As someone who finds Japanese corporate culture interesting or even desirable in some ways, it definitely doesn't seem like the most efficient way to run a company. And I'm sure there are plenty of cultural aspects that would not be my cup of tea.
I've worked for an American megacorp and the branch office of a Japanese company. The Japanese company felt a lot more humane on balance, though it doesn't express as well when I write it.
The Japanese company had some rituals were a bit weird, but harmless/charmingly quaint like mandatory volunteer days, keeping a copy of the founder's precepts on my desk for executive walkthroughs. They also had some bad tendencies, like praising employees for being there at 6AM/8PM. If something didn't work, they'd give it a bit of runway to see if it could pull through before cutting back. When there were layoffs, it was the whole division failing (each division competed with the others). It's hard to imagine what kind of political statements would have been offensive to that employer, it was just a neutral job. Really, the worst part was subpar compensation (and I still felt spoiled compared to Japanese coworkers).
My next job was at an American megacorp. The executives would give a holiday speech about "social responsibility" and how well we were doing, then layoff a factory. The employer was constantly involving themselves with US national politics, but employees were expected to refrain from having political opinions of their own.
> The employer was constantly involving themselves with US national politics, but employees were expected to refrain from having political opinions of their own.
Both. Though it's a bit hard to meaningfully distinguish the two when the president is showing up for photoshoots and regular meetings are held on what government official X thinks on topic Y.
> The employer was constantly involving themselves with US national politics, but employees were expected to refrain from having political opinions of their own.
Reminds me of my first job in state government where the incredibly underpaid workers had to go through bureaucratic paperwork if they needed a second job to pay the rent (ostensibly because of the conflict of interest risk)
Yet the governor was a known slumlord. I’m sure there’s no potential conflict of interest there.
You’re right and that’s intentional. Japanese companies don’t optimize for efficiently but for longevity. Sometimes those things go hand in hand. Sometimes they don’t.
> the J-firm, run by its employees and largely indifferent to the interests of shareholders, exists simply to continue existing
I don't know if all companies should be run like Japanese companies, but there's something very heartwarming about this. Some companies exist for the purpose of employment, and that's okay. In fact it's admirable and makes me want to cheer.
I do also think there's a charm to this model but there's a real cost also with Japan's economy stagnating compared to the United States in the last 30 years.
There’s also a real cost to the system in the United States as well. As companies pivot people get left behind. And we’re potentially going to see with LLMs a large collapse in employment that corporations don’t even being to consider their responsibility. I’m not suggesting one is superior but they do both have their downsides.
Japan is getting poorer. People online love to talk about American stagnant wages, but Americans are considerably richer than they were 20 years ago. The median American earns 20% more in real terms, and even the bottom quintile of earners in America has increased their inflation adjusted earnings by 15%. In the same time period, the median Japanese inflation adjusted earnings is down 2.8%.
Compared to 20 years ago, Japanese people travel much less (millions fewer can afford to go overseas). Residential energy is 35% more expensive per kwh, compared to only 5% in the US. Food as a portion of monthly Japanese spend is 48% more expensive than it was 20 years ago. Despite millions of vacant dwellings, the home ownership rate is slipping. They earn less and they spend less.
Tokyo may seem quaint to American visitors clanking down their metal Chase travel credit card for more sushi, but for the typical Japanese, although they take it with grace and in stride, they have mired in stagnation and degrowth for a generation.
Frankly I think any QoL measure between a western and a Japanese life are meaningless.
If you’ve ever worked for a Japanese corp under a Japanese boss, you would basically experience that your life is hell. As a westerner we are even subjected to far lesser rules and customs than a Japanese, and yet to me it still felt far more stifling and unbearable than any western company I worked for. Western companies have different failure modes, but intense unspoken micromanagement and stupid expectations was never one of them.
And I was a supposed “subject matter expert”, to be treated better than rank and file. That said, this clearly works for Japanese people, many of them are happy, I think they would be miserable under a western firms “do whatever the f you want as long as you get results” culture. To each their own.
