Cultural differences in companies in Japan
I have just started my new job in a rather new company. This company makes home appliances and I am joining as design development or maybe R&D engineer. I do not know yet as I am not told about the title yet. I only know that based on the job description, it is like R&D, or design development engineer or manager. First impression in this company is that everyone seems to be rather occupied, there is only one employee as others have gone outstation in another country to support product development. The same day, the boss returned from outstation, and then he spent an hour describing company details, and also briefed me the job contract.
After that I continued assisting the engineer who was preparing various documents and material for his outstation the next day. He mentioned that he worked until early morning the day before, so I thought maybe I should help him so he could go outstation and also get a bit of rest before that.
It is 14th today, and I have worked here for 2 weeks. I could see the differences compared to previous work place. The previous company started as trading company, and then recent few years attempted at making their own products and therefore hired me 2.5years ago to design and develop products. The boss used to work as sales and maybe project management in a massive Japanese trading firm, and now I slowly understands better why there are differences of the previous and current company.
Current company is started by someone who worked as engineer, then manager, then vice president in a home appliances manufacturer. He then went on to the GM or vice president of companies before starting the current company. Other colleagues seem to be from his previous company, and so I guess the colleagues here might have knew one another in previous company and the boss just gathered them and started the current company. So I think there is quite a big difference working with someone from sales background as compared to someone from engineering background.
One obvious difference is that in dealing with project, the person I report to could estimate one person able to take on how many projects and therefore could estimate how many engineers necessary, and how many manpower required, what help is required to do projects etc. I could recall that in previous company, the boss could just say do this or do that, and it is easy, not to spend a lot of time, etc, then he would then wanted to do many things, and the priority on projects are quite haphazard too. When there are customers, the priority would quickly shifted to fire-fighting, when there are potential customers asking about another product, then the priority would shift to that. Other time, the priority might change also due to different seasons, or due to different things boss read on magazine, newspaper, or internet.
In a certain way, after working 2 weeks, I have certain peace of mind as mainly the expectations and workload placed on me is still reasonable and predictable. I would also spend time making product and parts drawing, considering how to solve certain technical issues, discuss about technical problem of projects. I guess I just love dealing with technical issues, but I need to make sure I would also learn on project management, dealing with people, and learn on people skills.
When there are admin issues that arises, it would be dealed with easily and quickly and no one likes to dwell long amount of time on details on admin tasks. I believe this is still early to conclude anything and I shall continue to record more time working and dealing with projects.
