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

#241

Post by rurounijones » Mon, May 17, 2021, 4:09 PM 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…

Physical engineering is a much older discipline and has/had (this is 7 years ago in my company) much more respect as a "real" career socially in corporate life. Makers of physical things tend(ed) to get more respect.

I don't have any special insight into Toyota outside of some anecdotal stories from friends though.

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

#242

Post by rurounijones » Mon, May 17, 2021, 4:12 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #148

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.

3 years is enough time, but you will produce trash for your first year. The problem is that you just spent 3 years training someone and now you throw all that training into the trash and start from scratch with the next guy.

Don't forget that the training of the new people is done by the managers, i.e. the people with 3 years experience before they stopped learning and practicing themselves. "Blind leading the Blind" in many cases.

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

#243

Post by sangnoir » Mon, May 17, 2021, 4:43 PM UTC

xilni wrote: post #217

rkangel wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is common in the rest of the US/EU as well. The difference between how "tech" companies treat software engineers is very different from how "normal" companies treat software. Tech companies "get" that the difference between good and bad software is enormous and that it's worth doing the work to get good people to build it, other companies usually don't.

Can confirm this was the case in the US, made me promise myself to never take another software engineer role at a non “tech” company ever again which I’ve held to ever since. They outsourced every possible role in software engineering and IT to India to the bare minimum where all that was left were the devs who worked on the firmware for gov related projects and regulatory concerns meant only US citizens could work o…

"Do not work in a department that's only seen as a cost center" is a maxim I live by too. Everyone up the reporting chain is being antagonized, including the C-suite. If you're not (directly) contributing to the profits, the bean-counters will try to reign-in your departmental expenses, including salaries and equipment.

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

#244

Post by ironmagma » Mon, May 17, 2021, 4:51 PM UTC

prometheus76 wrote: post #207

Competitors: "Why is the stock in that company going up?" CEO hiding real reason: "I raised all the salaries in my company!" Other CEOs: "Even if that's the real reason, we aren't going to try that."

Why would that be a good cover story? It would make all the companies have to pay more.

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

#245

Post by rudnevr » Mon, May 17, 2021, 5:22 PM UTC

ehnto wrote: post #220

yulaow wrote: 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…

From my observation in several countries and industries, software development is not the job like any other.

Simply becase software development sucks thinking and knowledge from the product/sales/manager silos.

To make things works you have to know much more than many managers do. Effectively you do the digging, the thinking, the analysis, the design - via tooling or via POCs directly, and SDE is the sink who gets everything that other folks didn't think or care.

It's not like Uber driver who drives you where you want. It's more like baby-sitter who also serves like a Virgil, a guide in the hell, and who takes all the risks.

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

#246

Post by simfree » Mon, May 17, 2021, 6:49 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #222

simfree wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In N Out has opened new locations in poorer southern Oregon communities over the last few years. Dick's made a similar move opening their south end location.

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

#247

Post by 908B64B197 » Mon, May 17, 2021, 8:20 PM UTC

ehnto wrote: post #220

yulaow wrote: 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…

> It's just a job like any other, and it's only in certain bubbles that developers are treated like rockstar prodigies.

The bubbles that did however did incredibly well compared to the rest of the market. And often crushed traditional companies with a traditional view Software and engineers.

> Software is an incredible tool and I'm glad to still find ways to love it, but as a profession, it's just like any other.

The thing is, software scales almost infinitely. For a doctor to double his output, he'd have to put in twice the hours. For a software engineers to double his. But a 10x userbase growth? Happens overnight at some companies. That's where it's different.

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

#248

Post by 908B64B197 » Mon, May 17, 2021, 8:22 PM UTC

yulaow wrote: post #149

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…

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

EU devs get a lot of respect... here in the Valley!

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

#249

Post by max_hammer » Mon, May 17, 2021, 8:38 PM UTC

cutemonster wrote: post #163

max_hammer wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its same in Indian IT. When I joined Infosys straight out of university, my salary was approx `$350` per month. They told client, I have 2 years of experience as Informatica developer and charged $50 per hour. Before joining the project, I had never seen the Informatica tool.

How did you get to know what they told the client? Your bosses wanted you to know, so you didn't say the wrong things, if the client asked something? (eg so you knew to day yes if the client asked if you had two years experience)

My boss asked me to change my resume and show experience of 2 years in Informatica. Also, I had to lie to client about experience during introduction.

My client was non technical person and we use to get work from Onsite coordinator

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

#250

Post by Jare » Mon, May 17, 2021, 9:21 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #124

Jare wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen the "paying 4x" phenomenon at a former company (a long time ago tho). The external "expert" consultants worked with us for 3+ years, used our equipment and offices, and at least one of them didn't understand why C sizeof() was not giving him the length of the string.

Companies hire external experts (or "experts") in order to fix hiring problems (can't find the necessary people), or because they find it hard to predict future needs (might only need them for 3 months, or 3 years), or because they don't have the management team in place to manage those people (every person hired is a call on managers to give them work to do, and more admin to do). These are all things that are often…

Yeah, I mean it worked. Projects got delivered on time, I assume on budget, and functioning to spec. Lacks in some places were compensated with excesses in others. Some things were not pretty, but there's no denying the place ran like a well oiled machine. I learned a lot there.

At the time I thought the in-house knowledge and expertise these people would take with them when they moved elsewhere would be a big loss, but then the company was bought and dissolved into a larger parent, and that knowledge mattered exactly zero.