16 ms·

Blaming all ills of any Japanese industry on the keiretsu is in vogue for decades, but at best, keiretsu is a symptom, not a cause, of the underlying risk-avers

by quanto 2y ago

Blaming all ills of any Japanese industry on the keiretsu is in vogue for decades, but at best, keiretsu is a symptom, not a cause, of the underlying risk-averse culture. Keiretsu, even when they were toxically anti-competitive, did not go out of their ways to crush would-be global startups in Japan; keiretsu, by the author's own argument, didn't care about the global software-only market, thus would not kill those startups. The true culprit, the risk-averse culture -- while with own merits -- did not mesh well with the more fluid flat culture of software development. It was not an accident that software did well in the most hippy region in the US, San Francisco. On the contrary, hardware development, due to much more constraints from the laws of physics and economics, has been done well in Japan et al as careful top-down planning is the edge, not individual-level agility.* I am a little surprised that the author, who is active in Japan, is off the mark. I regularly talk to many engineers/entrepreneurs in the region, and the cause-and-effect are quite easy to see and are unanimously agreed upon. Kudos to people there who are trying to change the software development culture for the better. * Elon's ventures seem to challenge this conventional dichotomy as he attempts to bring both agility and top-down leadership into his firms. More power to him.

KerrAvon 2y ago
[flagged]
- octopoc 2y ago
  He makes a lot of people mad but that doesn’t make him an idiot. It just makes him genuine. Everybody else who looks polished is hiding secrets behind excellent PR.
  - MrLeap 2y ago
    I agree that making a lot of people mad doesn't necessarily mean someone is an idiot. At the time time, making a lot of people mad does not necessarily mean someone is genuine. For example, someone who manipulates a lot of people with misinformation might manifest anger in many. In that hypothetical scenario, I wouldn't think that the anger is because the target's an honest, forthright, genuine straight-shooter. Furthermore, most people are genuinely kind and compassionate towards others. For those people, mass anger is not their genuine goal, or a likely consequence of them being genuine.
  - alexander2002 2y ago
    That is an very good observation.
  - fzeroracer 2y ago
    I don't know what you'd call firing the entire supercharger team because the head of the department pushed back on layoffs as anything other than idiotic.
    - WillPostForFood 2y ago
      What if he didn't actually fire the entire supercharger team, and that was misinformation to damage Tesla and Musk? Would you revisit your priors? "They did not fire the entire Supercharger team. They mostly fired site acquisition, project management, marketing and some other things." https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1785406795814510785 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1785406795814510785 https://www.yahoo.com/tech/tesla-superchargers-really-open-other-100046380.html https://www.yahoo.com/tech/tesla-superchargers-really-open-o...
      - fzeroracer 2y ago
        No, I'd say they're running interference for Musk. It's one anonymous source claiming that the media was wrong, and many other fired sources that were willing to step up and say their entire department was axed. Why would I trust an anonymous source?
  - hughesjj 2y ago
    You can be an idiot in one area but a genius in another
- renewiltord 2y ago
  LLM level response. I don’t think we need this opinion shared every single time.
alephnerd 2y ago
> The true culprit, the risk-averse culture -- while with own merits -- did not mesh well with the more fluid flat culture of software development. Not even that. It's just about financing. Japan's domestic capital markets collapsed due to the Asset Bust in the early 1990s, the Asian Financial Crisis in the late 1990s, and the Great Recession in 2008-12, and domestic asset managers turbocharged the "Flying Geese" development model in order to make themselves whole. There's no reason for an Asset Manager at SoftBank, Nomura, or MUFG to invest in a Japanese startup when a South Korean, Chinese, Indian, or Singaporean startup can command outsized returns in an IPO or Acquisition. Japanese asset managers play a major role in Tech VC/PE in Asia, but they prefer to invest abroad. Look at the outsized returns from Alibaba (SoftBank), Flipkart (SoftBank), and Grab (MUFG) compared to anything that came out of Japan in the last 30 years. > but at best, keiretsu is a symptom South Korea and China both use the same corporate model that Keiretsus use, as much of the reform era leadership in both SK and China studied in Japan, and both countries got significant technical and economic advising from Japan via the "Flying Geese" model
makeitdouble 2y ago