Japan in some sense is stagnating if you compare it to a GOAT like US, but Japan of 1910s was also probably stagnating compared to US, in its own terms Japan is doing fine and their political situation is much more civil. So GG to them
They work crazy long hours (the last of which every day don't do much at all for productivity), which is really bad for QoL. Though I hear that the situation is improving.
Most of Japan stagnation was the result of brutal pressure from the US in the 1980s that led to a series of fiscal and monetary choices that removed a lot of Japan's competitivity.
The median age of Japan went from 37 in 1990 to 50 in 2026. That's an insurmountable headwind. Soon, half the country will be elderly. That's no way to run a vibrant dynamic economy.
That is because of population aging. Despite the US importing effectively endless amounts of young people, per capita income growth for working age population since the 1990s has been identical between US and Japan. I am unable to say why exactly but it should be obvious.
It is important to note, however, that the starting point is very different. The idea of employees robbing those evil shareholders sounds good but has resulted in capital markets that effectively do not function. Tidying up that mess will not be simple and improving equity markets will go a long way.
Also, the structure of Japan is a function of US policy after WW2 to dismantle the zaibatsu. In every single other historical case that I am aware of the result of "employee-friendly" policies has resulted in the kind of permanent underclass that people fear, incorrectly, that AI will lead to (i.e. Germany). It is a known bad idea. Japan avoided this because all the wealthy people's assets were taken, this didn't happen in other countries (i.e. Germany) which led to significant financial instability/risk/inequality (Germany also has inequality within a completely stagnant economic system, which is different from inequality in a system where the composition of wealthy people is continually changing...Germany's billionaires are a combination of people who mysteriously got rich in the 1930s very quickly and people who have been rich since the 10th century).
Japan is interesting but it is a complete outlier. Even with their relatively good relative economic performance, they could be producing absolute-terms growth that is double or even quadruple where it is now. Comparing middling economies like Japan or Western Europe with countries growing the same rate and per-capita incomes that are double is a misunderstanding of potential. Average economic performance should be double the US consistently for multiple decades.
> It remains to be seen where we'll converge on capability, incident rate, and acceptance.
I think we're already there with Waymo as the example. We may later choose to diverge from this now-accepted path, but for the moment we have a blueprint, and fixing edge cases with a software update is apparently acceptable, if you just look at all the Waymos operating legally right now.
On a normal day it should suffice to train the model to use its judgment and maybe monitor how other cars are reacting to water covering the road, but when it starts flooding everywhere maybe they should pause the service until it dries out.
Sometimes there are not other cars around. Sometimes, I get scared driving on the same roads I know in heavy rain. So I am interested to see how Waymo handles it. I agree a suspended service is nice. The issue with that is flooding is local localized at times, like even block by block. So I don't know how they will make the call to suspend service.
Because the nuclear options is any heavy rain cancel rides, but that seems to hurt their service model.
For people, they hear a news report and avoid affected intersections. With autonomous cars they can have people (or AI or both) monitoring affected areas and blacklisting streets and intersections in real time.
I would say that both US and China are using the data we trust upon them for industrial espionage. So don't use their models if you are working defence or other sensitive areas
Mostly dismissive comments, it seems. Maybe justified. But I think a more interesting conversation is what happens if this or other devices like it become a hit? I wonder if the next generation of users will look at computers with no AI features the way we look at MS-DOS.
Yeah the Pro Pinball series cstarted arriving around the same time as Windows 95. I guess people liked the Windows game because it was just a few clicks away.
> One chargeback for your 5$ game can consume you 55$ or more, handful and you permanently lose the ability to accept the payment anywhere including future businesses outside of games
This sounds like personal experience. Can you elaborate?
Edit: OHH perhaps you are saying this is one of the benefits of Steam; that it shields you from all this.
> Edit: OHH perhaps you are saying this is one of the benefits of Steam; that it shields you from all this.
Yes. In a sijmilar way: regular companies get Stripe at commodity pricing, games get xsolla, paysafe, tebex, and a massive compliance questionnaire, games are software (to you) but closer to porn or gambling on risk (to MoRs and processors).
People are less "likely" to charge back Steam because of their other games being frozen and Steam has volume to dilute chargebacks whereas you starting out may hit double digit dispute rates in one. Whether this is fair is an exercise best left to the reader ;.
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