181–190 of 439 posts
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The writing is a joy and the context is useful. Hardly buried.
I clicked on the article to learn, "why Japanese companies do so many different things," and then got hit with pages of low-bitrate context, such that my eyes started glazing over and it was difficult to find the answer to the question. So I appreciate their compression, or at least pointing to where the answer is found.
It’s always fascinating to see how Westerners idealize Japan on platforms like HN. It makes me wonder(i'm korean): how would a Westerner react if they saw me romanticizing the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain? They’d probably find it strange and out of touch with reality. This essay on Japan's corporate diversification and physical tacit knowledge is an interesting read. However, as an East Asian, my assessment is tha…
Are they successful?
Japanese culture reflects certain western attitudes which make it stand out.
Do I detect resentment?
> So why are Japanese companies like this? Why do they do so many different things? And how do they manage to do so all those different things so well? Author says: Japanese companies excel in lots of very different domains because it’s inherent in how they’re structured. My response: No mention of culture? Sure maybe it is because of how they are structured somewhat, but it's also because of their culture. Japanese…
Look at the best pizza place in the world, the best burger maker in the world.. they are not in Italy or America, but in Tokyo. That's a bold claim. While I'm sure the average quality in Japan is significantly better than ours, I would put the best pizza places in Jersey, NYC, and CT up against anywhere in the world.
Concepts like this make me think about precision in products. When you spend 40,000$ on a computer chip you get a commodity piece of nm-scale precision. When you spend 40,000$ on a pink ivory coffee table you get a pile of wood with a maximum precision of 0.1-1mm. I'm just wondering what it would be like if atom-level precision was the main focus of every single premium product.
The price of a computer chip has been lowered so significantly because of the standard process that is used across millions of chips with materials that are 99.999999999% pure.
My experience in American organizations is that products and services need to not just make money, but make a lot of money. There is zero appetite for things that make a little bit of money relative to the cash cows of the company. You could say this is in part focus, but it is also based on internal accounting. Small product lines are saddled with total company overhead costs even if they do not apply to said produc…
It’s always fascinating to see how Westerners idealize Japan on platforms like HN. It makes me wonder(i'm korean): how would a Westerner react if they saw me romanticizing the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain? They’d probably find it strange and out of touch with reality. This essay on Japan's corporate diversification and physical tacit knowledge is an interesting read. However, as an East Asian, my assessment is tha…
Japanese and American companies have different purposes. In Japan the corporation primarily provides stable income and employment for society, and secondarily returns on capital invested. In America, corporations primarily provide returns on capital invested and secondarily provide stable income and employment. This shows up in the data too. Japanese corporations are less likely to go out of business but provide wors…
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> how Westerners idealize Japan Westerners are taught by the media and education to idealize Japan and hate China almost everywhere. They present cherry-picked aspects of both countries that make China look bad and Japan look good. In reality every country has its good and bad aspects. This is just part of the propaganda machine and what politicians want you to believe, in an effort to align their populations to be s…
Hate China? I don’t see that. There are plenty of factual reports about the CCP that are pretty damning, but the people/culture/place is generally perceived postively other than being a competitor…
You seem to be an American so I'm very confused. You'd have to be willingfully blind at this point to not see the anti-chinese propaganda that has been going on in America for (at least) the past decade.
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As it should be. The pay gap from CEO to bottom tier worker is now obscene (21 times in 1965 and ~285 today). It's the foxes looking after the henhouses.
Not sure why the left cares so much about CEO to work pay ratio these days, especially when Marx himself recognized that ownership was the true source inequality. A CEO is just a really well paid worker. Even CEOs who become billionaires do so from capital appreciation more than compensation.
So yes, it is a problem when leadership doesn't have long term aspirations for the large company.
It’s always fascinating to see how Westerners idealize Japan on platforms like HN. It makes me wonder(i'm korean): how would a Westerner react if they saw me romanticizing the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain? They’d probably find it strange and out of touch with reality. This essay on Japan's corporate diversification and physical tacit knowledge is an interesting read. However, as an East Asian, my assessment is tha…
I didn't feel like this article necessarily idolized it; the author seemed pretty even-handed about strengths and weaknesses. The interesting question in all of these kinds of things is "are there ideas we can take to gain the strengths of other systems or patch the weaknesses in ours?". Looking at Japan specifically, I think I speak for most westerners in saying that if we could get a little more stability and less…