Software tends to create winner takes it all markets, which means if you're a small fish wanting to get bigger you either need to create your own market, or get enough money to win over the other players. Keiretsu not caring about a market forces new comers to go for the blue ocean strategy, as they won't get investments for fighting in the more crowded markets. As the keiretsu also hold the capital, they also shape markets and should totally be blamed for what happens there. To compare to the US, Microsoft wouldn't be there if IBM didn't invest in it. Apple also benefited from Xerox and got saved by Microsoft etc.. That's the kind of dynamic the Japanese market only saw in cars and customer electronics manufacturing.
frmersdog 2y ago
I think if you work in an analysis of the exception to the rule - the success of Japan's outsize piece of the gaming industry - you'll have something really, really compelling.
- quanto 2y ago
  I do not know if the Japanese gaming industry is an exception rather than of the rule. I see the game studios as part of the larger entertainment segment in Japan -- anime studios, music studios -- where it is actually very top-down vision driven by strong hands-on head figures like Hideo Kojima or Hayao Miyazaki. AAA titles (of games or motion pictures) have very different production, finance, and life cycles from typical dozen-person-developed consumer apps. An illuminating question is, is Japan a leader in boutique shop games?
  - lmm 2y ago
    What do you mean by "boutique shop games"? Like, Love Nikki and similar?
  - frmersdog 2y ago
    I think that's a misconception. AFAIK, the size of game development teams in Japan is generally smaller than that of Western teams, on average. Particularly in the industry's heyday of the 90s-early 2000s, teams were small enough that employees would be asked to wear many hats. For example, Tetsuya Nomura was famously hired by Square to be a creature artist, and found himself contributing in so many areas that he was eventually asked to direct. This includes on games like Final Fantasy VII, which at the time of release was one of the most expensive games ever produced. Maybe it's a matter of Japanese firms becoming rigid and hierarchical at a faster rate in their lifecycle than Western firms do.
- ekianjo 2y ago
  Japan is not leading the video games industry anymore for a long time now. They still have a good chunk because of strong long lived IPs but it's heydays are in the past
pezezin 2y ago
As a software engineer currently working in Japan, I fully agree with your comment. But I think it is not just the risk aversion, Japan is a very rigid country with an strong emphasis on following the hierarchy and rules, no matter how ridiculous they are, but introspection and critical thinking are not appreciated. This works well for industrial environments, but not for software development.
- m463 2y ago
  I think there is a bias for perfectionism. This can be a good point and a bad point. I remember being a junior engineer and spending time to really make my software good and my first review had a comment that I spent too much time adding "bells and whistles" (which was only partially true). So it gets drilled out of you in US software.
  - pezezin 2y ago
    I agree with you. As my first boss taught me, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. But after 6 years living here, I find the image of the Japanese as perfectionists to be a myth. Sure, the old sushi master that has dedicated his life to the craft might a perfectionist; most other people are not. Take a look a the average Japanese city with its ugly buildings, chaotic street layout, and insane cabling. Or the average office or shop, with a mess of boxes and piles of documents everywhere. Or the countryside (where I live) and the abysmal state of most roads and infrastructure. Those are not the signs of a perfectionist society.
    - mc3301 2y ago
      I agree, the myth and mystery around "perfect Japan" which is funny because the west also loves its "wabi-sabi" and "ikigai" among other things. Japan in up on such a pedestal for some people, especially through the narrow lens of being a tourist or a consumer of their goods/services/media. Heck, A LOT of things that have that desirable "made in Japan" sticker are made by abused migrant workers with very little protection and pay. They aren't even made by the "mythological perfect and careful Japanese hands." Note: been here 15 years and I have many friends in the manufacturing industry
nox101 2y ago
To me, a simpler reason is the Japanese language has 140million speakers vs English At 1.4 billion. You can argue that they've succeeded in other areas in the past like TVs and cars but software and apps imo are much harder to communicate usage and much harder to localize. It's not just localization, it's close zero conscience of the world outside of Japan by most people in it. That is not to say people in the USA have more consciousness of the outside world. It's that they don't need it by luck that English works with 1.4 billion people
- alephnerd 2y ago
