i don't get it
so the freshmen have entered nintendo. in japan all the companies hire all the new employees in april, in suit with the school year. even though i'm also a new employee, i don't count since i'm not a recent graduate. well anyway, they finished their 2 week training yesterday and were given their job placements.
now this is what bothers me. in japan, you don't apply to a specific job, you just apply to a company, and they place you wherever, regardless of your training/expertise. i work in the legal department, and while some of my coworkers do have some background in law, about half of the younger workers had no prior interest/education in law before joining nintendo. one woman was a marketing major, another did his thesis on "american comedy in translation," and yet another holds a teaching certificate for japanese language education.
this year's recruits are no different. i've been reading some of the new recruits' blogs on mixi (the surprisingly crappier japanese version of myspace), and while people with connections get choice positions (the daughter of a pretty high up exec was placed in game dev., of course with no bg in such), that's just plain nepotism. but others, quite a few people with rather impressive experience in programming/design, etc. were placed in marketing, personnel, etc. to their very unhappy disbelief. the most prevalent complaint of those feeling misplaced was that they would have to learn their new assigned field from scratch, and pray that nintendo decides to transfer them one day . . .
so, why bother going to university at all? yes, japanese university is generally a joke anyway (unless you're doing hard science), but really, it's even more so a waste of time since no one really uses what they studied.
but on top of all that, they all just take it. no one complains and they all just say 頑張って！ (do your best!) to the girl misplaced in gamedev. but what about those guys in personnel, whose years of technical training apparently just went down the drain? do they really say that to people like her with a straight face? how do they feel when she says "do your best" to them?
one last thing . . .is japan the only country that doesn's seem to trust native speakers with translation into their native language? why are japanese people always doing the translation from japanese to english?
now this is what bothers me. in japan, you don't apply to a specific job, you just apply to a company, and they place you wherever, regardless of your training/expertise. i work in the legal department, and while some of my coworkers do have some background in law, about half of the younger workers had no prior interest/education in law before joining nintendo. one woman was a marketing major, another did his thesis on "american comedy in translation," and yet another holds a teaching certificate for japanese language education.
this year's recruits are no different. i've been reading some of the new recruits' blogs on mixi (the surprisingly crappier japanese version of myspace), and while people with connections get choice positions (the daughter of a pretty high up exec was placed in game dev., of course with no bg in such), that's just plain nepotism. but others, quite a few people with rather impressive experience in programming/design, etc. were placed in marketing, personnel, etc. to their very unhappy disbelief. the most prevalent complaint of those feeling misplaced was that they would have to learn their new assigned field from scratch, and pray that nintendo decides to transfer them one day . . .
so, why bother going to university at all? yes, japanese university is generally a joke anyway (unless you're doing hard science), but really, it's even more so a waste of time since no one really uses what they studied.
but on top of all that, they all just take it. no one complains and they all just say 頑張って！ (do your best!) to the girl misplaced in gamedev. but what about those guys in personnel, whose years of technical training apparently just went down the drain? do they really say that to people like her with a straight face? how do they feel when she says "do your best" to them?
one last thing . . .is japan the only country that doesn's seem to trust native speakers with translation into their native language? why are japanese people always doing the translation from japanese to english?