CEO behind Japan’s best-performing stock says his secret is raising salaries • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by mathattack » Mon, May 17, 2021, 11:32 AM UTC

rurounijones wrote: post #46

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…

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…

My experience was similar. And if it’s not promotion, it’s rotation.

The system isn’t all bad. It’s just that it produces general managers at the expense of functional expertise. (The other extreme where 100% of the org’s entire skill set and network is limited to their own silo rarely works outside of Apple) Balance is needed.

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

#192

Post by fukmbas » Mon, May 17, 2021, 11:32 AM UTC

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…

The US is going backwards. IT departments used to be lean now they're full of MBA types trying to ride the Product wave. For the last decade I had no one between me and the end user. Now there are no less than 4

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

#193

Post by muskox2 » Mon, May 17, 2021, 11:35 AM UTC

ayushchat wrote: post #139

It would be interesting to see how the company would have performed had he raised employees equity instead of salary? I think having equity incentivizes employees to focus more on the welfare of the company than a fixed salary. I may be wrong though

I think this is true, but all things being equal employees will value $1 in salary much more than $1 in equity. So to get the same impact of higher salary, you have to give a large amount of equity. There are pros and cons.

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

#194

Post by alpaca128 » Mon, May 17, 2021, 11:38 AM UTC

rurounijones wrote: post #117

anovikov wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The stuff did get built in the company, usually half by contractors and half by the internal staff developers under guidance form the aforementioned managers. It was just build very slowly and it was held together by sticky tape and dreams. One manager spent 50% of his time keeping an old system he wrote as a developer years earlier from completely falling over because no one else could understand it, byzantine doesn…

Reminds me of a relative's tale when he talked with a Japanese developer to find out why one product of their company was really slow at processing data and the other was much faster. Turns out they were developed by two different teams, one of which had the idea to use the GPU for acceleration. The two teams were neighbours in the same company building but communicated so little they didn't know what the others were doing, and how.

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

#195

Post by pc86 » Mon, May 17, 2021, 11:38 AM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #183

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…

> 2: After 3 years they they got promoted to a "manager" level role and stopped doing development. There was no concept of junior developer -> developer -> senior developer progression. If you wanted promotion you went from developer -> manager; it was the same for sysadmins. Their IT and development suffered heavily for it. Do you have any insight into how this works in Japanese companies that do more traditional en…

They're referring specifically to software engineers.

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

#196

Post by etdev » Mon, May 17, 2021, 11:42 AM UTC

Not sure about this specific company but it's true that salaries in Japan have been increasing for tech positions.

I gathered up a ton of data points to try and prove this here:

https://japan-dev.com/blog/software-developer-salaries-in-ja...

I'm also attempting to keep track of modern companies that operate in Japan and pay globally competitive salaries here:

https://japan-dev.com

It's an exciting time for Japan (especially Tokyo).

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

#197

Post by nicoburns » Mon, May 17, 2021, 11:53 AM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #195

nicoburns wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2: After 3 years they they got promoted to a "manager" level role and stopped doing development. There was no concept of junior developer -> developer -> senior developer progression. If you wanted promotion you went from developer -> manager; it was the same for sysadmins. Their IT and development suffered heavily for it. Do you have any insight into how this works in Japanese companies that do more traditional en…

They're referring specifically to software engineers.

Yes, but then the question arises: why is software treated differently to other engineering in Japan?

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

#198

Post by theresAt » Mon, May 17, 2021, 11:56 AM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #183

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…

> 2: After 3 years they they got promoted to a "manager" level role and stopped doing development. There was no concept of junior developer -> developer -> senior developer progression. If you wanted promotion you went from developer -> manager; it was the same for sysadmins. Their IT and development suffered heavily for it. Do you have any insight into how this works in Japanese companies that do more traditional en…

I can confirm that Toyota has Senior Engineers (and Nissan).

Although I've seen this title on Teams be given to a 28 year old that didn't seem to be Senior quality, but I'm not much more experienced.

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

#199

Post by cutemonster » Mon, May 17, 2021, 11:58 AM UTC

snovv_crash wrote: post #134

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.

As it rises it starts to pull in talented people from other fields who wouldn't take the job otherwise (coming from everything from finance to biology). There is a lot more supply-side variability than people realise based on salary differences, and money can paper over a lot of work satisfaction issues, at least temporarily.

Maybe also some clients will be happy to pay more, if they notice the quality is better

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

#200

Post by philliphaydon » Mon, May 17, 2021, 11:59 AM UTC

rurounijones wrote: post #46

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…

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…

> No applicants studied computer science in university so they started learning when they joined the company and were assigned a development role.

Couple of years ago I had to integrate with a newly built api in japan. 2017, and they basically wrote their own web server in Java. Their own xml parsing. It looks like they read the spec for HTML and SOAP and implemented their own variation of it.

It’s the worst integration I’ve ever had to deal with.

If we got a 500 error from their system we had to write an incident report about why our system failed to call theirs. If they tried to call ours and it failed they would call up and we would ask them to “retry the call” and they would ask us to patch the data in our system because they can’t retry.