gets tenuous. In the end the only "fair" determination is what supply and demand based markets dictate. They're not perfect, but they approximate other forces/influences decently enough. When those aren't enough, governments may need to step in to enact policy.
    - nsonha 5y ago
      fair enough, fyi my line of thought is a bit Marxist, you should get paid based on your labour, time, mental energy etc put in the work as much as the result. When you pay people according to only "impacts" you create an incentive to make "viral" things. In software these days even without such incentive taking full effect, over abstraction, one-size-fits-all, github star counting are becoming bigger problems. > you generally need some kind of soft/firmware to make robots move) is insane The fact that you completely ignore the hardware is very telling. CPU has been improved according to Moore's law in the past few decades, if anything modern software engineering failed to live up to that potential and has been free riding on top of progress in hardware. It's insane to make robots move but software is a small part of that, there is also mechanical/electrical engineering, battery techs etc. Software sitting at the top of that stack shouldn't takes all the credit. It's very hard to innovate on the lower layers with all the lab work and physical constrains.
- ridaj 5y ago
  Software engineers in Europe aren't "underpaid," there just aren't enough highly successful European tech companies to make the job market there as tight as in the US. So they're paid less than what they'd be paid in the US, but that's just because that's what the market pays there IMO. There isn't a "fair" price other than the market's to judge whether someone is overpaid or underpaid, just offer and demand...
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    Without any analysis 'market decides what's fair' is deeply unhelpfull. The market is subject to market failure, manipulation, boom and bust cycles, depressions, can be undervalued, overvalued, etc.
- njwi332 5y ago
  Minor correction, it's 就職活動 (shuushoku katsudou) not seishoku. And the age of starting families here is older than you mention at close to 30 [1], especially in recent years. That's not to say it doesn't happen, just that Japanese couples don't, on average, get married much younger than in the west. You're right about paying people differently based on life circumstances - but this generally happens in the form of substantial tax cuts for couples with a non/part time working wife (e.g. [2]), rather than by paying them more (although there are some government benefits like a child allowance). Mostly nitpicking here! Appreciate your contributions to this thread, you're right on the money for the most part [1]: https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h00759/ https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h00759/ [2]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-JRTB-17152 https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-JRTB-17152
yocheckitdawg 5y ago
One thing I have been wondering about from the outside is if part of what keeps Japanese lifestyle's relatively cheap is that the population is so homogenous (& seemingly law-abiding) that there doesn't appear to be the same emphasis on living in a "good area" as in other countries for personal security reasons. I wonder if this acts as a somewhat hidden subsidy to life whereas for people in many Western countries it is normal to think "there is no way I am living in area X/Y/Z" due to security concerns for them or their families, in Japan you basically don't need to take that into consideration at all. Everywhere is pretty safe (relatively speaking). This is all speculation and I don't live in Japan, don't speak Japanese, and have never even been to Japan. So it is all based on reading other's views/articles etc. Even if I am completely wrong here, it is interesting to consider the economic costs of lack of personal security for men and especially women. All the extra costs paid, opportunities missed etc.
- nmfisher 5y ago
  This is an interesting dynamic I noticed when living in China, too. There are no "good" or "bad" areas, only "rich" and "poor". If you're a student/minimum-wage worker who can only afford to live in certain areas, you're not forced to deal with the crime/drugs/general shitheads you usually encounter in the "bad" areas in the West.
- sombremesa 5y ago
  There's definitely 怪しい areas in Japan. > This is all speculation and I don't live in Japan, don't speak Japanese, and have never even been to Japan. So what did you base this speculation on?
- hardwaresofton 5y ago
  > One thing I have been wondering about from the outside is if part of what keeps Japanese lifestyle's relatively cheap is that the population is so homogenous (& seemingly law-abiding) that there doesn't appear to be the same emphasis on living in a "good area" as in other countries for personal security reasons. As a foreigner living in Japan, I can confirm this is true. Much of japanese society benefits from this homogeneity. Hard to quantify a lot of these benefits and even harder to compare Japan to somehwere as big and varied as the US, but there is certainly grease in the wheels of society as long as you are the average case in japan. That said extremely homogeneous society is a double edged sword. Personal computing never took off in Japan as much as it did in the US, and the youth here are extremely disadvantaged because of it -- they're proficient with smart phones (roughly around 2010/2011 they gained mass adoption/cleared the popularity/acceptance hurdle) but it absolutely does not feel like there is enough proficiency being built in japan for success in the increasingly digital present and future. [EDIT] - the proficiency I mean in the last bit is "real" computing -- i.e. using computers to create content, programs, and other useful things, rather than simply consuming it. I'm likely blinded by my own biases, but I see the ability to use photoshop/gimp, after effects, IDEs, terminals as abilities that award more leverage than being really good at using tiktok (which can indeed make engaging content) or drawing apps on iphone/etc.

