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

CEO behind Japan’s best-performing stock says his secret is raising salaries

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 266 posts

Re: CEO behind Japan’s best-performing stock says his secret is raising salaries

#101

Post by namdnay »

anovikov wrote: post #90
rurounijones wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a further example: In my last full-on japanese company it was basically impossible to find any developer with more than 3 years experience by accidental design because: 1: No applicants studied computer science in university so they started learning when they joined the company and were assigned a development role. 2: After 3 years they they got promoted to a "manager" level role and stopped doing development. The…

So the real job is being done by Indian outsourcers then? I can't believe that someone who never coded before can get to build anything decent in only 3 years.

There is a lot of outsourcing to Tata and others in Japan, yes. With many many middlemen between the poor guy spitting out the code and the one writing the requirements

Re: CEO behind Japan’s best-performing stock says his secret is raising salaries

#102

Post by asutekku »

taurath wrote: post #72
NalNezumi wrote: post #35

While establishing a "cause & effect" here seems very hard, from my personal experience working in software field in Japan, I think the winning concept here is actually the combination of removing middleman and paying good salaries. Japan is very very behind in IT/digitalization compared to most western countries. This doesn't just mean it's behind in product portfolio and quality, but that perception of software eng…

> Japan is very very behind in IT/digitalization compared to most western countries. This doesn't just mean it's behind in product portfolio and quality, but that perception of software engineer & managers and still quite behind. Have you used anything digital in Japan? I find the interfaces to be fast, user friendly, and energy dense. Far better quality than what most of the western software people put out. You migh…

What? The digital interfaces in Japan looked and felt like they were at least 10 years behind the curve. And if "energy dense" you mean that every single possible option was crammed to a small screen estate then sure.

Re: CEO behind Japan’s best-performing stock says his secret is raising salaries

#103

Post by threatripper »

If you pay slightly above average and treat your employees well you will get the best talent, they will be motivated and they will stay longer. Caveat is that only a fraction of the companies can run this strategy or the average pay rate will start to rise continuously.

Re: CEO behind Japan’s best-performing stock says his secret is raising salaries

#104

Post by novok »

yocheckitdawg wrote: post #64
wait_a_minute wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very interesting. So a person can raise a larger family on an engineer’s salary and be happy in Japan? An American expat.

One thing I have been wondering about from the outside is if part of what keeps Japanese lifestyle's relatively cheap is that the population is so homogenous (& seemingly law-abiding) that there doesn't appear to be the same emphasis on living in a "good area" as in other countries for personal security reasons. I wonder if this acts as a somewhat hidden subsidy to life whereas for people in many Western countries it…

In canada, most places are not 'bad' areas, but just lower income or higher income. The competitiveness to live a richer area to get better schools is not much of a thing, almost a foreign concept.

Re: CEO behind Japan’s best-performing stock says his secret is raising salaries

#105

Post by simfree »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #29
savant_penguin wrote: post #26

I'd like to question the premise. How confidently can you associate cause and effect here? Based on what can he guarantee that raises in salary caused the company to grow? If the formula is so simple couldn't other companies copy that and grow 5500%?

>How confidently can you associate cause and effect here? You cannot. It depends if you’re buying commodified labor and selling commodity products. Walmart and McDonalds franchisees are not going to see much difference other than higher labor expenses and reduced sales due to higher prices at competitors.

Walmart and McDonalds think they are buying commoditized labor, but as In-N-Out, Costco, Dick's, Burgerville and many others have shown, paying above average wages and focusing on worker retention produces a better quality product as those employees gain experience and are emotionally invested in performing their job well.

Boeing is a great example where management has spent the past couple decades getting rid of their competent employees to move production to cheaper areas that produce planes which have all kinds of quality control issues (metal shavings left throught the plane, copious wiring faults, numerous structural issues, etc). The new Boeing workforce has minimal experience in aerospace and is not paid enough to stick around long term.