  South Korea has a market of 51 million and an equally horrendous English language fluency and continues to retain Japanese style corporate law and norms, yet does comparatively better in tech entrepreneurship than Japan. The big difference is capital markets, as SK along with other Asian countries became more attractive for Japanese capital than Japan during the 2000s.
  - valenterry 2y ago
    Does it? I wouldn't know of any popular software that originated in and by South Koreans. Can you give examples?
    - markerz 2y ago
      I agree with you. Samsung is probably their only global software exporter. Their other top companies are exclusively local: Naver, Kakao, Daum. Pretty much no one outside of SK (or Japan) knows of them. I will say they come out with some dank video games like Lineage, Guild Wars, MapleStory, Black Desert Online, PUBG
      - maeil 2y ago
        Line is the biggest messaging (and taxi, and many other things) app in Japan, Taiwan and Thailand. The software Samsung puts on their phones may just be a layer on top of Android but is still very influential by being run on billions of end-user devices. The country's definitely low on internationally impactful SaaS, though they do exist e.g. Sendbird and Moloco.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Karrot_Kream 2y ago
My feeling is that postwar Japan was a chaotic time and empowered a lot of crazy risk taking individuals along with the old zaibatsu who became keiretsu. As the Shouwa era progressed Japanese society became more risk averse and that most of Japanese industry now succeeds on the creative seeds of Postwar Japan and the rigidity born through the structure that came after.
- flextheruler 2y ago
  Well history isn’t a feeling. It’s well documented how lenient the U.S. was with enforcing international law on Japans high ranking military and political leaders. The U.S. covered it up and whitewashed Hirohito’s role in WW2. It’s why Japan still has never apologized or even admitted to genociding Chinese and enslaving and raping Korea. Open up a Japanese textbook on the early 20th century and you will find a glowing portrayal of an Imperial Japanese Empire.
  - Karrot_Kream 2y ago
    Huh? Weirdly aggressive response. I'm not talking about Hirohito, Yasukuni, the failure at regulating the zaibatsu, the occupation, or Japanese conservatism at all. I'm very familiar with Japanese history. I'm specifically talking about IT corporate culture in Japan. Not sure why you're bringing politics into this.
coldtea 2y ago
>It was not an accident that software did well in the most hippy region in the US, San Francisco. On the contrary, hardware development, due to much more constraints from the laws of physics and economics, has been done well in Japan et al as careful top-down planning is the edge, not individual-level agility. So, Japan could be doing software like many think it should be done: as an well designed engineering practice.
- adrianN 2y ago
  Until bugs become much more of a problem for sales than they are today, good engineering is probably not an advantage.
  - coldtea 2y ago
    For selling no. For creating good software though...
01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
Elon could afford to be a better person
- voidUpdate 2y ago
  There often appears to be an inverse relationship between amount of money and goodness of person
- throw7474848 2y ago
  Maybe buy a newspaper or two...
FrustratedMonky 2y ago
The software that runs convenience stores is good. See. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42087100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42087100 Games. Sony, Nintendo, are we really saying the country that makes PlayStation and Nintendo's is 'bad' at software? And, Didn't someone in Japan make the Ruby language? I didn't quite find it. How are they categorizing Japanese software as 'bad' compared to any other country? Was it just because US Silicon Valley has had a few bigger startups in general? Is that really a good benchmark?
- Y_Y 2y ago
  I propose Japanese ATMs as a example of truly awful software. Most ATMs in Europe or the US have software that is merely bad, the Japanese ones are in another level.
  - jeeeb 2y ago
    Why? They seem to do the job they’re meant to do very well and generally very reliable. The interfaces are simple. The touchscreens are instantly responsive. They support a variety of features. Overall they seem better than the ones National ATM makes.
- cooljacob204 2y ago
  I just booked a trip to Japan. Every single website was pretty bad, from airliners to bullet trains and hotels. They all look like something out of 2005 and have confusing flows.
thaumasiotes 2y ago
> It was not an accident that software did well in the most hippy region in the US, San Francisco. But it didn't. It did well in Palo Alto. It only moved into San Francisco when Palo Alto decided it was full, but the software industry continued growing anyway. San Francisco succeeded in software because it was near Palo Alto.

