[kippel]

Blaming it to the keiretsu is too simplistic. Here other factors that in my experience (living, studying & working) in Japan contribute:

- Graduates don't apply to a job, but to a company. The company decides where to place then. The first years are generally a rotation between departments until it is decided where to allocate them. This means that they will be often misplaced in positions for which they don't have the necessary background nor motivation to learn or contribute because in 6 months they'll be somewhere else.

- It is not uncommon for developers not to have a CS or coding background. They learn on the job how to "program" but lack best practices, etc. and figure out things as they go.

- Standing out is frown upon

- People who are good at their jobs are generally rewarded with more work. One can know who the manager's favourite is by who busy the person is. At the end, the good ones end up burned out, over-stressed and brain death.

- Looking busy or hard working is more important than the outcome.

- Combine the above, and there is no point to do a good job: There is no reward other than more pressure to deliver but on the other hand, as long as you look busy, not delivering is not "punished". Clear what option most people will take.

- As already commented, decisions are top down and often very conservative replicating old methods digitally.

- Many customer facing products will try to cover as many cases as possible to avoid complains, perceived discrimination or causing trouble, for example. This results in over bloated software, websites, flyers full of information, etc.

[vishnugupta]

From what you wrote none of the factors seem to be specific to software/CS. But then Japan is quite well known when it comes to physical products. So I wonder what’s it about software the Japanese culture inhibits.

[doctorpangloss]

I don’t think anything about Japanese culture or generalizations like that tell you much about this.

Physical products: you are buying them for their software. That’s why you choose an iPhone over an Android phone. They’re all rectangles with screens.

When Sonos screwed up its app it was a crisis because: people pay for the software not the hardware.

Is this true about cars? EV design is converging. It will be. CarPlay controversy is a great example: people choose cars that support it.

Vanmoofs have a lot of hardware problems but the reason people bought them was software (like location tracking and e-Shifting).

So “well known when it comes to physical products,” that may be, but all products are software products.

“Software is eating the world” was all about like, replacing human labor or whatever, disruption. Marc Andreesen thinks he was saying something forward looking when it was all backward looking.

The story is differentiation and customer choices. Truly forward looking. But are Japanese firms incapable of that? Of course not.

Once there was a guy on here who said he had the brilliant idea of using a web browser to make an airplane UI. Listen brother, everybody knows how to write good software. It’s a business strategy not execution problem.

[tivert]

>> From what you wrote none of the factors seem to be specific to software/CS. But then Japan is quite well known when it comes to physical products. So I wonder what’s it about software the Japanese culture inhibits.

> Physical products: you are buying them for their software. That’s why you choose an iPhone over an Android phone. They’re all rectangles with screens.

> ...

> So “well known when it comes to physical products,” that may be, but all products are software products.

You're just plain wrong. Most physical products have no software, so you're not addressing the very real question (which is basically "Why does Japan produce such perfect physical products, but suck so bad at software? Why hasn't the attention to detail transferred?").

As an aside, it's actually really interesting to be how you could so wrong in this particular way. It kind of dovetails with a vague pet theory of mine that (roughly, very roughly) software engineers are sometimes so enamored with computers they can have a weird cognitive distortion where they see computers as everything (so a computer is the solution to every problem, and they're an expert at everything because everything's a computer or should be).

----

As my contribution to answering about physical products. I met a woman once, while I was traveling, who spent a couple months in Japan. She said that Japanese cosmetics are very good and relative cheap because Japanese consumers are very picky and have very high standards. Maybe the reason is Japanese consumers just have higher expectations for physical products, but someone got enured to badly designed software.

[doctorpangloss]

> You're just plain wrong... Most physical products have no software

I'm just trying to be thought provoking. I can't generalize about whole cultures, other than to say, no one culture owns excellence.

Down this thread people are talking about stuff like, I don't know, home goods, or you're talking about cosmetics.

Are cosmetics software? Well the people who sell the most cosmetics have to master digital marketing.

"Chinesium" on Amazon is mastering software. It doesn't look that way. But the reason you are choosing things on Amazon is because of fulfillment software, advertising software, logistics software, that specifically the manufacturers of those products have all mastered. They are really smart sellers. The reason you choose a particular cosmetic is due to mastery of advertising and logistics software. You will never buy a cosmetic that isn't marketed by software.

Sure there's this box of, software on hardware means the thing that draws the pictures on an LCD screen. And indeed a lot of things that don't need LCD screens end up with them, and you know what? Consumers choose them. But that inside-the-box thinking aside, anything that reaches an industrial scale where you are able to buy it in many stores in America depends on mastery of some kind of software. The best of those choices happen to master both the logistics and the end-user software, whatever that may mean.

[dartos]

> But the reason you are choosing things on Amazon is because of fulfillment software, advertising software, logistics software, that specifically the manufacturers of those products have all mastered.

Just tacking on the word “software” to other fields does not mean that the program is the selling point.

Give that same software to a mom and pop shop and they will not become Amazon.

Give it to Walmart even, and they won’t become Amazon.

Software is a tool, not a selling point.

