"Dangling salaries of 10 million yen", or about $91k. The fact that this is considered unusually high tells you all you need to know about engineering salaries in Japan. (And yes, IT salaries are in the same ballpark.)
That’s why I left japan and came back to Seattle, really no reason to work for such little money and live in a small apartment when we are living through the best time to be an engineer in America.
It's still low if you invented flash memory. Looking at market rates is the wrong paradigm for that kind of breakthrough. It presumes you could replace the flash inventor with another engineer for about the same salary.
"It presumes you could replace the flash inventor with another engineer for about the same salary."
Yes, you can, if you already own his patent and do not expect him to invent anything else. It seems that is how the management looked at it.
I'd love to work in Norway or Sweden one day. Do you know what the tech scene in Oslo or Stockholm are like? My experience is mostly in building backend/distributed systems.
The scene is great in Stockholm, anchored in Spotify, King and a good representation of games companies (EA has a decent representation if I remember correctly). My knowledge of Oslo is limited, but from what I have heard, thing are a bit stunted there.
Copenhagen (my former home turf) used to be not great, basically software engineering was/is considered low status and all the smart devs in corporations were steered to higher status, but less technical, roles like architect, consulting or project management (or other middle management). Denmark really bought into the idea that we're the ideas people, the grunt work can be done in India or Poland or whatever. Some successful software startups came out of there, like Endomondo, Vivino and Zendesk, but they moved their centre of gravity to the bay area at first opportunity. This has since changed, and from what I've heard there's a fairly happening startup scene there now (still an awful place to be a corporate dev, though).
5-6M JPY is pretty normal if you're an engineer here working for a traditional Japanese software company. Good news is that the number of people willing to accept that is growing fewer by the day.
> Good news is that the number of people willing to accept that is growing fewer by the day.
Curious if you have any insights on where do they end up going instead, even if anecdotal. (E.g.: smaller firms, own startups, or foreign (US/China) opportunities?)
I worked in a small US office of a Japanese company and they let Japanese employees come visit America for six-twelve months - I think they only let married, more senior people come over so the employee would have more incentive to go back to Japan. The US office shut down and most of them quit after their contractual obligations were up and emigrated to the USA.
My first job in Japan was working at one of these places so I've seen it first hand. In my case I left to join a US startup with an office in Tokyo. Most of my former colleagues did similar and are now working either in startups (mostly Japanese) or for foreign corporations that do development work here.
Even working for a US company in Tokyo I made a fraction of what I do here in the US. High level engineers I worked with got offers from google and Microsoft in Tokyo and the offers were less than $100k USD. They declined. Some moved to Europe, I moved back to the states. It’s mostly young single western men I see willing to take the pay cuts to live in Japan.
>It’s mostly young single western men I see willing to take the pay cuts to live in Japan.
My SO and I have seriously discussed moving to Tokyo when it comes time to raise a family. We're both pretty disappointed with the culture here in the US that makes it difficult to let your kids be independent and self reliant (See: Parents getting their kids taken away for letting them walk to the park, etc), and we've loved the time we've spent in Tokyo.
The salary situation makes this pretty tough, though.
If you're upset about US politics, and you are looking to relocate, I would suggest Germany. Having spent 3 months in both Germany and Tokyo, I can tell you German salaries are much more reasonable, the politics are relatively sane, the quality of life is great, they are more likely to speak English in the office, and are very welcoming to tech workers (just apply for a freelance visa to start).
That said, blockchain jobs in Japan are supposed to be abundant and pay more like US wages.
Hi, I have been keeping an eye on blockchain jobs in japan as well.
->That said, blockchain jobs in Japan are supposed to be abundant and pay more like US wages.
do you mind sharing some source about this?
Maybe look at rural areas. My sister brought her kids up in rural New Zealand. First advantage: kids are taught to be self reliant from a young age. Second advantage: small rural schools mix ages in small classes so kids are more rounded. Third advantage: less access to drugs (which is only going to become worse). Maybe do AirBnB for a month somewhere and see what you'ze think.