Re: CEO behind Japan’s best-performing stock says his secret is raising salaries

#106

Post by novok »

nsonha wrote: post #78
hardwaresofton wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why do you only compare to Japan and EU? American engineers get paid more than anyone else (except for EU outliers). I make slightly above 100k in Australia, it's a bit tight with the housing situation and cost of living but it's liveable. Cost of living in the US is lower except for maybe healthcare but engineers get companies pay for them anyway. Well those are just the biggest/most relevant tech labor markets I…

fair enough, fyi my line of thought is a bit Marxist, you should get paid based on your labour, time, mental energy etc put in the work as much as the result. When you pay people according to only "impacts" you create an incentive to make "viral" things. In software these days even without such incentive taking full effect, over abstraction, one-size-fits-all, github star counting are becoming bigger problems. > you…

> fyi my line of thought is a bit Marxist, you should get paid based on your labour, time, mental energy etc put in the work as much as the result.

You can work very hard (dig useless ditches with shovels) or on very tricky things (write about things nobody cares about, nobody understands and do not matter) and not make things of much value. A society that does that in aggregate is a society that either dies or falls behind.

Re: CEO behind Japan’s best-performing stock says his secret is raising salaries

#107

Post by eecc »

NalNezumi wrote: post #35

While establishing a "cause & effect" here seems very hard, from my personal experience working in software field in Japan, I think the winning concept here is actually the combination of removing middleman and paying good salaries. Japan is very very behind in IT/digitalization compared to most western countries. This doesn't just mean it's behind in product portfolio and quality, but that perception of software eng…

> he respect that a lot of software engineers enjoys in US/EU

And then you go on describing the average attitude towards software developers I perceived in the Netherlands… :)

Re: CEO behind Japan’s best-performing stock says his secret is raising salaries

#108

Post by hardwaresofton »

nsonha wrote: post #94
hardwaresofton wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fair enough, fyi my line of thought is a bit Marxist, you should get paid based on your labour, time, mental energy etc put in the work as much as the result. When you pay people according to only "impacts" you create an incentive to make "viral" things. In software these days even without such incentive taking full effect, over abstraction, one-size-fits-all, github star counting are becoming bigger problems. Hmnn…

Viral or scalable in business/tech terms, means things that can be sold multiple times. Often times the value is already created and rewarded. In our economy we're not only incentivizing value creation but also building walls around innovations and gatekeeping the fruits of them, so that the innovators, the software developers like you wish, or whoever can earn royalty while no longer innovating.

Yeah, I get where you're coming from but I can't really agree that incentivizing raw labor is the way to get there (to a more equitable outcome for labor). The capital/labor struggle is a deep deep topic, but I think we can say at this point that with automation becoming increasingly common, labor is losing it's leg to stand on. We're going to get a lot farther by reining in capitalism than trying to return to piece work payment.

Re: CEO behind Japan’s best-performing stock says his secret is raising salaries

#109

Post by novok »

sombremesa wrote: post #11
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can pay 3-4x more for an employee that is 10x more productive (This is what I think about Netflix). It's a great deal for everyone. I don't think you can really convince most employers of this though.

I don’t know - the wfh revolution is changing this equation. The more productive employees (10x etc) can just scale down their output commensurate to compensation and expectations based on the median employee and enjoy a better work life balance now.

A bunch of work is coordination, and it requires everyone to be available simultaneously to coordinate. The fully async engineer with a round trip latency of 3-4 days is frankly the unproductive one in aggregate in their organization. Software is one of the biggest teams sports out there.

Re: CEO behind Japan’s best-performing stock says his secret is raising salaries

#110

Post by jiofih »

threatripper wrote: post #103

If you pay slightly above average and treat your employees well you will get the best talent, they will be motivated and they will stay longer. Caveat is that only a fraction of the companies can run this strategy or the average pay rate will start to rise continuously.

That’s not a problem as it’s not a zero-sum game. Everyone could get their pay raised at the same time and the overall productivity would go up accordingly, until some point of equilibrium.
Post reply on HN