I do feel like something is off with Nintendo, their games seem very scarce recently. Either they’re launching a new system this year at e3 or Covid really messed up their dev practices.
The other side of this is many people are not full time employees. Dispatch (派遣) employees are employed by one company and then sent to work alongside regular employees at other companies, with the dispatch company taking a good slice. The employer is now able to shrink their workforce more easily and the employee gets a smaller piece of the pie.
Simply writing a temporary contract might not even be enough. Recent changes to the law say that if you have been on temporary contract that is renewed for 5 years then you have the right to full time employment with the same conditions. Now you see plenty of people getting let go at 4 years, just to be on the safe side.
I think in many/most cases, the goal is not to have an additional permanent employee.
Most large, reputable companies completely gutted their hiring numbers for permanent positions after the 1989 crash. They still needed warm bodies to do stuff, so this “dispatch” system became much more common.
An unfortunate side effect of the growth of the dispatch system is that young people rightfully feel much less secure in their long term employment, so they ended up delaying or never making long-term commitments like marriage and having kids.
Imho, the growth of the “dispatch” system has been one of the leading reasons that Japan had the “lost decade” that seems to be working on its fourth decade. The federal government and the large corporations of Japan really dropped the ball on this, and they need to look in the mirror when they wonder out loud about the current societal and economic malaise.
I can’t speak to many other countries, as I haven’t really looked as deeply into them as I have into Japan.
That said, the differences in Japan are significant in social ways that they are not in other places (like the US, where I currently live).
Want a decent/nice apartment? Some places won’t rent to you unless you have a permanent job (the dispatch jobs often/typically don’t count). It doesn’t matter if your income is much higher than it would be while working at the permanent job.
This exact experience happened to patio11 in a provincial part of Japan where it would probably have been prudent to try to be more accommodating to financially successful residents. For reference, he quit his salaryman job because bingo card creator was making a multiple of his salaryman income. When it came time to renew his lease, the landlord was not accommodating even though patio11 had proof of his drastically increased income.
Want to get married as a male? If you don’t have a permanent job, then your marriage stock takes a massive hit. The dispatch jobs are considered much lower on the prestige scale.
The list of detractions go on.
Note that this probably wouldn’t be a big deal if the changes had been gradual and/or society had changed just as rapidly, but those things didn’t happen. The hiring was completely gutted, and it never returned to anything close to prior form.
I will add that these changes happened during a time of rapid change in regulations (mostly deregulation) in Japan in the 90s. I personally think that these changes were probably good from a corporate-level economic perspective. That said, these changes also led to a complete and irreverent shattering of the social contract in Japan. It was not a change that most people wanted. It is a change that the government and the large corporations, with much goading from the US, foisted upon the broader Japanese population with complete disregard for the social fabric of society.
What could have been done differently? The changes could have been slower. Many of the changes just could have not happened, imho. Social support systems could have been developed before or while these changes were implemented. Pro-consumer laws could have been enacted.
Instead, the Japanese bureaucrats showed how deep in over their heads they were at the time by just acquiescing to western pressure to deregulate without really understanding why the existing system in Japan actually worked (short version: a lot of “non-competitive” features of the broader Japanese economy functioned as a de facto social safety/support system that never got replaced).
Note that patio11 has discussed this topic in more detail with more references than I currently have, so I would search for his stuff if you want to dig deeper.
https://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan...
Relevant HN thread:
Now I know. It's the employment rules that makes firing people hard once recruited.
Let's say hypothetically that your second sentence is wrong, and ability to fire people more easily than Japan is why US software took off. That doesn't mean it needed to be "fire anyone anytime". Just that it needed to be less locked-in than Japan.
In other words, someone made a claim for why the Japan software industry failed, which was employment law being at this extreme. You then claimed the other extreme was not necessary for success. And it looked like your post was intended as a counterargument. But it's not a counterargument unless those are the only two options for employment law. So I pointed out those aren't the only two options for employment law.
> The ease with which an employer can fire someone doesn't have much to do with why the software industry in the US took off versus other countries.
Okay, I think that's what your original comment should have said. Or it should have said "The software industry here didn’t take off because employers could fire people more easily than in Japan."
And then ideally supported that argument with more data.
Instead you made a weaker argument that doesn't help narrow down the truth very much.
Get the best people in one place and good stuff will happen
Tech ecosystems are based on self-reinforcing feedback loops.
