Legally operating a job board in Japan
tokyodev.com
tokyodev.com
I also wonder how much culture clash there are for foreigners working at these companies e.g. how do they handle conflicts or disagreements with seniority.
In Tokyo you'd expect to make around 400,000 yen a month, which is about $3500 a month. That sounds nice until you see that a 400sqft apartment with no bedrooms can cost 100,000 yen or more. A one bedroom can hit 150,000 - 200,000 yen in a nice area with convenient access to train stations.
Edit: the website linked has good statistics on this:
https://www.tokyodev.com/2020/01/07/japan-developer-salaries...
Notably, "this 2018 survey conducted by the Japanese government found that the average "System Engineer" (a roughly analogous position to a software developer) in Japan had 12 years of experience and an annual compensation of ¥5.5 million."
There is plenty of housing much more reasonably priced than that. Just don’t live in central Minato-ku.
Here's some good numbers at different experience levels: https://www.tokyodev.com/2020/01/07/japan-developer-salaries...
I'll trust his higher end estimate of 16+ years netting you 11 million yen, but I've never seen a job posting anywhere near that even for senior engineers. And even if that is the case, 11 million yen is still far below a FAANG salary with equivalent experience.
My guess is a very experienced developer that speak English and Japanese can get base salaries above ¥10m at FAANG in Tokyo. So probably ¥15m with bonus and RSUs is obtainable.
I am out of touch of FAANG senior dev salaries are in London now. Does that sound on par?
In which direction?
Companies typically pay your commuting fees so it's an attractive option for some who don't mind riding trains for awhile.
Adding to that, most people live with their family until they get married in their early thirties and over half of the permanent resident population live in very heavily subsidised public housing.
The rest of the world doesn't have such extreme market forces, and there are even subsets of the software market in the US that also can't afford to pay at that level because they have more traditional business models.
You could say wages for devs in the US are more closely tied to the value they provide to the tech bubble and it's inflated economics, not the value they provide to society in traditional business models.
This is also why there are more "family owned" style small software companies in the rest of the world. A single SV wage would be more than some companies yearly revenue.
Just putting this here for people to know it might be an option. I certainly wish I knew sooner. Visa can be tricky though, if you’re not at least an EU citizen (or better yet, married to a Swiss), it’ll tough getting a visa. And I’d you’re American, no bank will touch you with a ten foot pole.
That’s my understanding, if I made a mistake please correct me.
Yes food costs more, so does clothing etc. But taxes aren’t suuuper high in my opinion (around 20-30% with health insurance paid separately), VAT is 7.7%, and you can get anywhere by train for quite cheap (super saver tickets let you go across Switzerland for 20 francs, if you plan a bit ahead).
The caveat is that unless you have an EU passport or marry a Swiss, it’s almost impossible to get a work visa. And if you’re a US citizen, there is no bank that will want to take you as a customer.
Banks are a big employer but there are also insurance companies. I’m joking, these two are big but there are startups as well, consultancies, big entreprise type of jobs, etc.
It's truly fascinating because I've never seen a city in Japan that costs anywhere near as much as some podunk local economic hub in the US, yet I hear these "it's too expensive" stories all the time.
My combined monthly expenses in a city--rent, food, and everything--comes to maybe $1200. My mind is blown whenever I hear people say they're struggling to pay for things or life is too expensive. The main thing I've noticed is most of these people are going to bars/izakaya several times a week, and it's easy to spend $50+ for a small meal and some beers there. I know people in Tokyo making far less than Western wages but still living very comfortably.
But in-city rent in Japan doesn't even approach a typical 500k population city in the US , unless you're insisting on living in the middle of the most in demand parts of Shibuya or something.
Many "perks" are provided by companies, this includes dinners, drinks tax breaks on your company housing etc.
The vast majority of people who are employed in Japan are also part of a family, which is their company. Your company even sends you for health checkups and they know the results of said checkups. If you're overweight, they'll make you go lose it etc.
