13 ms·

Japan needs a lot more tech workers. Can it find a place for women?

74 points by mikhael 5y ago

peakaboo 5y ago
Yes. Women are awesome in tech, and the field needs much more of them. But the mass media portraying her as a rebel for coloring her hair, that's like... Tabloid stuff.
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  In Japan it's still a big deal for women. Japanese value conformity and coloring your hair a bright color is a big way of sticking out.
- nomdep 5y ago
  > Yes. Women are awesome in tech, and the field needs much more of them. That absolutism sound sexists to me. Some women are awesome in tech, and some are not. Some women could be awesome but they don’t know it yet. The field needs more of those awesome women, not because they are women, but because they are awesome.
  - rajin444 5y ago
    Why does this get downvoted? I don't think being a woman implies being awesome.
    - ueueshitashita 5y ago
      > Why does this get downvoted? Because HN in 2021 is a farce, and people who grey out comments they don't like are basically toddlers.
    - marcellus23 5y ago
      In general, you can't say anything that could be interpreted as sexism using the broadest possible definition of that word. Simply saying that not all women are amazing falls into that category unfortunately. Yes, it's ridiculous but that's the society we live in.
      - laurent92 5y ago
        It is ridiculous. And more ridiculous is to bring it up. What sane adult would mention it? Everyone knows it’s an unwritten rule. Let me downvote you for saying it out loud. This just in: Men constantly hide their emotions and we have no clue why they would do that. Why can’t they speak up about their problems like women do???
    - StevePerkins 5y ago
      "Black Lives Matter" does not imply that all lives don't matter. People who get bent out of shape and senselessly contrarian over these things tend to get downvoted... because we've been hashing it out for years now, and if you're still dying on hills at this point then it's because you're deliberately choosing to misinterpret for sake of seeking out an argument. Parent poster is clearly saying that greater female representation in the industry is a good thing. Not that every single female on the planet is literally a great computer programmer.
      - ueueshitashita 5y ago
        > "Black Lives Matter" does not imply that all lives don't matter. But "#believeallwomen" implies that women never lie.
      - angelzen 5y ago
        Tech industry workforce is not a representative body. Normally we'd describe the situation as 'greater female participation in the industry'. The dissonance is reminiscent of Russell's conjugation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotive_conjugation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotive_conjugation Bertrand Russell, who expounded the concept in 1948 on the BBC Radio programme The Brains Trust, cited the examples: I am firm, you are obstinate, he is a pig-headed fool. I am righteously indignant, you are annoyed, he is making a fuss over nothing. I have reconsidered the matter, you have changed your mind, he has gone back on his word.
      - kflzufkrbzi 5y ago
        "Blue lives matter" does not imply blacks lives dont matter, but I would imagine BLM protesters dont see it that way? Perhaps you could even say they are "deliberately choosing to misinterpret for sake of seeking out an argument". You make a generous interpretion for the parent, but not so much for the reply. It's just politics.
        detaro 5y ago
        "Blue Lives Matter" went around telling press that they choose that name as deliberate attack against Black Lives Matter, so it would be unfair to their wishes to not treat it as what they want it to be?
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    You’re reading too much into the comment imo - my read is that they’re simply responding to the title: “can it find a place for women?” “Yes, women are awesome in tech” Basically they’re just supporting women in tech
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Jetrel 5y ago
      It's worth pointing out that even by most "legitimately" gendered issues relating to careerism, tech caters pretty well to women's needs. A lot of women do, in fact, want to pursue motherhood, and tech is one of the easiest careers to stay involved in during the time-and-obligation demands thereof, rivaled only by a few other careers like writing. There are many careers (ones that require you to travel, ones that require lots of in-person onsite availability) that genuinely are really tough for young mothers, and it forces a classic feminism catch-22 on them; namely, an unpleasant need to make a choice between seeking fulfillment via having a career, versus seeking personal fulfillment via motherhood. It's just really unfair that one has to choose and can't just do both. As it turns out, there are a lot of careers where you can have both with no problem; but there are others that are a bad fit. (For an example of a career that fits this really poorly, take truck driving.)
  - serial_dev 5y ago
    Within the context, it's clear to me, that the comment was not sexist. Can we write anything without 5 paragraphs of caveats and clarifications after every innocent sentence?
- cannonpr 5y ago
  Japan is a very different society than the US or Europe, the comment on colouring hair being an incredibly rebelious thing in Japan is entirely valid. Not having black hair has lead to bullying so extreme in some situations that it has lead to suicides.
  - tdeck 5y ago
    Apparently some schools in Japan have a policy that your hair must be black. At least one student sued because of this, saying she was forced to dye her hair black to satisfy the rule: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56099237 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56099237
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    Come on did you see the picture? In Europe or US having pink hair will also lower your chances of getting a job, unless it is an artsy place.
    - drxzcl 5y ago