Most of Western Europe and especially the Nordics kick ass when it's time to raise a family. I've never been to Japan, but judging by all the info I've read about it, the work-life balance tends to be on the bad side. That's generally not the case in Europe.
Anecdotally, I have a close friend who works at a U.S.-based high end manufacturing facility which used to be owned and managed by a Japanese company.
It was sold to a U.S. company, and everything about management and corporate culture has gotten worse. People are less happy and feel they have less job security, which translates into poorer performance and reduced commitment. Japanese companies have their issues, but a lot of Americans have much to learn from them about making employees want to stay.
I did exactly this — moved to Tokyo since it's such a great place to raise a family — and I've been very happy with the decision so far. The salaries and work culture can be tricky, but if you can find yourself a nice (work-based) bubble in a western firm or startup or something, it's possible to piece together a nearly ideal situation since the home environment is so great.
Right now they're absolutely crushing the camera market - the A73 and AR73 are taking the world by storm, with tons of Canon and Nikon DSLR converts (Including myself). Their GM lenses are the sharpest available at a lot of focal lengths, the bokeh is close to the top of readily available modern lenses, etc. They're certainly competing there.
Their UHS-II cards are some of the fastest on the market.
The PS4 is the leader in lifetime sales vs. other consoles.
The number of people that would buy a phone just for the camera is a small market and the phone market aside from the iPhone is a low margin commodity market. Samsung makes a lot of money from the phone market - but not from selling phones. They make most of thier money as a component supplier.
Sony's camera division makes money from selling camera parts to other companies - including Apple.
Other factor also contributes to the demise of Sony phone division. Here in my country, Sony Z1 and Z2 boom as they are probably the first premium phone with nice camera and waterprof body. But bad aftermarket support and service destroy that advantages very quickly. Nowdays almost everyone avoid Sony smartphone. Either you choose phone with more support and service center such as Samsung or go to other way with Xiaomi (cheap with almost non existance official service & support).
The Xperia phones and E-paper offerings are products where Sony could have been competitive with the market leaders (Apple, Amazon), partly because they were among the first to market, but they chose not to spend much on R&D and thus lost their dominance.
My comment does not refer to the gaming and photography divisions, as those are cash cows for Sony.
On the dev side.
I’ve been told that there are a few main consultancy firms which do the bulk of development for most companies. It’s more appropriate to hire these firms than it is to build your own teams. Because these firms do not pay high amounts to their devs, it sets the norm across the country.
I mean there are a lot of causational arrows. In central Japan, for example, there exists an ultimate monopsony consumer of all engineering labor. Their salary scale is known to middle schoolers. All engineering labor is priced against that scale, sometimes directly, because that scale informs what they'll pay subcontractors and then the magic of consulting math replicates that scale across the supply chain.
I don't think you are interpreting that comment in this context the way I would. It is possible for an employee of a Japanese company to have a $91k salary and, also, a high internal status, resulting in non-pecuniary benefits as described.
It is extraordinarily unlikely that employee is an engineer.
(For additional "It's complicated!" context: I believe his bosses likely considered the offer they made him to be a plum. My ex-employer had a similar terminal outcome for distinguished engineers, where you'd be given a laboratory, perhaps an assistant or two, and total freedom. Is that a particularly compelling terminal offer? No. But it's an offer better than 99.8% of employees in the engineering track have. The mere fact that it is obviously better than what 99.8% of engineers get is a component of the offer; Japanese megacorps figure out that giving you money to purchase status is inefficient when they can simply award you status directly.)
Right but I had in mind your other point that a lot of the compensation is in the form of the benefits of having the business card, although I guess that wouldn’t have any value in terms of a promotion while staying at the same workplace.
I knew a guy who worked in the university IT department where I did my post-grad. He made more there than in Japan, and the cost of living was insanely low.
Doesn’t this come with perks like life long job security, retirement etc? I had heard that in Japan, working for a traditional company is like getting married.