Even peoples managers or the companies president will come speak at an employees wedding.
It's a totally different culture.
> it should at least be higher than megacorps
Yes, with exceptions
> how much culture clash there are for foreigners
In my subjective and limited experience, not much. Start-ups in Japan are rare (compared to most tech cities), Japanese founders/employees often do not want to emulate the working culture of big companies, on the contrary they might work in a startup to avoid it. Knowledge of English and living abroad experience also seem more common than average
A large foreign company like say Google or an international bank will pay more competitive wages than a domestic company. While startups likely have more variability in pay the same pattern holds.
I’ve seen ranges senior devs that are for approx $70k USD. That’s a huge pay cut for someone coming from the US. If you were teaching English in Japan that would be a huge step up however.
Similarly culture will be better for a foreign company than a domestic one — hours, overtime, company politics, etc. Your language ability would also be a critical factor.
Consequently, for me, it seems better to develop a career in the US and visit Japan. Now a company that is 100% remote that would allow you to live anywhere in the world and pay US wages would be an interesting opportunity.
There's another school of thought here; there's actually a lot of value that you could bring by emphasizing the fact that you can act as a bridge between foreign engineers and japanese ones.
They exist, but you don't just get free reign to work wherever you want. Most countries tax systems are not well equipped to handle international income, so you have to figure that out for every country you stay in, or try to fly under the radar and potentially commit a felony in a foreign country.
It's getting better though, with some countries starting to offer specific visas and tax options for digital nomad style living.
- housing is literally 4x or 5x or even 10x the pricing elsewhere in the US.
Rent is easily in that category too.
- food, fuel for your car, electricity, and literally everything including haircuts is more expensive there.
Often, several times more expensive.
Pay = base needs + retirement savings + extra money for lifestyle/fun + bonus for skill set
If base needs + retirement needs + lifestyle/fun costs go up/down, then of course pay will go up/down.
Yes, 'skill set' remains static. Unless, of course, there is a surplus in one area (people not willing to move), and a shortage in another.
In that case, yup.. guess what! That commodity becomes more valuable.
I'm not sure why many people find all of the above confusing.
With that observation, whether the software is made in SF for one unit of cost or in a cheaper place for 1/4 unit of cost, the company sells it for the same amount and it’s profitable.
Ergo, software produced anywhere yields the same amount of money to the company. So why should people get paid less no matter where they live if they produce the same output for the company? Isnt that unfair?
I’m not talking within the US where someone could move to the higher COL city and get paid more for the same output (if it made financial sense, after living expenses etc) but about people who can’t move countries because they’ll never get a visa for instance.
How is it fair, then, that a SV engineer gets paid 200k to produce software, and her colleague in Turkey gets paid a tenth of that for the same output? It’s not because they’re producing less valuable code, the company sells the product for the same price to anyone anywhere.
But the Turkish engineer is basically told by the company that because she’s stuck there and she can’t move elsewhere, then it’s normal to get paid a tenth of her SV colleague.
How is that fair?
You're effectively complaining that capitalism isn't entirely fair. Yes? And?
You're also saying "The US is wealthy, people are paid more there, that's not fair". Yes? What's you're point?
Nothing is entirely fair. Other political and economic systems suck too. So?
Don't conflate "companies paying by a logical, sensible, fair means under a free market economy" with "Turkey is a poorer country, due to social, cultural, historical issues, and therefore, someone 1/2 a world away should help. And not help my entire country, but just give me a few random people, software engineers, more wealth."
If Turkish law, case history, employment law, market and economics was the same, then likely there would be more upward pressure on wages. In other words, the way to "fix" this, is to make Turkey a 100% clone of the US, along with all of its history, and most importantly, with the cultural outlook many have in the US.
But I bet that isn't what a lot of people in Turkey want, is it?
