Just want to get something off my chest and ask you to share your experience.
I was infatuated with Japan (especially, Japanese engineering) and enchanted by Japan before I joined a Japanese company in the West and observed their ways of working along with the behaviour on the workfloor.
All-piercing bullying, wide-spread sucking up to higher-up, pretending to work and making long hours of this pretend game and a complete discouragement from showing any initiative (thus, absence of any initiative as a result) — is just a tip of the iceberg.
In my 2.5 years there I observed many Europeans and Americans joining the branches of this company in their corresponding countries, full of energy and motivation only to get crashed by the Japanese management style within a year or two. It was painful to watch people initially eager to do their best turning into demotivated cynics.
I would have left earlier and not spend 2.5 years there, as the problems became apparent after approximately 1 year, but I could not due to my family situation at the time.
The company is not a big well-known company.
My post my sound as if I am tarring the whole country with one brush. Perhaps, I am a bit guilty of doing so, but the reason is that every time I raised these topics with other senior and more experienced colleagues, almost all of them told me that this is very representative of the Japanese work culture.
Hence, my question to you: was this just this particular company or is this indeed characteristic of the Japanese work culture?
I thank you sincerely for sharing your thoughts and experience.
by Rude-Course4925