Japan "Running Out of Engineers"

bfwebster writes "A story in the New York Times reports that Japan, a country that rebuilt itself as a technological power after World War II, now faces an increasing shortage of college graduates with degrees in science and engineering. Says the article: 'By one ministry of internal affairs estimate, the digital technology industry here is already short almost half a million engineers.' The article goes on to point out that the overall trend of waning interest in science and technology has been going on for 'almost two decades' and that the shortage is made worse by the traditional reluctance of Japanese companies to hire and use foreign workers. The US has had a similar trend for quite some time: 'Undergraduate engineering enrollment declined through most of the 1980s and 1990s, rose from 2000 through 2003, and declined slightly in recent years.'"

Comments

Also a matter of rewards, I guess

[Moraelin]

It's also a matter of

A) rewards. If you're going to put 10x more work into something, then you'd expect the rewards to be worth it. That doesn't mean only salaries (though that sure helps too), but also stuff like overall job quality, social recognition of your efforts, etc. I'd say that in the west, for various reasons and to various degrees, all of those gradually declined.

We went for example from a culture which put its intellectual elites on pedestals, to a culture where being technically illiterate or even outright stupid, is cool and fashionable. In fact, if you show any intelectual interests or aptitudes, it's kinda mean of you and insensitive to your below-average neighbours/classmates/etc.

In programming alone we went from being those wizards doing high tech stuff, to being outright disconsidered. Nowadays for the average outsider it's not "I don't know how to do the things he does", it's more like "I have a life, I don't have time for that crap" or "yeah, the neighbour's 12 year old can do that kind of stuff." The idea from the 90's that you can just retrain an unemployed pizza-delivery-guy or burger flipper off the street, and he'll be just as good as those snotty CS and engineering graduates anyway, also didn't do much for recognition. It was hammered in everyone's head that you _are_ no better than him, and he could have had your job too if only he could be arsed to take one of those two-week java courses.

Now not all countries are at the same point, and not all went in that direction as fast, but that was the general direction all went slowly.

That's one reason to put in the extra effort, that went down the drain right there. For a lot of people that criterion is now actually a disincentive, since all that extra effort might actually _lower_ their prestige in the community instead of raising it.

B) Rampant age-ism also doesn't help. Back then, sure, I was young, I thought I'd never get old. When 15 years is your entire life so far, and you probably remember only 10, living another 45 years to 60 seems like a bloody eternity. No point worrying about something _that_ far in the future. Now I see perfectly competent programmers pushed aside or into a corner, because some PHB learned the mantra that only the smart young kids are any good.

If I had a kid, I'd tell him to stay well away of that field. Chances are you _will_ live to _at_ _least_ your 40's, even if you chain-smoke and get to twice your idea weight and go alcoholic too. If you want a job where you start being discriminated against as early as the 30's, heck, go into prostitution or porn instead. (And considering some bosses I've occasionally seen, prostitution might even be the more dignified job.)

C) It's also a matter of, well, excitement.

In all science or engineering domains, there was a time where it looked like there's so much interesting stuff to do or discover, and only the sky is the limit. (Or in aerospace not even the sky.)

In programming, for example, when I looked at some primitive games or programs on the old ZX-81 or later ZX-Spectrum, I thought, "I can do better." Often I actually could. Heck, I could even paint my own sprites by hand, although I'm no graphics artist, and they still looked good enough at that resolution.

Nowadays, if I look at a modern game, well, there's just not the same sensation. Duly noted, nowadays about half can be modded, so you can still tempt someone to programming that way. But for a while even that wasn't the case.

Ok, so that's only games, but the same applies to any other programming domain. At some point you could have been the guy who created the next big language, wrote the OS for some underpowered mini, or did the next great maths thing with a computer, or designed the next computer itself, or whatever. Nowadays you'll be a cog in a 20-people team writing the front-end to some database app.

Or if we move away from programming, as I was saying, the same applies to any other engineering domain. At one point we

Re:Also a matter of rewards, I guess

[SageMusings]

As someone who lived 9 years in Japan, allow to amplify that comment. You can speak the language embrace the culture, and breathe local community activites. However, you will always be an outsider and something less than a valuable memeber of any organization in the way that people need to copier machine but never praise it nor think about it after hours.

I love Japan. But do not expect that love to come back to you. God help you if you are of Korean descent, too. They treat them like trash.

Outsourcing to Japan

[dido]

Funny, I just got back from the SODEC trade show in Tokyo last week promoting our company's outsourcing services... As someone whose company which is engaged in providing software outsourcing services to Japanese companies, I can personally attest to the barriers to entry involved in doing this. Language is a serious one: while we would like to think that we are motivated enough to try to learn, it is a very tough language to try to master, and misunderstandings can be costly. We were humbled when we were handed a Japanese software specification which took us a month to reasonably understand but a only week to implement and test. Japanese also seem to have an entrenched attitude of looking down on foreigners, and having more than a little skepticism that the people in companies such as ours will be able to adapt to their ways of thinking and doing things. So far, we haven't seriously disappointed our existing customers, but still, even a brick-headed software engineer like me can sense their skepticism. They are also a lot less flexible than other outsourcing markets that we have had the experience of working with. These are some of the problems that we've encountered, but still, we do think that going into the market for the long haul will be profitable. They really have few choices to remedy their situation with the way things are going.

