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Uniqlo dangles $8.8M salaries to draw talent in Big Tech showdown
- jstx1 5y ago> "In the future, our rival will be GAFA [Google, Apple, Facebook (now Meta) and Amazon] rather than Zara," Yanai said. Those are some big words.
- interestica 5y agoSo the new acronym can be MAGA?
- TameAntelope 5y agoGrouping companies based on how well they fit into a pronounceable acronym, at this point, seems a little silly.
- grayfaced 5y agoMAGMA adding microsoft in.
- philistine 5y agoNo need for an acronym: simply call them the monopolists.
- shigawire 5y agoMANGA
- jstx1 5y agoA new acronym is a good opportunity to drop Netflix from that group.
- Hamuko 5y agoMAMAA (Microsoft, Apple, Meta, Alphabet, Amazon) looks like the winner at the moment. Big Tech doesn't seem to like most of the alphabet (even though one of them is literally called that).
- jstx1 5y agoI hope not, MAGA is kind of overloaded at this point. If you add Microsoft, you can have: MAMAA (Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, Apple, Amazon) or GAMMA (using G for Google but not F for Facebook seems incosistent but it's a better acronym overall)
- qzw 5y agoLooking forward to the Uniqlo "Dark Patterns" collection made with "Cloud-based" fabrics, coming this fall. Oh, and NFTs! Mustn't forget the NFTs.
- fermentation 5y agoI feel like this is common among non-tech companies. I went to college near a large grocery chain, a trucking company, and a meat processor. All three of them had the same tagline of "we're like a tech company that sells X".
- ghughes 5y agoPicking up major WeWork vibes from this.
- sergiotapia 5y agoBut tell me this doesn't get you hyped af!
- ibatindev 5y agoApple has already begun. Apple + Nike targeting sportswear. Apple + Hermès targeting upper class consumers. How long until they acquire all the know-how they need and ditch their strategic partners?
- curiousllama 5y agoJust because it’s not tech doesn’t mean it’s not hard. Are you concerned Nike might steal Apple’s computer design know-how?
- bogwog 5y agoI don’t really know anything about fashion, but I find it hard to believe that anyone would take Apple seriously as a high-end fashion brand. To me they seem like Target: undoubtedly more fancy than Walmart, but it’s not like that’s a high bar. And sure, maybe the fashion eites of the world all use Apple products, but that’s more a consequence of the duopolies and a lack of choice for consumers rather than any actual merit of the brand itself.
- throw123123123 5y agoThis article looks like it was mangled by a translator. It mentions > its headquarters had about 1,600 employees, mostly midcareer hires... The average pay is about 9.6 million yen. Also the job description does not mention software engineers, but "logistics" and such. I think it is 8.8 million yen for non-tech salaries.
- csa 5y ago> I think it is 8.8 million yen for non-tech salaries. This is much more believable for Japan, where salaries in larger organizations tend to be very structured, and typically not on the high side. Most cushy jobs offer QoL benefits via non-salary perquisites of some sort or another, and these can be substantial. Edit: Another possibility is that the $8.8m is the total amount that will be spent on mid-career hires. That would be about right if they bring on 100 people at ~$88k each, and the article mentions bringing on 100 or “even 200” new mid-career hires.
- DevX101 5y agoI was in a Uniqlo in Manhattan a few months ago and my guess is that they've deployed some kind of computer vision tool for identifying purchases. I went to the checkout kiosk and my purchases were already on screen, no need to scan barcodes, no visible RFID tags. It was incredibly friction free and if it got deployed universally at all major retailers would eliminate hundreds of thousands, if not millions of retail jobs.
- jstx1 5y agoI saw this just today in London! I was like "where do I scan? oh... oooh!". I wonder what they're actually using to detect the items.
- Eric_WVGG 5y agoIf you hold the tag to the light you can see a paper thin rfid tag sandwiched inside.
- RedBeetDeadpool 5y agoBut isn't building the system (0 to 1), harder than scaling (1 to 100)? Why do they need all the engineers now?
- throwawaynay 5y agoIt's not visible but I'm 99% sure it's RFID or something similar. This would be so freaking easy to completely break. Have a friend deposit some clothes in a booth => go get the clothes => checkout with all those clothes for free
- gkoberger 5y agoYou could also just walk out the front door with them, too.
