5 ms·

Why are Japanese developers not undergoing mass layoffs?

21 points by stevev 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
j7ake 2y ago
It’s harder to fire people in Japan and Europe compared to USA. The downside is that it is extremely hard for new grads with no experience to get their first job in Japan and Europe compares to USA.
- n_ary 2y ago
  > The downside is that it is extremely hard for new grads with no experience to get their first job in … and Europe compares to USA. Not sure about Japan or rest of EU, but in Germany, landing a SWE with no prior experience beyond basics(watched some videos on YouTube and wrote some HTML/CSS in notepad) in larger corps is easy. Firing is also simple(2 weeks notice) during first 6 months probation period.
  - legitster 2y ago
    The counter to that counter is that I have been told that software jobs in Germany start out as very low paying. My friend who moved to Germany to work as a programmer ended up only getting about $30k a year to start, which at the time was less than half of what our peers were making in the US. That said, I think probationary periods are one of the best ideas the US needs to adopt.
    - manishsharan 2y ago
      >>probationary periods are one of the best ideas the US needs to adopt May I ask why? Both Canada and USA allow employers to fire with 2 weeks (or a month .. I forget )notice.
      - ushtaritk421 2y ago
        In the US you can be fired with 0 notice or severance, regardless of tenure in most states.
      - legitster 2y ago
        Even though you are entitled to fire people in the US, there are a lot of differing state and city rules. You are also open to (potential) lawsuits at all times. There are also now a lot of very obtuse rules about things like healthcare coverage for full time employees. There's an extra layer of simplicity when it comes to probationary periods.
    - mmarq 2y ago
      A junior/graduate dev in Germany makes €50K a year. $28K is the minimum wage for a full time employee.
  - constantcrying 2y ago
    >Not sure about Japan or rest of EU, but in Germany, landing a SWE with no prior experience beyond basics(watched some videos on YouTube and wrote some HTML/CSS in notepad) in larger corps is easy. I don't think this is true at all, but even if SWE pays pretty badly in Germany, at least compared to the US.
    - rcbdev 2y ago
      SWE pays bad everywhere compared to the US.
- Manuel_D 2y ago
  Wages are also much lower in Japan than the USA. Average Japanese software developer salary is 32,164.34 USD [1]. Even accounting for purchasing power parity, it's still only ~40-50K. That's peanuts. I made $110K straight out of college, with another $100k through equity. I did get lucky through equity (at the strike price, my RSUs would only have been ~50k per year) but even excluding equity that's over twice the average Japanese developer salary for a new grad. https://www.tokyodev.com/articles/software-developer-salaries-in-japan https://www.tokyodev.com/articles/software-developer-salarie...
- unsignedint 2y ago
  In Japan, new graduates, known as "shinsotsu," have a unique opportunity to secure jobs without relevant experience beyond their schoolwork. In contrast, mid-career hires, called "cyuto-saiyo," are selected based on their skills. However, within companies, rank is determined by tenure, so unless hired specifically as a manager, even experienced hires start at the bottom, regardless of their age and experience. This age-based hierarchy is reminiscent of the traditional lifetime employment system, which persists in some conservative companies. This system makes it relatively difficult to find jobs elsewhere, creating a negative feedback loop where employees might feel compelled to stay despite poor treatment. This is why many tolerate long working hours and unfavorable conditions. Additionally, some companies make it difficult for employees to resign, leading to the rise of resignation proxies who represent individuals in the resignation process.
PaulHoule 2y ago
I’m not sure if giving up on PS exclusives is going to cause difficulties for Square Enix at all. I mean, I used to have a PS Vita and I enjoyed Japanese games such as the Neptunia series and Akiba’s Trip 2 and Persona 4 Golden. Most games like that come out on Steam these days. Back in the day porting was difficult but there is no major technical difference between the current XBOX and PS and a gaming PC. Even the Switch is not all that different except it is much lower spec and requires more optimization. Making exclusives in 2024 is just a choice to go out of business.*
snakeyjake 2y ago
My employer only had a profit of $850,000,000 last quarter instead of the anticipated $860,000,000. edit: that's not a joke, that's real, those are actual numbers rounded to the nearest ten million. This caused the line to remain flat instead of going up, and the line has only doubled in height in the last four years instead of tripling or quadrupling, so the executives decided to lay off half of the overhead staff to prove that they're doing something to turn around this sinking ship. Now we have mechanical engineers troubleshooting PDM login issues instead of system administrators. The PE jackals slowly tearing apart the still-living body of this century-old company are very pleased. It seems to an outside observer who has done some limited in-country contract work for Japanese aerospace firms that Japanese companies face less of this type of pressure.
- legitster 2y ago
  The whole "line must always go up" is completely a self-imposed injury of our tax code. There is no reason companies can't remain healthily stagnant for long periods of time and just pay out their earnings as dividends or stock buybacks. But both are heavily disincentivized by our current tax code vs all earnings coming from gains in stock value.
  - im3w1l 2y ago
    Interesting, I've never made that connection. Not an easy fix though I think; taxing increase in market cap, through mark-to-market has its own issues.
    - legitster 2y ago
      That's what some of the proposals to tax "unrealized" capital gains try to do, but I don't see how it wouldn't be a huge mess. I had an economics professor who rather eloquently made the case that we should just make it a legal and fiduciary responsibility of corporations to return money to shareholders - either as dividends or buybacks. They get taxed when the profits are realized, and they can always re-invest their (taxed) earnings right back into the company if they want to.
  - 2y ago
leros 2y ago
I have experience (directly and via friends) at international companies with offices in Japan. When they announce layoffs, they immediately lay off their US employees. A month or so later, they lay off their European employees after going through some process. The Japanese employees are safe though because apparently it's very difficult (or impossible) to lay off Japanese employees. However, they will tell the Japanese employees they're having layoffs to trick them into quitting voluntarily.

