I slightly understand the push to move experienced coders into management. I have enjoyed coding but the biggest frustration has been the poor direction of management. Companies often don't know how and why technology should be used. They need smart people that know technology to lead (not just code).
Look at the language he used, 'intense coding work', 'physical capacity', 'speed [to] absorb and understand new technologies'.
Japan seems to have the same perspective on programming that the gaming industry does. That somehow typing words into a computer, learning and thinking is a young man's game.
That makes sence. Plenty of people who started out coding but who ended up in management early weren't very good at it in the first place, but that is a very hard thing to accept psycologically so they come up with the "it is a young mans game" instead.
Let's not overcorrect here. Mental agility does matter a lot in programming; here are some quotes from _Coders at Work_, which surely features interviews with people who are not merely sour-grapes-management types: http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20FAQ#fn19
It is a very good translation, but when a Japanese programmer begins a sentence with "I might not be as fast to pick up a new technology as the young'uns but..." he's just making polite noises.
There is a pecking order in every company and it is almost never "sort by age asc." The two engineers at my company commonly held to be better than me (either of whom I'd stack with any Googler you cared to mention, btw) were ten and twenty years older. Both would work something similar intoba description comparing their programming abilities with a high school sophomore's first Hello World app. Everyone knows not to read it literally.
Neither of them would have much luck on the employment market but there is a separate HR pathology at play there, namely that Japanese companies do not hire for talent, they hire for perceived flexibility to mold into their corporate culture (among other things), and someone with 20 years of experience has all sorts of weird non-company habits they might have become attached to where a 22 year old is incompetent but a blank slate. Who cares, you can train fir competence any time over the next 45 years, goes the thinking.
I don’t think outside of Japan there’s anything like this “retirement age” of 35 that is imposed on programmers here. There’s absolutely nothing special about being over 35 years of age over there.
He's clearly complaining about being forced out of programming because of age, not because they're taking some sort of enlightened approach to management.
In the company he was working in he was being deliberately forced away from programming. He's not making polite noises it's the entire reason he moved to Amazon and he explicitly says it.
My impression is that programmers who work in the gaming industry programmer in the US accept poor work conditions because they love games, they love writing games, they feel there's a certain "glamour" to it, and also (sort of recursively) because of peer pressure. Similar to aspiring Hollywood actors and film makers. So the employers take full advantage of that. But it's really the programmers' choice. I'm quite sure anyone working on writing games (as opposed to actors) could get a job with better conditions in a MegaCorp very easily, if only they could bring themselves to write "boring" apps in a corporate environment. And I suppose after a certain age, getting married and having kids, many game programmers will eventually do that anyway.
Here in Japan the problem is deeper. It's not limited to a subset of IT/software companies, so there's not much choice. The difference between working in a big company and in a so-called "black company" is not that big. It's mostly perceived prestige and stability, not so much actual work conditions like hours, pay and career path.
To make things worse, this is a country where social change happens very slowly. Technological novelties are readily embraced, but companies would rather slowly sink than give equal opportunities to women or foreigners or otherwise change their modus operandi. Some examples:
* companies expect hand-written resumes. You're a student applying to 10 companies? Write 10 resumes by hand. Oh, and include a picture.
* if you're a woman, things you should expect to be asked in a job interview: "Are you planning to get married? Are you planning to have kids? If so, are you leaving the company?"
* are you 30 years old and already changed jobs twice? Job hopper.
* are you over 35 and want to change jobs? Too old.
To reiterate what nandemo said, the difference in material conditions between working at my previous megacorp and a body shop was epsilon. (Stability aside.) My old job was the kind of place you'd want to source a son-in-law from, though.
I fully agree with you that management at most companies is horrible when it comes to utilizing IT resources. Part of you wants to fix the problem. I'm all for you trying. Keep in mind, though, that you might just get absorbed into the machine you're trying to fix.
You'll have to be extremely charismatic to get upper management to care about things like code quality and proper form. Management looks at IT, wrongfully, as a cost center. They don't realize, or care if they do realize, that poor code quality might make it cheaper to roll out the first few phases of the project, but in the long run make costs higher. Businesses think they are in business, rather than thinking they are in the IT business. Until companies learn they are in a hybridized model of software company and industry, they will never advance.
