Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Buddhist Priest Who Became a Billionaire Snubbing Investors

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 111 posts

Re: The Buddhist Priest Who Became a Billionaire Snubbing Investors

#101

Post by patio11 »

anon4 wrote: post #99
patio11 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A "black company" is one which abuses employees in such a manner as to shock the conscience of a Japanese salaryman. Normal company: Work Monday to Saturday, Sunday off. Black company: two Sundays a month off... but you have to work on them anyhow Normal company: 70 hour workweek involving 20+ hours of paid overtime. Black company: the overtime is uncompensated ("service" overtime)/ Normal company: underperforming em…

Tangentially, I keep seeing those figures, but can't figure out how it happens. I mean, how is there enough work for every single corporate drone to work 70 hours per week, plus an additional 20? What the heck is it that all those people do? Not trying to be derisive, I'm just genuinely curious if it's actual work, or if they clock in, spend 5 hours playing Fate/GO and 5 hours adjusting the spreadsheet a bit.

It's not highest-and-best-productive work -- if you actually try that, like a stupid young American, you will quickly be taken aside and told to stop making your teammates look bad. You'll spend lots of time on meetings, meetings to schedule meetings, corporate rituals, meetings to discuss improvement of corporate rituals, reading the newspaper, and doing a solid 6 hours of work in a 14 hour day.

Re: The Buddhist Priest Who Became a Billionaire Snubbing Investors

#102

Post by kombucha2 »

vonklaus wrote: post #80
markdown wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Next you'll be claiming to be the Queen of England and expecting us to accept that at face value as well. Citations please.

Also interested in citations. I am sure this article glorifies the ceo (it's bloomberg), but saying they are slave keepers sort of justifies a bit of substantiation. edit: ddellacosta posted some Japanese links for our international audience. Also, to be clear it isn't that farfetched of a claim, but certainly contradicts the article.

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://...

Re: The Buddhist Priest Who Became a Billionaire Snubbing Investors

#103

Post by anon4 »

patio11 wrote: post #101
anon4 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangentially, I keep seeing those figures, but can't figure out how it happens. I mean, how is there enough work for every single corporate drone to work 70 hours per week, plus an additional 20? What the heck is it that all those people do? Not trying to be derisive, I'm just genuinely curious if it's actual work, or if they clock in, spend 5 hours playing Fate/GO and 5 hours adjusting the spreadsheet a bit.

It's not highest-and-best-productive work -- if you actually try that, like a stupid young American, you will quickly be taken aside and told to stop making your teammates look bad. You'll spend lots of time on meetings, meetings to schedule meetings, corporate rituals, meetings to discuss improvement of corporate rituals, reading the newspaper, and doing a solid 6 hours of work in a 14 hour day.

Fewer hours at work and no dress code are never on the table, I suppose... On another tangent, is there no japanese analogue to Scott Adams's Dilbert? People must be self-aware of the system, right?

Re: The Buddhist Priest Who Became a Billionaire Snubbing Investors

#104

Post by fweespeech »

jpatokal wrote: post #37
fweespeech wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My current employer will never show up on a "Best Places to Work" survey either but its still the best employer I've ever had.

Kyocera is not some boutique consultancy, they have 70,000 employees.

1) I don't work for some "boutique consultancy".

2) Yes and the fact I felt it was relevant to say that might mean I work for some place with a large number of employees too hmmm?

Re: The Buddhist Priest Who Became a Billionaire Snubbing Investors

#105

Post by hardwaresofton »

euske wrote: post #68
ddellacosta wrote: post #20

Forget it, says Kazuo Inamori, entrepreneur, management guru and Buddhist priest. Spend your time making staff happy instead. Huh...and here I thought Kyocera had a reputation in Japan for being a terrible place to work. (sorry, no luck finding links in English, but search for 京セラブラック企業) and you get a fair number of links. https://www.google.com/search?q=京セラブラック企業 EDIT: (ブラック企業 = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_C…

It's worth noting that the term ブラック企業 is now a kind of buzzword and a general slander that carries little meaning. I can see why people like using it because the sound it makes in Japanese is mildly shocking and tarnishing.

Nope, it definitely carries a lot of meaning still. Many younger members of the japanese work force (those are the only people I can claim to have talked about this kind of thing to), have a pretty clear perception of what makes a "black company":

- Unreasonable hours

- Distinct social pressure to not leave before your boss

- Non-optional drinking after work

- Absurd drinking rituals (ex. when you cheers, your cup must be below the more senior employees, a senior employee's cup near you should never be less than 80%)

- Threat of being randomly reassigned to a distant town if you get on someone's nerves

- list goes on...

Re: The Buddhist Priest Who Became a Billionaire Snubbing Investors

#106

Post by plonh »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #105
euske wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that the term ブラック企業 is now a kind of buzzword and a general slander that carries little meaning. I can see why people like using it because the sound it makes in Japanese is mildly shocking and tarnishing.

