Hello r/Japan! Dave here from the audience engagement team at Nikkei Asia. I’d like to share an excerpt from this data-rich story for anyone interested.
— — —
TOKYO — Japan’s IT industry experienced the steepest decline in labor productivity among the Group of Seven leading industrialized economies between 2019 and 2023, as the sector’s growing workforce did not yield proportional profit growth.
The sector’s inflation-adjusted labor productivity, measured as the added value produced per employee, fell 13% over the four years to 2023 in yen terms, according to the Japan Productivity Center. Added value is defined as revenue minus the cost of goods and services used in production.
In contrast, productivity in the U.S. grew 27% and in the U.K. it rose 9%, in local currency terms. Of the three G7 countries that posted a decline, only Japan recorded a double-digit drop. The other members of the G7 are Canada, France, Germany, Italy and the European Union.
Productivity in Japan?
Did it just went from the last place to deeper last place? Taking two last places now?
Is this from the influx of cheap outsourced foreign labor from SEA?
I know a lot of people (great engineers) leaving or working remotely for some company in their country.
Personally me and others are stuck where we work because family, bank loans, PRs, etc but slowly everybody is moving on as work conditions have gone to shit like return to office mandates, bullshit performance reviews, stack ranking implementation, benefits going away, no salary changes for almost two years, forced AI adoption and pretty much an attitude of comply or there is the door.
So people just go back to their country or work for a foreign company remotely as PR holders.
As layoffs are hard in Japan there are a lot of companies doing all these nasty changes to force people to go away, sadly it affects morale, it feels like people are working at their 50 percent at best and nobody says anything because no motivation.
This is coming from a company that maybe 5 years ago everybody was onboard and working as expected. As usual, no accountability for management.
As I’ve heard about this from a couple of companies it doesn’t look good as they fail to attract foreign talent by salary and conditions. In an already understaffed IT market, these companies will suffer when the AI bubble explodes when the hiring spree begins all over again but now with a bad reputation.
is this why all the websites go offline overnight
If Japan keeps trying to push foreigners out, productivity is only going to get worse since we have entire generations of japanese people scared to use the internet and computers. They never learned and now they are going to suffer.
They need to implement AI into their fax machines
Japanese productivity and efficiency are myths.
Tons and tons of paperwork and redundancies are working in the background.
This is coming from my experience after working in a Japanese MNC for years. Multiple levels of approval just to get something minor done.
And yet, they refuse to move on from their practice even after decades of stagnation.
That is why I wasn’t super worried about moving to Japan over 10 years ago because I told my wife back then Japan is bad in IT, so I will have no trouble finding a job. And indeed it all worked out perfectly so far. Japan still hasn’t improved as whole, but at least some companies that hired skilled IT people and trusted them did.
They’re the lowest in productivity in any fields in G7
Their old management style is just not fit in to work in this new era where flexibility and quick adaptability is a must
Not really surprised to hear that considering that Japanese businesses don’t really favor innovation unless they have something to work of from that already had proven to be successful in the past. I remember at a training session during my internship, the teacher specifically mentioned that businesses from Asian countries like Japan, don’t like taking risks due to the factor of uncertainty, which of course prevents them from getting the necessary learning experience and insight to innovate and subsequently improve established systems that are in need of improvement.
How can I get the iMode version of this article? Maybe can someone fax me the link?
Before I went independant I tried to apply for an IT position at a Japanese company.
They sent me a code where I had to solve a specific issue.
I did do so, but I noticed the page they gave me had a LOT of UI and security flaws.
I made suggestions for how this could be improved.
At the interview the guy was pretty cool about it, but he said that if they decided to hire me I had to show more “trust” in the company.
He explained to me that even though they KNEW the code was bad, it would disturb the group dynamic if someone began calling out mistakes of the senior programmers.
So basically if I wanted to work for them I had to write shitty code on purpose to not hurt the feelings of my seniors…
I have a feeling it’s like that in other places too.
Instagram: “Japan is literally living in 2050″
Reality : ” Japan is living in 1995.”
I don’t have a lot of direct experience, but from the outside it looks like Japanese companies either treat IT as part of a generalist skillset or as blue collar workers. Neither approach attracts experienced staff or develops the skills needed to be competitive.
Just look at any Japanese website. For any company.
