My one Japanese company experience was in my early career, and it was discouraging. It has been so long, I can name NEC.
The colleagues were great, but on the occasions that executives from Japan were visiting, we were specifically told to look busy. And looking busy actually meant printing things out, walking around with papers, etc. Even in those dark, pre-eco times, I found it absurd. On the plus side, I got proper introduction to sushi and fell in love with that.
I can only imagine what a good situation one must have to spend 27 years there.
Cheers to your future endeavors.
The corporation (I don't name it in postings, but it's fairly easy to figure out, if you visit my SO Story) is one of the top-shelf corporations in Japan. Their brand is/was pretty much synonymous with "Quality."
I have been into writing Quality code, since my very first engineering project, and loved the passion.
The engineers and scientists in Tokyo were awesome. The company got "first draft pick." Every single one of them had at least a Master's degree. Many Ph.Ds. Having their business card opened a lot of doors for me.
I found their reliance on Process (note the capital "P") to be absolutely infuriating. It worked extremely well on hardware; not so well on software.
I did my best to coax them out of their mousehole, but, in the end, the conservatives won, and the company has basically retreated to its roots; which may not work out so well, in the long run.
It was pretty much impossible to get these (highly accomplished and talented) engineers to accept that their way (hardware and some firmware) would not work on software.
It usually ended up with them, labeling my efforts to introduce flexibility as some variant of “lazy, bad-quality engineering.” Hard sell.
Let's not feature creep work life balance ;)
> I made some effort to find new work, after leaving that company…
I'm curious why you left, if you want to share!
It was no surprise to me. I was saddened, but not surprised.
(I'm ready to "retire" whenever personally, and then work on the code I want with the people I want to without financial expectation!)
Good to see you here again, completely off topic follow up: did you or your siblings ever end up writing about work your father did with three letter agencies?
No, I suspect that we have all the information that we will get.
He earned a bronze star, silver star, and a couple of purple hearts, during WWII (I only found one, but he was wounded at least twice -maybe they just award one).
It earned my parents a place in Arlington, with the whole caisson/21-gun salute thing, but we have no idea why he got them.
There was a big fire, in St. Louis, in the 1950s (I think), that destroyed a lot of records.
Forget hearing anything he did with The Company. He was one of the first field agents. I think he may have been recruited in the first year or so of the agency. We think at least one of his brothers may also have been a "company man," but we'll never know. He took that secret to the grave.
Good idea!
Is it for profit or just for fun. I love to read stories like your's.
It’s coming along nicely.
I liked the article. It was an authentic (I assume) personal story. It wasn't a "strawman," or a "this is the way things should be" thing. It was a fairly plain-spoken personal chronicle.
I enjoyed it, and wish the author well.
For myself, I worked at a company that had a mission I was passionate about. I'm also a xenophile, and it was a Japanese company. I was fascinated by the Japanese commitment to Quality (at that company). I like working in teams; the more varied and exotic, the better.
I joined, planning on an 18-month stay (like my previous two gigs), but left, 27 years later.
I made some effort to find new work, after leaving that company, but became quite disillusioned with the process. I had acquired a "nest egg" that would allow me to retire, early. After a few insulting and rather demoralizing interactions with a few corporations, I decided that it was time to hang up my chinos, and write the code I always wanted to write, the way I wanted to write it; with no one taking a dump on it.
I have never been happier. I am probably working harder than I ever have, in my life, and having a blast.