Tokyo and tech through the eyes of a split pea

From the Ground Up

Disclaimer: It shouldn’t have to be said, but all views expressed throughout this blog are strictly my own and in no way reflect those of my employer. However, I have become increasingly open to documenting experiences which happen within Sony only as examples of a culture inside a Japanese company that claims to be global.

So I mentioned a meeting with a Sony VP in the CTO office, we’ll call him Mr. X, someone I’d met during my first interview rounds a few years back. We’d kept in touch, mostly through greetings at company functions. Being annoyed with how things were progressing after months of hearing about “impending changes”, the final straw was watching an exchange of emails regarding introducing university researchers to certain departments evaporate due to the Sony contact’s department being shutdown. I drafted up an outline I wanted to share with Mr. X regarding university relations, which quickly expanded into what I feel is the biggest issue that needs change:

• University Relations
  • numerous divisions discussing with same professors makes us look very uncoordinated and unprofessional
  • sprouting and dying groups within Sony common; need secure interface for university dialog
  • difficulty in establishing connection as Sony engineer
• Nurturing hires, especially foreigners of Western mentality
  • mentality towards hiring:
    • Japan: hire, find a job
    • U.S.: hire for the job
  • mentality towards universities
    • Japanese: difficult to enter, easy to exit
    • U.S.: easy to enter, difficult to exit
    • thus, western university graduates generally place greater stake in what they studied
      • many view their time as having an idea of what they want to pursue
      • Jcorp’s expectation for new hire to scrap university education, do what is demanded just doesn’t jive
  • mentality towards work
    • Japanese: work towards 60/65, retire in hands that created you
    • U.S.: work towards 40, retire in hands you created
  • bosses, managers, consistently not knowing new hire’s background
  • doesn’t it make sense for new hire to at least meet those he may be working with?
  • Why is this important?
    • Idei wants to run Sony more like an American operation? Hire like an American company
• Innovation
  • internal groups coming from Europe and US trying to sell ideas; response: “neat, but our hands are full”
  • “pay 5-6 year engineering dues, then you can project manage” mentality

There are too many threads for each topic above to cover fully, along with some serious generalizations which I am quite aware of, but suffice to say I was at least happy to hear Mr.X acknowledge that the hiring process within Sony is ridiculous. Hiring some 400+ new employees to join every April regardless of actual need and without any real filtering of relevant skillsets for the division they may join is a blatant example of procedure over principle. Also pointed out was that there are definitely not enough non-Japanese within the HQ of a company that has operations on a global scale, and Mr.X claims to have received comments as such from colleagues at Nokia and Samsung. Even Matsushita’s “entering class” is apparently 2/3 non-Japanese this year (mostly Chinese, in case you were wondering). With foreigners making up no more than 2% of HQ, it’s no wonder Sony’s relationships with universities and R&D on an international scale pale in comparison to such efforts as Intel’s opening of research centers in Japan. There are numerous reasons, not least of which is the Granovetter theory on the strength of weak ties; by increasing your international employee pool, especially in HQ, you’ll undoubtedly increase your avenues for growth in ideas, resources, connections to pioneering people, etc. Influencing any organization, culture, or body of thought ultimately must begin from the ground up. In this case, the hiring process.

We covered a lot of other ground, touching on issues such as COLA policies (of which there is basically none), innovation process issues, and what Sony should do regarding the audio compression wars. So what’s next? Good question. Mr.X said he would look into creating a voice for non-Japanese to speak with when they have things to say regarding company issues. Whether this is through some comments box or an actual steering committee, we shall see.