      It's not the 1950's anymore. In any job where workers have a modicum of bargaining power, it's perfectly fine. This goes treble for tech, which skews younger, less conservative and suffers from severe labor scarcity.
      - nr2x 5y ago
        Tell that to a law firm.
        filoleg 5y ago
        Law firm or corporate finance? Sure, agreed, that would be a bit out there. Probably includes some other industries i cannot think of right now. Tech? Please don't make me laugh. Working at MSFT for a while, I've seen plenty of people in-person (even in management) with visible massive tattoos (even one with full neck covered in ink), piercings, and I am not gonna even start on wild hair styles and colors. One of the very senior people I've gotten a chance to work with had her hair color being split in half right down the middle - half black half white (ala Cruella from Disney's 101 Dalmatians). And mind you, out of all the big tech companies, MSFT is one of those that imo skews a bit of an older crowd, so I don't doubt this kind of stuff is even more common at places like FB. One of my friends is a doctor in the deep south, and his arm is fully tattoed and is on open display at work (short sleeves). From my anecdotal experience, every time I go for an annual physical checkup with my primary doctor (in PNW), more than half of his nurse staff has either bright-colored hair or tons of tattoos (or, not uncommonly, both). All of this is extremely acceptable in the US these days, barring few specific industries that still insist on ultrastrict "suit-and-tie" dress code and some rural areas. But in major cities? It would be impossible for me to walk through a block on the street without seeing at least one person with either neon-colored hair or very covered in ink or with tons of piercings.
- CobaltFire 5y ago
  In America the saying is "The squeaky wheel gets the grease". In Japan the equivalent is "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down". Her dying her hair is ABSOLUTELY a large act of rebellion there.
  - mc32 5y ago
    To add, until recently, people who naturally had a different color of hair were required to dye their hair black for primary school.
- teawrecks 5y ago
  > the mass media portraying her as a rebel for coloring her hair, that's like... Tabloid stuff. I think you're underestimating the stigma against different hair colors in Japan. Japanese culture puts a heavy emphasis on not sticking out, to the point that even having a natural hair color that is different from the norm can be viewed as being rebellious. https://www.businessinsider.com/japanese-students-hair-color-2017-5?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/japanese-students-hair-color... https://soranews24.com/2019/08/03/tokyo-public-schools-will-stop-forcing-students-with-non-black-hair-to-dye-it-official-promises/ https://soranews24.com/2019/08/03/tokyo-public-schools-will-...
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  > Yes. Women are awesome in tech, and the field needs much more of them. Shouldn't we hire/want people in the field because they are passionate and want to be there rather than some arbitrary skin pigmentation or assigned gender?
chaostheory 5y ago
Did Japanese companies ever resolve the issue surrounding low tech worker pay yet? If not, then Japanese women interested in tech might face even more adversity since gender pay gap is another issue in Japan.
- csa 5y ago
  Agreed. This problem is easily solvable with increased pay, but this is tough to pull off in the Japanese corporate system.
- tjpnz 5y ago
  Some are but there are still a lot of hold outs. I recently struck up a conversation with a female working for one of the larger ones. Probably had 10 years experience but was being paid close to what she would've made at a conbini.
bluepizza 5y ago
No. Women will say shouganai, men will say mendokusai, and nothing will change. If you suggest change, you will be consistently attacked, both by locals and other immigrants.
pshc 5y ago
https://archive.is/ACow9 https://archive.is/ACow9
Animats 5y ago
If women aren't working in Japan, what are they doing? The birth rate is way below replacement. Outside Osaka and Tokyo, the country is emptying out.
- kwere 5y ago
  i higly doubt a japanese salaryman can mantain 2+ people on a single wage
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  I think you're misinterpreting the article. It's not about women working in general, but women working in technology fields. Due to either explicit bias (per a couple examples in the article, girls being told that math and science was too hard for them) or systemic bias (lack of examples of women in the technology fields, no or very few women educators in STEM disciplines). Which is a very different thing than saying women aren't working, which, again, the article isn't saying.
  - bigbillheck 5y ago
    > (per a couple examples in the article, girls being told that math and science was too hard for them) There was also rigging medical school entrance exams: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46568975 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46568975
- NovemberWhiskey 5y ago
  Women are working in Japan, but structurally speaking they do not work in great jobs. i.e. many Japanese companies operate dual employment tracks with career and non-career tracks; women are hired disproportionately into non-career tracks with lower job security, promotion prospects, training and pay. Women are substantially under-represented at both middle-management and senior level (i.e. boards); and face the second-largest pay gap vs their male peers in the OECD nations. Japan's tax and social security systems also create penalties for dual-income households with large benefit cliffs and other similar structures so many types of part-time employment are economically discouraged.
- 5y ago
throwawayy89944 5y ago
Over 70% of tech workers are male, maybe closer to 80%. Isn’t there much more room to expand tech workers by focusing on the most motivated and interested demographic?
jimbob45 5y ago
