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

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

#221
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If your software business relies on last minute availability all the time, no engineer worth their salt will work there.

https://sahillavingia.com/work

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

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 the…

> 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.

In n Out, Costco, Dick’s, and Burgerville exist in the richer parts of town/country. You can figure out which side of town has more money based on which stores are there.

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

#223
post #220
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we get respect as SWE in EU? In every eu state I have been, except maybe uk in some sector, there was the meme that we are "the new blue collar workers" and indeed in a lot of places salaries were pretty much aligned

I am a software developer, and I feel software developers expect a lot more than is reasonable if they consider themselves part of the same society as everyone else. It's just a job like any other, and it's only in certain bubbles that developers are treated like rockstar prodigies. For the rest of the world, or even just the rest of the US, to expect exceptionally high compensation in order to feel respected is unre…

hmm, maybe i should study computer graphics so i can work on those algorithms lol

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

#224
post #184
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we get respect as SWE in EU? In every eu state I have been, except maybe uk in some sector, there was the meme that we are "the new blue collar workers" and indeed in a lot of places salaries were pretty much aligned

I think it you want to feel respected as developer in Western Europe, you should be consulting. The best way to get a respectable compensation for your efforts.

The governments found out that people are making too good money doing this. For example in the UK there is a term "disguised employment" thrown around and consultants being smeared as tax dodgers. This year they changed the law, so that company must declare whether hired person is a genuine contractor or de-facto an employee. There is a fine if they declare a disguised employee as a contractor, but not the other way around. The effect is that companies now offer contracts that always place a contractor as a disguised employee to avoid problems with the tax man. As a result such consultant has to pay over 50% in effective tax. Many good ones I know already looking to move overseas.

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

#226

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…

This is the exact same problem we have with Indian outsourcing. You get that one who's really damn good at what they do. Just as they are up to speed on your project and working style, they get promoted to manage a group of 10+ engineers. And then you start again with the next one, hoping that they're as good as the previous one.

I've heard that big, well-known consulting companies have refined this pattern into a business model that scales even better.

Why do any sort of progression, when you can just have a bunch of skilled people visiting customers to secure contracts, and once projects are started, they can be substituted for an army of juniors? Meanwhile, the seniors go secure more contracts elsewhere.

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

#227
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Looking back, if the store had more workers like myself and Dave, I bet we could have increased the sales 20-50%. The fact that there are tens of thousands of restaurants not hiring workers like yourself or Dave to increase sales 20% to 50% means there must be something preventing that. Such as insufficient number of workers like yourself or Dave at the wages they can pay and also sell at a low enough price, or the…

The better workers move on to better restaurants where pay-for-performance is somewhat implicit, like tips in restaurants. You want your highly tipped waiters because they are the salespeople of your restaurant, and their commissions are a measurement of that.

Right, but what if people cannot afford or do not want to pay the amount required for better restaurants with better staff 80% of the time?

That’s what the current business landscape looks like to me when I see the various restaurant options.

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

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the exact same problem we have with Indian outsourcing. You get that one who's really damn good at what they do. Just as they are up to speed on your project and working style, they get promoted to manage a group of 10+ engineers. And then you start again with the next one, hoping that they're as good as the previous one.

My company has found good luck in India by not outsourcing, instead we have a branch office. Gives us the ability to grow people to be what we need them to be. Looking at all the names on the buildings around ours, I don't think we are the only ones to figure this out. There are good people everywhere. You just need to find them, and grow them to where they can shine.

A company I consulted for did something similar, they flew their team from India to their offices for a month or two so they could teach them the proper company culture faster.

Simple things, like it's better to ask when you don't know than say "yes everything is fine" until it's too late.

Worked pretty well, a few from the team actually ended up immigrating and are still living over here with their families =)

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

#229
post #118

> Tange, 46, says his business model is an attempt to remove inefficiencies in Japan’s software industry, where layers of subcontractors take cuts on orders before passing the work to another company below. This reminds me of a role I once had back in the late nighties. I was hired on contract by a multi-national consultancy firm to help out on one of their projects. The need someone to come in with good C programmin…

In 2003 or so, I was 4 years out of grad school and making a solid $85k or so doing software integrations. My company billed me out at $250/hour and my typical week was about 40-60 hours of billable time (yes, that's real, and that's why I quit!)

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

#230
post #7

It's not the whistle that pulls the train! Chances are that Tange hired well qualified employees tht fit the corporate culture (and fired the ones who didn't fit in), and continued to reward as objectives were met. Remind me of Netflix and GE 20 years ago.

Seems like it's not just that he hires better people, since he "buys smaller firms and boosts their workers’ pay."
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