Re: [tlug] Looking for Summer Internship in Japan

[Benjamin Kowarsch <trijezdci@example.com>]

I am talking globally excluding locations where there is war or civil war or other kinds of unrest that make it likely you will get kidnapped or killed, and excluding locations where getting a visa first is a requirement for hiring companies to even consider your application.

In general, there is global greed and short term thinking by cutting down the workforce and let the remaining workforce do the work for those you got clipped, burning them out. This runs across countries and industries. Most countries have not reinstated their job numbers from before the Lehmann crash yet and many may never do so. Yet there are more people coming on to the job market.

Japan is particularly bad in terms of age discrimination.

But greed plays a role in age discrimination just about everywhere.

The thinking goes like this:

"Let's see, this guy is very experienced, likely he wants more money, I don't need such an experienced guy for this work and as I have a very constrained budget I am not even going to invite him for an interview."

When I had entitlement to unemployment benefits in Switzerland worth 70% of my prior income I offered companies to work for any amount they would be willing to pay, no matter how ridiculously low it may be. The Swiss unemployment office would have paid the difference for one year. Their system encourages people to work. If you can find even a part time job in a supermarket while on benefits, the combined pay from your part time salary and your benefits will be higher than what you would have not working that part time job. Trouble is, I lived in France across the border and my entitlement was suspended unless I took up residence in Switzerland which was impossible to do without a job. So I offered to work for much less than any unskilled or graduate entering the workforce, just to get in. Still, nobody took me up on it.

People told me, we are currently doing this massive relocation project, new campus under construction, moving to the new campus from all these locations, migrating all the infrastructure, regulatory affairs, etc etc, if we didn't already have a PM for that I would hire you and put you in charge of this project in a heartbeat, but for delivering the design of racks for our new data centre you are overqualified, and I realise you have just done such a thing at Alcatel, but nevertheless, you are too senior.

This is always the tenor. Too senior. Overqualified. Too old.

Japan is no exception, in fact it is worse. Age discrimination is rampant. In Europe it has more to do with greed and headcount limits which ultimately leads to age discrimination as a side effect. In Japan age discrimination is not a side effect, it is endemic.

regards

benjamin

On 17 March 2015 at 20:43, Josh Glover <jmglov@example.com> wrote:

On 17 March 2015 at 05:22, Benjamin Kowarsch <trijezdci@example.com> wrote:

> You don't understand a thing or two about today's job market. It has nothing
> to do with being qualified or deserving

Are you referring specifically to Japanese companies in Japan?

I understand quite a bit about today's job market, defined as:

1. Software development
2. In one of these types of companies:
 * US-owned multinationals
 * Small, privately held (non-VC funded) US companies
 * VC-funded US startups
 * VC-funded Swedish startups
 * Small, privately held (non-VC funded) Swedish companies

I have worked at and interviewed for all of the above, save the last
one, where I have just interviewed but not accepted a job.

Your characterisation of the job market does not match my personal
experience at all. I am both qualified and deserving of a job as a
professional programmer, and every time I have looked for a job, I
have always had more than one company extend me an offer. Out of the
five companies I have worked for since leaving university 12 years
ago, I had the advantage of knowing someone on the inside exactly
once. And that once was when a fellow TLUGger interviewed me for a
UNIX sysadmin job after knowing me for five years on TLUG, which could
reasonably be described as a five year-long practical interview.

I know for a fact that companies in the Silicon Valley, Seattle,
Dublin, and Stockholm have a really hard time hiring programmers,
because the good ones are snapped up immediately, the decent ones are
snapped up quickly, and even the mediocre ones find jobs. Companies
I've worked at in Sweden and Dublin have actively recruited elsewhere
in Europe because there simply aren't enough programmers locally.

Given how expensive it is for a company to make a bad hire (at least
for programmers), you'd better believe that a lot of effort goes into
ensuring that anyone who gets an employment offer is both qualified
and deserving.

Again, I am not making any claims whatsoever to understand any job
market that lies outside the definition I've given above, but if you
were talking about the global job market for programmers, I can assure
you with utmost certainty that things are not as glum as you believe.
:)

Cheers,
Josh

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