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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

#111

Post by f6v »

eecc wrote: post #107
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… :)

Could you elaborate?

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

#112

Post by novok »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #67
ecpottinger wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Equally important, when I work at Arby's the quality of some of the workers was questionable at best, but because of the pay rate the better workers soon found work elsewhere and most who were left clearly did not as good or fast of a job as they could. I only stayed since I only had to work in the early morning and the work was less than a block from my house. Also the other worker "Dave" was studying robotics at th…

> 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.

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

#113

Post by [deleted] »

krishvs wrote: post #22

Sounds good but does this scale in the long term? Looks like a resource placing firm. Not sure about japan, but in India it is expected that on average as an employee you get a 10 to 15% hike year on year primarily due to inflation pressures. How would this company be able to afford this if they are both reducing prices for customers while simultaneously increasing base salaries. Wouldn't the employees leave after 2…

[deleted]

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

#114

Post by hrktb »

eecc wrote: post #107
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… :)

In my experience, in EU it’s just the average perception and you’ll find a good section of big companies having better views. In Japan it’s more like finding exceptions to the rule.

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

#115

Post by novok »

krishvs wrote: post #22

Sounds good but does this scale in the long term? Looks like a resource placing firm. Not sure about japan, but in India it is expected that on average as an employee you get a 10 to 15% hike year on year primarily due to inflation pressures. How would this company be able to afford this if they are both reducing prices for customers while simultaneously increasing base salaries. Wouldn't the employees leave after 2…

He could scale beyond just software testing, maybe make a product or two leveraging his investment in a better-than-normal engineering base by copying more best practices from silicon valley while leveraging the language barrier that prevents these engineers from moving onto FANG in the first place.

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

#116

Post by hrktb »

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.

Not disagreeing, but the devil’s advocate: sometimes you don’t want to be keeping the contractors longer, and will use them as fuses to shelter your business when bad times come. This is at least part of the reasoning behind having layers and layers of sub-contracting companies paying their employees low wages.

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

#117

Post by rurounijones »

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.

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't begin to describe it.

He worked many, many, many hours overtime doing this in addition to his managerly duties but, of course, because this is Japan, he won an award for hardest worker of the year and a trip to Hawaii... which he couldn't take because otherwise the system would fall over.

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

#118

Post by jussij »

> 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 programming skills.

When I started I was amazed to find a 70 developers and testers workforce working on the project, most of whom were straight out of university.

A nice earner for the consultancy firm; they were charging their development team out at $150.00 per hour, yet only paying graduate salaries.

It must have been $100+ profit per hour per developer.

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

#120

Post by hrktb »

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…

Crime rates are generally low so the difference between the areas is less a factor than for other countries, but there are soil and geographic positioning factors that weight a lot more.

For instance low elevation areas are usually weak to tsunami, river areas can also flood, and former swamp and artificial terrain can liquify under seisms. There are hazard maps detailing the risks, and avoiding riskier areas will usually cost a bunch.

Buildings also get more expensive depending on their level of resistance against earthquakes.

Sizeable seisms are not that rare (way more than “once in a lifetime” kind of event), so you might still be spending a decent amount of money to try to have a better chance at surviving them.

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