Not the OP, but a 45,000 yen apartment in a city centre is likely to be quite small (essentially a studio apartment). It really depends on the city, though. You might be able to get a 1 bedroom for that in an older building.
Apartments in Japan tend to be small and having lived in various places in the world, I'm going to say that it is not really comparable. For example, no matter what you rent, you are going to get a stupidly small kitchen: probably a single sink, 0.5 meter counter top and a place to put a konro (2 burner gas range with a fish grill).
Apart from the kitchen (which takes a lot of practice to get used to), the bath room/wash rooms tend to make very efficient use of space. If you are living in Japanese style, you also put your futons away in the closet during the day and can live in what would be your bedroom.
I live in a rural area and since I work remotely, I wanted an office in the apartment. We tried to get a 3 bedroom apartment (so we would have a guest room as well), but it was just impossible. Nobody could even understand why a childless couple could possibly use that much space.
So it's more a matter of culture than price. In large centres you actually have a lot more choice. For example when I visit Tokyo, I often see advertisements for 4 bedroom luxury apartments. They are about the same price as you would pay in any other metropolitan centre in the world. However, things like that just aren't available in a lot of smaller places. You pretty much have to buy a house.
My place is about 40sqm, which is quite big for a single person in Japan. My place before was in a similar location but 25sqm and is quite representative of a Japanese single occupancy apartments.
My place is 70 square meters, which is unusually small for a one bedroom where I live in NY. For instance, there is no separate dining room. My former apartment was more like 84 square meters.
well if it is cold it is "cold rent" than it's a little bit cheaper than a rent in a city center in germany. (actually german city centers are totally overpriced).
I live in 57 sqm (not in a city) and pay 300€ warm rent, which is extremly cheap even that it is outside a city.
It's really not much better in the U.S. or elsewhere. I believe it was Nokia which had a patent program where it was a $500 bonus per patent. Meaning, even if you invented something - that was your bonus.
In my current role we have a similar program, beyond the relatively small bonus I think the only benefit is bragging rights. Patenting or inventing something means little to superiors. Large companies focus on the short term stategic initiatives, often being unable to capitalize on long term or even short term opportunities. That's why more nimble startups are more effective.
The patent bonus at Nokia was just that, a patent bonus; the purpose of the program was to systematically collect a large portfolio of patents; such a patent mass is used in IPR negotiations with other technology giants. Those patents were mass-produced - I got paid for one too - but I wouldn't call them "inventions".
There were other, substantially larger bonuses for innovations made by staff, when these innovations had larger economical impact (for instance, optimizing the production line).
The inventors of synthetic diamonds at General Electric didn't receive anything other than their normal wage (perhaps a little bonus, I don't remember).
Same in my EU based company (~600 ppl, owned by a large conglomerate ), we are encouraged to come up with all kinds of BS to patent for a one time bonus of i believe 1000$ or 1500$ and your name on the patent
> [...] come up with all kinds of BS to patent [...]
I guess that that is the point. I worked for a similar company. They were not interested in groundbreaking one-of-a-kind patent. They were looking for something to use as a countermeasure if another company in the same sector sues them.
A new chemical process, a new antibiotic, or something of that scale can be used to create a new successful product, save lives, etc. Patents were designed to make sure that companies could profit from them, but that the knowledge was not lost just because they keep it secret.
In software development, I have seen a lot of "method to send content to a remote storage using gesture-based commands" (this one is made up). When they just mean that a developer implemented a drag & drop touch functionality for the phone that sends a file to a server. A necessary implementation, but hardly an invention as any developer will come with a similar solution in minutes if presented with the problem.
I don't think the bonus was the issue so much as the career path. He left Toshiba after being "promoted" into a position where he had no subordinates and no budget.
> I believe it was Nokia which had a patent program where it was a $500 bonus per patent. Meaning, even if you invented something - that was your
The one patent per Scrum sprint program, bred a whole encyclopedia of "apparatus or algorithm for searching, publishing, or displaying a thing within another thing" patents.
