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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

#91

Post by unishark »

judge2020 wrote: post #70
nsonha wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if engineers in America are ridiculously overpaid, or why do you only compare to Japan and EU? American engineers get paid more than anyone else (except for EU outliers). I make slightly above 100k in Australia, it's a bit tight with the housing situation and cost of living but it's liveable. Cost of living in the US is lower except for maybe healthcare but engineers get companies pay for them anyway. I don't have…

Simply looking at the number value might be too surface level for this. The bay area has high wages because of the cost of living - due to the housing crisis and overall pay required to live in the area, FAANG and non-FAANG alike pay more simply in order to have employees that can actually afford living somewhere within an hour of the city - and with remote work, companies are docking employee pay to more competitive…

If pay is increased solely to compensate for house prices, then working in a higher cost of living area is still better because the job buys you a more valuable house. Imagine if house prices were a non-issue because companies just give you a free house when you start. Would you consider still the job in a cheap housing area equal?

Anyway at the senior levels the pay is even more stupid high in SV, way more than anything you'd need to live on. How high do salaries go in Australia?

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

#92

Post by hardwaresofton »

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…

> 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.

As a foreigner living in Japan, I can confirm this is true. Much of japanese society benefits from this homogeneity. Hard to quantify a lot of these benefits and even harder to compare Japan to somehwere as big and varied as the US, but there is certainly grease in the wheels of society as long as you are the average case in japan.

That said extremely homogeneous society is a double edged sword. Personal computing never took off in Japan as much as it did in the US, and the youth here are extremely disadvantaged because of it -- they're proficient with smart phones (roughly around 2010/2011 they gained mass adoption/cleared the popularity/acceptance hurdle) but it absolutely does not feel like there is enough proficiency being built in japan for success in the increasingly digital present and future.

[EDIT] - the proficiency I mean in the last bit is "real" computing -- i.e. using computers to create content, programs, and other useful things, rather than simply consuming it. I'm likely blinded by my own biases, but I see the ability to use photoshop/gimp, after effects, IDEs, terminals as abilities that award more leverage than being really good at using tiktok (which can indeed make engaging content) or drawing apps on iphone/etc.

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

#93

Post by unishark »

iratewizard wrote: post #23
MattGaiser wrote: post #13

What is turnover like in Japan? Do people turnover? It seems like a place where people stay at one company for a career.

Historically that was extremely true. A salaryman would not be hired by a company that would let him retain his social status if he were fired or left. Poaching was uncommon practice. It's becoming much less true today, but it's not over yet.

Historically it was true in the US too. When I first graduated, some big companies still had pension plans they'd try to entice you with.

I'm sure there's a direct link between increasing salaries and the prevalence of job-hopping.

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

#94

Post by nsonha »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #84
nsonha wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fair enough, fyi my line of thought is a bit Marxist, you should get paid based on your labour, time, mental energy etc put in the work as much as the result. When you pay people according to only "impacts" you create an incentive to make "viral" things. In software these days even without such incentive taking full effect, over abstraction, one-size-fits-all, github star counting are becoming bigger problems. > you…

> fair enough, fyi my line of thought is a bit Marxist, you should get paid based on your labour, time, mental energy etc put in the work as much as the result. When you pay people according to only "impacts" you create an incentive to make "viral" things. In software these days even without such incentive taking full effect, over abstraction, one-size-fits-all, github star counting are becoming bigger problems. Hmnn…

Viral or scalable in business/tech terms, means things that can be sold multiple times. Often times the value is already created and rewarded. In our economy we're not only incentivizing value creation but also building walls around innovations and gatekeeping the fruits of them, so that the innovators, the software developers like you wish, or whoever can earn royalty while no longer innovating.