Most people buy from Amazon because they deliver addictively fast. That is, in part, because of their logistics, but also because they are very vertically integrated.

The convenience is what makes you buy. Pretty much all their customers wouldn’t care if Amazon switch to old school paper records if their delivery times didn’t change.

[tivert]

> I'm just trying to be thought provoking.

Being obviously wrong is probably not the way to do that.

> Down this thread people are talking about stuff like, I don't know, home goods, or you're talking about cosmetics.

It's all kinds of products. I have a Zojirushi travel mug and coffee maker that are both ridiculously well made and designed. The travel mug keeps things hot, never leaks and has a spring tensioned juuust right to fling the lid open and lock it behind a stop without bouncing back. The coffee maker has an unusual design that makes it very easy to clean. I've been using both daily for going on ten years. Japanese stationary is very good. Until recently, a Japanese company made the best chalk (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagoromo_Fulltouch_Chalk). Back in the day, Sony CRT TVs were the best you could get. That's just the stuff I have personal experience to rattle on about without doing any research.

Japan has a longstanding reputation for producing very high quality products, which you don't seem to be very aware of. I'm kind of wondering if you're trying to make a point when you don't actually know anything about the topic.

> The reason you choose a particular cosmetic is due to mastery of advertising and logistics software. You will never buy a cosmetic that isn't marketed by software.

Like you're trying really, unusually hard to miss the point and reach to pull the discussion back to software. Again, I find that really interesting. At this point, are you just digging in your heels or is something else going on?

And the woman I met wasn't seeking out Japanese cosmetics because of marketing software, for the obvious reason that she was visitor buying things marketed to a domestic audience.

[nuancebydefault]

I don't think he's plain wrong. Almost any non-living product is born out of software. If Japanese products are good, the software taking care of developing, manufacturing, marketing, selling, transporting, maintaining, rma'ing the product must be good.

[doctorpangloss]

Yeah listen, I own the same Zojirushi crap you do, a lot of it, and it has its own problems. The mugs leak occasionally, the rubber and silicone goods are cumbersome for many people to deal with, there are voids in the lids and interior corners in the rubber goods that are hard to clean, they mold all the same as anything else exposed to water. The boilers develop a lot of scaling issues, they are not easy to clean, the replacement parts are expensive, and you talk to their CS, they will tell you the wrong dimensions for things like screws. And they don’t replace anything for free.

I don’t know why you are being so hostile about my knowledge levels about $5 versus $30 pieces of junk. But I’ll just say that you are buying these things because you can buy it on Amazon, and Amazon wrote all this software to fill in the blanks like returns which Zojirushi would never do, and because Wirecutter told you to, and their affiliate marketing machine is very software enabled. It is actually a good example of my point: can you think of a Japanese brand that in your opinion has great purely mechanical products like mugs but advertises as aggressively as Apple does? What about a brand that can reach people with ad blockers, so therefore it must innovate, like by managing fleets of influencers, digital product catalogs / product syndication, affiliate schemes, etc.?

[dartos]

> software engineers are sometimes so enamored with computers they can have a weird cognitive distortion where they see computers as everything (so a computer is the solution to every problem

Does your pet theory extend beyond the adage “to a child with a hammer, everything is a nail?”

I think it’s self evident that anyone who works in a specific field will see the world through the lens of someone who works in that field…

[strus]

Software in Japanese cars is terrible from European point of view, yet people are buying them because of the hardware (reliable engines).

[doctorpangloss]

We shall see. Cars with better software are a really important differentiator. Toyotas may be reliable, they may be the most popular today, but then why doesn't everyone choose a Toyota?

And anyway, Toyota's most innovative and market-making vehicles, like the Prius: software plays a pretty big role no? I don't think you can reduce a complex product like this, but I'm not wrong: a car with great user-facing software is pretty exciting to consumers. The Apple Car would probably be pretty successful, the Tesla has pretty innovative software that differentiates it from other EVs, the deployment and preferences for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto enabled cars... it can be true that someone buys something despite the software being bad, but that's not where the trend is going.

[lupusreal]

> why doesn't everyone choose a Toyota?

Because Honda also exists. I kid, I kid..

A lot of Americans buy American cars simply because they're loyal to American brands, or European cars because they want their neighbors to be jealous of their ability to buy such overpriced transportation. I think software is low on the list.

[AnthonyMouse]

People buy Teslas because they go fast, get 300 miles to a charge and have five star safety ratings. "Software" is thing main thing capable of rivaling build quality and repair costs as the thing people most complain about. They're leaving a major untapped market for competitors to fill with electric cars that have tactile HVAC controls etc.

There was a meme a while ago where thing thing people used to want out of their car's entertainment system was satellite navigation and fancy everything, whereas the thing people want now is a dumb standard plug to connect their phone to the car's speakers.

[nuancebydefault]

It's the customer-facing software that looks sub-par. There are hundreds of thousands of lines of embedded code in almost each ECU. Those cannot be crap in a prius without having an effect on the car's (the hardware) performance.

