Basically having 2-3 guys with expertise working on a niche product preserves capability and you have a little turtleegg that can hatch into a product over time.
Why Japanese companies do so many different things
291–300 of 439 posts
Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things
#292It’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'm a german software developer working for a japanese corporation in a german subsidiary. I agree with pretty much everything in your post. Especially the exhausting chain of approvals and also the unwillingness to make quick/tough decisions feels like walking through molasses at times. However, there is also an upside to this. I can actually confirm that they take quality control very serious, probably due to the l…
As a fan of Nintendo (the games, not the company of course), this definitely checks out. There are exceptions, but you rarely see a new Zelda game release in the state you can expect from Bethesda.
Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things
#293Like with China, people try to explain Japan with "culture", which always results in a circular argument: China/Japan is this way, because that's what China/Japan is like.
An example would be "super apps". If you google this term you will see countless results that say "Chinese users prefer one app that does everything; they are also better at handling information density." The argument becomes: Super apps exist because Chinese users like Super apps. This is wrong. If you ever talk to a single Chinese user you will learn that none of them like these types of apps.
Read the comments here as an example: https://x.com/felixleezd/status/2039008846514119046
> "No it doesnt. As a Chinese, these apps are shitty to use and I struggle with finding what I need most of the time."
> 'Lol no.
> Its just bloat without careful thoughts.
> "We have this new product, pls add it to the main screen, pls send a notification to all our users to try it out, pls my promotion depend on it"
> You can get away with this for decades if the main moat is strong enough.'
> "I hate them, full of shitty ads and ads and ads. Basically, every app wants to lend you money, which is a total disaster."
There's not a single user that likes "super apps."
Then why do they exist? Because of the business environment. In the 2010s, post-iPhone and when smartphones became everyman's personal computing device, VC investment into China skyrocketed, culminating in 2015. Alibaba alone launched something like 50 new services during this decade. A few giant companies remained while the other startup tech companies failed; they divided the market among themselves, and in order to increase LTV per user they started bootstrapping their new services by putting links into them inside their existing platforms. Taobao adding links to Alipay and so on.
So "super apps" exist in China because of the business environment. The apps are literally designed by KPIs: get more users to click on this button and open this other service. It has so far been impossible for any startup to disrupt the BAT giants, so they can keep adding more and more services to the same apps and as a result they get more cluttered.
The reason I'm making the analogy about China is that the same is certainly true for Japan. It is a steady-state, non-dynamic market where companies that were created decades ago remain and can expand horizontally. It has nothing to do with Japanese culture.
Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things
#294It’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…
“Weeabo crap” was also my take on the article.
Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
I made a very small and highly defensible claim. You argued that this article (by David Oks) is an example of "how Westerners idealize Japan." I argued that this article does not idealize Japan, and that, if you interpreted Oks' article that way, then you didn't understand the article. I didn't say that Japanese business culture is more "horizontal" than Western business culture, or that Japanese business culture is…
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From pfp Oks is upper middle class hafu
There's almost no way these guys (low pass filter)can see the water they have been breathing since they were born unless they've had first hand experience that wakes them up (high pass filter)
Add to that (Western) (indie?) game-makers and hafu are both predominantly right-wing.. far-right, if you take a global perspective. Polite to the point of being offensive, though. :) Perhaps there are very very few opportunities in which to feel a loss of control in real life, or trained since infancy
That said, there's seems to be still a lot of useful info in article that bears "bookmarking"..
Anyways..
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Especially
Jesuit to Marxist or Marxist to Catholic is always interesting, but it's not quite an 180 life changer
Like sending Mormon kids to spread the faith in Indi-- er, Maharashtra
Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with most of your points. However, I can't quite agree with idealizing China completely (frankly, I don't think any government in the world is all that great). China has its own deep structural issues, such as the massive disparity between Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities, the grueling 996 work culture, and the 'Tangping' movement. That being said, I can absolutely vouch for your deep understanding of Korea.
So 996 is still a thing but the government is trying to stamp it out [1]. Tang ping is also something the government is dealing with (agree or not) [2]. One of the big problems in China right now is youth unemployment [3], which is (IMHO) related to Tang ping. That is, for a lot of young people (in the world, not just China) feel hopeless, like they have no future. This is exacerbated in China because of the gender g…
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Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> Most citizens would prefer stability to growth, but I think the tradeoff has a lot of downstream consequences. People want personal stability, which in our current society means a stable job. That doesn't have to be the case, though. Overall, economic growth is good for society as a whole, so it makes sense that a state should encourage it as much as it can. This means that what is good for an individual is not the…
> Overall, economic growth is good for society as a whole, so it makes sense that a state should encourage it as much as it can.
The problem with basing the language in the aggregate, is implies that distribution doesn’t matter, and all modern economic models agree. This is a big problem for the reality of people living in ever increasing inequality. Money is a competitive resource, we use it to bid for real resources. If constant economic growth disproportionately goes to the already wealthy, it worsens inequality when resources to exploit become more scarce. It’s one thing to have massive swaths of untouched natural world to exploit for human benefits, but those days are long gone IMO.
Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things
#298> 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.
It’s all kinda silly because there’s a “quantity is quality” thing going on with pizza and a lot of “commoner food”.
But Tokyo has a loooooooot of good food from various places, and a lot of people with money willing to spend 5 bucks a slice (for example). Or at least enough to sustain one restaurant.
The contrapositive: what magical thing exists in Jersey that would not be exportable to Tokyo?
I would bet that NYC has the best cheap slice tho.
Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Japan takes Western concepts, and applies an obsessive cultural devotion to mastery (Shokunin). Thank you for explaining this. I was alawys amazed how the japanese would take the cuisine from other countries and make it better in all aspects than the country that originated it.
Why are people saying that the Japanese counterpart of other cuisines are better? Have you guys eaten the originals? OP mentions curry, bread, pizza, etc. Those are things most gaijins complain about when in Japan! Can't find a proper piece of bread that isn't sweetened, or you find a French chain doing something almost similar but still not on par with breads found in France. I helped at a pizza shop near Fuji city…
> Still haven't found a decent thai or indian restaurant in Japan, and probably never will, given the general aversion for strong spices.
are you not in Tokyo? Because “no decent Thai restaurant in Tokyo” is a wild claim
You can get spicy food in Tokyo! It’s just not going to be all the restaurants. You gotta to to the right place. But you don’t need 100 good thai restaurants to eat dinner, you just need the one.
Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've thought a lot about (and I don't mean this in a derogatory way) the weebu phenomenon. I remember encountering it first in college when I met people who were in an anime club. It wasn't for me but my philosophy generally is "let people enjoy things". I will say that it often goes beyond "idealizing". I'd use the word "fetishizing". I've wondered how much of this stems from being disaffected by the modern (particu…
1. It’s hilarious that your version of “cool” Japan was immeasurably worse in terms of things like misogyny, racism and war crimes than modern Japan. 2. Post WWII Japan set the benchmark for pulling its people out of poverty in an astonishingly short period of time. 3. There have always been foreign, exotic cultures people have romanticized. The Romans romanticized Greece and ancient Egypt.
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