5-6M JPY is pretty normal if you're an engineer here working for a traditional Japanese software company. Good news is that the number of people willing to accept that is growing fewer by the day.
Curious if you have any insights on where do they end up going instead, even if anecdotal. (E.g.: smaller firms, own startups, or foreign (US/China) opportunities?)
My SO and I have seriously discussed moving to Tokyo when it comes time to raise a family. We're both pretty disappointed with the culture here in the US that makes it difficult to let your kids be independent and self reliant (See: Parents getting their kids taken away for letting them walk to the park, etc), and we've loved the time we've spent in Tokyo.
The salary situation makes this pretty tough, though.
That said, blockchain jobs in Japan are supposed to be abundant and pay more like US wages.
Unless it's Cannabis.
But alcohol, cigarettes and Coca Cola are less available if you live on a rural farm.
Salaries are fair and correspond to the cost of living.
It was sold to a U.S. company, and everything about management and corporate culture has gotten worse. People are less happy and feel they have less job security, which translates into poorer performance and reduced commitment. Japanese companies have their issues, but a lot of Americans have much to learn from them about making employees want to stay.
What kind of a job did your colleague apply for at Microsoft? They don't do much development work in Tokyo.
What hardware realm? They're involved all over.
Right now they're absolutely crushing the camera market - the A73 and AR73 are taking the world by storm, with tons of Canon and Nikon DSLR converts (Including myself). Their GM lenses are the sharpest available at a lot of focal lengths, the bokeh is close to the top of readily available modern lenses, etc. They're certainly competing there.
Their UHS-II cards are some of the fastest on the market.
The PS4 is the leader in lifetime sales vs. other consoles.
What hardware are you talking about?
You're off by a factor of two. The PS4 has been out for 4.5 years, not "8 years or so".
> It may outsell the PS4 right now, though.
In FY2017 the PS4 sold 19 million units. The Switch sold 13 million (15.5M sold in total so far, but 2.7M were in FY2016).
That said, they seem to do way less marketing than Samsung or Apple.
Even so, they have carved out a niche of making smaller Android phones (their Compact variants) that share internals with their larger brethren.
Sony's camera division makes money from selling camera parts to other companies - including Apple.
Then the iPhone came out and just being a phone wasn't good enough.
Now everyone else uses Sony's sensor anyway so what is their advantage? Lenses?
Maybe not the first, damned close.
My comment does not refer to the gaming and photography divisions, as those are cash cows for Sony.