by quanto 2y ago

KerrAvon 2y ago

[flagged]

octopoc 2y ago
He makes a lot of people mad but that doesn’t make him an idiot. It just makes him genuine. Everybody else who looks polished is hiding secrets behind excellent PR.
- MrLeap 2y ago
  I agree that making a lot of people mad doesn't necessarily mean someone is an idiot. At the time time, making a lot of people mad does not necessarily mean someone is genuine. For example, someone who manipulates a lot of people with misinformation might manifest anger in many. In that hypothetical scenario, I wouldn't think that the anger is because the target's an honest, forthright, genuine straight-shooter. Furthermore, most people are genuinely kind and compassionate towards others. For those people, mass anger is not their genuine goal, or a likely consequence of them being genuine.
- alexander2002 2y ago
  That is an very good observation.
- fzeroracer 2y ago
  I don't know what you'd call firing the entire supercharger team because the head of the department pushed back on layoffs as anything other than idiotic.
  - WillPostForFood 2y ago
    What if he didn't actually fire the entire supercharger team, and that was misinformation to damage Tesla and Musk? Would you revisit your priors? "They did not fire the entire Supercharger team. They mostly fired site acquisition, project management, marketing and some other things." https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1785406795814510785 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1785406795814510785 https://www.yahoo.com/tech/tesla-superchargers-really-open-other-100046380.html https://www.yahoo.com/tech/tesla-superchargers-really-open-o...
    - fzeroracer 2y ago
      No, I'd say they're running interference for Musk. It's one anonymous source claiming that the media was wrong, and many other fired sources that were willing to step up and say their entire department was axed. Why would I trust an anonymous source?
- hughesjj 2y ago
  You can be an idiot in one area but a genius in another
renewiltord 2y ago
LLM level response. I don’t think we need this opinion shared every single time.

alephnerd 2y ago

> The true culprit, the risk-averse culture -- while with own merits -- did not mesh well with the more fluid flat culture of software development. Not even that. It's just about financing. Japan's domestic capital markets collapsed due to the Asset Bust in the early 1990s, the Asian Financial Crisis in the late 1990s, and the Great Recession in 2008-12, and domestic asset managers turbocharged the "Flying Geese" development model in order to make themselves whole. There's no reason for an Asset Manager at SoftBank, Nomura, or MUFG to invest in a Japanese startup when a South Korean, Chinese, Indian, or Singaporean startup can command outsized returns in an IPO or Acquisition. Japanese asset managers play a major role in Tech VC/PE in Asia, but they prefer to invest abroad. Look at the outsized returns from Alibaba (SoftBank), Flipkart (SoftBank), and Grab (MUFG) compared to anything that came out of Japan in the last 30 years. > but at best, keiretsu is a symptom South Korea and China both use the same corporate model that Keiretsus use, as much of the reform era leadership in both SK and China studied in Japan, and both countries got significant technical and economic advising from Japan via the "Flying Geese" model

makeitdouble 2y ago

Software tends to create winner takes it all markets, which means if you're a small fish wanting to get bigger you either need to create your own market, or get enough money to win over the other players. Keiretsu not caring about a market forces new comers to go for the blue ocean strategy, as they won't get investments for fighting in the more crowded markets. As the keiretsu also hold the capital, they also shape markets and should totally be blamed for what happens there. To compare to the US, Microsoft wouldn't be there if IBM didn't invest in it. Apple also benefited from Xerox and got saved by Microsoft etc.. That's the kind of dynamic the Japanese market only saw in cars and customer electronics manufacturing.

