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It is the same in Japan. They are really good for hardware and other "physical" engineering disciplines, but they are terrible when it comes to software and general IT stuff.

Seriously, I work here as an IT guy and I can't stop wondering how they could become so advance in other areas and stay so backwards in anything software-related except videogames.

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Yeah. This is my exact experience too wrt japan! The japanese just somehow can't assess and manage neither the scale, nor the complexity, the risk, the effort or the cost of software projects. Working in japan as a software guy feels like working in a country lagging 30-40 years behind :/

In my experience, risk assessment is the worst part. Japanese culture is extremely risk averse, and the moment you ask them to do something that they have never done before, they freeze in panic. They need a procedure for everything, and have a really hard time improvising.

That's why they are good for industrial processes where they can iterate and improve in small, incremental steps, but terrible for software projects full of uncertainties.

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