Re: [tlug] Looking for Summer Internship in Japan

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

Benjamin Kowarsch writes:

 > Japan is particularly bad in terms of age discrimination.

True, but you shouldn't class Japan with other countries in that
regard.  The motivation is rather different.  In Japan, the job market
is like hole flow in a semiconductor.  A hole opens up when somebody
retires or moves on to another post, and somebody younger and less
experienced fills it.  There were abortive experiments with a more
flexible job market (especially in software engineering, ironically)
in the 80s and early 90s, but companies that did so got badly burned
because flexibility in filling positions clashes with Japanese work
culture.  It's not about "saving money" (the Japanese job market has
other ways to do that), it's about preserving The Natural Order of
Society.

You don't have to like it, I don't.  But it's not the same as age
discrimination in other countries.

 > [In Switzerland, 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.

I've always admired the Swiss system.  But it wouldn't work as well in
Greece (for one thing, with a 25% unemployment rate, there's no way
they could afford to top up to 70% of previous income).