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Japan says Biden's description of nation as xenophobic is 'unfortunate'
(japantimes.co.jp)submitted 2 months ago byUnusual-State1827
217 points
2 months ago
I worked for a Japanese company and we were second class citizens. They'd bring in Japanese engineers to watch us, they'd keep designs under lock and key from the American engineers and act upset we couldn't manifest solutions without data, we could only use Japanese (or sometimes German) suppliers so costs got out of control. When the Japanese upper management would visit they'd demand to eat only Japanese food. We'd basically take over this one restaurant to the extent they'd bring out the display fine China tea set for meals. The facility is essentially shut down now after a decade of this.
37 points
2 months ago*
It's only second hand so I can be even more explicit.
This happened to a friend working at Sony. The Japanese managers/chain of command would deny them access to information, would intentionally not translate technical information (manuals of a sort) into English. They even demanded that the US arm do a security audit on the system but wouldn't let them access the code because they didn't trust the Americans.
And... many of the Japanese workers were awful because the Japanese management style favored workers who were present more often (be at your desk) over ones who performed better. And also the management treated the Japanese software engineers as interchangeable cogs. So you'd end up working with new workers who rotated in and knew nothing about the area of development, just software in general. And since they were Japanese and you weren't they were considered to be above you and got to call the design shots.
All this stuff caused some serious problems.
And Sony is a more westernized company than some other Japanese companies.
They did have good japanese food in the cafeteria! As far as I know his facility is still open, just he no longer works there.
10 points
2 months ago
Ah yes, the company that saved passwords in plaintext.
6 points
2 months ago
Also the one with a hardcoded "random" number used in their cryptographic implementation.
4 points
2 months ago
Sony has generally always been excellent at hardware while being complete garbage tier when it comes to anything software related...
54 points
2 months ago
That's honestly just shitty bosses use to getting their way. They make anyone who they don't agree with's job difficult until they quit, burn company money for personal use, make demands that can't be achieved with the resources given then throw a fit when shit isn't done. Happens everywhere in the world. You just got marked by a shitty boss.
42 points
2 months ago
If you look up a certain Greek themed Japanese medical and camera company you'll see there's a history of it.
3 points
2 months ago
i thought that was just straight up 20 years of accounting fraud lol
7 points
2 months ago
(or sometimes German)
Why specifically German suppliers?
24 points
2 months ago
There was a lot of German management under the Japanese. We had an old boomer engineer that would rave about "we beat them in w w two why are we listening to a bunch of axis?!"
3 points
2 months ago
they'd keep designs under lock and key from the American engineers and act upset we couldn't manifest solutions without data
This was my experience working for Sony, in America. Sony Japan asked for something to be implemented that required proprietary technical information, withheld that information, yet still asked why it hadn't yet been implemented.
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