21 points by stevev 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

It’s harder to fire people in Japan and Europe compared to USA. The downside is that it is extremely hard for new grads with no experience to get their first job in Japan and Europe compares to USA.

n_ary 2y ago
> The downside is that it is extremely hard for new grads with no experience to get their first job in … and Europe compares to USA. Not sure about Japan or rest of EU, but in Germany, landing a SWE with no prior experience beyond basics(watched some videos on YouTube and wrote some HTML/CSS in notepad) in larger corps is easy. Firing is also simple(2 weeks notice) during first 6 months probation period.
- legitster 2y ago
  The counter to that counter is that I have been told that software jobs in Germany start out as very low paying. My friend who moved to Germany to work as a programmer ended up only getting about $30k a year to start, which at the time was less than half of what our peers were making in the US. That said, I think probationary periods are one of the best ideas the US needs to adopt.
  - manishsharan 2y ago
    >>probationary periods are one of the best ideas the US needs to adopt May I ask why? Both Canada and USA allow employers to fire with 2 weeks (or a month .. I forget )notice.
    - ushtaritk421 2y ago
      In the US you can be fired with 0 notice or severance, regardless of tenure in most states.
    - legitster 2y ago
      Even though you are entitled to fire people in the US, there are a lot of differing state and city rules. You are also open to (potential) lawsuits at all times. There are also now a lot of very obtuse rules about things like healthcare coverage for full time employees. There's an extra layer of simplicity when it comes to probationary periods.
  - mmarq 2y ago
    A junior/graduate dev in Germany makes €50K a year. $28K is the minimum wage for a full time employee.
- constantcrying 2y ago
  >Not sure about Japan or rest of EU, but in Germany, landing a SWE with no prior experience beyond basics(watched some videos on YouTube and wrote some HTML/CSS in notepad) in larger corps is easy. I don't think this is true at all, but even if SWE pays pretty badly in Germany, at least compared to the US.
  - rcbdev 2y ago
    SWE pays bad everywhere compared to the US.
Manuel_D 2y ago
Wages are also much lower in Japan than the USA. Average Japanese software developer salary is 32,164.34 USD [1]. Even accounting for purchasing power parity, it's still only ~40-50K. That's peanuts. I made $110K straight out of college, with another $100k through equity. I did get lucky through equity (at the strike price, my RSUs would only have been ~50k per year) but even excluding equity that's over twice the average Japanese developer salary for a new grad. https://www.tokyodev.com/articles/software-developer-salaries-in-japan https://www.tokyodev.com/articles/software-developer-salarie...
unsignedint 2y ago
In Japan, new graduates, known as "shinsotsu," have a unique opportunity to secure jobs without relevant experience beyond their schoolwork. In contrast, mid-career hires, called "cyuto-saiyo," are selected based on their skills. However, within companies, rank is determined by tenure, so unless hired specifically as a manager, even experienced hires start at the bottom, regardless of their age and experience. This age-based hierarchy is reminiscent of the traditional lifetime employment system, which persists in some conservative companies. This system makes it relatively difficult to find jobs elsewhere, creating a negative feedback loop where employees might feel compelled to stay despite poor treatment. This is why many tolerate long working hours and unfavorable conditions. Additionally, some companies make it difficult for employees to resign, leading to the rise of resignation proxies who represent individuals in the resignation process.

