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

bloomberg.com

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

#51

Post by devoutsalsa »

rurounijones wrote: post #46
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…

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…

As a 195cm tall, 120kg, non-Japanese, senior developer who has never been to Japan, I kind of want to get a job at a Japanese company and just see what happens.

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

#52

Post by xupybd »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #51
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…

As a 195cm tall, 120kg, non-Japanese, senior developer who has never been to Japan, I kind of want to get a job at a Japanese company and just see what happens.

Try Vietnam, they are the shortest in south east Asia. I'm 190 and couldn't fit in a seat at a restaurant outside of tourist spots.

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

#53

Post by rileymat2 »

ecpottinger wrote: post #49
rileymat2 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this true? When I worked as an assistant manager at Burger King, you could see employees that were more productive by a large factor. If paying them more led them to stay longer it would have been a big win. The best could do the work of 2-3 people, if paying them 1.5x more means they stay, you more profits on lower labor costs. What is hard to do is create a repeatable process for this. And trusting local managem…

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…

There were clear differences in drive-tru with up selling that makes a huge difference too.

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

#54

Post by wait_a_minute »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #50

Some context on the japanese job market from what I've seen: - The entire japanese job market's wages are depressed[0] - In 2019, pressure had to come from the PM (not the local unions) to raise the minimum wage to 1000 yen/hour (~$9/hour)[1] - Engineers are underpaid here, possibly more so than the EU in relation to the US. This is amplified for japanese companies (whether "black"[1] or not) - With nationalized heal…

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.

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

#55

Post by oh_sigh »

Rzor wrote: post #48
shp0ngle wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what works for me is just disabling JS. That actually fools a lot of websites - like NYTimes and I think WaPost.

Usually I just interrupt a reload, but sometimes it keeps loading the popup after a while. uBlock's disable JS button helps, but I never remind myself to use it. I found out that I could only recently.

Your browser almost certainly lets you block JS on a per-site setting by clicking the lock in the URL bar -> site settings -> disable javascript

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

#56

Post by kh1 »

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…

Very true, especially hiring "Scrum-experts/Agile coaches" and cheap engineers from outside. Based on my experience, they don't have good understanding of the business, so business people need to write up word-for-word documentation (e.g. Take this column from spreadsheet and multiply by 100 to show the numbers in percentage). At this point, business people who have programming skills wonder why they have to work with corporate IT.

On the other hand, don't many western companies outsource IT work as well? Having never worked in US/EU tech industry, I don't see much difference when it comes to outsourcing. (hiring temp engineers is obviously different from outsourcing, but the concept must be the same)

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

#57

Post by p_l »

lupire wrote: post #37

Headline is contradictes by the article. The company replaces layers of contractors with direct employees.

Layers of middlemen

The company itself is contracting, they just cut out a huge value-skimping set of middlemen, and the savings involved mean they can simultaneously undercut their competitors while pocketing more money, which is fed into employees' salaries.

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

#58

Post by hardwaresofton »

wait_a_minute wrote: post #54
hardwaresofton wrote: post #50

Some context on the japanese job market from what I've seen: - The entire japanese job market's wages are depressed[0] - In 2019, pressure had to come from the PM (not the local unions) to raise the minimum wage to 1000 yen/hour (~$9/hour)[1] - Engineers are underpaid here, possibly more so than the EU in relation to the US. This is amplified for japanese companies (whether "black"[1] or not) - With nationalized heal…

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.

At many Japanese colleges, graduating with ~$40k/year at an office job is considered success after undergoing "seishoku katsudou" which the junior year college hunting process, as long as the company is of good repute. As japan is very homogenous culture wise relative to other countries, it's very common for people to generally start families before ~25/by the end of their 30s. $40k is a salary under which doing this is tight, but not impossible.

Japanese companies also give pay bumps eventually of course, and are very loathe to fire (worker rights are strong in japan), with an engineer's salary of "only" 100k (which honestly was being paid to interns at FAANG 10 years ago) you could raise multiple families here.

There is something called a "super salaryman" which is for salarymen who make ~$100k (1 million yen IIRC). Achieving this status is recognizable and makes a lot of things (getting loans, etc) easier -- that should say something about the mindset.

It's still unclear if engineers in American are ridiculously overpaid, or if engineers in Japan and the EU are ridiculously underpaid. I lean towards the latter.

[EDIT] - forgot something, it used to be common practice in Japan to pay people according to life circumstances (getting married, children, etc) or other things (lots of info here[0] though it doesn't directly cover this was something I learned studying in Japan in some undergrad Japanese management course). It would be naive to think people aren't paid slightly differently because of their life situation here though -- it's very easy to rationalize paying someone more because they have more "responsibility" at home/in society, and maybe arguably even morally correct.

[0]: https://www.ilo.org/ifpdial/information-resources/national-l...

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

#59

Post by lotsofpulp »

rileymat2 wrote: post #38
lotsofpulp wrote: post #29

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.

Is this true? When I worked as an assistant manager at Burger King, you could see employees that were more productive by a large factor. If paying them more led them to stay longer it would have been a big win. The best could do the work of 2-3 people, if paying them 1.5x more means they stay, you more profits on lower labor costs. What is hard to do is create a repeatable process for this. And trusting local managem…

> you could see employees that were more productive by a large factor.

And you would never be able to pay enough to keep them and still sell at the low prices. They will move on to bigger and better things as soon as they can, and the proof is the astronomical turnover in almost the entire mid and low tier restaurant market. There’s a reason it has the widespread reputation of being the least desirable, dead end jobs.

The proof of my statement being true is reality. All the management at retail stores and restaurants and hotels are not stupid, they just know that the market for buyers willing to pay the extra marginal cost required for buying upper tier labor is too small, and that even with the high turnover, most customers are satisfied and unwilling to pay extra to reduce turnover.

It’s similar to how 80% of people’s needs are solved by tools from Harbor Freight rather than festool or snap on or other fancy tool brand.

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

#60

Post by crispyambulance »

ecpottinger wrote: post #49
rileymat2 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this true? When I worked as an assistant manager at Burger King, you could see employees that were more productive by a large factor. If paying them more led them to stay longer it would have been a big win. The best could do the work of 2-3 people, if paying them 1.5x more means they stay, you more profits on lower labor costs. What is hard to do is create a repeatable process for this. And trusting local managem…

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…

There's something to be said for a food or retail establishment that is able to staff up with a cohort of smart local kids. Not saying the service is better or that they'll work harder, but it's nice to hear witty banter from national merit semifinalists enjoying (and especially not enjoying) their after-school jobs.
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