hardwaresofton 5y ago

At many Japanese colleges, graduating with ~$40k/year at an office job is considered success after undergoing "seishoku katsudou" which the junior year college hunting process, as long as the company is of good repute. As japan is very homogenous culture wise relative to other countries, it's very common for people to generally start families before ~25/by the end of their 30s. $40k is a salary under which doing this is tight, but not impossible. Japanese companies also give pay bumps eventually of course, and are very loathe to fire (worker rights are strong in japan), with an engineer's salary of "only" 100k (which honestly was being paid to interns at FAANG 10 years ago) you could raise multiple families here. There is something called a "super salaryman" which is for salarymen who make ~$100k (1 million yen IIRC). Achieving this status is recognizable and makes a lot of things (getting loans, etc) easier -- that should say something about the mindset. It's still unclear if engineers in American are ridiculously overpaid, or if engineers in Japan and the EU are ridiculously underpaid. I lean towards the latter. [EDIT] - forgot something, it used to be common practice in Japan to pay people according to life circumstances (getting married, children, etc) or other things (lots of info here[0] though it doesn't directly cover this was something I learned studying in Japan in some undergrad Japanese management course). It would be naive to think people aren't paid slightly differently because of their life situation here though -- it's very easy to rationalize paying someone more because they have more "responsibility" at home/in society, and maybe arguably even morally correct. [0]: https://www.ilo.org/ifpdial/information-resources/national-labour-law-profiles/WCMS_158904/lang--en/index.htm https://www.ilo.org/ifpdial/information-resources/national-l...

nsonha 5y ago
> if engineers in America are ridiculously overpaid, or why do you only compare to Japan and EU? American engineers get paid more than anyone else (except for EU outliers). I make slightly above 100k in Australia, it's a bit tight with the housing situation and cost of living but it's liveable. Cost of living in the US is lower except for maybe healthcare but engineers get companies pay for them anyway. I don't have insights into other engineering, but I think software engineers are overpaid. Would I enjoy being overpaid? Of course, but it's hard to say it's fair pay considering what people in other professions are making.
- hardwaresofton 5y ago
  > why do you only compare to Japan and EU? American engineers get paid more than anyone else (except for EU outliers). I make slightly above 100k in Australia, it's a bit tight with the housing situation and cost of living but it's liveable. Cost of living in the US is lower except for maybe healthcare but engineers get companies pay for them anyway. Well those are just the biggest/most relevant tech labor markets I could think of, roughly by GDP. I don't know much about Australia but couldn't comment there, thanks for the insight. > I don't have insights into other engineering, but I think software engineers are overpaid. Would I enjoy being overpaid? Of course, but it's hard to say it's fair pay considering what people in other professions are making. I don't think comparing pay across professions makes sense -- why compare a plumber or doctor to what a software engineer does? the outcomes are completely different, the risks are completely different, the upside/profit potential is completely different. I lean towards considering software engineers as underpaid because the power of automation (whether software or hardware -- because you generally need some kind of soft/firmware to make robots move) is insane. If software engineers were ever paid a percentage of the revenue impact they generate (which is not how markets work, but I digress), software engineers would be paid much much more. I think it might be possible to compare across professions if you think of % of value creation captured let's say but it gets tenuous. In the end the only "fair" determination is what supply and demand based markets dictate. They're not perfect, but they approximate other forces/influences decently enough. When those aren't enough, governments may need to step in to enact policy.
  - nsonha 5y ago
    fair enough, fyi my line of thought is a bit Marxist, you should get paid based on your labour, time, mental energy etc put in the work as much as the result. When you pay people according to only "impacts" you create an incentive to make "viral" things. In software these days even without such incentive taking full effect, over abstraction, one-size-fits-all, github star counting are becoming bigger problems. > you generally need some kind of soft/firmware to make robots move) is insane The fact that you completely ignore the hardware is very telling. CPU has been improved according to Moore's law in the past few decades, if anything modern software engineering failed to live up to that potential and has been free riding on top of progress in hardware. It's insane to make robots move but software is a small part of that, there is also mechanical/electrical engineering, battery techs etc. Software sitting at the top of that stack shouldn't takes all the credit. It's very hard to innovate on the lower layers with all the lab work and physical constrains.
ridaj 5y ago
Software engineers in Europe aren't "underpaid," there just aren't enough highly successful European tech companies to make the job market there as tight as in the US. So they're paid less than what they'd be paid in the US, but that's just because that's what the market pays there IMO. There isn't a "fair" price other than the market's to judge whether someone is overpaid or underpaid, just offer and demand...
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  Without any analysis 'market decides what's fair' is deeply unhelpfull. The market is subject to market failure, manipulation, boom and bust cycles, depressions, can be undervalued, overvalued, etc.
njwi332 5y ago
Minor correction, it's 就職活動 (shuushoku katsudou) not seishoku. And the age of starting families here is older than you mention at close to 30 [1], especially in recent years. That's not to say it doesn't happen, just that Japanese couples don't, on average, get married much younger than in the west. You're right about paying people differently based on life circumstances - but this generally happens in the form of substantial tax cuts for couples with a non/part time working wife (e.g. [2]), rather than by paying them more (although there are some government benefits like a child allowance). Mostly nitpicking here! Appreciate your contributions to this thread, you're right on the money for the most part [1]: https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h00759/ https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h00759/ [2]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-JRTB-17152 https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-JRTB-17152