To put it another way, you’re employing an individual to make you a thing you’ll sell for 1000$, you’re paying that person 10$ because you can get away with it since they live in a poorer country. If that same person was living in the US (for instance), you’d pay them 30$ if they lived somewhere cheap or 200$ if they lived in SV. Same individual, same skills, same output, same product. The only thing that changes is where that person lives which isn’t always a free choice because visas mostly.
Framed differently, why is it fair to pay women less than men for the same job? We actually don’t think it’s fair judging from the lip service most companies pay to that issue and the laws written in a lot of countries. In that case, the personal circumstances that influence salary is sex, in what we were discussing before it’s where you live.
What we're talking about pay, relative to where you live. This is NOT discrimination, but market forces at work.
I honestly can't even understand where you're coming from. You're essentially just asking for free money here.
For people, shareholders, companies, foreign governments to hand over free money, for no other reason because you don't like how the economy works.
Let’s agree to disagree and leave it at that then.
Not very sporting, now is that?
You're saying you believe individual's rights trump company's rights. Well sure, I agree with that.
But that is an insanely broad statement, and yet you're claiming I see it differently, which really can be used to infer that I'm some sort of careless bastard.
Let's be clear. When you mentioned 'individuals', what you've meant this entire time is 'a person in a foreign country, working in software engineering".
That's it. That's the extent of your definition of 'individual'.
Any other 'individual' can go suck eggs, as far as you're concerned! You literally have thrown away all logic on living costs, not to mention you're heartlessly and carelessly disregarding all taxation!
What about all those taxes, federal, state, sales tax, gas tax, property tax, city taxes, which go to help the homeless? Those are a part of that salary too. Yet, you literally cannot understand, or refuse to get, the concept that salary pays, not just the engineer... but instead the entirety of cost to support that engineer.
People get so upset, that various governments don't help the poor, build infrastructure to help those in lower income brackets, try to make sure schools are funded, and so on.
California has crazy taxes, and a lot of that DOES go towards additional social programs. And therefore? That tax creates upward pressure on engineer salaries, which means?
Part of that wage is "high", due to that taxation. Yet you aim to use that AGAINST companies, and instead, force them to pay that SAME SALARY, without local taxation, to some guy in ... well, anywhere but the US, as you've said.
Like places with reduced human rights. Or horribly restrictive laws. Or a disregard for the rights of women, minorities, and more!
Yup, screw it all and nail a bucket to a post, just gimme gimme gimme that salary.
And say anything to make it a reality.
I don’t know you, I have nothing against you personally, I just don’t wish to argue the matter further since neither of us will change their mind and we’re most likely the only ones reading at that point.
So, tu sum up: you and I see this issue differently for different reasons, neither of us is better than the other, and your point of view has as much right to be had as mine.
> Rent is easily in that category too.
> Food, fuel for your car, electricity, and literally everything including haircuts is more expensive there
It still doesn't matter. On a $200k salary in SF your post-tax income is $10667/month. If you spend $4k/month on rent (there are plenty of decent apartments and even houses if you commute a little at that price), $2000 on bills, food, your remaining salary of ~4500 usd is now still greater than a mid level engineers gross pay in the rest of the world, including most of europe.
It's a balance, the causation can flow the other way, and I'm pretty sure is currently doing so. The reason SF is so inflated is because (some) people can afford it. That's why locals get angry at tech companies, because the insane wages enabled by the tech bubble have driven the price of everything up, while everyone else's wages aren't catching up.
If somehow you picked the bubble up and moved it away, there are no businesses in SF that could match the wages tech companies can, so fewer in SF could afford the inflated prices and they would drop back down to meet the wages that people are now getting.
You can see the same thing happen when foreign housing investment is unregulated, and people with far more money than the community they're buying in purchase homes and push the market way up. People who live within the economic bounds of the community the houses are in can't afford it.
The company doesn't pay someone in San Francisco more than someone in Kansas because the San Francisco worker has a higher cost of living, they do it because the San Francisco worker would go work for someone else for more money if they didn't. The worker in Kansas doesn't have that alternative option.
