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not the person you're replying to, but seemed pretty obvious they were rejecting the idea that Japanese programmers are somehow unique in being good in some cases and bad in other cases

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Japanese organizations are different, and that makes the skills and behavior of their programmers different.

They reward tenure and respecting the hierarchy. Wonder what kind of positive (from western pov) skills and behaviours are fostered in that environment.

Regarding hierarchy, I have an anecdote about India. A manager told me that western teams are more likely to challenge a ticket than Indian teams, who hesitate to do that and are more likely to power through. His theory is that the culture makes it disrespectful to question the upper hierarchy, given its caste system, and causes a clash with western culture.

His solution was to communicate much more actively with the Indian team, to try to squeeze more feedback that they would hesitate to give at first.

Tenure could induce creating respectable code that one has to deal with for a lifetime of work. Just a guess.

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