[hulitu]

> Software in Japanese cars is terrible from European point of view,

So is software in European and American cars. Testing is expensive. (the overall quality of software has gone downhill in the latest years)

[physicsguy]

The software in my Skoda Scala and my Vauxhall/Opel Corsa is terrible as well, but like most new-ish Toyota's, all of them support Apple Play so it doesn't matter.

[ghaff]

The Honda software is mediocre as well but I suspect any sensible automaker realizes that most consumers are using Car Play or Google Play so they put some junior engineers on a checklist item and call it a day.

[generic92034]

I wonder when cars become inoperable without using a smartphone.

[nemomarx]

I mean outside of electronics this isn't really true? A hammer, a comic book, an umbrella you don't buy for software at all.

[doctorpangloss]

The reason you are choosing a particular hammer, comic book or umbrella on Amazon is because of mastery of marketing, logistics, and design software.

It sounds ridiculous but what is a software-enabled hammer? A construction robot could be a pretty big deal no? That might not exist today. You might still be buying hammers but everyone will want construction robots.

[bluGill]

Some things go obsolete, some remain useful even when they are mostly replaced. All carpenters carry a hammer even though nail guns are used for almost all nails. By contrast I know a professional photography who uses film cameras as decoration - they still work but he doesn't own film for them (he also has a second job because professional photographer isn't nearly the job it used to be before everyone had a camera on them)

[connicpu]

Even some electronics, I don't expect anything beyond a basic BMS (which has the logic baked into the IC) is inside my battery powered drill. All it has is a direction selector switch and a trigger.

[dowager_dan99]

even with electronics. Apple didn't achieve their dominance because of their software - any of the times. The physical products were continually refined and the software used as a lever to help them perfect the experience. When they focused on making the software "perfect" it almost destroyed the company.

[doctorpangloss]

Yeah dude. The iPhone continues to be chosen for its superior software. It absolutely became dominant because of the software. I mean they’re all black rectangles. Black rectangles with capacitive screens existed before the iPhone. A good mobile browser didn’t. This is coming from someone who owned a Zaurus, which had the closest thing to a decent browser, NetAccess, and a grid of icons touchable Home Screen all the same. You are underplaying how groundbreaking the software was.

This is one set of facts, totally correct, that you are talking about:

    iPhones are made in China.
    They cost $770 or so with tax.
    They make a 55% margin (or whatever) per phone.
    Consumers prefer premium materials like titanium, and they don’t prefer things like replaceable batteries.

Here is another set of facts:

    Everyone’s phones are made in China.
    But of course iOS is made in the US.
    Consumers are choosing not between a titanium and aluminum phone, but almost always, they are choosing between Android and iOS
    The margin on the software is like 99%
    Apple News, the App Store, etc have a very powerful DRM scheme, where Apple is one of the only companies, besides maybe Sony, where you cannot pirate things they sell for the iPhone like services subscriptions, game IAP and extra iCloud storage.
    The price of the iPhone isn’t its $770 sticker but the LTV of the owner.

This is a big deal because the second set of completely and utterly true facts is why Apple is the richest company in the world. And then you look at NVIDIA, another really rich company but which people feel less passionate about, and unequivocally, people choose NVIDIA because of its software, because of CUDA, which is why you can’t “just” add more VRAM, which is something else that everyone wants and would be a key differentiator, yet for some reason doesn’t manifest in the market.

This matters to firms everywhere not just Japan. If you can’t make 99% margin software someone else will. And consumers LIKE software. So everything you are saying is true but it doesn’t really disagree with me.

[hulitu]

You should see Windows 10 or 11. The best hammer out there.

[hulitu]

> Listen brother, everybody knows how to write good software

But they are very shy. /s

[kippel]

You are right, it is not specific to software, just wanted to add more context and also, because I don't know the answer and I believe there are multiple factors, but my two cents: a mix of history and culture.

By the time software came around, Japan already had a well stablished manufacturing industry that had a reputation for quality (this wasn't always the case).

Software was something totally new and wasn't considered important, why? perhaps management didn't understand it or didn't know how to handle it and did nothing.

The above made a career in software not very attractive compared to other industries. Since then, companies struggle to get good developers, who can move to more attractive sectors or countries than trying to change things within Japan with its rigid hierarchy.

How things move in Japan is generally by someone breaking the status quo and the rest following if it is a success. That was the case with Toyota in manufacturing for example. For software it hasn't happened.

Another problem IMHO is that code is invisible to users. If the app works, people don't care if the code is beautifully made or not, and without consumer pressure, management doesn't care either. Compare that with the complains they'll get if a physical object had the sightless defect.

Finally, there is a higher entry barrier for physical products than software. Any teenager can build an app in her bedroom, it is a different story to develop a bullet train. Inefficiencies and slow decision processes in manufacturing are less obvious than in tech (though manufacturing industries in Japan are struggling as well because of this), and Japan simply isn't competitive in this area, making it less attractive to invest.

And perhaps, the most important: People got used to it and don't have higher expectations.

[itronitron]

Precision manufacturing, such as for ballpoint pens and Gundam figures, will more readily show defects, so that might be the reason.