PaulHoule 2y ago

I’m not sure if giving up on PS exclusives is going to cause difficulties for Square Enix at all. I mean, I used to have a PS Vita and I enjoyed Japanese games such as the Neptunia series and Akiba’s Trip 2 and Persona 4 Golden. Most games like that come out on Steam these days. Back in the day porting was difficult but there is no major technical difference between the current XBOX and PS and a gaming PC. Even the Switch is not all that different except it is much lower spec and requires more optimization. Making exclusives in 2024 is just a choice to go out of business.*

snakeyjake 2y ago

My employer only had a profit of $850,000,000 last quarter instead of the anticipated $860,000,000. edit: that's not a joke, that's real, those are actual numbers rounded to the nearest ten million. This caused the line to remain flat instead of going up, and the line has only doubled in height in the last four years instead of tripling or quadrupling, so the executives decided to lay off half of the overhead staff to prove that they're doing something to turn around this sinking ship. Now we have mechanical engineers troubleshooting PDM login issues instead of system administrators. The PE jackals slowly tearing apart the still-living body of this century-old company are very pleased. It seems to an outside observer who has done some limited in-country contract work for Japanese aerospace firms that Japanese companies face less of this type of pressure.

legitster 2y ago
The whole "line must always go up" is completely a self-imposed injury of our tax code. There is no reason companies can't remain healthily stagnant for long periods of time and just pay out their earnings as dividends or stock buybacks. But both are heavily disincentivized by our current tax code vs all earnings coming from gains in stock value.
- im3w1l 2y ago
  Interesting, I've never made that connection. Not an easy fix though I think; taxing increase in market cap, through mark-to-market has its own issues.
  - legitster 2y ago
    That's what some of the proposals to tax "unrealized" capital gains try to do, but I don't see how it wouldn't be a huge mess. I had an economics professor who rather eloquently made the case that we should just make it a legal and fiduciary responsibility of corporations to return money to shareholders - either as dividends or buybacks. They get taxed when the profits are realized, and they can always re-invest their (taxed) earnings right back into the company if they want to.
- 2y ago

leros 2y ago

I have experience (directly and via friends) at international companies with offices in Japan. When they announce layoffs, they immediately lay off their US employees. A month or so later, they lay off their European employees after going through some process. The Japanese employees are safe though because apparently it's very difficult (or impossible) to lay off Japanese employees. However, they will tell the Japanese employees they're having layoffs to trick them into quitting voluntarily.