- TameAntelope 5y agoEverything you could possibly think of off the top of your head they've already either solved or don't care about. Retail theft, in general, is not the problem people seem to think it is.
- amenod 5y agoIf I'm reading this right, it's not actually saying anything about tech hires. Given the outrageous compensation, this is probably for management roles?
- dasil003 5y ago> "We are looking for people who can create new value and think about businesses from scratch, not consultants and those who worked at big corporations," Yanai said. To me this shows Yanai's head is in the right place, but the question of how you achieve this in a big company. Offering big salaries is of little use if you can't create an environment conducive to iterating fast on big ideas. Essentially you need startup people, but in general startup people will be eaten alive by big company politics. Even in SV where you have more crossover it's still a rare breed that can do both. I have no idea if Uniqlo fits the stereotypical Japanese corporate culture, but if the senior ranks are full of lifers with a conservative bent then Yanai has his work cut out for him.
- Gigacore 5y agoThe same company owed $5.5 million in unpaid salaries to women who made the clothes https://cleanclothes.org/news/2020/uniqlo-and-the-women-owed-55-million https://cleanclothes.org/news/2020/uniqlo-and-the-women-owed...
- namdnay 5y agoWell that was a pretty short article!
- ngngngng 5y agoI thought the same thing, it's a single tweet taking up a whole webpage. Guess it's not loading for me either.
- reustle 5y agoNikkei has been doing this a lot lately, essentially tweet-level articles (and tweet-level effort) for full ad revenue.
- zamadatix 5y agoEverything past the first paragraph gets loaded separately, I'm guessing it didn't for you for some reason.
- guerrilla 5y agoInteresting, worked in private mode for me. uBlock Origin or PrivacyBadger must have been preventing it loading for me.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- thrwn_frthr_awy 5y agohttps://www.uniqlo.com/us/en/employment/job-opportunities.html https://www.uniqlo.com/us/en/employment/job-opportunities.ht... My first commit: Don't hide text on links on job opportunities page.
- omginternets 5y agoWhere are the developer job postings?
- thrwn_frthr_awy 5y agoI couldn't find them. I tried on their .jp site as well with no luck.
- YPPH 5y agoSecond commit: Don't pop up promotional offers on job opportunities page.
- dmitriid 5y agoMake them remote, and I'm instantly interested
- bufferoverflow 5y agoLet's be real, for $8.8m all of us would move anywhere in the world. Somalia? North Korea? No prob.
- ipaddr 5y agoI wouldn't even go into the office for 8.8 million.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y agoNope. $8.8m does me no good if I get killed in a robbery, killed in some civil war, or die from the lack of proper healthcare. Money can alleviate those risks but not fix them fully.
- fault1 5y agoNK would be bad because of government repression, but Somalia might be doable. - parts of the country are defacto independent of the state - can hire a private army for security - short hop on a private DC-8 to world class health care in the gulf
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- stickfigure 5y agoYou can buy a lot of security for half that.
- lostgame 5y agoSpeak for yourself. I would not move to North Korea no matter how much I was paid, ever.
- dmitriid 5y ago
- throwaway1777 5y agoSeems like a lot?
- ab_testing 5y agoLook like not paying for labor that makes your clothes, gives you impressive margins. [1] https://cleanclothes.org/news/2020/the-devastation-of-covid-19-on-uniqlos-former-garment-workers https://cleanclothes.org/news/2020/the-devastation-of-covid-...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- krono 5y agoThat might explain why one of the shirts from my last order wasn't even stitched up properly on the left seam. Although I must say the quality of their products had been on a sharp decline since even before the pandemic. The fit remained scary consistent though.
