alt Hacker NewsWorking and Communicating with Japanese Engineers
Comments
> Make your English more understandable
This entire section is also good advice for working and communicating with English engineers. (Especially in a world where about 3/4 of English speakers don't have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language as their first language.)
> Create new meeting strategies
A lot of this is also relevant within English, honestly. (The phrase この認識で合っていますか is good to know and I definitely wouldn't have come up with it on my own.)
> If you notice that certain members are very quiet at a meeting, despite seeming like they have something to say, see if you can give them an opportunity. A simple “Does anyone else have thoughts on this?” can go a long way in making sure everyone feels heard.
This in particular also seems like something I've seen recommended in many other contexts.
> Lastly, be aware that some katakana words are commonly abbreviated differently in colloquial Japanese, often becoming unrecognizable to English speakers. Here are some examples: ... Topic/theme (of a meeting): テーマ (te-ma)
The others check out, but https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%83%86%E3%83%BC%E3%83%9E isn't an abbreviation. It's just.. a loanword that English speakers might well not recognize, because it comes from German Thema (in turn from Latin and Greek; so ultimately the same source as the English "theme", but by a separate path). Also because we don't often use the word "theme" this way, but yeah.
Worked for years in japan, beg to disagree.
Love japanese and japan but their work culture is horrific - Japanese are inefficient and the veneer of looking to work "hard" is more important than the hard work itself. People often stay until ridiculously late just to show they "put in the effort" which is more important than outcome.
Then again that happens in many other countries as well ...
developers from the West see no problem with clearly stating their opposition to a topic and listing the reasons why they oppose it—in many ways, this is seen as good, clear communication. This style can sometimes be jarring to Japanese speakers, who generally prefer to avoid anything that could be taken as blunt or confrontational.
This was buried at the end of the essay, but is one of the most important points.
I worked (not as a developer) in a company that was acquired by a Japanese company. Meetings were structured, and debate was kept to a minimum. If there was disagreement (typically framed as a difference of opinion or conflicting goals) there would be an effort to achieve some sort of balance or harmony. If the boundary was not hard, it was possible to push back. Politely.
Also, if Japanese colleagues expressed frustration, or were confrontational, that was a red flag that some hard boundary had been crossed. This was extremely rare, and replies had to be made in a very careful, respectful way.
"we really need to focus on user-facing touchpoints, because there’s too much sign-up friction. Like, we need to 10x the stickiness of the landing page but also keep it lean,"
Even as a native English speaker I find this type of language hard to understand, fluffy and ambiguous. We would all benefit from using plain language not just non native English speakers
It is the expectation in my country to wait for your turn too, and seen as rude or a power display to speak over someone.
I also find that casual conversations are more turn based, and people are expected to continue a conversation by asking questions (of the other person). So this also means being mindful of how long you've spoken, and to ask a question about the other person instead, to not keep the other person just listening. The gauge is questions (or short responses), and the period is silence.
I find that questions pose less importance with US people, which might still use them, but not in the way we're used to. There i feel like the gauge is speaking (or short responses) and the period is silence.
Greetings like "how's it going" and "what's up" were confusing at first too, it took me a while to get when people were using them as greetings.
Something the article touches on: communication is not just about how we express ourselves, it's about this mutual respect that that we have to grow into. That crosses any boundary, and is something we can always learn.
You can see that, to some extent, in how the article’s points apply to language and communication in general, not just between Japanese and English. While turns of phrase give your repartee a flavour that sells your point—like what you’re reading now—it’s also a product of your thinking process, and as the article says, could cloud the point you’re trying to make. If you can speak or write clearer, then your points will also become clearer to yourself. That’s follows my experience, since I speak a lot of German for work. In German, I must think carefully about each point I make, otherwise I’ll run into a sentence for which I don’t know the words. I endeavour to respect the language and culture, and in doing so put effort into making my points simple enough for me to reach for the right words and phrases to show this respect (at least, I try!)
For a good example: David Sylvian collaborating with the late Ryuichi Sakamoto. You can see them writing ‘Blue of Noon’ in the Brilliant Trees sessions on Vimeo/Youtube. David talks about his use of really minimal language to get musical structure and points across, since Ryuichi’s English wasn’t yet as perfect in the 80s as it was later on. You see this directly in the session videos. What’s truly the best about it, is the respect they show for each other.
Bad example (potentially): Aston Martin F1 collaborating with Honda on the new F1 engine :-) . After several years of extensive development and billion-dollar investment, today they’re at the back end of the grid, more than 3 seconds off the pace. According to recent rumours, as recently as November, the Aston Martin F1 bosses visited Tokyo to discuss progress of the engine that had been in development for a few years, apparently having hardly visited before, and were shocked to learn that only about 30% of the original workforce from Honda's previous venture in F1 remained. It seems they didn't even know how far behind schedule Honda was! For projects as large as F1 car development, it’s unfathomable that this mutual curiosity, which in effect is a form of respect, apparently wasn’t there.
