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Wow, I had no idea its that bad. I have never worked in India, but my Indian friends describe a similar environment in the Indian public sector - jobs for life,

by dxbydt 13y ago

Wow, I had no idea its that bad. I have never worked in India, but my Indian friends describe a similar environment in the Indian public sector - jobs for life, generally no job-hopping, no worries about money, company homes, company schools, company hospital, servants provided for, essentially just punch the clock, pretend to do some work & go home. I wonder how the salaryman culture gels with the Japanese being so innovative. In Rising Sun (both the bad movie & worse book by same name), Michael Crichton make the claim that the Japanese are light years ahead of the US viz-a-viz computing/tech/optics/physics. There's a scene where Sean Connery walks into a physics lecture hall in ucla & points out that all the students are Asian while Americans are missing because they avoid hard subjects. If they are all boring homogenous salarymen, what's the impetus for being so innovative ? Any innovation by definition rocks the boat, so why do that ?

lkrubner 13y ago
You ask: "I wonder how the salaryman culture gels with the Japanese being so innovative." But that was answered above: "You presided over a corporate bankruptcy? Oh dear. That's even worse than a personal bankruptcy. Not only did you fail personally, you ruined the lives of people to whom you owed society's highest form of loyalty." They are highly motivated to engage in enough innovation so as to stave off bankruptcy.
hkmurakami 13y ago
That is because innovation happens within the bounds of the preexisting industries and constructs.
wikwocket 13y ago
As to Japanese companies leading in innovation and successful business/manufacturing/etc practices, I will defer to those who are more familiar, but I believe a big part of it is rigorous frameworks that look at the situation, take a long (LONG) term view, and methodically remove failure points and find ways to reliably achieve success. Patrick has discussed this a number of times, here is a representative quote[0]: "Keep doing this whole "Learn from failure and overcome it" thing for a few decades and you end up the biggest car company in the world and make the competition look like sniveling amateurs." If you want to learn more, look up "Kanban," "Kaizen" (continuous improvement), "5 Whys," or search HN for "patio11 toyota." 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=406545 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=406545
gadders 13y ago
That book also seemed to imply that Japan was buying up the US and was about to overtake the US in terms of GDP. Look how that turned out.

by dxbydt 13y ago

lkrubner 13y ago

You ask: "I wonder how the salaryman culture gels with the Japanese being so innovative." But that was answered above: "You presided over a corporate bankruptcy? Oh dear. That's even worse than a personal bankruptcy. Not only did you fail personally, you ruined the lives of people to whom you owed society's highest form of loyalty." They are highly motivated to engage in enough innovation so as to stave off bankruptcy.

hkmurakami 13y ago

That is because innovation happens within the bounds of the preexisting industries and constructs.

wikwocket 13y ago

As to Japanese companies leading in innovation and successful business/manufacturing/etc practices, I will defer to those who are more familiar, but I believe a big part of it is rigorous frameworks that look at the situation, take a long (LONG) term view, and methodically remove failure points and find ways to reliably achieve success. Patrick has discussed this a number of times, here is a representative quote[0]: "Keep doing this whole "Learn from failure and overcome it" thing for a few decades and you end up the biggest car company in the world and make the competition look like sniveling amateurs." If you want to learn more, look up "Kanban," "Kaizen" (continuous improvement), "5 Whys," or search HN for "patio11 toyota." 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=406545 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=406545

gadders 13y ago

That book also seemed to imply that Japan was buying up the US and was about to overtake the US in terms of GDP. Look how that turned out.