Now, as more and more companies become primarily remote employers, we will likely see the location based variance for workers diminish. However, this is likely to mean that the higher cost of living places see their wages decrease more than lower cost of living places increase.
I’m always baffled by this kind of comments. The world isn’t made of SV engineers making 300K$/year, living in appartment with 5K appartment and buying 40$ sandwiches. Sure, most places and jobs are paying less, but cost of living is also lower. In Japan for instance eating out is cheap compared to Europe. Healthcare is accessible too. Cooking can help saving money too. Heck, I’m living (alone) fine with $16K/year (yes, per year) in one of the biggest Japanese city and I still can go to parties, buy video games, travel abroad while saving some money.
Another thing which a foreigner would have a hard time finding out is how much you have to spend on decent domestic staff or private tutors.
They could look up English speaking companies serving the Anglo expat market, but the local middle class is likely able to get those services for dramatically different prices.
Food costs about the same - a ramen is about ~400-500 円 (~ a Chipotle burrito ?), and food at restaurants would cost about the same as the US. Groceries, and Electronics cost slightly higher. Finding Vegan/Vegetarian food is like coming across an Oasis in a desert.
Nevertheless, Japan is a far more interesting place.
Can you live on $70k? Yes. You will likely live in a small-ish apartment and not save that much. At least to me, at $70k I felt like a failure in Tokyo. A lot of things go into that feeling.
1. Not being able to afford what I considered a "nice" apartment. Like say as nice as the one I was living in before I cam in So Cal with 2 bedrooms, a nice living room, 2 bathrooms, etc. Those apartments exist. They're probably $2500 a month a few stops out of downtown. If you move way out they can get way cheaper but then you aren't downtown.
2. Having "finance" jobs and corresponding lifestyle in front of my face. Before I moved to Japan I thought I was doing well (never compared). Once I got here, at least at the time, the English free magazines around town are all targeting expats in finance. Those people, at the time, made $300k to $1000k a year and live in $4k to $20k a month apartments provided by their comapany so their salary is even higher. At $70k I don't I can justify spending more than about $1400 a month on an apartment.
That said, if I was just out of college, even at $40k-$50k I think I'd have thought things were pretty good. In other words, "it depends" on what you find acceptable. I took a big step down in lifestyle to live here at the time.
Something that hasn’t been mentioned is the role of women. While many more women work there are still barriers, discrimination and the cultural tendency for women to be full time mothers/housewives. So $70k is household income.
Lastly, one needs to take time into consideration. A couple hours on the train commuting and a couple hours of overtime can add up to long days. So on a $ per hour basis it might not be that good.
For comparison, an L5-L6 at Amazon or the equivalent would make something similar in India. Japan for some reason hasn't valued Software as much as Hardware (a race it's also losing), despite having successes with the Playstation etc.
The longest open jobs in public boards are unsurprisingly those devs don't want because they pay too little. So if you try to estimate pay based on those boards I'd say you are under-estimating it.
Japan is still a buyer's market, and companies are constantly looking for engineers. It's all a matter of applying to high-paying company[1] and passing their interview. Granted, the competition for these companies is much higher, but the competition for software talent is also high.
If you can get a 15M/y salary at one of the top paying companies, you can have quite a good life in Tokyo. There is a certain fantasy of unattainable Tokyo that is perpetuated by expatriate cost of living rankings like Mercer's[1]. An American expat relocated on company expense looking to match their standard of living with a spacious 100 square meter apartment in a classy neighborhood in central Tokyo (like Roppongi or Azabu) is will go north of 400k yen per month, which is not much cheaper than what it would be in SF, I guess. If you go ahead and make sure it is fitted to US standards - with space for dish washer and standalone clothes dryer, built-in oven, and a bedroom which can fit a king-size bed - you can very well end up with a 800k per month.
