My employer only had a profit of $850,000,000 last quarter instead of the anticipated $860,000,000.

edit: that's not a joke, that's real, those are actual numbers rounded to the nearest ten million.

This caused the line to remain flat instead of going up, and the line has only doubled in height in the last four years instead of tripling or quadrupling, so the executives decided to lay off half of the overhead staff to prove that they're doing something to turn around this sinking ship.

Now we have mechanical engineers troubleshooting PDM login issues instead of system administrators.

The PE jackals slowly tearing apart the still-living body of this century-old company are very pleased.

It seems to an outside observer who has done some limited in-country contract work for Japanese aerospace firms that Japanese companies face less of this type of pressure.

I have experience (directly and via friends) at international companies with offices in Japan. When they announce layoffs, they immediately lay off their US employees. A month or so later, they lay off their European employees after going through some process. The Japanese employees are safe though because apparently it's very difficult (or impossible) to lay off Japanese employees. However, they will tell the Japanese employees they're having layoffs to trick them into quitting voluntarily.

It’s harder to fire people in Japan and Europe compared to USA.

The downside is that it is extremely hard for new grads with no experience to get their first job in Japan and Europe compares to USA.

I’m not sure if giving up on PS exclusives is going to cause difficulties for Square Enix at all.

I mean, I used to have a PS Vita and I enjoyed Japanese games such as the Neptunia series and Akiba’s Trip 2 and Persona 4 Golden. Most games like that come out on Steam these days.

Back in the day porting was difficult but there is no major technical difference between the current XBOX and PS and a gaming PC. Even the Switch is not all that different except it is much lower spec and requires more optimization.

Making exclusives in 2024 is just a choice to go out of business.*

In Japan, new graduates, known as "shinsotsu," have a unique opportunity to secure jobs without relevant experience beyond their schoolwork. In contrast, mid-career hires, called "cyuto-saiyo," are selected based on their skills. However, within companies, rank is determined by tenure, so unless hired specifically as a manager, even experienced hires start at the bottom, regardless of their age and experience. This age-based hierarchy is reminiscent of the traditional lifetime employment system, which persists in some conservative companies.

This system makes it relatively difficult to find jobs elsewhere, creating a negative feedback loop where employees might feel compelled to stay despite poor treatment. This is why many tolerate long working hours and unfavorable conditions. Additionally, some companies make it difficult for employees to resign, leading to the rise of resignation proxies who represent individuals in the resignation process.

Wages are also much lower in Japan than the USA. Average Japanese software developer salary is 32,164.34 USD [1]. Even accounting for purchasing power parity, it's still only ~40-50K. That's peanuts. I made $110K straight out of college, with another $100k through equity. I did get lucky through equity (at the strike price, my RSUs would only have been ~50k per year) but even excluding equity that's over twice the average Japanese developer salary for a new grad.

https://www.tokyodev.com/articles/software-developer-salarie...

> The downside is that it is extremely hard for new grads with no experience to get their first job in … and Europe compares to USA.

Not sure about Japan or rest of EU, but in Germany, landing a SWE with no prior experience beyond basics(watched some videos on YouTube and wrote some HTML/CSS in notepad) in larger corps is easy. Firing is also simple(2 weeks notice) during first 6 months probation period.