I had a friend whose father was getting royalties for some chemical manufacturing process that he came up with. I recall that royalties were planned to be a major component of his retirement.
I wonder if it used to be better. I have heard of one company where engineers would get some percentage of savings or increased revenue if they came up with something. Then somebody got a several hundred thousand dollar award and the program got cancelled. I have received $500 for an idea what got valued at $2 million during the award ceremony.
It was better at my employer in the mid-2000's. Systems process projects (6-sigma stuff) paid out to stakeholders in the project proportional to the measured cost savings in results. The payouts were similarly cancelled not because of large payouts, but more so for chasing cost-savings instead of product improbements.
It's interesting that for execs big bonuses for good work are considered motivational and necessary whereas for the little guy good work doesn't need to be rewarded because it would add cost.
My understanding is that Japan has some of the smartest professionals, and yet very tough (unrewarding?) work conditions, especially in the megacorps.
If so, it appears that there is room for foreign companies/startups (US, or even Chinese) to establish office in Japan and recruit away the best people with better pay/perks/vacation time/etc. Sort of "recruiting arbitrage." Heck, the same happened in the US in the past 10-15 years with a relatively small number of firms siphoning off the best talent.
Curious if there are any examples of that (e.g. I know that Google has an office in Tokyo, but I don't know what kind of work they do.)
Quitting a typical salaryman job is a tough mental and cultural barrier for a lot of Japanese, so the best bet would be to hire new grads or young people. Even then, it might be tougher than it looks.
That said, megacorps in Japan offer "perks" that American, especially tech companies, do not offer. See patio's post (scroll down to the "The company hereby promises the employee" section) for some examples:
I assume a big barrier for this is job security. If I've understood correctly, quitting a company stamps you as a no-hire for other megacorps. And knowing western tendencies of firing people on business downturns, that may not be a tempting proposition.
As a guy in Japanese traditional Soft company, what your idea has acheived by Big Company such as Accenture, they has Company called Avanade for this opportunity. Besides best talented Japanese just don’t learn Computer Science, they go to consultant and financial company or NTT, NEC, Hitachi, Fujitsu which main business is not software product( Actually they are manufacturer)
Salaries in Europe are also very low for software developers. In Germany you will make on average 50-60K euro per year as a senior software developer. After tax this is less than 3000 euro per month. Similar situation in the UK. This is the reason why not a single company from Europe reached the TOP-10 in the world by market cap. Talents are moving away from Europe. According to news I read, 140000 people leaving Germany each year, especially people with high qualification.
You have to take into account the different workload and priorities. The average annual rate of hours worked in Germany is 1300 hours roughly. In the US it's 1800 hours, eclipsing even Japan. That's more than three full months of additional work.
Germans usually express a preference for long-term stable employment and work-life balance rather than skyrocketing salaries. The same is true for a lot of European countries.
Keep in mind that the "official" work hours reported in Japan are bogus because many Japanese workers do not report overtime, nor do they report the hours they feel obligated to spend with their team after work hours.
Work-life balance for software engineers is a bit better in the US than it is in Japan.
No way you can use 1300 hours average to compare with 50~60K average salary.
I just assume you took this number off the OECD chart which explicitly states that you can't compare between countries because they have different methods of evaluating the numbers. (Ironically I have only seen country-comparisons from this data)
You won't get anywhere near 1300 hours without counting all part-time, half-time workers who obviously don't get the full salary. The standard is 40 hours per week (37.5 if generous) with 30 days of paid vacation. That is 1700+ hours per year.
175k even if you refer to the study "International Mobil" using 2009-2013 timefame [1]. 140k of those come back, they calculate 25k Germans net leaving per year. 70% are high qualified. The study says salary is not the main factor [2]. The 25k are offset by equal immigration from other EU countries [3]
You also pay less for rent, less for food, less for your internet bill, less for your phone bill than in America.
In the end if you live in SF vs Germany you might earn twice as much, but you spend 3 times as much. In Seattle it's maybe a better factor, but that's one of the few places with worse weather than Germany.
