Hello Al (of sortz), nice to hear you are alive and well.

Plausible explanation? - Dunno, but I'll give it a go.

With the exception of roughly 60% of people working in Japan (ie those
in SME's, gaishikei, NGO's and all other organisations & entities that
are usually ignored and swept under the carpet whenever "Japanese
style" management is mentioned), people are either working as public
servants or as bastards (not a criticism in this case, more a term of
empathy).

Those working in largish to large corporations inevitably start at the
bottom**. The less experience they have, the better, as it means that
there will be fewer bad habits to stamp out of them. If they have any
experience at all, it is preferable that it not be in the same field in
which they are now employed. Why? I can think of only two reasons. One
is the above mentioned "bad habits picked up while working for the
enemy team", and the other obvious reason is that they are obvious
failures. After all, if they were not failures, why aren't they still
working for the enemy? How could they possibly work in a team
environment?

**Exception being gaigins on temporary contracts (who aren't real
employees anyway) and those kicked out from middle-to-top management
into subsidiaries of the larger company**

It would seem that the thinking is more or less along the lines of "it
is more expensive to un-train and re-train someone than to just train
them". When I worked at Makita, there were (from memory) about 70 of us
who were fed into the one size fits all induction program. Average age
was 22, all but maybe 5 were straight out of undergrad programs
(including me at the time). Of the 5 who weren't - 4 didn't last 6
months. The female recruits went into a different induction program
(the one that subtly encourages them to marry an employee and then
quit), and the factory fodder into a 3rd program.

It was a bit like being back in the army. Everything that anyone had
learnt at university was considered of no value whatsoever. You shut up
and learned, or didn't and left. At the end of "Basic", we got our
marching orders. For example when we received our initial 2 year
postings, those with degrees in mechanical engineering were not allowed
to use CAD software, only paper, until they had proven themselves, or
found themselves in the Quality control divisions. Those who could
speak English fluently, were sent to remote sales offices in Hokkaido.
And some of those who couldn't - naturally were soon spotted in
International Sales.

At the time it seemed silly, but then at the time I didn't know much
about university education in Japan :-)

Of the 4 who didn't last 6 months (some of them lasted 3 months - ie 6
weeks of training and about 6 weeks of work), 3 of them had (gasp!)
overseas study experience which in retrospect, it appears must have
corrupted their ability to work in a team. The other guy had some
knowledge of production engineering - so inevitably he was sent into
the domestic sales division. One bloke I remember was a newly married
guy with a Masters in Economics and fluent English. He had studied in
the USA, so he was sent to Niigata. He was allocated company
accommodation, and requested permission for his wife to join him.
Permission was denied of course. He requested permission to move out of
company accommodation into a privately rented apartment so that his
wife could join him, and this was also denied. He promptly resigned.
Funny thing is that by this stage I'd been so completely indoctrinated
that I considered his resignation petulant.

Naturally this company has become the best in the world in it's
particular field.

Of course this kind of logic flies out the window in the case of SME's,
gaishikei & NGO's. The SME's and NGO's can't afford to untrain/retrain,
and as gaishikei are usually concentrated in Tokyo they are inevitably
clueless idiots who hire people mainly because they can speak some
English - even if they were sacked for incompetence (or worse) at their
previous point of employment.

In short - if you have a lot of experience - apply only to gaishikei,
SME or NGO. If you don't have a lot of experience, hide it in the case
of large Japanese companies, and mention it in the case of gaishikei,
SME or NGO. It may not make a lot of common sense to fresh of the
boeing gaigin, but it is definitely (IMHO) the path of least
resistance.

Plausible?

Regards Declan