>written by Malcolm Foster Bit of an inauspicious time to be writing about exporting Western ideals right after pulling out of Afghanistan where we failed to do that exact thing, no? Considering Japan's biggest problem is their birth rate and our feminists this week can't stop complaining about not aborting enough babies, they're probably not the people to guide Japan on future policy changes.
- oblio 5y ago
  If the way to increase birth rates is by blocking abortions, that's not a society I'd want to be a part of. And those kids probably wouldn't to be a part of, either. Edit: Did I touch a nerve with people wanting to block abortions?
- thriftwy 5y ago
  From some moment, decline in birth rate is accelerated by lack of employment options in light of becoming a self-sustaining mom. "Traditional" family in Japan does not make these babies happen anyway, so what's there to guard.
- MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
  „What Japan really needs is more pink-haired girlbosses“ he wrote on his phone, as he tried to avoid the feces and needles of SF. He knew he was One Of The Good Ones, an ally, because the future was female. One day that attitude would surely get him a girlfriend.
- dang 5y ago
  Ideological flamebait will get you banned here. Not what this site is for. No more of this please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: We've had to warn you about this more than once before—not cool.
chrischen 5y ago
Japan has also completely blocked immigration for almost 2 years now (for COVID reasons).
gdsdfe 5y ago
Unpopular opinion but I think Americans should stfu about other people problems and fix their own not everything that works in the US will translate well outside. Edit: I'm having a beer ignore my misplaced disgust with American imperialism
- ueueshitashita 5y ago
  but muh systemic bias
  - dang 5y ago
    We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines. Please don't create accounts to do that with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- yaitsyaboi 5y ago
  This is a Japanese publication. How did Americans get dragged in? I’ve heard Americans complain about a lot of things, but never the labor shortage in Japan.
  - petermcneeley 5y ago
    Thats weird because it appears to be in English.
  - nullifidian 5y ago
    "By Malcolm Foster, The New York Times"
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- burkaman 5y ago
  The author was born and raised in Hokkaido and appears to have lived and and worked in Japan for the last 5 years.
literallyaduck 5y ago
Perhaps an unpopular opinion but if Japan doesn't want them, I believe many American companies will.
- MomoXenosaga 5y ago
  Japanese people can run their country however way they want. In the Netherlands one always chooses money over religion, race, culture and tradition. Your ridiculous pink hair and absurd American culture will be tolerated to service a higher purpose.
  - mrtranscendence 5y ago
    Sure, if Japan wants to screw itself over by keeping tech pay too low and women out of the workforce, there's nothing I can do from America to stop it. But non-Japanese people can comment on the situation "however way they want", too.
- gremloni 5y ago
  I hope not, economic warfare on a country should be frowned upon.
solidsnack9000 5y ago
I'm just not sure these people are understanding the problem the right way round. Salaries and prestige are relatively low for developers in Japan, so it's relatively easy for other jobs to compete for prospective workers and draw them away from technology. That will be true even if more women are interested in the field than formerly. In fact, convincing many women to commit to the field early in their educations for reasons of representation, rather than because the economics are compelling to them, would only make the situation worse: relatively more workers competing for jobs with salaries that are already low. Japanese enterprises do not value software engineering talent and there are probably some underlying fundamentals behind that -- in workplaces with relatively low independence, it's hard to leverage engineering talent for much -- which, left unchanged, will make initiatives like this into a game of musical chairs.
- junar 5y ago
  You sure about that? I came across two different surveys of Japanese workers that suggest women in tech are paid relatively well compared to women in other industries. [1] https://kimi.wiki/work/income https://kimi.wiki/work/income ("IT, Communications") [2] https://www.tsunagulocal.com/en/42243/ https://www.tsunagulocal.com/en/42243/ ("Informations services")
  - ejvincent 5y ago
    You are looking at this differently than the parent post. You are looking at cross-industry inside Japan. Parent is talking about inside Japan vs outside Japan within the same industry/job. If you look at public data on somewhere like levels.fyi, there's a big gap in pay even within the same company, at the same level. I'm most familiar with Seattle comp, and same tier of SDE role is a 30+% paycut from Seattle to Tokyo at FAANG companies. I also know someone who left a FAANG company here to go work in Japan for awhile. They had to move from SDE to Data Scientist + got a senior role at the new company, and even then they struggled to get anywhere close to their previous comp.
    - junar 5y ago
golemiprague 5y ago
Japan is not different in that sense from the rest of the world, women are not interested in this type of work and that's it. It is not about salaries or sexism or whatever, tech jobs are no different to other white collar jobs these days and there are Japanese women who are into it and do it but most of them would rather be a lawyer or a doctor or a designer or a marketing person. It is about time we let women do what they want to do and stop shoving tech down their throats with no regard to the differences in average preferences between men and women.
dragonelite 5y ago
From what I gathered in the Asia region you really only have Singapore or a Chinese tier 1 and maybe some tier 2 cities as a option(financially). Where you can actually earn enough to not waste years of income when you return again to the west. If they want to attract more tech workers they really need to up their salaries. People might go for maybe cultural reason or whatever but that pool is not enough to close the gap is guess.
- azuriten 5y ago