And then you have to account for 4 weeks less vacation, no paid overtime (or overtime as time off). I usually do two 3 week vacations a year and 2 weeks over Christmas. It's not only pay that counts.
The amazing thing is, it appears, that they still manage to get people from the US. A significant portion of my Linkedin spam is coming from EU/UK recruiters who evidently believe they have a chance to poach people from here. I figure they would not have been doing this if there were no takers.
And terribly expensive rents, at least in big cities like Munich. Many engineers would like to move to US, but it’s much harder than to move to some other less expensive place within EU.
Chip engineers abandoned Hitachi, NEC, Sony and other Japanese electronics companies in droves, starting in the second half of the 1990s. Samsung Electronics of South Korea hired many on favorable terms ...
Apparently, in the 1980s, Japan used to outlaw Japanese engineers traveling to South Korea to advise South Korean companies. Ultimately, this strategy failed.
I wanted to hire someone that worked for a local Japanese company to come and work at my startup. Just handed then an offer letter that was 2x their current pay package. Done. Still cheaper then US package. It is sad what very good sr. people get paid in Japan. Makes it much simpler to hire them away.
"Unhappy with what he saw as Toshiba's failure to reward his work, Masuoka quit to become a professor at Tohoku University."
That is a weird choice, considering that he was looking for a better recognition.
He should have pursued a career at one of competitor firms, possibly in the US.
When I was first introduced to this concept, someone pointed out this partly indicates why 3D printing innovations are introduced by US firms and often then refined by German or other coordinated market economy-based firms.
I remember my toshiba laptop as one of the best laptops I've owned. Solid construction, no skimping on components and stellar service. When it was time to upgrade I didn't find anything comparable, went with an HP that literally melted from its own heat within a year.
That's what I thought as well about HP, just anecdata, but every single HP I had (3 of them in total) broke within a year, for various reasons. I always thought it was just a coincidence, but then I got a Toshiba in 2014 and it's as good as new still.
I am not suggesting that Toshiba (or other tech fossils) has the right culture when it comes to dealing with its engineering talent .. BUT .. If a company is de-risking the process of inventing/commercializing a new solution for its engineers, then they are entitled to the IP.
"A team led by Masuoka paved the way for the practical application of flash memory. The team was small when it was created in the 1980s, with an annual budget in the hundreds of thousands of dollars."
Asking for a bonus as an engineer for doing your job well is like begging for tips for waiting tables! If you don't think you are being compensated well for your skillset and you can get a better deal elsewhere then quit!
If one thinks they have a great idea that would be incredibly profitable, they should quit their job and develop it on their own dime. I have a background in micro/nanofabrication and highly doubt that Mr. Masuoka could have done what he did in his garage, without the state of the art fab technology available at Toshiba at the time.
A piece of advice to startup founders, always ALWAYS have a "propriety rights agreement" in place with whomever you work (contractors, employees, interns), detailing the ownership status of the IP created as a result of the collaboration. Without one, this could be a potential show-stopper later on when you are looking for outside investments and going through due diligence.
Quitting is culturally not very well accepted in Japan. The expectation is that you work for the same company your whole career and in turn the company takes care of you.
Credit doesn’t need to be monetary. It’s the same when a team of developers develop a product that (say) wins awards and a group of managers collect the prize at a fancy gala with no developer present.
If you want more money you can just find a better offer. But some times you just want a fair share of credit.
I realize my employer might own the IP - but if I make some breakthrough making billions for my employer they could e.g give me a nice diploma in a plastic frame, or have me speak 30 minutes at an internal event about the discovery.
I think these things are often forgotten. It’s very easy for a manager to send an email saying “Bob’s new feature landed us a contract worth 10M! Great job Bob and everyone else”.
> if I make some breakthrough making billions for my employer
That is a completely hypothetical situation and always never happens in the real world. Billion dollar ideas take many years to develop and many more failed attempts to successfully commercialize with lots of highly skilled individuals contributing to the project.