...which happened because, after WW2, the federal government was very interested in establishing a decisive lead in computing and similar technologies [1] [2] [3]. The US military was a key early customer of Silicon Valley, and industry research labs like Xerox PARC received heavy support from publicly funded grants. Projects like ARPANET [4] paved the way for the Internet as we know it now.
To this day, programs like the Silicon Valley Innovation Program [5] continue to subsidise tech firms. This is a feature, not a bug: transitioning new technologies from early basic research to proof-of-concept to commercial viability takes time, more time than many companies and VC firms are willing to wait. ARPA, NSF, etc. exist largely to support this transition, which is why they deploy funding in both industry and academic settings.
[1] https://onezero.medium.com/the-hidden-history-of-how-the-gov... [2] https://marianamazzucato.com/books/the-entrepreneurial-state [3] https://computerhistory.org/blog/the-valley-and-the-swamp-bi... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET [5] https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/svip
Japan has the lowest TOEFL score in Asia amongst 30+ countries. English proficiency is much higher in both advanced and developing Asian economies. This is not inherently a blocker for software development, but it reflects a trend counter to globalization and being receptive to American practices.
Japan has less billionaires than both Hong Kong, SK and Taiwan, all of which have a fraction of the population. Tax policy is one part of this, but there is a cultural aversion to risk taking. The typical apartment lease is 2+ years, which reflects the sense to long term commitment. There's also more restrictive regulation and actually following policies to the tee. Even human-powered bicycles require registration and not too powerful e-bikes requires license plates, registration, insurance. All of this means there are less startups, less startup ecosystem, less hackers. Heck, Indonesia has since grown a more vibrant startup ecosystem and even deca-unicorns.
Also reigning in from Japan's manufacturing era is prioritizing reliability and virtueing craft. Japan is still building appliances and electronics that last decades, which is at odds with the SDLC chasing shiny new features for smartphones every year. Unfortunately, consumers have spoke with their wallets that they value updates more than reliability. Ironically, Japan's software is pretty crap and not reliable. My bank is one of the more vibrants one, going through a DX digital experience / "digital transformation" as it is called, but all of the technology, hardware and software is atrocious. It's been the second time within a year where my ATM card has stopped working because it's gotten demagnetized. It's a lot of security theater.
Random link: https://www.theregister.com/2013/08/21/boredom_rooms_japan_e...
This might be less effective nowadays with ubiquitous internet access.
Part of the reason that Japanese businesses don't give pay increases is because there's effectively no inflation in Japan, and growth in general has been mostly stagnant (though in reality that's not really true, but rather an excuse); but, the other reason is because for the most part, workers work in a company for life and don't switch companies for higher wages. There's no real competition on salaries, so no reason to be competitive on pay increases either.
Why not just surf the internet and play games all day at your desk?
But with the Japanese social preference for conformity[1][2][3], usually there is some mutually beneficial solution rather than firing.
[1] "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down."
[2] "Do not cause disturbance or inconvenience for others."
[3] "Everything should be frictionless."
So maybe you're right. The next Zelda is coming in several months.
Nintendo has a history of launching consoles with the newest Zelda game.
What’s a relatively modern SOC that sold poorly and was manufactured in large volumes? That’s probably what the next Nintedo console will use.
The Jetson nano is the same chip as the nintendo switch, with half the cuda cores iirc.
They posted a job ad in 2022 saying "looking to hire a deeply technical, creative and hands-on software engineer to pioneer the next generation of Graphics Developer Tools for Game Consoles"
Nvidia's only game console client is Nintendo.
Game Freak develops them.
In the last 5-10 years, the gap between Japan and west europe for top tier companies salaries has decreased a lot: you can now get 100k $ or more.
We'll see how long the 500k + total comp in the US will continue for top tier. My prediction is that this will decrease a lot in the next 5 to 10 years.
Which is 90 to 160 Canadian
Anecdotally, my friend earned something like 5M yen and was working 10-12 hour days including Saturday at entry/mid level.
I've worked extensively with the best salary datasets available. Even then, you shouldn't believe everything you read. Even when the data is good, it's not reality. I fail to believe SalaryExperts are anywhere near experts in this case when there is so many odd points on that page.
