Working as System Engineer in Japan: After reading “Doing Business in Japan” by Patrick McKenzie

This article is all about my experience working as system engineer in Tokyo, inspired by Doing Business In Japan by Patrick McKenzie and the translated version by Shu Uesugi.

I am Japanese and used to work at IT company, which is often categorized as “System Integrator,” in Tokyo for about 4 years, and am now studying in Canada. Following case is based on my experience in only one company, and my friends regarded the company as “having so much better working condition compared with the standard in the industry”.

What I was doing?

In Japan, term “system engineer” is ambiguous. It does not always mean the engineer is engaged in engineering like software development, as Mr. McKenzie says;

“tasks which actually require programming with magically route around them, and they’ll end up doing things like leading 6 hour planning meetings and producing spreadsheets. Lots and lots of spreadsheets.”

This is partly true, especially for companies undertaking system development from large enterprise, not for in house developers.

In my case, I was engaged in billing system development for telecom companies, but mainly doing budget controlling and negotiation with clients. I could spend very small amount of time for programming. Actually, most of “system engineers” in the company are not focusing on the narrow sense of “engineering”, and only those who at R&D department and related one do. But fortunately, my boss gave me as much experience as possible to engage in system engineering such as system integration and security issue project.

Why it happens?

It is partly because the companies does not build a team as necessary for projects. For most of companies in Japan adopt a certain recruiting system called Simultaneous recruiting of new graduates and also Japan keeps strict rules to discharge employees. As a result, production process of software which requires more project staffs, is outsourced to companies where employ mainly programmers and dispatch them on demand.

So, what the new grads are required? Directors and HR department often said, understand our tradition, business process, and find business frontier. Some of them even mentioned a few months experience in software development is enough to start tackling what they want.

I know it had a little exaggeration to emphasize, but there is no homage to technology.

Excellence in the practice of engineering?

As the author wrote

While raw programming ability might not be highly valued at many  Japanese companies, and engineers are often not in positions of  authority, there is nonetheless a commitment to excellence in the  practice of engineering.

exemplifying checklists for server maintenance. This reminded me of my friend’s experience, who working in Canada, that he had been surprised to see for his co-worker deploying resources into production environment without a certain procedure or assuming trouble case.

In my previous job, this kind of preparation was considered as matter of course to keep quality of work (to speak straightforward, “to standardize quality of work”). Bad side? Directors started to request “explanatory document for checklists,” “checklist for checklists,” and “evidence to prove the sufficiency of checklists.” These documentations are obviously not for engineering but for excuses when something would go wrong, that is, to state “I did everything not to cause any trouble, but…”

This is really depends on how directors understand software development or architecture, or regard as important “political game” in the society. Surprisingly, some people in management position proudly spoke out “I never and ever trust the concept of cloud computing. It is hard to understand” or “We cannot explain the issue without the documentations. Superior authorities do not have any sense of system architecture.” It was a true story in 2010s at Information and Technology Industry.

What the company promises the employee?

To tell the truth, the promises depend on the department, or project team. Large companies like hiring more than 5000 employees have different culture and people in each department. In my case, they provided 20 paid holiday in a year, limited excessive work time and did not require unofficial form of service, with a certain level of welfare program / social status / job security. Thankfully, I had time to study English and am studying abroad.

Talking about unfortunate case, some of my colleagues in other departments were required to work without paid holiday and they provided “whatever form of service” which did not deserve to do as work, I thought.

How About in Canada?

So far, I only experienced working at one company / one country. I hope to have enough experience here and would post the difference to compare even in cultural level.