In a well-run company, nobody is irreplaceable. Research is always incremental with everyone adding a little bit to the work done by their predecessors. Breakthroughs do not happen in a vacuum.
As the article mentions: "But Masuoka was not around to enjoy that success. He left Toshiba in 1994, before commercial production of the chips got rolling. A decade later, Masuoka filed a lawsuit against Toshiba, demanding 1 billion yen in compensation for his work in developing flash memory."
Turns out Toshiba got along just fine after Masuka rage quit. Do you think if the technology failed (which happens all the time) Musaka would come back a decade later to ask for ¥1bn?
The only thing that is rewarded in business is RISK. The founders who quit their cushy jobs to start a company out of their garage or the early stage investor who took a chance on this untested and unproven venture and put their capital at risk are the true movers and shakers.
If you are not putting your time and capital at risk you should not expect to be making billions of $.
By the same logic, CEOs shouldn't be paid much, since they can't create much value themselves, they can only leverage other people's work. If they want to be paid well, they should strike out on their own and do stuff themselves.
The CEO, unless they are also the founder, is just an employee too. They are not a risk-taker or an innovator, they are just a manager. Everyone forgets that. Maybe they could be paid 10x as much as an entry-level employer but 100 or 500 or 1000x is insane
That's right. People also seem to come up with the point that the manager can make a huge difference to the company, but they forget that can also mean a huge negative difference. Ordinary employees tend not to be able to destroy a company on their own.
Wouldn't that imply you should be far more careful and selective with your choice of CEO since they can do much more damage? If anything I'd use this as an argument to pay as much as you can afford for the "best". Anything less poses significant risk of damage to the company.
Depends on how that tradeoff works. If you wanted to push up CEO salaries, certainly. But you could as well see that recruitment due diligence is of limited power.
Since you don't agree with the ethical side, think about it this way: if you're not known in the industry for paying bonuses for successful projects and inventions, why should any brilliant engineer look forward to work for you? Not to mention that there will be no motivation among your employees to perform more than the absolute minimum work required to keep their job.
Consider whether you would like to own 80% of a failing company or 30% of a widely successful one.
"no motivation among your employees to perform more than the absolute minimum work required to keep their job"
There is a great body of research suggesting quite the opposite actually. Beyond a certain level of compensation, offering more money does not correlate with better productivity or creativity at all.
Those who are satisfied with doing the absolute minimum to keep a 9-5 job are not suddenly turned into great inventors if offered more money. I have often found that the most valuable engineers are their absolute worst critic when it comes to quality of work and work ethics. They would put in their absolute best even if they were doing something for free/opensource.
> Those who are satisfied with doing the absolute minimum to keep a 9-5 job are not suddenly turned into great inventors if offered more money.
That may be true, but that doesn't mean the converse isn't true, which is what's being alleged here, that a great inventor can be turned into an absolute-minimum employee when given insufficient reward.
More specifically, I think you're conflating the typical "inventives" that employers use (which I what I believe the studies have been about) with credit, respect, and/or an ownership stake. Even the article has a quote about it being not about the money.
> They would put in their absolute best even if they were doing something for free/opensource.
I'm speculating here, but I would expect that would change if they had to do that contribution under someone else's name, especially if that someone else were a manager and not an engineer.
> A great inventor can be turned into an absolute-minimum employee when given insufficient reward
Absolutely true.
> Even the article has a quote about it being not about the money.
I don't think that is the case. "Unhappy with what he saw as Toshiba's failure to reward his work, Masuoka quit to become a professor at Tohoku University." He was very well compensated AND given full credit and even allowed to publish his work.
It was ABSOLUTELY about the money! As the article mentions: "He left Toshiba in 1994, before commercial production of the chips got rolling. A decade later, Masuoka filed a lawsuit against Toshiba, demanding 1 billion yen in compensation for his work in developing flash memory."
"Masuoka had told the court in 2004 that he believed ¥1bn ($9.1m) was appropriate compensation for the contribution his inventions had made to Toshiba's profits"
> I would expect that would change if they had to do that contribution under someone else's name ...