Most Americans / Brits I've interacted with don't know what a phrasal verb is and don't realize they're hard to parse. Canadians and Kiwis too, but they've often got much more experience interacting with non-native English speakers.
Take out vs. Take up vs. Take in vs. Take on, etc
I try to avoid using phrasal verbs wherever a simple verb will do. And if I have to use a phrasal verb, I try to keep it together: "let's take on this task" vs. "Let's take this task on". The latter requires an extra effort to parse. But obviously "let's take this task" works too and is simpler.
The worst is when Americans use baseball idioms without even noticing they've switched away from "base-level English".
> If we get this shipped by the end of the month it'll be a homerun, and if by the end of the week then I'll consider that a grand slam.
So... ship soon = good then, got it.
I feel that everyone could learn and apply the idea of having clear, concise language without jargon.
I've hear this notion called "international English". English spoken in a way that non-native speakers find relatively easy to understand and follow.
The hard part of this is that non-native speakers will rarely ask for this. It's a gift that you have to give, and a gift you have to encourage others to give. And most of all, it needs to be done in a way so as not to be condescending, by simply being clear.
As Someone who has spent decades working with teams around the world with varying levels of English from native to none, these are good guidelines. I would add to try and talk using the simplest and least ambiguous words you can. Breathe. And use shorter sentences.
I also have non English speaking family members so I get to improve everyday. And yes I make mistakes every day but 99% avoidable and the rest I just accept and move on. Multicultural and multilingual teams are a joy not a test so enjoy them when you have the chance. Might surprise yourself how much you will learn about people and communications and build a new level of self awareness in the process.
My 2c.
Could Project Managers start talking to me like the suggestion in Scenario 1 too please, that's clearly better.
This article misses some significant cultural differences.
I worked with a talented older group in Japan for a while.
If on a call they said something would be “difficult”, that was their understated way of saying “never in a million years would we do that”.
They were also strongly hierarchical and would often defer to their leader to avoid any disagreement.
They could teach the British a lesson in understatement…
Even though we had a close working relationship they were very much trying to “save face” when issues came up and didn’t directly admit shortcomings.
Also, never address them by their first names !!
Have a strong liver.
I worked in Japan for ~7 years. I don't think I can relate with any of this, for starters I think not speaking Japanese relatively fluently would completely shape your experience from the get go.
Granted, this was a long time ago and even seeing non-Japanese around in Tokyo was rare, unlike now. But in the office environment let alone in tech, I doubt you can really make it work without not just speaking Japanese, but being considerably adapted to their culture. I think the chances of the dev just moving to Japan to work in tech and be anything other than a total outcast are poor. Which is ok if you plan to just do a year or two maybe. Even the author himself first got well acquainted with the language and culture then moved into development. And even so, this is hardly for but a select few to just fit into this lifestyle.
For North Americans or Europeans, the intersection of people who can make it work and are also incentivised to make it work looks infinitesimally small to me, esp. if you can opt for jobs in the industry in America or even Europe. It's a totally different story for someone from say South Korea or Taiwan, or to a lesser extent other Asian countries. For starters, coming in as a junior dev in Japan or as a translator won't be a massive pay downgrade for them. For South Koreans and Taiwanese the culture will be a lot more familiar, although there will of course still be some friction. So imagine coming in as mid-manager or higher, wow it sounds like quite the experiment to me knowing the place well. CEO with capital, maybe. But good luck with that.
Since it kind of had an LLM flavor in the original anyway, I had an LLM redraft this for my particular non-Japanese intercultural situation, and it wasn't valueless. I had to tell it to "Make sure to keep the same technology focus of the original."
Minor nitpick, but I didn’t think テーマ (tēma, “theme”) was an abbreviation—Jisho and Wiktionary (for what they’re worth) say it’s from German Thema.
Worked for famous Japanese data platform for a few years. The Japanese engineers were collegial but some who didn't come in to the office were actually Hikikomori focused on very narrow things and were very nitpicky about details that wouldn't have ultimately mattered. Those that came into the Tokyo office lived to work and I saw people regularly sleeping at their desk after having stayed out all night for obligatory whiskey outing with colleagues and arriving at the office at 6 am as expected. The San Fran office was the opposite, very sloppy standards people, getting in at noon and staying up late to meet deadlines. The impedence mismatch between the two environments was almost unbearable.
[dead]
[dead]
Lush, the bathbombs company, has an internal tech team that builds the apps, website, and point of sale systems. I worked there for a little while on some web-based tooling for payments which involved working with the Japanese team who did the tech for the Japanese site. They were really good. Everything was incredibly clear and easy to understand because they had to put a lot of effort into written comms due to both the language barrier and the time difference. I built a great appreciation for what concise, high quality communication looks like.
It's worth getting a role where you're forced into improving. I'm definitely a better communicator than I was before that job because of it.