  > If they want to attract more tech workers they really need to up their salaries. Having a good salary is important but the work-life balance is just as important, if not more. I lived in Japan for a years (not as a dev, am now); I can make do with a lower salary due to healthcare being mostly sorted (you pay 30%, government pays 70%) and a good standard of living (better than London IMO), but I don't want to work absurd hours and deal with a toxic working culture, alongside a low salary. I've met many talented women in Japan via Meetups and Women Who Code Tokyo and there's definitely no shortage of great developers. People just want a fair work-balance and an honest salary, which they are more likely to find at a gaishikei (foreign-run company)
  - dragonelite 5y ago
    Yeah I agree on the work-life balance that is why I find it interesting that China banned the unpaid 996 culture. It was one of the reason I placed China as a lower option then Singapore for me personally. In Singapore you have more western companies so maybe they also use more western work culture. I was thinking of maybe work a couple of years in a Asian country when the world starts opening up again hopefully somewhere in 2023~2024. So that I why I did some minimal research on salary.
  - fendy3002 5y ago
    I hear that the seniority is so strong there. Added with commute, bad working hours and mandatory parties after works, I don't think good developers will want to work there.
MBCook 5y ago
Does Japan still have the issue (compared to a US perspective, though it happens here to) where workers are expected to work very long hours to be seen as productive or a team player or whatever? If that was still a problem and I could get a remote job for a Western style company with better working hours that would be a serious decision point. Not to mention the salary issue others have mentioned that I wasn’t aware of.
Tarucho 5y ago
The article uses the same "smart riot girrl" marketing that has been used here in Argentina to bring young woman that embraced feminism into programming. It´s most probably a paid ad in disguise (and I can point this out because I know a big consulting firm CEO that paid local media for this kind of "articles") Curious thing is these articles always portrait a single cool young woman in their early twenties, never a woman with kids or a woman in their 30s or older. Sadly this is not about equality at all, it´s about the employers having a bigger workforce so that they can reduce salaries and discard the old. Computing is an smoke and mirrors kind of market.
- xyzzy21 5y ago
  No mentioned that the jobs are seldom "cool" like that in real life.
xyzzy21 5y ago
Do Japanese women WANT that place? I'm bet money they don't just like how American women don't.
goldwind1111 5y ago
I wonder if teachers in Japan really discourage girls from learning about computer science and other things like that. If so, that is crazy. I think there should be an issue with that. I guess it will be interesting to imagine Japan as a women-oriented society.
- prestigious 5y ago
  I think women in general are less interested in tech. Actually the most oppressive cultures have highest number of women in tech
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    > the most oppressive cultures have highest number of women in tech Like the US in the 1950s. It's not a matter of interest, it's that it has actually been the case that women are locked out of many high paying prestigious jobs, and software is/was the best available, where it isn't so prestigious. There was a time when women simply could not get an engineering degree. And so, someone might study math, and end up as a programmer whose job title was "engineering assistant" to a male engineer.
sbierwagen 5y ago
Interesting article. The line of argumentation goes like this: 1) The birth rate in Japan has been below-replacement since 1974. 2) As a result, the population is shrinking. 3) Because the population is shrinking, there isn't enough workers. Alright, I'm with you so far. 4) Therefore, more women need to get full-time jobs. Uh... ? I feel like I'm going nuts. Everywhere in the prestige media the solution presented is "women should just have a full-time job and raise 2.1 children at the same time". But does that actually exist anywhere? I hear about paid child leave in the Nordic countries as a solution. But Sweden has a birth rate of 1.76, Denmark 1.73, Norway 1.56... and the curve isn't even trending up! Paid child leave and government childcare is great and cool, but as a solution to below-replacement fertility it clearly and obviously doesn't work, and for some reason nobody wants to say this. The other answer is immigration, but the problem then is then you're competing with every other country in the world, and Japanese firms pay way, way, way below FAANG.
- gremloni 5y ago
  Seriously, women getting full time jobs just means further population decreases.
- nodejs_rulez_1 5y ago
  > The other answer is immigration... Transplanting a brain to save the body?
  - fomine3 5y ago
    Broken analogy.
    - MathMonkeyMan 5y ago
      Broken but interesting. We might learn something about the brain by observing what happens when you put it in another body. I'd like to think that the body would affect the brain in dramatic and transformative ways, but on the other hand the body might just establish a class system that eventually starves both systems.
- 5y ago
fomine3 5y ago
A reason I believe why women won't come tech industry is that tech people is considered to nerdy so uncool, and and programmer is hard work (death march is popular word). But now programming become booming popular for kids (I don't know reason) so maybe feelings are changing.
- chaircher 5y ago
  Are you able to expand this a bit? It is difficult to follow the logic
xiaodai 5y ago
they can only up their immigration and import workers from other countries like the US. E.g. there are lots of engineers graduating from Chinese, India, and East European countries. Maybe Japan is becoming less attractive for Chinese since the Chinese coastal areas are getting rich, but they can just compete like the rest of the world for these talents.

