Mike Huay
Stunt Coordinator
- Joined
- Sep 2, 2001
- Messages
- 79
I guess I can say I had a rare opportunity as an American to work inside a traditional Japanese company.
I took my work very seriously. I was hired to do training and presentations, and I improved the dismal state of affairs in this area since a year ago. I branched out. I designed the layout of some important brochures and the company's international website and all its navigation and wrote or edited all the copy. I changed the way presentations and meetings went by introducing the radical concept of listening. I traveled around Japan and to Asia and trained sales people and buyers.
Working in a Japanese company is like living in North Korea. There is absolutely no transparency to anything. The word is used because is is a nice PR term, but it does not exist. Not even to your own performance or whatever. Nothing in writing is ever given to you, just verbal hints that can later be denied.
So what did I do? I highlighted the areas of past achievement, proposed what I would do for the next year, and asked for a payraise that would make up for the sliding yen. Note that my pay was not spectacular anyway. That was it. The pay and rank is based on age only and I am 30. No matter how inept a manager is who is say, over 50, he will have a huge salary. (For example 1 million yen a month and 2 bonuses a year of more than 3M yen each.) There is no system to hold managers (middle or high level) responsible for their performance. To ask for a salary that I could not earn until 35 at 30 is unheard of. (And I found out it will get you no contract at all.) It is a wholly unjust system that is only starting to fall apart (the Western media says its dead, but it is still the dominant practice in Japan) It will only fall apart when Japan's economy is totally in ruins, and its heading that way. It is not capitalism. It is a system that protects the incompetent, and punishes the able. It is now famous that many great talents have been leaving Japan for years.
Protecting status of high level people is one of the most fundamental values here. If an employee makes improvements that were not made in 20 years by a manager, and does not allow the do-nothing-manager to take COMPLETE credit for the actions, the employee is out of line. Without tooting my horn, I am sure that I would have been rewarded for my performance had I been in an American company. But here, its all about when the highest boss comes to work on a Monday with a certain haircut, how many male employees can get that same haircut by Friday. (Without anything being said of course.) I am not kidding.
I have been here for several years, first in another capacity and there are many many things I love about Japan. Many people, the FOOD, the land, many cultural aspects. But the current political power, which lies with a network of people spanning across banks, companies, government, yakuza, police, royal ties, and even institutions such as that cult. That political power is choking Japan to death while most people passively or unknowingly let it happen. Moreover, there are some scarry ideas which most foreigners don't immagine exist anymore. On any given Sunday, trucks with massive loudspeakers ride around major cities shouting "pro" Japanese-race statements, should get military power back, anti-foreigners statements, etc. I am certain that most Japanese people do not agree with these kinds of things, but the apathy is a concern.
Intellegent educated people have no idea of the bank crises here because the newspapers are silent about it. Maybe I am just old fashoned, or read too much Drucker, but help may lie with foreign buyouts of companies such as with Nissan, when they get a dose of the art of MANAGEMENT, which has been missing for 10+ years since the generation of great leaders who rebuilt this country and its companies to greatness in the 1970s and 1980s are now retired well into their 70s.
Darn I now have 3 things to take care of:
I have to move.
I have to find a job.
I will actually have to BUY my HT stuff.
At least "I did it my way." (Hince my real-sounding name.)
Mike www.geocities.com/mike77000
Japan's economy:
http://www.economist.com/agenda/disp...tory_ID=963729
I took my work very seriously. I was hired to do training and presentations, and I improved the dismal state of affairs in this area since a year ago. I branched out. I designed the layout of some important brochures and the company's international website and all its navigation and wrote or edited all the copy. I changed the way presentations and meetings went by introducing the radical concept of listening. I traveled around Japan and to Asia and trained sales people and buyers.
Working in a Japanese company is like living in North Korea. There is absolutely no transparency to anything. The word is used because is is a nice PR term, but it does not exist. Not even to your own performance or whatever. Nothing in writing is ever given to you, just verbal hints that can later be denied.
So what did I do? I highlighted the areas of past achievement, proposed what I would do for the next year, and asked for a payraise that would make up for the sliding yen. Note that my pay was not spectacular anyway. That was it. The pay and rank is based on age only and I am 30. No matter how inept a manager is who is say, over 50, he will have a huge salary. (For example 1 million yen a month and 2 bonuses a year of more than 3M yen each.) There is no system to hold managers (middle or high level) responsible for their performance. To ask for a salary that I could not earn until 35 at 30 is unheard of. (And I found out it will get you no contract at all.) It is a wholly unjust system that is only starting to fall apart (the Western media says its dead, but it is still the dominant practice in Japan) It will only fall apart when Japan's economy is totally in ruins, and its heading that way. It is not capitalism. It is a system that protects the incompetent, and punishes the able. It is now famous that many great talents have been leaving Japan for years.
Protecting status of high level people is one of the most fundamental values here. If an employee makes improvements that were not made in 20 years by a manager, and does not allow the do-nothing-manager to take COMPLETE credit for the actions, the employee is out of line. Without tooting my horn, I am sure that I would have been rewarded for my performance had I been in an American company. But here, its all about when the highest boss comes to work on a Monday with a certain haircut, how many male employees can get that same haircut by Friday. (Without anything being said of course.) I am not kidding.
I have been here for several years, first in another capacity and there are many many things I love about Japan. Many people, the FOOD, the land, many cultural aspects. But the current political power, which lies with a network of people spanning across banks, companies, government, yakuza, police, royal ties, and even institutions such as that cult. That political power is choking Japan to death while most people passively or unknowingly let it happen. Moreover, there are some scarry ideas which most foreigners don't immagine exist anymore. On any given Sunday, trucks with massive loudspeakers ride around major cities shouting "pro" Japanese-race statements, should get military power back, anti-foreigners statements, etc. I am certain that most Japanese people do not agree with these kinds of things, but the apathy is a concern.
Intellegent educated people have no idea of the bank crises here because the newspapers are silent about it. Maybe I am just old fashoned, or read too much Drucker, but help may lie with foreign buyouts of companies such as with Nissan, when they get a dose of the art of MANAGEMENT, which has been missing for 10+ years since the generation of great leaders who rebuilt this country and its companies to greatness in the 1970s and 1980s are now retired well into their 70s.
Darn I now have 3 things to take care of:
I have to move.
I have to find a job.
I will actually have to BUY my HT stuff.
At least "I did it my way." (Hince my real-sounding name.)
Mike www.geocities.com/mike77000
Japan's economy:
http://www.economist.com/agenda/disp...tory_ID=963729