Why is Japan So Weak in Software?

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[youcantata]

Because software developer jobs in Japan is infamous for low pay, long work-hours, and low job security. Japanese company considers software as "non-core, non-essential" or auxiliary part of their business that can be contracted out. So most software works are done by small software subcontractor house, so called "black company". Social image of software developer in Japan is perceived as poor, overworked and fatigued salary-man without girlfriend or wife, without career promotion, working overtime for small company, low on social ladder, not desirable for marriage candidate. Complete opposite of developers in USA.

[endintiers]

I worked for Fujitsu Australia in the early 90s as a developer (porting IBM utilities to MSP). I also assisted in a major project for Canon. Canon flew a large team of developers to Sydney. They all dressed alike (suits), lived together, arrived at the same time every day (in a minibus), ate lunch from boxes at the same time every day. I read their code. They were rated by number of lines of code created each day. If something had to happen 5 times (say) they would not write a loop, they would copy the code 5X. The code they left behind worked, but was effectively unmaintainable.

[samfrostinjapan]

Actual software developer in Japan here. I would say the biggest contributing factor to poor engineering practices is less turnover of employees. People don't realize they're making complicated messes that veer from industry standards because they don't have people coming in regularly that voice their opinions. Similarly, new developers rarely have any experience and often didn't study programming before getting their first job.
In other words, projects kinda becomes a cess pool of smart people doing stuff in creatively bad ways.

None of this is helped by the terrible pay and frequetly poor work culture compared to global practices.

[markwilliamson]

In the 1980’s my company received some Japanese software to control an aluminum smelter. Roughly 1045 FORTRAN files, each one had only one FORTRAN function! Linking was a nightmare. Clearly they had a large team and split the problem up. Clearly not all modules were written to the same spec, as it evolved over time. So we reverse engineered it and wrote a new version in Pascal that was a lot more reliable.

[edwardfletcher]

Because Japan is a Gerontocracy.

Every government department, corporation and university is run by 60-80 yr old men who have zero interest and a huge distrust of technology !!

Plus the entire bureaucracy is still run on paper, faxes & floppy disks ☹️

[dbbbbbbb]

Because a train driver is paid 120k per year and a software developer is 60k per year. Because English is crucial these days for software development. Because if someone in Japan can speak English and develop they might as well work for an American or European firm.

[videocouk]

I remember the first time I came across Japanese software. It was in the late 1980s on a stunningly expensive piece of semiconductor manufacturing kit from Canon (I'll not name it). There may have been some amazing things going on under the bonnet, but the human interface was unbearable. Press one wrong key and it would go off on a tangent and maybe not come back. One key on the keyboard was marked AIDS, people were not keen to try that.

[chinaman]

It's weird because I used to work for a major Japanese equipment manufacturer, and they have pretty good in-house software developers.
we had a guy who doesn't speak much English, visited one of our clients and listened to the whole conversation in English.
He took about 20 minutes and in front of us wrote the logic for the software and explained if that's what the client wanted?
Then when he developed the software, which was an automation add-on to the main operations software, it worked like a charm, our client was so happy with him.
And even at the point of delivering the equipment, they did not send any of the mechanical or electrical engineers to do the machine installation, they sent this guy.
At the date of installation, he found bugs and solved them on the spot, even added in new features when the client asked despite the machine having already been delivered.
Dude was a Genius.
I've since left the company, but i last heard the machine was still running great and software was still fine.

I guess as what others had said, not many companies appreciate software developers in Japan. But let's hope they have since made significant changes in this new era.

[jamesanakin]

They dumped their skill points into hardware.

[thedopplereffect]

I used to work with both Japanese and U.S. variable frequency drives. The Japanese model had a menu diagram sheet that looked like a maze with arrows pointing everywhere. There was no consistency. The U.S. one had a very simple to understand hierarchical order that was easy to use. They Japanese version simply had no care or regard for the user interface.

[SalivatingSteve]

18:02 I think i-mode failed internationally because Japan used CDMA-based cellular networks so EVERYTHING had to use Qualcomm chips. Sprint was the only American carrier that really supported i-mode tech, since Verizon is weird and super stingy about what they allow on their network. Also every piece of Japanese electronics produced in the early 2000s were white/silver, before the iPod was a thing. But man it just goes to show with how fast tech evolves, i-mode was made obsolete within 5 years.

[lolkthnxbai]

Please do more on software and web development in asia, it's such an undocumented and recorded area to those of us in the west and it goes far in explaining some of the issues we're seeing today.

[nmmeswey]

Japan really has been in the 2000s since the 80s

[ENNEN]

"30 million yen to migrate to hardened linux, hire programming, networking and scripting specialists and bolster security? Make a foundation that'll work for 30 years? That's nonsense. Why would we spend that much money just so a few NERDS can play with computers all day? Our systems might be 20 years old but they still work! That Windows Embedded 2002 thing still has a few years left in it!"

2 weeks later:
"WHAT? WE GOT ATTACKED WITH RANSOMWARE? ALL DATA GONE? WHERE ARE THE BACKUPS? WHAT?! I TOLD YOU IT WAS 'TOO MUCH MONEY'?! DON'T PIN THIS ON ME! 40 HOURS UNPAID OVERTIME TO FIX IT AND ANOTHER 40 HOURS FOR DARING TO BLAME ME!"

[BenRangel]

It’s ironic that one agile software development method kalled Kanban was based on the Toyota assembly line - but I heard when Toyota’s software department were doing poorly they brought in external consultants and were unfamiliar with the concept - they operated on what in software was considered ancient principles

[TKSSLCHN]

I suspect for much the same reason as it is in Germany:
1. Old business owners and managers who cannot imagine paying good wages for good developers
2. Adherence to antiquated frameworks and rules
3. The usual corporate mess that leaves developers without the agency to make critical decisions (which reinforces point 2)
4. Reliance on unmaintainable legacy codebases

[phoenix]

I'm a Filipino, working as a software engineer and making around $2500 per month after taxes. Imagine my surprise that similar jobs in Japan pays just as much... IN A FIRST WORLD COUNTRY!? They really don't pay their software engineers well.

[metacob]

I have a friend who moved to Japan and started a family there. We studied CS together, then he switched to Japanese, and in Japan he became a language teacher.
For a short time he switched to a software job where he had a terrible manager and just bad office culture in general, and then basically the entire department got cut. So he went back to teaching languages, and people appreciate him.

[yutakago]

Many Japanese companies IT department are run by old man who don't have any IT qualification. They are in that position because of their seniority and not because of their qualification. Many old man in manager position is in that position due to their closeness to the previous top management. In Japanese companies, as long as you maintain good relation with your managers, you will be promoted when there is manager position opening. Japanese companies also have the Ringgi system where all the managers need to agree in order to carry out any important changes. Office politics may cause one manager to block another manager's project.

[deersakamoto]

One prescription for the Japanese software industry is to remove the middleman and raise salaries. Bloomberg did an article in 2021 on Masaru Tange, a CEO of a software testing firm who did just that. "CEO Behind 5, 300% Stock Gain Says Secret Is Raising Salaries"