But considering Tokyo's amazing public transportation system, you don't need to - and usually don't want to - live in central Tokyo. You can go to a station that's 10 minutes away by train from Shibuya or Shinjuku and pay half the price for a larger apartment or even a standalone house - or alternatively get tiny studio apartment for 60k per month.
[1] https://japan-dev.com/blog/software-developer-salaries-in-ja...
Can't speak for startups but megacorps started in the last 10 years tend to be pretty chill places to work with good pay and perks. My current team is managed by a foreigner and there's a 50/50 split between local and foreign engineers. I haven't personally had any issues attributable to culture, they can still happen but you tend to have to go looking for them.
https://japan-dev.com/blog/software-developer-salaries-in-ja...
I have been in situations when "the agent" sent me to a pharma lab to interview for a purchasing role when I used to do purchasing in the constructions industry.
it's entirely possible that there is an effective solution without involving inefficient government bureaucracy
I won't say hard words about the agent even though I'm tempted. It was not the first or the last time something like that happened.
As much as I hate gov butting in in general... I can see recruitment companies self-regulating just as well as advertising/tech companies.
Regulation and licensing introduces change. There’s no stipulation whether the change is positive or negative, and to again make a change once it’s set generally requires lobbyists and lots of money in the US.
Having worked in NYC with union workers I have witnessed how easily it can be abused.
Is there any reason why we want to double down on this model? Are we all so blind fed by outrage and/or social media we accept emotions instead of debate?
These are the kinds of things I want to see. The human fallacy is known and quantified, although, as far as I know it’s abused / exploited instead of providing neutral ground for policy discussion.
Licensing in Japan at least is isn't about ensuring the recruiter has knowledge of the field. Rather, it is to ensure that they meet privacy requirements and are not a fly-by-night business. They include having a minimum amount of assets, have a physical office with a separate room to interview candidates, and appointing a "privacy representative" who has completed a training seminar.
Personally, I think trying to ensure that a recruiter has knowledge of a field would be quite challenging to do via licensing, especially in an area like tech where the field evolves so rapidly.
I guess it's a cultural thing, but they're always written extremely clearly with basic grammar and everyday vocabulary, almost making it feel elementary if you're used to the English way of writing legal text as abstruse as possible.
The law is wrong.
I have no idea whether these particular regulations for recruiters make sense or not, but just because something is fundamental to living doesn't mean regulating it is automatically a bad idea.
In the US, you can legally go see a chiropractor (100% nonsense quackery), but getting $2 of antibiotics generally costs upward of $100 just for the office visit.
I wouldn't personally be using this model of an example of a working system.
Licensing systems frequently (usually?) do more harm than good. Look at optometry licensing and prescription control in the US, for example: it's 100% price fixing and protectionism. Same with hairdressers.
I have never seen any new-agy or pseudoscience-like stuff come up in treatments. They just snap my spine into place and some times rough up a muscle just to prevent it snapping back out of location again.
I too have heard people say it’s pseudoscience and humbug (usually e.g in the US) but could this vary? What are the pseudoscience parts? Could loose regulation in some countries have led to it becoming a market for pseudoscience whereas in other places it hasn’t?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiropractic
Back pain related therapy in general is filled with “qualified” people ready to dole out “treatments” in exchange for money, including MD surgeons who do back surgery.
The problem is succinctly explained in this clip, starting at 2min:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyugCJ40IIw
As the video says, we’re using a clothesline as a flagpole. Other than squats, deadlifts, and core workouts, keeping your weight low, and avoiding work that stresses the back, I doubt there’s real solution, and even those are probably just pushing the back pain into the future. It’s probably inevitable as you get older.
It was invented by a guy who practiced healing with magnets and said that a ghost taught him about spinal adjustments - it has always been pseudoscientific nonsense. There may well be places that have extracted only the meaningful parts, but I’d be skeptical.
https://www.jmptonline.org/article/S0161-4754(05)00111-9/ful...
Honestly, "They just snap my spine into place and some times rough up a muscle just to prevent it snapping back out of location again." sounds pretty suspicious to me. What does "snap my spine into place" mean, exactly? Were you literally paralyzed or handicapped in some way until they did this thing?