- whosgotmine 5y agoFor me by the way that sounds like a good reason to 'buy local' for an example, hint: the gag for me (maybe unseen on the photos of their 'Strickwaren' made in Frankfurt) was Criss Cross wearing they clothes 'wrong side' an they (the label VM) thought and presented 30y ago , that 'it is posible, we can do this' ...local, page: //www.velvetmonkeesshop.com/VM-STRICK-PULLOVER-p123861920 , also nice that they wrote 'Felix is 188cm and wears size...' (-: and um no i am not involved or getting tantieme by that comapany, this anecdotical posting was just for your entertaiment, regards... edited, 'wrong link' sry
- krono 5y ago> For me by the way that sounds like a good reason to 'buy local' You're right, the perfect reason even. Thanks for making me see. I was under the illusion that locally made business-casual style clothing would be difficult to find. A very quick search was all it took to bust that idea, and make me feel ridiculous for thinking it in the first place. More expensive, naturally, but the price difference is minimal - not much more than a small uptick. This is enrichment :)
- 5y ago
- beckingz 5y agoI assume that they'll pay one senior person this and otherwise it's just marketing.
- outside1234 5y agoYou’d have to think that salary conversations inside the company at the mid-career level will be interesting too. “So… I’m making $200k a year and you said…”
- whimsicalism 5y agoHow does it make sense to pay mid level uniqlo employees more than the CEOs of most large banks? what am i missing?
- vanusa 5y agoThe operator of the Uniqlo chain of casual apparel stores will pay midcareer hires up to 1 billion yen ($8.8 million) a year I don't see any possibility that this is accurate as reported.
- Victerius 5y agoYou could work for 6 months and then retire for the rest of your life. Extremely low and high wages drive people away, but for different reasons.
- sharkweek 5y agoI hope to one day fall so far upward that I end up in a multimillion dollar a year role that I can flail through for a year (maybe two) then call it a day.
- effingwewt 5y agoYea, CEO's and their golden parachutes. They make 8000% of the median worker income, and whether the company succeeds or fails they rake in millions. When the company is successful all credit goes to the CEO, and when they fail blame goes to everyone else as the CEO takes time to be with family with their golden parachute worth millions. The era of the cult of CEO needs to end, it's become grotesque.
- varelse 5y ago
- bidirectional 5y agoIlya Suskever is not just an employee, they're C-suite and notable enough to have a Wikipedia page. Obviously people earn millions per year, but they're generally pretty notable and rare.
- mabbo 5y agoThis is HN. You'll get more downvotes for complaining about downvotes than you will for saying something people disagree with.
- kstrauser 5y agoHuh, today I found my price.
- kolanos 5y agoEdit: Misread the article.
- thrwn_frthr_awy 5y agoIt's literally the first sentence in the article: > TOKYO -- The operator of the Uniqlo chain of casual apparel stores will pay midcareer hires up to 1 billion yen ($8.8 million)
- Cycl0ps 5y agoRight, and that figure does not mesh with any other given in the article
- xwdv 5y agoBad translation, it was 8.8 million yen which is double the typical salary in Japan for this job. It’s a pittance for any US based developer.
- kadoban 5y agoAre you sure? The article explicitly says the opposite. Not clear how that could be a bad translation, at least it seems unlikely since then it raises the question of why the currency conversion came out to a nice round number.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jimsimmons 5y agoWhat qualifies as senior these days? I presume it mostly means they know how to handle a large distributed web app. It’s not really for all CS people
- jstx1 5y ago> "We are looking for people who can create new value and think about businesses from scratch, not consultants and those who worked at big corporations," Yanai said. "Geniuses who are more capable than me. If the pool is bountiful, we'll take 100 or even 200."
- inawarminister 5y agoIs it just me or is the quote imply they want a startup founder inside Uniqlo? Why not just make a separate business? Or at least a new business unit at first.
- zdyn5 5y agoFor those saying it’s a typo, it’s not, if you read further: “More than [CEO] Yanai's own pay of 400 million yen, the maximum amount will be among the highest in the nation.”
- tlwehr34234 5y agoSeems like a stunt as usual. Which mid-level engineer in SV makes $9M ? IIRC ~L6/L7 salaries at Google are around ~$1M, and I think they are ~40% lower in Tokyo. I remember seeing a similar news piece for NEC a few years ago - about how the salaries can go as high as $1M. Meanwhile, even those tech workers who do chose to work there in Tokyo have been stranded out of Japan for ~1.5y now; and unlike the US, which despite falling birth rates and a lack of interest in Tech from the natives, manages to keep its industry afloat with an endless supply of grad-students from India/China, Japan has basically shut itself off to STEM students too. I'm not sure if they have their priorities straight for a tech ecosystem. Which is surprising (and a bit tragic), considering that Tokyo was neck-and-neck with SV until before the internet boom.