For starters, it's kind of weird to fix game dev salaries on Tokyo when the Kyoto Triangle is a thing. I have on-the-ground context on Japan because I can see the Nintendo office from my backyard. People who aren't familiar with Japan don't realize that Tokyo city doesn't even exist or at least stopped existing over a century ago. That's just a litmus test as to why you trust the anecdotal evidence of people who actually live and work in Japan over a cherrypicked website from Google search for "game dev salary Japan".
I would suggest you to re-evaluate your market opportunities if you are an Engineer getting paid ¥5M in Japan.
My starting salary was 2.1M yen in Japan, and until my current position never breached 5.5M
Happy to discuss more over chat or something similar. Let me know if you want to compare notes.
The point of using the national average is that we can compare it to other careers. If we compare game devs to other software development positions they get paid significantly less on average. The BLS puts software engineers at an average of $109k for 2021 (couldn't find 2022 stats, not sure if they exist yet?)[1]. That means game devs make 20+% less on average compared to their non-game counterparts.
1: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/Computer-and-Information-Technology/...
Try again. What would you expect? The value to the employer is significantly lower because each developers contribution is… No wait.
Tell me again how this capitalism thing works because I get confused?
Googling… Hmmm…
Are you sure this thing is working?
> supply outstrips demand quite a bit
How does that follow? It is constrained therefore supply is artifically lowered. No matter the demand, no one can supply more doctors than the body permits, therefore the price for each is quite high.
Nobody is making the market in game devs, so market wages prevail. Gaming happens to be the world’s most popular form of entertainment so it’s not surprising that more people want to be game devs than say write ERP software.
There are also way fewer game dev jobs than there are general dev jobs. This isn’t rocket science.
Now I understand what this Chartered Professional Engineer thing is all about! It’s a license to print money by controlling supply! I want in!
And no, most chartered engineers do not really print money, some making even less than SW devs.
In my insignificant EU country, nearly every profession has it's own labor union, and guess what, the IT union is one of the weakest, seeing some of the worst possible contract terms and work conditions for a skilled profession, while the metal workers union being one of the strongest, having some of the best perks, rights, working conditions and mandatory wage increases in the country.
We can have cool ceremonies! Stuff to hang on your wall! A club house!
If you mean, like, Bangkok, then sure.
Going out to eat almost anywhere decent is a hundred bucks these days.
$1500 a month is not a reasonable assumption for monthly housing overhead even in a low CoL location. Also mortgage interest rates are much higher now.
1,500 is perfectly reasonable for a low cost of living area. I currently pay 1,800 a month (and that includes electric, which also powers my heat) in a state that most consider to be one of the highest costs of living in the US. For that amount of money, I could be renting a standalone house in much of the country.
I also think that your assertion of going out to eat costing 100 bucks is inaccurate. Many decent restaurants have entrées in the 18-25 dollar range. Add in a beer and an appetizer, plus a 30% tip, and you still only hit 65 dollars (assuming the app/entree cost 40 bucks combined and the beer costs 10, which is a high estimate).
All of this also assumes that you drive a nice car, a luxury that most wouldn't consider a necessity. The 15k number assumes 1250 combined for car payments and insurance, a number which many would consider much too high.
Is it the most glamorous life? No. But calling it "shit pay" is a massive overreach. If you can afford a solid car, your own place, all the necessities, and still have 1400 bucks to play with, I would consider that a pretty solid life. Certainly above "shit."
In low cost of living / mid cost of living (LCOL/MCOL) areas you can definitely eat out for two at a decent place for less than that. Pricing out for two at my favorite local Italian place in San Antonio, here's the bill:
$15 - spaghetti with homemade meat sauce
$16 - penne arrabiatta
$20 - wine
Pad 28% for tax and tip and you come out to ~$65.
On San Antonio Zillow, I'm finding almost 200 results for 2 bedrooms at $1200 or less per month.
I don't think San Antonio is even the lowest LCOL location you could find, by far. Even in Texas, not looking outside the state, El Paso's way cheaper, maybe Corpus Christi.
I think people often overestimate how much it costs to live quite well in a LCOL area.
Buses just aren’t worth riding when tourism is high (you’ll be waiting forever with dozens in line ahead of you and then stuck in traffic) and the train routes aren’t nearly as convenient as a lot of other Japanese cities.
Nintendo's well-known for taking risks with gameplay (Mario, Metroid, and Zelda were all new genres). But, as people get older, they get more conservative. The company is very heavily invested in their franchises and they seem to be taking a lot fewer risks in terms of gameplay innovation and new IP.