So leadership is needed to move them forward. I want to do the same. You will need to establish a game plan that requires total company reform. Until the business individuals go to meetings with IT with the goal of creating the best software possible, and until your analysts go to the same meeting with the same goal rather than wanting to just plow through requirements, and until your developers go caring to learn the business, your leadership will be completely useless, because no one is listening.
I'm 35 and have been working in Tokyo for about 10 years now. It's funny how fast those 10 years have gone by.
I was this super energetic do-everything-that-was-asked-of-me kind of guy in the beginning.
After a few inhumane projects of working 6 days/week, 9am-11pm I began to question the meaning of it all and found little.
Now I'm careful not to volunteer myself too much for fear of being seen as the point-man for every little problem that pokes up so I can enjoy a work-life balance. Now I have a family and live just outside Tokyo where it's quiet and peaceful.
Japan really does need to wake up and realize that it's throwing away its skilled people (not just in IT) but it'll take a massive exodus for the question to ever be raised unfortunately.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 21.7 ms ] threadLook at the language he used, 'intense coding work', 'physical capacity', 'speed [to] absorb and understand new technologies'.
Japan seems to have the same perspective on programming that the gaming industry does. That somehow typing words into a computer, learning and thinking is a young man's game.
There is a pecking order in every company and it is almost never "sort by age asc." The two engineers at my company commonly held to be better than me (either of whom I'd stack with any Googler you cared to mention, btw) were ten and twenty years older. Both would work something similar intoba description comparing their programming abilities with a high school sophomore's first Hello World app. Everyone knows not to read it literally.
Neither of them would have much luck on the employment market but there is a separate HR pathology at play there, namely that Japanese companies do not hire for talent, they hire for perceived flexibility to mold into their corporate culture (among other things), and someone with 20 years of experience has all sorts of weird non-company habits they might have become attached to where a 22 year old is incompetent but a blank slate. Who cares, you can train fir competence any time over the next 45 years, goes the thinking.
I don’t think outside of Japan there’s anything like this “retirement age” of 35 that is imposed on programmers here. There’s absolutely nothing special about being over 35 years of age over there.
He's clearly complaining about being forced out of programming because of age, not because they're taking some sort of enlightened approach to management.
In the company he was working in he was being deliberately forced away from programming. He's not making polite noises it's the entire reason he moved to Amazon and he explicitly says it.
Here in Japan the problem is deeper. It's not limited to a subset of IT/software companies, so there's not much choice. The difference between working in a big company and in a so-called "black company" is not that big. It's mostly perceived prestige and stability, not so much actual work conditions like hours, pay and career path.
To make things worse, this is a country where social change happens very slowly. Technological novelties are readily embraced, but companies would rather slowly sink than give equal opportunities to women or foreigners or otherwise change their modus operandi. Some examples:
* companies expect hand-written resumes. You're a student applying to 10 companies? Write 10 resumes by hand. Oh, and include a picture.
* if you're a woman, things you should expect to be asked in a job interview: "Are you planning to get married? Are you planning to have kids? If so, are you leaving the company?"
* are you 30 years old and already changed jobs twice? Job hopper.
* are you over 35 and want to change jobs? Too old.
You'll have to be extremely charismatic to get upper management to care about things like code quality and proper form. Management looks at IT, wrongfully, as a cost center. They don't realize, or care if they do realize, that poor code quality might make it cheaper to roll out the first few phases of the project, but in the long run make costs higher. Businesses think they are in business, rather than thinking they are in the IT business. Until companies learn they are in a hybridized model of software company and industry, they will never advance.
So leadership is needed to move them forward. I want to do the same. You will need to establish a game plan that requires total company reform. Until the business individuals go to meetings with IT with the goal of creating the best software possible, and until your analysts go to the same meeting with the same goal rather than wanting to just plow through requirements, and until your developers go caring to learn the business, your leadership will be completely useless, because no one is listening.
I was this super energetic do-everything-that-was-asked-of-me kind of guy in the beginning.
After a few inhumane projects of working 6 days/week, 9am-11pm I began to question the meaning of it all and found little.
Now I'm careful not to volunteer myself too much for fear of being seen as the point-man for every little problem that pokes up so I can enjoy a work-life balance. Now I have a family and live just outside Tokyo where it's quiet and peaceful.
Japan really does need to wake up and realize that it's throwing away its skilled people (not just in IT) but it'll take a massive exodus for the question to ever be raised unfortunately.