Re: [tlug] Looking for Summer Internship in Japan

[Lyle H Saxon <llletters@example.com>]

On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 12:39 PM, Raymond Wan <rwan.kyoto@example.com> wrote:
> PS:  Not just Japan, but everywhere is sending IT jobs to other
> countries.  Everything from manufacturing to programming has that
> potential.  Ironically, one "good" thing about Japan is still the
> language barrier.  Until other countries' IT staff read and write
> Japanese natively, as least some parts like documentation writing and
> GUI design can remain more or less within Japan...  All IMHO, of
> course...

Again, I'm basing this on discussions I've had with my Japanese
national now-and-again drinking buddy who has been full-time
programming for a couple of decades, but they're at ground zero and
have been for the past two decades.  A couple of things they related
to me:

For one contract at a major Japanese IT company, my friend was shocked
to find themselves in a room (in Japan, at a major Japanese
corporation) full of foreign (I'll leave their nationality out of this
to prevent a war over a different issue!) programmers and there as the
lone Japanese person to sort things out.  In a word, the job was sheer
h**l.  The foreign programmers retaliated whenever they were asked to
do things and that experience alone (although there were others) left
my friend feeling very negatively regarding that class of
foreigners...  But never mind the clash of cultures thing - the point
is - while there are indeed positions that only native speakers of
Japanese are given, they are not especially numerous and conditions
can be harsh - very harsh.  Over a period of a couple of years, my
friend had to work seven days a week, and about twelve hours a day,
and this for zero overtime pay.

LHS