- bushbaba 5y agoL6 at google is not making 1M/year. Just see levels.fyi. Most l7 a arent either.
- bradlys 5y ago> Which mid-level engineer in SV makes $9M ? IIRC ~L6/L7 salaries at Google are around ~$1M, and I think they are ~40% lower in Tokyo. I remember seeing a similar news piece for NEC a few years ago - about how the salaries can go as high as $1M. Basically no one offers that out of the gate. Even L6 at Google is not going to be anywhere near $1m. L7 isn't either. If you notice - all the L7 samples at Google on levels are people who have significant tenure at the company and thus lots of appreciation. Only way you're getting $1m+ as a software eng IC at any tech company is by being a celebrity, extremely rare specialist, or - the most common way - through stock appreciation. There are plenty of L5/L6 eng out there making $1m+/yr (I was one) but that's entirely due to stock appreciation and that's it. $9M/yr is definitely an outlier and would only be experienced by early eng at $10B+ valuation company.
- jstx1 5y agoFor reference Roger Federer gets $30 million a year for representing Uniqlo.
- duxup 5y agoThose numbers seem too absurd to be true…. Did they pay one guy or something and now we have an article?
- 1023bytes 5y agoThere no way this is real, this definitely couldn't be economically viable
- asimpletune 5y agoWhat I'm more curious about is what are they looking to build?
- neophocion 5y agoCan someone explain why Uniqlo's future rivals will be the likes of Google, Apple, Meta, and Amazon rather than Zara?
- kadoban 5y agoNo. Marketing fluff cannot be explained.
- finiteseries 5y agoSubscriptions as a vehicle of some sort?
- Slartie 5y agoIt's clearly the Uber/WeWork playbook: masquerade as a tech company, even if you're not, because then you can lose money all the time without investors stopping their injections of fresh cash.
- bidirectional 5y agoTech valuations outstrip clothing valuations so they need to pose as a tech company.
- randomsilence 5y agoI would guess that it is because of Shein[1]. >The company was not involved in clothing design and manufacturing, and instead obtained its products from the wholesale clothing market in Guangzhou. In 2014, Shein acquired Romwe, another Chinese e-commerce retailer, making it a "fully integrated retailer." In 2020, Shein was the most talked about brand on TikTok and Youtube and the 4th most talked about brand on Instagram. Shein seems to be a frontend to the Chinese clothing industry. They are faster and cheaper than traditional retailers, which should include Uniqlo. If Uniqlo wants or has to compete, they have to build a similar platform in a fraction of the time. Maybe they also want to expand into virtual reality and such, then they have to become a software company. After all, they sell fashion and not textiles. If people spend their money on hats and armor in games, then they have to be there, and not in a shopping mall. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shein_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shein_(company)
- sh1mmer 5y agoI feel like the term “mid-career” is a bit misleading here since the CEO says up to 100-200 hires, which depending on the size of their engineering team might be ~1% of the engineering team. Eg they want very senior talent and are willing to outbid Amazon, etc.
- Kluny 5y agoMeanwhile half the items on their website are out of stock right now - maybe they ought to spend the money on production instead? That’s the only way they’re going to get my money.
- darkwizard42 5y agoIt is pretty clear from the last 6 months that supply chain disruptions are likely to blame…not production.
- TigeriusKirk 5y ago>"We are looking for people who can create new value and think about businesses from scratch, not consultants and those who worked at big corporations," Yanai said. "Geniuses who are more capable than me. If the pool is bountiful, we'll take 100 or even 200." I think it's the "mid-career" that's misleading here. They're really looking for the top, actual world-class talent with those potential salaries. In which case they aren't so insane.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago*up to So they’re probably looking for one CTO with $8.8m comp, and a ton of engineers for $100-200k.
- kadoban 5y agoOr one CTO for a lot less than that and a bunch of engineers for...also a _lot_ less than that. "Up to" makes the sentence meaningless, this is just for marketing.