Nope, it definitely carries a lot of meaning still. Many younger members of the japanese work force (those are the only people I can claim to have talked about this kind of thing to), have a pretty clear perception of what makes a "black company": - Unreasonable hours - Distinct social pressure to not leave before your boss - Non-optional drinking after work - Absurd drinking rituals (ex. when you cheers, your cup mu…

I thought that is normal salaryman culture, not the extra bad "black company"

Re: The Buddhist Priest Who Became a Billionaire Snubbing Investors

#107

Post by hardwaresofton »

plonh wrote: post #106
hardwaresofton wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, it definitely carries a lot of meaning still. Many younger members of the japanese work force (those are the only people I can claim to have talked about this kind of thing to), have a pretty clear perception of what makes a "black company": - Unreasonable hours - Distinct social pressure to not leave before your boss - Non-optional drinking after work - Absurd drinking rituals (ex. when you cheers, your cup mu…

I thought that is normal salaryman culture, not the extra bad "black company"

Well this is what I meant in an earlier post about most companies going from grey to black -- I think it's well understood that black companies have AT LEAST these issues (and I'm sure more that I don't know about), but this is definitely not the case at every japanese company I think...

I think one of the only exceptions I know of is Nikon, I've heard they don't have such strict/crazy practices. Trying hard to think of more exceptions, but I can't, so maybe you're right :\

Re: The Buddhist Priest Who Became a Billionaire Snubbing Investors

#108

Post by oxryly1 »

nicholas73 wrote: post #94
oxryly1 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, to an extent. But I did get burned by this mindset... I owned a non-trivial amount of MSFT back in the 90s, and they had never paid dividends. Instead, their share price seemed to be linked to the tech bubble and their own popularity. I bought as part of that herd mentality. Eventually, though, I realized that their share price was really not bound by anything concrete, so I sold. A month later, they paid ou…

No you didn't. The dividend cash would just be subtracted from the market cap (roughly) the next day when the market opens.

Are you suggesting that any time a dividend is paid on a single share, that share's price drops by exactly the dividend payment amount?

Re: The Buddhist Priest Who Became a Billionaire Snubbing Investors

#109

Post by numbsafari »

crdoconnor wrote: post #87
numbsafari wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did. For about three months. The place was a nightmare. And, yes, not only were you encouraged to give them high marks, they actually built a front-end to the survey system used to track who had and had not submitted a response and setup HR conversations with anyone that gave them less than a top score. I actively avoid companies on those kinds of lists.

What made it a nightmare?

It was a number of things.

The company was very proud of "teamwork". There were "teams" everywhere. Every employee was expected to be on at least 3. As a senior engineer, I was on 5, not including the actual project team I was assigned to. Things like "data architecture team" and "API review team" and "future engineering team" or "testing web services team". These teams would meet at least once a month, often weekly.

In spite of, or, more likely, because of, all these teams existing, there was actually very little team work. Lots of turf wars and internal politics.

The review process was silly. Your manager gave you 5 goals and you had to come up with 3 goals for each team you were on. You had to select two peers to rate you on your 5 goals, as well as 2 members from each team for your team goals. So, basically, you just did horse trading to give each other 5-star reviews ('hey, I'll give you all fives if you give me all fives, cool?'). This consumed an insane amount of time. Even though I was only there for 3 months, I had to go through this process twice.

Management was also completely ham fisted. They wanted to improve QA. So they gave notice to everyone in QA and told them they could reapply for their jobs. They literally made them all clean out their desks and then come in the next day with resumes in hand to interview. As if they had never worked there. Anyone not "rehired" by the end of the week was given severance.

There were some positives. They had on-site day care and a decent (for the time) vacation package. They also had a liberal education reimbursement plan that only had a 1 year lock-in.

Re: The Buddhist Priest Who Became a Billionaire Snubbing Investors

#110

Post by cpubreak »

mahranch wrote: post #52
jpatokal wrote: post #39

> From Kyocera’s headquarters overlooking the hills and temples of the ancient capital of Kyoto... Ah yes, that old trope. This is what people think Kyoto looks like: http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02657/kyoto_2657... But it's a city of 1.5m, and this is what it actually looks like: http://nward.com/myworld/places/japan/214.jpg

My buddy took this picture of his trip to Kyoto: https://tokyokawaiietc.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/kyoto-sce... I would assume Kyoto is just like any city. However, my buddy did say he was amazed by the cleanliness of the city, so I think your picture is slightly exaggerating what Kyoto actually looks like.

Been travelling for half of my lifetime here. Kyoto, and most places in Japan are hella clean. One that shocked me the most was Manhattan and how dirty it was.
Post reply on HN