Again, absolutely true. But that was not the case here at all. If anything we should recognize that Masuoka was the lead scientist for a team of engineers, that means he had a more managerial role and other junior engineers actually did the work.
I don't think we really disagree on anything. I just hate it when people take out their pitchforks and go after the "big, bad corporations" every time one of these articles hits HN :/. Japanese culture is very different than what we in the west are accustomed to and the situation is a lot more complicated than just blaming all on the evil CEOs.
Many called Masuoka greedy at the time.
He was unfazed by the critics. "Money is not the issue," Masuoka said. "I just want to continue with research and development. Japanese engineers must be rewarded."
It's as though you're trying to make the point that, because money is a factor, it's the (or only) factor. That doesn't jibe with the totality of the story, nor with, more importantly, the research, with which you're obviously aware, since you brought it up in the first place.
It's also pretty easy to point out a money motive in the face of a civil lawsuit, as one can't sue (directly) for respect. That he eventually settled for less than 1/10th the amount he sued for suggests (to me, anyway) that it was more a shaming/publicity exercise than a money-making one.
> If anything we should recognize that Masuoka was the lead scientist for a team of engineers, that means he had a more managerial role and other junior engineers actually did the work.
I didn't see this mentioned anywhere, especially with regard to the invention. As such, I'm not willing to make any such huge leaps of assumption.
> I just hate it when people take out their pitchforks and go after the "big, bad corporations" every time one of these articles hits HN :/.
I'm curious as to why you perceive there being some kind of mob mentality ("pitchforks") and which comments here have name-called corporations.
I find it very relevant to discuss the compensation (monetary and otherwise) of highly productive (or potentially so.. "talented") employees and how they are allocated, usually a question of where/what they choose to work on. Personally, I find it worth the occasional emotion or blame-mongering creeping in.
> Japanese culture is very different than what we in the west are accustomed to and the situation is a lot more complicated than just blaming all on the evil CEOs.
That's as may be, but also somewhat irrelevant to the discussion, since, ultimately, it doesn't matter who/what is to "blame", at least not to the engineers, not if they have a choice. Increasingly, especially with the globalized labor market, they do.
> Not to mention that there will be no motivation among your employees to perform more than the absolute minimum work required to keep their job.
If that is the reason you pay a bonus, then you already lost. People will just do the minimum required to achieve he bonus requirements and will not keep the companies interest in mind. I’ve seen places where people prioritized stuff that was no longer in the companies interest, but made them eligible for a bonus.
You could just as well fold the bonus into the fixed salary and be better off in most cases.
It’s practically impossible to guarantee the alignment unless the bonus is a flat out share of the profits or paid after an employee has performed in an extraordinary fashion without any pre-written bonus agreement. But any kind of variable payment agreement might be in perfect alignment with the companies goals at its inception by runs a substantial risk of loosing the alignment over time. Company goals change over time.
It’s totally ok if you feel like a bonus should be paid to an employee for achieving something special, but if your employees do not go beyond the bare minimum that keeps them their job, you’re in a kind of trouble that a bonus payment cannot fix.
That is what we have stock options for .. to align the best (longterm) interests of the company and the employees. It is much better vehicle to build value for both parties than a bonus culture.
I agree that's what stock options are for, but I disagree that, in practice, they have that effect.
I think it's important to differentiate between a "meanginful" share of the company and stock options in general. For the average engineer, joining after employee #10 where founder allocated 10% to an ever-diluting option pool, that doesn't seem likely.
Perhaps public companies' profit-sharing plans are closer to the mark, except that an individual employee is so much less likely to have the power to "move the needle" on profit that even that's questionable.
Except that as an engineer, you can stick with improving or enhancing existing processes, or aim to do something utterly revolutionary. Either way, you’ll be doing your job.
Those who make a multi-billion dollar division most definitely should be very well compensated. The CEO sure is.
Without talent like Masuoka, it really wouldn’t matter that there is advanced fab technology. You need skilled and talented people to use those things in creative ways.
