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Comment by thw1438383 | Hacker News Reader

Atleast they get paid relatively more than in the EU. In Japan you're expected to work mad hours (read 11-12 hrs) for what is barely above minimum wage in the US! Add to that Tokyo is hecka expensive.

I was quoted a salary of $ 30k for a deep learning position. Now that is third world.

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11-12 hrs is normal hours by Japanese standards. My wife used to work for a trading house that had a dormitory at the office to make it easier to sustain a stretch of 18-hour days.

On the limited upside, the wages are not all there is to working for a Japanese megacorp. In addition to the thick wad of non-taxable allowances, there are also non-monetary benefits. As patio11 notes [1], “Most people want to become wealthy so they can consume social status. Japanese employers believe this is inefficient, and simply award social status directly.”

[1] http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan/

Tokyo isn't all that expensive unless you're trying to live in luxury and a fair percentage of that 11-12 hrs would be spent appearing busy, CYA, napping or waiting for your boss to leave so you can go home. Speaking from experience the Japanese work ethic is as much about show as it is about actual hard work. It's a brutal culture behind a facade of politeness.

Spending 11-12 hours doing that every day sounds like a horrible existence

Please keep in mind that your costs of living are also different.

In the EU you don't pay as much for the same services as in the US, especially healthcare.

I'm not sure about Japan but it could be the same thing there.

Tokyo's definitely cheaper than the bay area or NYC, but it's still not exactly cheap. The median monthly rent is low, but you have to figure that the median apartment is tiny by American standards.

So many comments about big houses, I'm wondering if buying a big house in the suburbs that you have to commute hours to work from and therefore rarely enjoy is (to quote Homer Simpson) both the solution and the cause of all America's problems.

It's certainly a problem that American suburbs lack the local services that typically exist in European cities, which is currently exacerbating the issue of suburban poverty:

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/suburbs...

I see this comment a lot in threads about quality of life - people say American life is better than the 60s because houses are bigger. Why do you want that?

I'll accept "having more than one child" but not "having a bigger TV".

You'll have to ask someone else, I don't want a huge house and have strongly pro-density political leanings.

Cost of living, for the same sized apartment, in Tokyo is more that San Francisco by my calculations.

Hmm, yeah, thought so, but I wasn't sure.

Emphasis on the "same sized apartment" there: American-sized apartments are quite rare in Tokyo and priced to match. In Tokyo, unlike SF, there are tons of tiny but perfectly livable "one-room mansion" apartments at non-insane rents ($500-1000/mo, depending on how small and how far away from the city).

Wow! How much do people manage to generally save in Japan as opposed to SF ?

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