74 points by mikhael 5y ago

Yes. Women are awesome in tech, and the field needs much more of them. But the mass media portraying her as a rebel for coloring her hair, that's like... Tabloid stuff.

Karrot_Kream 5y ago
In Japan it's still a big deal for women. Japanese value conformity and coloring your hair a bright color is a big way of sticking out.
nomdep 5y ago
> Yes. Women are awesome in tech, and the field needs much more of them. That absolutism sound sexists to me. Some women are awesome in tech, and some are not. Some women could be awesome but they don’t know it yet. The field needs more of those awesome women, not because they are women, but because they are awesome.
- rajin444 5y ago
  Why does this get downvoted? I don't think being a woman implies being awesome.
  - ueueshitashita 5y ago
    > Why does this get downvoted? Because HN in 2021 is a farce, and people who grey out comments they don't like are basically toddlers.
  - marcellus23 5y ago
    In general, you can't say anything that could be interpreted as sexism using the broadest possible definition of that word. Simply saying that not all women are amazing falls into that category unfortunately. Yes, it's ridiculous but that's the society we live in.
    - laurent92 5y ago
      It is ridiculous. And more ridiculous is to bring it up. What sane adult would mention it? Everyone knows it’s an unwritten rule. Let me downvote you for saying it out loud. This just in: Men constantly hide their emotions and we have no clue why they would do that. Why can’t they speak up about their problems like women do???
  - StevePerkins 5y ago
    "Black Lives Matter" does not imply that all lives don't matter. People who get bent out of shape and senselessly contrarian over these things tend to get downvoted... because we've been hashing it out for years now, and if you're still dying on hills at this point then it's because you're deliberately choosing to misinterpret for sake of seeking out an argument. Parent poster is clearly saying that greater female representation in the industry is a good thing. Not that every single female on the planet is literally a great computer programmer.
    - ueueshitashita 5y ago
      > "Black Lives Matter" does not imply that all lives don't matter. But "#believeallwomen" implies that women never lie.
    - angelzen 5y ago
      Tech industry workforce is not a representative body. Normally we'd describe the situation as 'greater female participation in the industry'. The dissonance is reminiscent of Russell's conjugation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotive_conjugation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotive_conjugation Bertrand Russell, who expounded the concept in 1948 on the BBC Radio programme The Brains Trust, cited the examples: I am firm, you are obstinate, he is a pig-headed fool. I am righteously indignant, you are annoyed, he is making a fuss over nothing. I have reconsidered the matter, you have changed your mind, he has gone back on his word.
    - kflzufkrbzi 5y ago
      "Blue lives matter" does not imply blacks lives dont matter, but I would imagine BLM protesters dont see it that way? Perhaps you could even say they are "deliberately choosing to misinterpret for sake of seeking out an argument". You make a generous interpretion for the parent, but not so much for the reply. It's just politics.
      - detaro 5y ago
        "Blue Lives Matter" went around telling press that they choose that name as deliberate attack against Black Lives Matter, so it would be unfair to their wishes to not treat it as what they want it to be?
- endisneigh 5y ago
  You’re reading too much into the comment imo - my read is that they’re simply responding to the title: “can it find a place for women?” “Yes, women are awesome in tech” Basically they’re just supporting women in tech
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Jetrel 5y ago
    It's worth pointing out that even by most "legitimately" gendered issues relating to careerism, tech caters pretty well to women's needs. A lot of women do, in fact, want to pursue motherhood, and tech is one of the easiest careers to stay involved in during the time-and-obligation demands thereof, rivaled only by a few other careers like writing. There are many careers (ones that require you to travel, ones that require lots of in-person onsite availability) that genuinely are really tough for young mothers, and it forces a classic feminism catch-22 on them; namely, an unpleasant need to make a choice between seeking fulfillment via having a career, versus seeking personal fulfillment via motherhood. It's just really unfair that one has to choose and can't just do both. As it turns out, there are a lot of careers where you can have both with no problem; but there are others that are a bad fit. (For an example of a career that fits this really poorly, take truck driving.)
- serial_dev 5y ago
  Within the context, it's clear to me, that the comment was not sexist. Can we write anything without 5 paragraphs of caveats and clarifications after every innocent sentence?
cannonpr 5y ago
Japan is a very different society than the US or Europe, the comment on colouring hair being an incredibly rebelious thing in Japan is entirely valid. Not having black hair has lead to bullying so extreme in some situations that it has lead to suicides.
- tdeck 5y ago
  Apparently some schools in Japan have a policy that your hair must be black. At least one student sued because of this, saying she was forced to dye her hair black to satisfy the rule: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56099237 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56099237
- rightbyte 5y ago
  Come on did you see the picture? In Europe or US having pink hair will also lower your chances of getting a job, unless it is an artsy place.
  - drxzcl 5y ago
    It's not the 1950's anymore. In any job where workers have a modicum of bargaining power, it's perfectly fine. This goes treble for tech, which skews younger, less conservative and suffers from severe labor scarcity.
    - nr2x 5y ago
      Tell that to a law firm.
      - filoleg 5y ago
        Law firm or corporate finance? Sure, agreed, that would be a bit out there. Probably includes some other industries i cannot think of right now. Tech? Please don't make me laugh. Working at MSFT for a while, I've seen plenty of people in-person (even in management) with visible massive tattoos (even one with full neck covered in ink), piercings, and I am not gonna even start on wild hair styles and colors. One of the very senior people I've gotten a chance to work with had her hair color being split in half right down the middle - half black half white (ala Cruella from Disney's 101 Dalmatians). And mind you, out of all the big tech companies, MSFT is one of those that imo skews a bit of an older crowd, so I don't doubt this kind of stuff is even more common at places like FB. One of my friends is a doctor in the deep south, and his arm is fully tattoed and is on open display at work (short sleeves). From my anecdotal experience, every time I go for an annual physical checkup with my primary doctor (in PNW), more than half of his nurse staff has either bright-colored hair or tons of tattoos (or, not uncommonly, both). All of this is extremely acceptable in the US these days, barring few specific industries that still insist on ultrastrict "suit-and-tie" dress code and some rural areas. But in major cities? It would be impossible for me to walk through a block on the street without seeing at least one person with either neon-colored hair or very covered in ink or with tons of piercings.
CobaltFire 5y ago
In America the saying is "The squeaky wheel gets the grease". In Japan the equivalent is "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down". Her dying her hair is ABSOLUTELY a large act of rebellion there.
- mc32 5y ago
  To add, until recently, people who naturally had a different color of hair were required to dye their hair black for primary school.
teawrecks 5y ago
> the mass media portraying her as a rebel for coloring her hair, that's like... Tabloid stuff. I think you're underestimating the stigma against different hair colors in Japan. Japanese culture puts a heavy emphasis on not sticking out, to the point that even having a natural hair color that is different from the norm can be viewed as being rebellious. https://www.businessinsider.com/japanese-students-hair-color-2017-5?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/japanese-students-hair-color... https://soranews24.com/2019/08/03/tokyo-public-schools-will-stop-forcing-students-with-non-black-hair-to-dye-it-official-promises/ https://soranews24.com/2019/08/03/tokyo-public-schools-will-...
908B64B197 5y ago
> Yes. Women are awesome in tech, and the field needs much more of them. Shouldn't we hire/want people in the field because they are passionate and want to be there rather than some arbitrary skin pigmentation or assigned gender?

