Re: work times & accommodation @tokyo, WAS: Re: [tlug] Embedded linux dev wanting to find work in Tokyo.. Seeking advice.

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Curt Sampson writes:
 > On 2008-07-22 14:02 +0900 (Tue), Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
 > 
 > > I too thought I would learn something about the search for quality, or
 > > even perfection, when I came to Japan. ...but I'm not sure what they
 > > have to teach the West that we haven't already made a good start on
 > > learning.
 > 
 > Right. Much of what they're doing was brought to them *from* the U.S.
 > via folks like Deming.

That's not a very useful thing to say.  The Japanese have kaizenned
much of Deming to the point where he wouldn't recognize it.  And North
Americans didn't pay much attention to that work until the Japanese
auto and consumer electronics industries clobbered them with superior
products at much lower resource costs than we could achieve at that
time.

 > On 2008-07-22 14:28 +0900 (Tue), Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
 > 
 > >  > > Why would you build an engine that is so inefficient that it has
 > >  > > to work so hard that it eventually kills itself?
 > > ...
 > >  > Learn more about the people side of management, particularly managing
 > >  > non-engineers, and you'll figure it out easily enough.
 > > 
 > > I'm not sure what you mean by that?
 > 
 > Basically, people do not make rational decisions. We're in fact wired to
 > to have a strong bias to stick with our old beliefs rather than change
 > them, probably because there were and are natural selection benefits to
 > doing this. (I.e., it's in general better to be sometimes wrong than
 > often indecisive, as far as your reproductive fitness goes.)

I think the resource costs and coordination problem, not to mention
risk aversion, involved in changing these practices are a bigger
constraint than irrational decision-making.

 > Actually, I no longer buy the idea that Google is startup-like-
 > disruptive. In some areas they might be, but I can see definite areas
 > where they are actively opposing the use of better technology.

*sigh* Startups are generally not disruptive.  Better technology per
se has nothing to do with disruption.

 > One example would be in programming languages; they're stuck on C++,
 > Java and Python, essentially, all of which have large known weaknesses
 > that other more modern languages are solving. This is particularly
 > ironic because the main reason poor languages are used is because
 > companies don't have smart enough developers or feel they can't be
 > sure of continuing to attract enough smart enough developers, which is
 > obviously a not problem for Google.

Communication is the key, not the strength of the language used.
Programmers need to work together, often with predecessors who are no
longer with the company.

Have you ever been a project manager in a company the size of Google?

 > The apparent reason for this, from what I've seen, is that they have
 > relatively primitive application deployment systems they they aren't
 > trying to improve. This is also an old problem that much work has gone
 > into solving.

I think you sound like the man with a hammer to whom every problem
looks like a nail.  These are precisely the areas you pride yourself
on, which leads me to ask what evidence you have that these
technologies (which admittedly have been successful for you with your
clients) would really solve the problems of companies like Google?

 > Actually, I'm about ready to buy Robert X. Cringly's opinion that once
 > a company grows beyond a certain size, it simply can't be disruptive
 > any more. There are too many non-entrepreneurs in it, or whatever. (He
 > posits that this was the issue with Windows Vista;

Anybody who links Windows Vista to the notion of disruptive innovation
needs to be beaten with a cluebat until unconscious.[1]  Windows Vista
was all about defending in a contest of sustaining innovation.  You
don't need to know anything about the technical content, just look at
the customers it was supposed to serve: the existing ones who could
afford insanely expensive overspec'ed machines.  (Aka Apple users
....)

If you want to know where to look for attempts by Microsoft to be
disruptive (in the Christensen sense), look at Windows CE.  I don't
promise you'll find anything there, but that's a much better place to
look than Vista.


Footnotes: 
[1]  RXC probably needs that treatment anyway.  But I digress.