frmersdog 2y ago

I think if you work in an analysis of the exception to the rule - the success of Japan's outsize piece of the gaming industry - you'll have something really, really compelling.

quanto 2y ago
I do not know if the Japanese gaming industry is an exception rather than of the rule. I see the game studios as part of the larger entertainment segment in Japan -- anime studios, music studios -- where it is actually very top-down vision driven by strong hands-on head figures like Hideo Kojima or Hayao Miyazaki. AAA titles (of games or motion pictures) have very different production, finance, and life cycles from typical dozen-person-developed consumer apps. An illuminating question is, is Japan a leader in boutique shop games?
- lmm 2y ago
  What do you mean by "boutique shop games"? Like, Love Nikki and similar?
- frmersdog 2y ago
  I think that's a misconception. AFAIK, the size of game development teams in Japan is generally smaller than that of Western teams, on average. Particularly in the industry's heyday of the 90s-early 2000s, teams were small enough that employees would be asked to wear many hats. For example, Tetsuya Nomura was famously hired by Square to be a creature artist, and found himself contributing in so many areas that he was eventually asked to direct. This includes on games like Final Fantasy VII, which at the time of release was one of the most expensive games ever produced. Maybe it's a matter of Japanese firms becoming rigid and hierarchical at a faster rate in their lifecycle than Western firms do.
ekianjo 2y ago
Japan is not leading the video games industry anymore for a long time now. They still have a good chunk because of strong long lived IPs but it's heydays are in the past

pezezin 2y ago

As a software engineer currently working in Japan, I fully agree with your comment. But I think it is not just the risk aversion, Japan is a very rigid country with an strong emphasis on following the hierarchy and rules, no matter how ridiculous they are, but introspection and critical thinking are not appreciated. This works well for industrial environments, but not for software development.

m463 2y ago
I think there is a bias for perfectionism. This can be a good point and a bad point. I remember being a junior engineer and spending time to really make my software good and my first review had a comment that I spent too much time adding "bells and whistles" (which was only partially true). So it gets drilled out of you in US software.
- pezezin 2y ago
  I agree with you. As my first boss taught me, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. But after 6 years living here, I find the image of the Japanese as perfectionists to be a myth. Sure, the old sushi master that has dedicated his life to the craft might a perfectionist; most other people are not. Take a look a the average Japanese city with its ugly buildings, chaotic street layout, and insane cabling. Or the average office or shop, with a mess of boxes and piles of documents everywhere. Or the countryside (where I live) and the abysmal state of most roads and infrastructure. Those are not the signs of a perfectionist society.
  - mc3301 2y ago
    I agree, the myth and mystery around "perfect Japan" which is funny because the west also loves its "wabi-sabi" and "ikigai" among other things. Japan in up on such a pedestal for some people, especially through the narrow lens of being a tourist or a consumer of their goods/services/media. Heck, A LOT of things that have that desirable "made in Japan" sticker are made by abused migrant workers with very little protection and pay. They aren't even made by the "mythological perfect and careful Japanese hands." Note: been here 15 years and I have many friends in the manufacturing industry

nox101 2y ago

To me, a simpler reason is the Japanese language has 140million speakers vs English At 1.4 billion. You can argue that they've succeeded in other areas in the past like TVs and cars but software and apps imo are much harder to communicate usage and much harder to localize. It's not just localization, it's close zero conscience of the world outside of Japan by most people in it. That is not to say people in the USA have more consciousness of the outside world. It's that they don't need it by luck that English works with 1.4 billion people