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

#95

Post by babesh »

nsonha wrote: post #78
hardwaresofton wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why do you only compare to Japan and EU? American engineers get paid more than anyone else (except for EU outliers). I make slightly above 100k in Australia, it's a bit tight with the housing situation and cost of living but it's liveable. Cost of living in the US is lower except for maybe healthcare but engineers get companies pay for them anyway. Well those are just the biggest/most relevant tech labor markets I…

fair enough, fyi my line of thought is a bit Marxist, you should get paid based on your labour, time, mental energy etc put in the work as much as the result. When you pay people according to only "impacts" you create an incentive to make "viral" things. In software these days even without such incentive taking full effect, over abstraction, one-size-fits-all, github star counting are becoming bigger problems. > you…

I think what is happening is that people in general, not only software engineers, are getting paid much more and sometimes less because of increasing impact due to tech/globalization scaling and winner takes all network effects.

Look at how much some YouTubers make. Due to the Internet, they can reach far more people than before and make far more money. Also, their popularity begat more popularity without commensurate additional work on their part.

The same is happening to tech companies. You have that same power law with a few at the top making a lot of the money. It applies to YouTubers, tech companies, software engineers at those tech companies, etc... The rise of tech billionaires is another manifestation of this.

Of course this is creating a lot of pushback from other parts of society that are sometimes actually losing influence, money, etc... since there is a negative feedback loop on the other side.

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

#96

Post by onion2k »

koilke wrote: post #65

Having had experience in a company that acts as middleperson/outsourcing company, many of the employees where working for company A and then outsource to work for company B. They would be hired as full time employees at company A and let us say in my example start with a salary at around 30k USD per year and the company A would receive around 120k USD per year by letting that employee work for company B. I thought it…

Paying someone X and charging 3X for their time is not "hugely profitable". Employing someone is pretty expensive. You have to account for all the costs of employing them (payroll, admin, HR, project management, etc), the fact you still need to pay them for the time they're not being charged to a client, the cost of an office for them to work from and equipment for them to do the work, and so on. It's common in business admin to account for at least 2X of someone's salary as the cost of employing them. If you charge less you'd be making a loss.

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

#97

Post by xupybd »

JCharante wrote: post #82
xupybd wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's tons of non-tourist spots where you'd fit. It's not super uncommon to find guys who are 180cm or taller, the tallest I've met is 194cm while waiting for the bus. Even at 181cm you do have to watch your head though.. I've hit my head many times while going up stairs, and for those who don't know stairs are extremely common because many businesses are split up across multiple floors of a narrow building.

When I say I don't fit I'm being a little hyperbolic. I'm talking about sitting at a table with tiny plastic chairs and having my knees sit well above the table.

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

#98

Post by bobthepanda »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #88
bobthepanda wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really backwards, it's a cycle that reinforces itself. House expensive -> salaries jump -> people have more money to pay for house -> house becomes more expensive. This is like arguing about the chicken or the egg. More housing supply would help to a point but it would take an order of magnitude change to make a dent in the current self-reinforcing cycle, and probably would need that level of increased produ…

I'm no expert on the history of SV or your housing (I've never lived there, probably never will), but I thought the general story was something like this: 0. California existed 1. Government investment comes to the valley during the cold war in early SV companies 2. Innovation happens in leaps and bounds thanks to the government checkbook 3. Profit is made hand over fist by some people/groups/entities 4. People/group…

Depending on how far back you want to go 1 isn't even really the start of it.

Stanford was founded by Leland Stanford, the robber baron who owned the Central Pacific, which built the transcontinental railroad. This has more or less been the cycle since the Gold Rush.

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

#99

Post by Jare »

onion2k wrote: post #96
koilke wrote: post #65

Having had experience in a company that acts as middleperson/outsourcing company, many of the employees where working for company A and then outsource to work for company B. They would be hired as full time employees at company A and let us say in my example start with a salary at around 30k USD per year and the company A would receive around 120k USD per year by letting that employee work for company B. I thought it…

Paying someone X and charging 3X for their time is not "hugely profitable". Employing someone is pretty expensive. You have to account for all the costs of employing them (payroll, admin, HR, project management, etc), the fact you still need to pay them for the time they're not being charged to a client, the cost of an office for them to work from and equipment for them to do the work, and so on. It's common in busin…

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.
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