Muscles "snapping out of location"? How does that work?
The area is easily seen/felt with a finger on the spine near where the issue is.
Apart from pain it can give a sensation of tension or a feeling you can’t take deep breaths.
The diy fix is having someone lift you from behind as you exhale (a snap-crackle-pop sound will be heard), or rolling with your back on a foam cylinder.
I thought almost everyone, at least those with desk jobs and not enough excercise had this issue occasionally. I go to either a chiro or a naprapathy person to sort it. And as I said they do the same thing or very similar.
The same authority that certifies doctors certifies these people, so it’s literally under the surgeon general’s oversight. Which is why I think they basically have to practice something very similar to naprapathy, and can’t make claims to treat anything but the areas actually treated. Basically back muscles.
The entire field was based entirely on the idea that all diseases were caused by lesions of the nervous system (called subluxations) therefore all diseases could be cured by manipulation of the spine.
https://quackwatch.org/related/chiro/
https://quackwatch.org/chiropractic/general/
https://quackwatch.org/related/chirovisit/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiropractic_controversy_and_c...
No idea why you think your spine needs to be "snapped into place."
At a certain point people give up and look elsewhere. Communities are friendlier. Certain things like diet changes or supplements can help.
Unfortunately it’s also were the crystal healers hang out.
About food regulations; if a product uses dangerous chemicals (for example), in a proper free market, that should give alternative products a competitive advantage. The problem is not lack of regulations; it's the lack of a free market and free exchange of information.
Regulations exist to prevent abuse. If companies couldn't get away with abusing their customers (without going bankrupt), we wouldn't need regulations in the first place.
In any case, large corporations which essentially have immunity from the law usually find clever ways to work around the regulations without fixing the underlying problem.
A better solution would be to stop propping up big corporations with infinite fiat currency; big corporations are riddled with blind spots and they are devoid of any sense of accountability due to inherent flaws in the concept of corporate personhood; big corporations are not meant to exist and they wouldn't exist if not for all that free fiat which is creating an artificial anti-competitive moat around them. Competition and churn is necessary for a proper functioning capitalist system.
Our current monetary system is all about propping up zombie corporations by giving them unlimited free money which allows them to get away with everything.
The way our economy works now is basically like a son who is CEO and who keeps getting caught doing drugs and getting in trouble and then rich daddy keeps bailing them out over and over again and then bribing journalists to keep quiet so that nobody finds out... Regulations are the equivalent of sending the son to rehab; except it's all a PR stunt and the son will be back to doing drugs and causing problems within a few weeks. The solution is to fire the spoiled brat and let someone else do the job; someone who is passionate about it and can do it right.
Supply-side economics have distorted the way people think about the economy. Instead of figuring out what consumers need and working backwards from that, companies are constantly trying to figure out how to use up all available resources (e.g. capital, people, raw materials) and then resorting to advertising to convince consumers that they need whatever it is that they ended up producing. It's madness. All the talk about 'product-market fit' is delusional; it's mostly about fitting the customer to the product than the other way around. Advertising and A/B testing is not about improving the product to fit the user, it's about manipulating the user to buy the product.
This is largely untrue. A recent debate: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/k2ofqw/the_a...
For example, just off the top of my head, I can think of one aspect which was not mentioned; the number of years of training that are required to become a doctor; this is in itself a limiting factor which reduces the number of applicants and therefore graduates. Do doctors need so many years of training; who decides that? Maybe they could specialize sooner and still yield excellent results? Another aspect would be cost; it's likely that the high costs of education themselves are limiting the number of applicants.
Unfortunately, these types of debates are always going to end up being a case of trusting authority versus trusting your own critical thinking (and common sense). Showing a bunch of arbitrary data doesn't mean anything unless you can prove that all the relevant aspects have been covered exhaustively and this never happens in practice. In practice, the main use of data is to lend credence to profitable narratives.