alephnerd 2y ago
South Korea has a market of 51 million and an equally horrendous English language fluency and continues to retain Japanese style corporate law and norms, yet does comparatively better in tech entrepreneurship than Japan. The big difference is capital markets, as SK along with other Asian countries became more attractive for Japanese capital than Japan during the 2000s.
- valenterry 2y ago
  Does it? I wouldn't know of any popular software that originated in and by South Koreans. Can you give examples?
  - markerz 2y ago
    I agree with you. Samsung is probably their only global software exporter. Their other top companies are exclusively local: Naver, Kakao, Daum. Pretty much no one outside of SK (or Japan) knows of them. I will say they come out with some dank video games like Lineage, Guild Wars, MapleStory, Black Desert Online, PUBG
    - maeil 2y ago
      Line is the biggest messaging (and taxi, and many other things) app in Japan, Taiwan and Thailand. The software Samsung puts on their phones may just be a layer on top of Android but is still very influential by being run on billions of end-user devices. The country's definitely low on internationally impactful SaaS, though they do exist e.g. Sendbird and Moloco.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Karrot_Kream 2y ago

My feeling is that postwar Japan was a chaotic time and empowered a lot of crazy risk taking individuals along with the old zaibatsu who became keiretsu. As the Shouwa era progressed Japanese society became more risk averse and that most of Japanese industry now succeeds on the creative seeds of Postwar Japan and the rigidity born through the structure that came after.

flextheruler 2y ago
Well history isn’t a feeling. It’s well documented how lenient the U.S. was with enforcing international law on Japans high ranking military and political leaders. The U.S. covered it up and whitewashed Hirohito’s role in WW2. It’s why Japan still has never apologized or even admitted to genociding Chinese and enslaving and raping Korea. Open up a Japanese textbook on the early 20th century and you will find a glowing portrayal of an Imperial Japanese Empire.
- Karrot_Kream 2y ago
  Huh? Weirdly aggressive response. I'm not talking about Hirohito, Yasukuni, the failure at regulating the zaibatsu, the occupation, or Japanese conservatism at all. I'm very familiar with Japanese history. I'm specifically talking about IT corporate culture in Japan. Not sure why you're bringing politics into this.

coldtea 2y ago

>It was not an accident that software did well in the most hippy region in the US, San Francisco. On the contrary, hardware development, due to much more constraints from the laws of physics and economics, has been done well in Japan et al as careful top-down planning is the edge, not individual-level agility. So, Japan could be doing software like many think it should be done: as an well designed engineering practice.

adrianN 2y ago
Until bugs become much more of a problem for sales than they are today, good engineering is probably not an advantage.
- coldtea 2y ago
  For selling no. For creating good software though...

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago

Elon could afford to be a better person

voidUpdate 2y ago
There often appears to be an inverse relationship between amount of money and goodness of person
throw7474848 2y ago
Maybe buy a newspaper or two...

FrustratedMonky 2y ago

The software that runs convenience stores is good. See. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42087100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42087100 Games. Sony, Nintendo, are we really saying the country that makes PlayStation and Nintendo's is 'bad' at software? And, Didn't someone in Japan make the Ruby language? I didn't quite find it. How are they categorizing Japanese software as 'bad' compared to any other country? Was it just because US Silicon Valley has had a few bigger startups in general? Is that really a good benchmark?

Y_Y 2y ago
I propose Japanese ATMs as a example of truly awful software. Most ATMs in Europe or the US have software that is merely bad, the Japanese ones are in another level.
- jeeeb 2y ago
  Why? They seem to do the job they’re meant to do very well and generally very reliable. The interfaces are simple. The touchscreens are instantly responsive. They support a variety of features. Overall they seem better than the ones National ATM makes.
cooljacob204 2y ago
I just booked a trip to Japan. Every single website was pretty bad, from airliners to bullet trains and hotels. They all look like something out of 2005 and have confusing flows.

thaumasiotes 2y ago

> It was not an accident that software did well in the most hippy region in the US, San Francisco. But it didn't. It did well in Palo Alto. It only moved into San Francisco when Palo Alto decided it was full, but the software industry continued growing anyway. San Francisco succeeded in software because it was near Palo Alto.