chaostheory 5y ago

Did Japanese companies ever resolve the issue surrounding low tech worker pay yet? If not, then Japanese women interested in tech might face even more adversity since gender pay gap is another issue in Japan.

csa 5y ago
Agreed. This problem is easily solvable with increased pay, but this is tough to pull off in the Japanese corporate system.
tjpnz 5y ago
Some are but there are still a lot of hold outs. I recently struck up a conversation with a female working for one of the larger ones. Probably had 10 years experience but was being paid close to what she would've made at a conbini.

bluepizza 5y ago

No. Women will say shouganai, men will say mendokusai, and nothing will change. If you suggest change, you will be consistently attacked, both by locals and other immigrants.

pshc 5y ago

https://archive.is/ACow9 https://archive.is/ACow9

Animats 5y ago

If women aren't working in Japan, what are they doing? The birth rate is way below replacement. Outside Osaka and Tokyo, the country is emptying out.

kwere 5y ago
i higly doubt a japanese salaryman can mantain 2+ people on a single wage
Jtsummers 5y ago
I think you're misinterpreting the article. It's not about women working in general, but women working in technology fields. Due to either explicit bias (per a couple examples in the article, girls being told that math and science was too hard for them) or systemic bias (lack of examples of women in the technology fields, no or very few women educators in STEM disciplines). Which is a very different thing than saying women aren't working, which, again, the article isn't saying.
- bigbillheck 5y ago
  > (per a couple examples in the article, girls being told that math and science was too hard for them) There was also rigging medical school entrance exams: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46568975 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46568975
NovemberWhiskey 5y ago
Women are working in Japan, but structurally speaking they do not work in great jobs. i.e. many Japanese companies operate dual employment tracks with career and non-career tracks; women are hired disproportionately into non-career tracks with lower job security, promotion prospects, training and pay. Women are substantially under-represented at both middle-management and senior level (i.e. boards); and face the second-largest pay gap vs their male peers in the OECD nations. Japan's tax and social security systems also create penalties for dual-income households with large benefit cliffs and other similar structures so many types of part-time employment are economically discouraged.
5y ago

throwawayy89944 5y ago

Over 70% of tech workers are male, maybe closer to 80%. Isn’t there much more room to expand tech workers by focusing on the most motivated and interested demographic?

jimbob45 5y ago

>written by Malcolm Foster Bit of an inauspicious time to be writing about exporting Western ideals right after pulling out of Afghanistan where we failed to do that exact thing, no? Considering Japan's biggest problem is their birth rate and our feminists this week can't stop complaining about not aborting enough babies, they're probably not the people to guide Japan on future policy changes.