“due to slow adoption of cloud tech” yeah. sure. thats the reason…
17 comments
Hello r/Japan! Dave here from the audience engagement team at Nikkei Asia. I’d like to share an excerpt from this data-rich story for anyone interested.
— — —
TOKYO — Japan’s IT industry experienced the steepest decline in labor productivity among the Group of Seven leading industrialized economies between 2019 and 2023, as the sector’s growing workforce did not yield proportional profit growth.
The sector’s inflation-adjusted labor productivity, measured as the added value produced per employee, fell 13% over the four years to 2023 in yen terms, according to the Japan Productivity Center. Added value is defined as revenue minus the cost of goods and services used in production.
In contrast, productivity in the U.S. grew 27% and in the U.K. it rose 9%, in local currency terms. Of the three G7 countries that posted a decline, only Japan recorded a double-digit drop. The other members of the G7 are Canada, France, Germany, Italy and the European Union.
Productivity in Japan?
Did it just went from the last place to deeper last place? Taking two last places now?
Is this from the influx of cheap outsourced foreign labor from SEA?
I know a lot of people (great engineers) leaving or working remotely for some company in their country.
Personally me and others are stuck where we work because family, bank loans, PRs, etc but slowly everybody is moving on as work conditions have gone to shit like return to office mandates, bullshit performance reviews, stack ranking implementation, benefits going away, no salary changes for almost two years, forced AI adoption and pretty much an attitude of comply or there is the door.
So people just go back to their country or work for a foreign company remotely as PR holders.
As layoffs are hard in Japan there are a lot of companies doing all these nasty changes to force people to go away, sadly it affects morale, it feels like people are working at their 50 percent at best and nobody says anything because no motivation.
This is coming from a company that maybe 5 years ago everybody was onboard and working as expected. As usual, no accountability for management.
As I’ve heard about this from a couple of companies it doesn’t look good as they fail to attract foreign talent by salary and conditions. In an already understaffed IT market, these companies will suffer when the AI bubble explodes when the hiring spree begins all over again but now with a bad reputation.
is this why all the websites go offline overnight
If Japan keeps trying to push foreigners out, productivity is only going to get worse since we have entire generations of japanese people scared to use the internet and computers. They never learned and now they are going to suffer.
They need to implement AI into their fax machines
Japanese productivity and efficiency are myths.
Tons and tons of paperwork and redundancies are working in the background.
This is coming from my experience after working in a Japanese MNC for years. Multiple levels of approval just to get something minor done.
And yet, they refuse to move on from their practice even after decades of stagnation.
That is why I wasn’t super worried about moving to Japan over 10 years ago because I told my wife back then Japan is bad in IT, so I will have no trouble finding a job. And indeed it all worked out perfectly so far. Japan still hasn’t improved as whole, but at least some companies that hired skilled IT people and trusted them did.
They’re the lowest in productivity in any fields in G7
Their old management style is just not fit in to work in this new era where flexibility and quick adaptability is a must
Not really surprised to hear that considering that Japanese businesses don’t really favor innovation unless they have something to work of from that already had proven to be successful in the past. I remember at a training session during my internship, the teacher specifically mentioned that businesses from Asian countries like Japan, don’t like taking risks due to the factor of uncertainty, which of course prevents them from getting the necessary learning experience and insight to innovate and subsequently improve established systems that are in need of improvement.
How can I get the iMode version of this article? Maybe can someone fax me the link?
Before I went independant I tried to apply for an IT position at a Japanese company.
They sent me a code where I had to solve a specific issue.
I did do so, but I noticed the page they gave me had a LOT of UI and security flaws.
I made suggestions for how this could be improved.
At the interview the guy was pretty cool about it, but he said that if they decided to hire me I had to show more “trust” in the company.
He explained to me that even though they KNEW the code was bad, it would disturb the group dynamic if someone began calling out mistakes of the senior programmers.
So basically if I wanted to work for them I had to write shitty code on purpose to not hurt the feelings of my seniors…
I have a feeling it’s like that in other places too.
Instagram: “Japan is literally living in 2050″
Reality : ” Japan is living in 1995.”
I don’t have a lot of direct experience, but from the outside it looks like Japanese companies either treat IT as part of a generalist skillset or as blue collar workers. Neither approach attracts experienced staff or develops the skills needed to be competitive.
Just look at any Japanese website. For any company.
“due to slow adoption of cloud tech” yeah. sure. thats the reason…