The foundation of our modern economy is to draw attention towards convenient facts and suppress inconvenient ones even when both are true and equally relevant.
Absent regulation, how do you expect consumers to know about chemicals used in the product? We didn't get those nutrition facts and ingredients labels out of the grace of the manufacturers.
The internet. If corporations were not hoarding up all the money and media and censoring critics, we would have many competing services which would allow us to do quick and accurate product lookups.
Or do you mean "no regulations besides trademarks and copyrights"?
Incredible. Do you really believe it's possible to make a safe food market without regulations?
> Regulations exist to prevent abuse. If companies couldn't get away with abusing their customers (without going bankrupt), we wouldn't need regulations in the first place.
What on Earth will make a company selling, fake protein, which is actually poisonous melamine, to go out of business? They got paid before anyone ate the poisoned food, and really, there are no regulations, so what are you suing them for? What did they do wrong?
Must you trust a large, well marketed brand name or else worry about fly-by-night manufacturers making a quick buck on adultered goods and then dissapearing? Are trademark regulations still enforced in this "no regulations" world or if the counterfeit is close enough that you can't tell the difference then caveat emptor?
Every libertarian secretly _loves_ regulations, as long as they get to choose which. "Enforce property rights because I have property" or "Enforce nothing because I already have guns and that makes me the enforcer".
It's not a coherant ideology.
Perhaps! But how about having reasonable requirements instead of ridiculous ones?
In other countries -- the US for instance -- we have restrictions on connecting jobs to people. We prohibit, for example, job boards that are explicitly designed to favor (or be exclusive to) members of one race. Even if there are a lot of employers and employees who would appreciate such a service.
If you don't think THOSE rules are wrong, then are you REALLY sure you want to criticize how Japan chooses to organize their own approach to the topic? They have chosen to license the people who do the connecting rather than introduce legal liability for those who discriminate (and are sloppy enough about it to leave enough evidence to prevail in court).
I'm not saying control of discrimination is the reason that Japan licenses job recruitment, but I DO think that it requires a more thoughtful and open-minded approach that asks more about the benefits gained before dismissing out of hand the approach of requiring a license.
The entire nation of Japan (population 130m) has half the total number of homeless people as the city of San Francisco (population 1m).
Essentially all Japanese people have health insurance, while 30m Americans have none and many more barely have coverage.
Maybe they are on to something over there?
It's my understanding that most of Japan's workforce is massively underpaid in comparison to many other markets for similar jobs.
Something's deeply broken, there, and it's not reflected in unemployment rates.
Even FB in London pays significantly less than FB in SF, and you can transfer somewhat easily and get that high pay if you move to SF.
Restricting the job seeking/information process (something that should be completely open) can't possibly be helping out.
Perfect information about all jobs available to you would surely be ideal for worker happiness by helping you find a job you hate the least.
What's nice are the yearly comprehensive medical checkups, what's not nice is your employer pays for it and gets a copy of the results too.
It's a giant, very well manicured, thoughtfully attended 'house of cards'.
But none of this means that job boards necessarily need to be regulated.
Montana has an unemployment rate of 3% and very few homeless as well, very stable economy.
Licensing does have a very good side however and that side is that it guarantees that the holder of a license jumped through the right educational hoops to get that license. For example nobody wants to get treated by an unlicensed quack doctor... so it's a case by case situation whether or not something should be regulated.
Doctors are also a good example of the other side of the coin when regulation starts to produce a cartel where doctor supply is throttled. There's no other country that makes MD licensing harder to achieve than the US and by sheer coincidence doctors in the US are also one of the highest paid in the world. Also ask any doctor, they will tell you that 4 years of unrelated undergrad that includes all chemistry up to organic chemistry is all useless to the actual job along with the majority of stuff they learn in med school as well.
Sorry for the unrelated rant on doctors but it's actually a very common phenomenon and is basically exactly what is happening here for recruitment in japan.