my perspective from some friends that bought a Japanese software startup and moved over there to help run it a few years ago:
promotion is based on age and length of employment. employment is essentially for life. you can't really be fired and you if you quit you may never again be hired (and i can't imagine whistle blowing would bring you any better). seniority reins supreme and unquestioned. there is a huge focus on hard work and long hours but also on loyalty and face.
contrast this to where and how you're working and think about the differences it would make. my friends were constantly frustrated that, try as they may, they could not elicit feed/push-back from anyone that worked under them. part of this is them being stupid foreigners that can't "read the air" properly, but part of that is people being extremely hesitant to touch anything that could be considered a break in seniority or disloyal. and this was a start-up. these were the f'in cowboys in comparison.
from what i gather, this system worked out pretty good with the long, patient and deliberate development cycles in hardware. when a product cycle takes ten years it might not be that bad to have people running it 'cause they've been there 10-20 years. but it doesn't work very well in software.
promotion is based on age and length of employment. employment is essentially for life. you can't really be fired and you if you quit you may never again be hired (and i can't imagine whistle blowing would bring you any better). seniority reins supreme and unquestioned. there is a huge focus on hard work and long hours but also on loyalty and face.
contrast this to where and how you're working and think about the differences it would make. my friends were constantly frustrated that, try as they may, they could not elicit feed/push-back from anyone that worked under them. part of this is them being stupid foreigners that can't "read the air" properly, but part of that is people being extremely hesitant to touch anything that could be considered a break in seniority or disloyal. and this was a start-up. these were the f'in cowboys in comparison.
from what i gather, this system worked out pretty good with the long, patient and deliberate development cycles in hardware. when a product cycle takes ten years it might not be that bad to have people running it 'cause they've been there 10-20 years. but it doesn't work very well in software.