Rubbish. I don't buy it.

[Qbertino]

I've been hearing this litany in Germany for quite some time now. Not enough expert workers, no engineers, no IT people, Jada-Jada-Jada. Every 5 years or so the industry goes through the same bullshiting ritual.
How else is it then that I'm struggling to survive as a freelance Software Developer with 8 years of experience under my belt? Why is it that I'm not even considered because I don't have a grade - allthough I can easyly out-develop any graduate I've met?

This whining is nothing but a salary lowering measure. The best that will happen for true experts is that salaries and benefits will reach the old levels.

Not as simple as it seems.

[v(*_*)vvvv]

Comp sci has been an achilles heel in Japanese education.

Not even at the college level will you find decent computer courses that can mass produce decent programmers. Japanese is naturally a less abstraction oriented language, and in school, they get attached to the details and technicalities, making the courses boring, difficult, and alienating, not to mention unproductive. What they really need to teach is how to abstract those details away and how to be constructive. This is done creatively, not logically.

Then there is the whole video game situation. These programmers don't mix with other industries, so it acts like a huge black hole for programming talent by not sharing their talent pool with the software industry.

Overpriced and incompetent, software houses in Japan have wrecked havok on Japanese businesses since day one, and now pretty much everyone is just scared to try anything.

Re:This is 100% a money issue in Japan

[kklein]

I teach at a foreign language university in the Tokyo area. My students get hired to become software engineers pretty regularly. No experience. No interest. They just scored right on the company aptitude test.

See, that's the thing that every single person on this thread is misunderstanding: In Japan, university is just a kind of finishing school. You work your ass off to get in, then play guitar in a band or play American football or some other club activity for 3 years, then spend your last year of university going to cattle-call interviews for all the companies you're interested in. You should probably have your job--the job you will have until you retire, I might add--worked out by about the beginning of your last semester.

Companies do not look at your GPA. They don't look at your transcripts. All they really care about is the name of your school and how you interviewed and how you did on the aptitude test. If they want you, they'll make an offer, and if you take it, they will take care of the rest.

For the rest of your life.

All you have to give in return is, well, the rest of your life. All of it. Every waking hour (and by the time they're done with you, that might be 20 a day). Until you're a hollowed out shell of a human who hates life and chainsmokes through rotten teeth in a stained suit at a barbecued chicken place, slamming back beer and shochu until you've worked up enough of a drunk to stumble back to your home and crash, avoiding all contact with the family you barely know, but despise nonetheless.

Okay, that's a bit of satire, but there's some truth in it, to be sure.

If I were a Japanese kid today, I'd be one of these supposed "dropouts" (called "freeters," for some reason) who just run from temp job to temp job and moonlight at a bar. They make enough money to be happy, not enough to have to pay that much in taxes or health insurance, and they can have a life anytime they want.

Who the hell would want to be a salaryman in Japan?

The likely problem, I think, is that Japanese corporate culture has finally been rejected by the generation of kids who have grown up knowing nothing but the rich Japan and don't have the fearful, hard-headed, overworking mentality of their parents.

That's my reading of the situation, anyway.

Re:Germany has been there for more than a decade..

[alexgieg]

The Japanese aren't interested in bringing foreigners into the country. They prefer Japan to have its culture preserved no matter what the price. Thus, to compensate for the shortage of people due to the population becoming old and having less and less children, they prefer to invest strongly in robotics. Nowadays there are personal robots over there to do things, such as house cleaning and other unpleasant jobs, that in countries which opt for immigration are left to immigrants.

I'm not saying they're right or wrong, it's just the way they want it to be, and it's different from the way chosen by Europe or the USA. But one thing is certain: by pursuing this policy Japan has no "risk" of becoming "less Japanese" over time, while Europe is slowly becoming more Slavic, Arabic, Latin etc. each day. Whether "going international" is ultimately good or bad for Europe on the long term, or whether "going ethnic" is ultimately good or bad for Japan on the long term, is something we'll only discover when that long term is over.

Re:Regular degrees are simpler

[mikael]

Spain has a law that entry-level Spanish engineers must be paid half the salary of an engineer with several years experience. As a a consequence many choose to work abroad for their first few years then return once their salaries are no longer capped by the government.

According to this article, students are choosing to take law school courses instead, and get paid a more rewarding salary which leads directly to management than a long route which only leads to becoming a wage-slave.

Re:I think I'm turning Japanese

[atamagabakkaomae]

Foreign engineers really can't keep pace with the Japanese engineers here.

It's the running around in circles. In a way he is right. I study for a PhD in robotics here in Tokyo. My fellow students are in most ways incredibly good at what they are doing (better than me most of the time). But what is their handicap is that they have this really fussy, maybe typically Japanese way of doing things. They want to plan things perfectly and they want to do things perectly all the time. Everyone stick to the rules please!

So they have a hard time dealing with fuzzy planning which is very important in everyday engineering work (especially if your boss has no idea what he is talking about). So thats when the marooning (maru in Japanese =circle) starts.

So maybe Japan needs more engineers because the current number does not work efficiently enough.
Also foreigners can easily enter a company or any university here in Japan. Only requirement (except being an ok engineer): reading, writing, speaking Japanese. And takes a while to learn.. :(