yocheckitdawg 5y ago

One thing I have been wondering about from the outside is if part of what keeps Japanese lifestyle's relatively cheap is that the population is so homogenous (& seemingly law-abiding) that there doesn't appear to be the same emphasis on living in a "good area" as in other countries for personal security reasons. I wonder if this acts as a somewhat hidden subsidy to life whereas for people in many Western countries it is normal to think "there is no way I am living in area X/Y/Z" due to security concerns for them or their families, in Japan you basically don't need to take that into consideration at all. Everywhere is pretty safe (relatively speaking). This is all speculation and I don't live in Japan, don't speak Japanese, and have never even been to Japan. So it is all based on reading other's views/articles etc. Even if I am completely wrong here, it is interesting to consider the economic costs of lack of personal security for men and especially women. All the extra costs paid, opportunities missed etc.

nmfisher 5y ago
This is an interesting dynamic I noticed when living in China, too. There are no "good" or "bad" areas, only "rich" and "poor". If you're a student/minimum-wage worker who can only afford to live in certain areas, you're not forced to deal with the crime/drugs/general shitheads you usually encounter in the "bad" areas in the West.
sombremesa 5y ago
There's definitely 怪しい areas in Japan. > This is all speculation and I don't live in Japan, don't speak Japanese, and have never even been to Japan. So what did you base this speculation on?
hardwaresofton 5y ago
> One thing I have been wondering about from the outside is if part of what keeps Japanese lifestyle's relatively cheap is that the population is so homogenous (& seemingly law-abiding) that there doesn't appear to be the same emphasis on living in a "good area" as in other countries for personal security reasons. As a foreigner living in Japan, I can confirm this is true. Much of japanese society benefits from this homogeneity. Hard to quantify a lot of these benefits and even harder to compare Japan to somehwere as big and varied as the US, but there is certainly grease in the wheels of society as long as you are the average case in japan. That said extremely homogeneous society is a double edged sword. Personal computing never took off in Japan as much as it did in the US, and the youth here are extremely disadvantaged because of it -- they're proficient with smart phones (roughly around 2010/2011 they gained mass adoption/cleared the popularity/acceptance hurdle) but it absolutely does not feel like there is enough proficiency being built in japan for success in the increasingly digital present and future. [EDIT] - the proficiency I mean in the last bit is "real" computing -- i.e. using computers to create content, programs, and other useful things, rather than simply consuming it. I'm likely blinded by my own biases, but I see the ability to use photoshop/gimp, after effects, IDEs, terminals as abilities that award more leverage than being really good at using tiktok (which can indeed make engaging content) or drawing apps on iphone/etc.