oblio 5y ago
If the way to increase birth rates is by blocking abortions, that's not a society I'd want to be a part of. And those kids probably wouldn't to be a part of, either. Edit: Did I touch a nerve with people wanting to block abortions?
thriftwy 5y ago
From some moment, decline in birth rate is accelerated by lack of employment options in light of becoming a self-sustaining mom. "Traditional" family in Japan does not make these babies happen anyway, so what's there to guard.
MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
„What Japan really needs is more pink-haired girlbosses“ he wrote on his phone, as he tried to avoid the feces and needles of SF. He knew he was One Of The Good Ones, an ally, because the future was female. One day that attitude would surely get him a girlfriend.
dang 5y ago
Ideological flamebait will get you banned here. Not what this site is for. No more of this please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: We've had to warn you about this more than once before—not cool.

chrischen 5y ago

Japan has also completely blocked immigration for almost 2 years now (for COVID reasons).

gdsdfe 5y ago

Unpopular opinion but I think Americans should stfu about other people problems and fix their own not everything that works in the US will translate well outside. Edit: I'm having a beer ignore my misplaced disgust with American imperialism

ueueshitashita 5y ago
but muh systemic bias
- dang 5y ago
  We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines. Please don't create accounts to do that with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
yaitsyaboi 5y ago
This is a Japanese publication. How did Americans get dragged in? I’ve heard Americans complain about a lot of things, but never the labor shortage in Japan.
- petermcneeley 5y ago
  Thats weird because it appears to be in English.
- nullifidian 5y ago
  "By Malcolm Foster, The New York Times"
deleted 5y ago
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burkaman 5y ago
The author was born and raised in Hokkaido and appears to have lived and and worked in Japan for the last 5 years.

literallyaduck 5y ago

Perhaps an unpopular opinion but if Japan doesn't want them, I believe many American companies will.

MomoXenosaga 5y ago
Japanese people can run their country however way they want. In the Netherlands one always chooses money over religion, race, culture and tradition. Your ridiculous pink hair and absurd American culture will be tolerated to service a higher purpose.
- mrtranscendence 5y ago
  Sure, if Japan wants to screw itself over by keeping tech pay too low and women out of the workforce, there's nothing I can do from America to stop it. But non-Japanese people can comment on the situation "however way they want", too.
gremloni 5y ago
I hope not, economic warfare on a country should be frowned upon.

solidsnack9000 5y ago

I'm just not sure these people are understanding the problem the right way round. Salaries and prestige are relatively low for developers in Japan, so it's relatively easy for other jobs to compete for prospective workers and draw them away from technology. That will be true even if more women are interested in the field than formerly. In fact, convincing many women to commit to the field early in their educations for reasons of representation, rather than because the economics are compelling to them, would only make the situation worse: relatively more workers competing for jobs with salaries that are already low. Japanese enterprises do not value software engineering talent and there are probably some underlying fundamentals behind that -- in workplaces with relatively low independence, it's hard to leverage engineering talent for much -- which, left unchanged, will make initiatives like this into a game of musical chairs.

junar 5y ago
You sure about that? I came across two different surveys of Japanese workers that suggest women in tech are paid relatively well compared to women in other industries. [1] https://kimi.wiki/work/income https://kimi.wiki/work/income ("IT, Communications") [2] https://www.tsunagulocal.com/en/42243/ https://www.tsunagulocal.com/en/42243/ ("Informations services")
- ejvincent 5y ago
  You are looking at this differently than the parent post. You are looking at cross-industry inside Japan. Parent is talking about inside Japan vs outside Japan within the same industry/job. If you look at public data on somewhere like levels.fyi, there's a big gap in pay even within the same company, at the same level. I'm most familiar with Seattle comp, and same tier of SDE role is a 30+% paycut from Seattle to Tokyo at FAANG companies. I also know someone who left a FAANG company here to go work in Japan for awhile. They had to move from SDE to Data Scientist + got a senior role at the new company, and even then they struggled to get anywhere close to their previous comp.
  - junar 5y ago

golemiprague 5y ago

Japan is not different in that sense from the rest of the world, women are not interested in this type of work and that's it. It is not about salaries or sexism or whatever, tech jobs are no different to other white collar jobs these days and there are Japanese women who are into it and do it but most of them would rather be a lawyer or a doctor or a designer or a marketing person. It is about time we let women do what they want to do and stop shoving tech down their throats with no regard to the differences in average preferences between men and women.

dragonelite 5y ago

From what I gathered in the Asia region you really only have Singapore or a Chinese tier 1 and maybe some tier 2 cities as a option(financially). Where you can actually earn enough to not waste years of income when you return again to the west. If they want to attract more tech workers they really need to up their salaries. People might go for maybe cultural reason or whatever but that pool is not enough to close the gap is guess.

