

Japan's IT exodus: A personal perspective - shioyama
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/10/30/japan%E2%80%99s-it-exodus-a-personal-perspective-part-1/

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jayfuerstenberg
I'm 35 and have been working in Tokyo for about 10 years now. It's funny how
fast those 10 years have gone by.

I was this super energetic do-everything-that-was-asked-of-me kind of guy in
the beginning.

After a few inhumane projects of working 6 days/week, 9am-11pm I began to
question the meaning of it all and found little.

Now I'm careful not to volunteer myself too much for fear of being seen as the
point-man for every little problem that pokes up so I can enjoy a work-life
balance. Now I have a family and live just outside Tokyo where it's quiet and
peaceful.

Japan really does need to wake up and realize that it's throwing away its
skilled people (not just in IT) but it'll take a massive exodus for the
question to ever be raised unfortunately.

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va_coder
I slightly understand the push to move experienced coders into management. I
have enjoyed coding but the biggest frustration has been the poor direction of
management. Companies often don't know how and why technology should be used.
They need smart people that know technology to lead (not just code).

~~~
mattmanser
That's not what this is about.

Look at the language he used, 'intense coding work', 'physical capacity',
'speed [to] absorb and understand new technologies'.

Japan seems to have the same perspective on programming that the gaming
industry does. That somehow typing words into a computer, learning and
thinking is a young man's game.

~~~
patio11
It is a very good translation, but when a Japanese programmer begins a
sentence with "I might not be as fast to pick up a new technology as the
young'uns but..." he's just making polite noises.

There is a pecking order in every company and it is almost never "sort by age
asc." The two engineers at my company commonly held to be better than me
(either of whom I'd stack with any Googler you cared to mention, btw) were ten
and twenty years older. Both would work something similar intoba description
comparing their programming abilities with a high school sophomore's first
Hello World app. Everyone knows not to read it literally.

Neither of them would have much luck on the employment market but there is a
separate HR pathology at play there, namely that Japanese companies do not
hire for talent, they hire for perceived flexibility to mold into their
corporate culture (among other things), and someone with 20 years of
experience has all sorts of weird non-company habits they might have become
attached to where a 22 year old is incompetent but a blank slate. Who cares,
you can train fir competence any time over the next 45 years, goes the
thinking.

~~~
yuhong
From the industrial manufacturing era, I guess.