azuriten 5y ago
> If they want to attract more tech workers they really need to up their salaries. Having a good salary is important but the work-life balance is just as important, if not more. I lived in Japan for a years (not as a dev, am now); I can make do with a lower salary due to healthcare being mostly sorted (you pay 30%, government pays 70%) and a good standard of living (better than London IMO), but I don't want to work absurd hours and deal with a toxic working culture, alongside a low salary. I've met many talented women in Japan via Meetups and Women Who Code Tokyo and there's definitely no shortage of great developers. People just want a fair work-balance and an honest salary, which they are more likely to find at a gaishikei (foreign-run company)
- dragonelite 5y ago
  Yeah I agree on the work-life balance that is why I find it interesting that China banned the unpaid 996 culture. It was one of the reason I placed China as a lower option then Singapore for me personally. In Singapore you have more western companies so maybe they also use more western work culture. I was thinking of maybe work a couple of years in a Asian country when the world starts opening up again hopefully somewhere in 2023~2024. So that I why I did some minimal research on salary.
- fendy3002 5y ago
  I hear that the seniority is so strong there. Added with commute, bad working hours and mandatory parties after works, I don't think good developers will want to work there.

MBCook 5y ago

Does Japan still have the issue (compared to a US perspective, though it happens here to) where workers are expected to work very long hours to be seen as productive or a team player or whatever? If that was still a problem and I could get a remote job for a Western style company with better working hours that would be a serious decision point. Not to mention the salary issue others have mentioned that I wasn’t aware of.

Tarucho 5y ago

The article uses the same "smart riot girrl" marketing that has been used here in Argentina to bring young woman that embraced feminism into programming. It´s most probably a paid ad in disguise (and I can point this out because I know a big consulting firm CEO that paid local media for this kind of "articles") Curious thing is these articles always portrait a single cool young woman in their early twenties, never a woman with kids or a woman in their 30s or older. Sadly this is not about equality at all, it´s about the employers having a bigger workforce so that they can reduce salaries and discard the old. Computing is an smoke and mirrors kind of market.

xyzzy21 5y ago
No mentioned that the jobs are seldom "cool" like that in real life.

xyzzy21 5y ago

Do Japanese women WANT that place? I'm bet money they don't just like how American women don't.

goldwind1111 5y ago

I wonder if teachers in Japan really discourage girls from learning about computer science and other things like that. If so, that is crazy. I think there should be an issue with that. I guess it will be interesting to imagine Japan as a women-oriented society.

prestigious 5y ago
I think women in general are less interested in tech. Actually the most oppressive cultures have highest number of women in tech
- perl4ever 5y ago
  > the most oppressive cultures have highest number of women in tech Like the US in the 1950s. It's not a matter of interest, it's that it has actually been the case that women are locked out of many high paying prestigious jobs, and software is/was the best available, where it isn't so prestigious. There was a time when women simply could not get an engineering degree. And so, someone might study math, and end up as a programmer whose job title was "engineering assistant" to a male engineer.

sbierwagen 5y ago

Interesting article. The line of argumentation goes like this: 1) The birth rate in Japan has been below-replacement since 1974. 2) As a result, the population is shrinking. 3) Because the population is shrinking, there isn't enough workers. Alright, I'm with you so far. 4) Therefore, more women need to get full-time jobs. Uh... ? I feel like I'm going nuts. Everywhere in the prestige media the solution presented is "women should just have a full-time job and raise 2.1 children at the same time". But does that actually exist anywhere? I hear about paid child leave in the Nordic countries as a solution. But Sweden has a birth rate of 1.76, Denmark 1.73, Norway 1.56... and the curve isn't even trending up! Paid child leave and government childcare is great and cool, but as a solution to below-replacement fertility it clearly and obviously doesn't work, and for some reason nobody wants to say this. The other answer is immigration, but the problem then is then you're competing with every other country in the world, and Japanese firms pay way, way, way below FAANG.

gremloni 5y ago
Seriously, women getting full time jobs just means further population decreases.
nodejs_rulez_1 5y ago
> The other answer is immigration... Transplanting a brain to save the body?
- fomine3 5y ago
  Broken analogy.
  - MathMonkeyMan 5y ago
    Broken but interesting. We might learn something about the brain by observing what happens when you put it in another body. I'd like to think that the body would affect the brain in dramatic and transformative ways, but on the other hand the body might just establish a class system that eventually starves both systems.
5y ago

fomine3 5y ago

A reason I believe why women won't come tech industry is that tech people is considered to nerdy so uncool, and and programmer is hard work (death march is popular word). But now programming become booming popular for kids (I don't know reason) so maybe feelings are changing.

chaircher 5y ago
Are you able to expand this a bit? It is difficult to follow the logic

xiaodai 5y ago

they can only up their immigration and import workers from other countries like the US. E.g. there are lots of engineers graduating from Chinese, India, and East European countries. Maybe Japan is becoming less attractive for Chinese since the Chinese coastal areas are getting rich, but they can just compete like the rest of the world for these talents.