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Comment by etdev | Hacker News Reader

> And I think the answer is the language barrier.

This may contribute, but it's not the main issue imo. I've worked with tons of Japanese devs and English didn't hold them back much.

Plus look at Ruby, which was all the rage in webdev at one point. It was invented in Japan, and it had better documentation in Japanese than English.

Bigger issues for Japan's tech industry in 2023:

- Lack of VC/Startup investment (0.02% of GDP vs. 0.52% for USA)[1]

- Lack of government support

- Lack of strong CS university programs

- Risk-averse culture (failure is congratulated in the US but condemned in Japan; people don't want to risk building a startup)

- Continued prevalence of "System Integration" rather than in-house dev teams

- Outsourcing of dev work to cheaper countries (India etc).

- Difficulty of moving to Japan (visa issues, high taxes etc; hard for immigrants to start businesses here)

[1] https://www.boj.or.jp/en/research/brp/ron_2021/data/ron21031...

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>Plus look at Ruby, which was all the rage in webdev at one point. It was invented in Japan, and it had better documentation in Japanese than English.

Ruby has somewhat infamously had a divide between "Ruby programmers" and "Rails programmers". The fact that it was invented in Japan is fairly unrelated to anything about why it succeeded.

Ruby took off here due to Rails, and to a lesser degree _why's work way back in the day that made it so beloved.

Ah, good old days where the first step of developing a CGI app in Ruby was creating your own web framework. Rails changed everyhting.

I agree with all of your points except part of the last one. I agree starting a business could be harder than many places especially if there is a language barrier. But I disagree that it's difficult to move to Japan.

It's easy for a company to hire foreigners and get a visa for them. There isn't even a local market hiring test like there is in most countries. If you're skilled enough in the newish points system[1], the process is fast-tracked and you get benefits like your spouse can work without restrictions and you can get permanent residency in as little as one year.

Or you can get an investor visa[2] to start a business. The main requirement is having ¥50M of capital. If you can't swing that you may be able to get a startup visa[3] with relaxed requirements.

The taxes also aren't that high and while salary is much lower than US for tech people, the cost of living is also much lower. If you're coming from Europe to Japan, you'll probably enjoy a similar salary, with lower taxes and much lower cost of living. And slowly, there is a trend for tech companies to allow remote work from within Japan, with occasional visits to the HQ in Tokyo. I know a few people taking advantage of this to move to a low-cost area to live a quiet family life, or be close to skiing or whatever.

[1]https://www.lb.emb-japan.go.jp/Points-Based-Immigration-Trea...

[2]https://www.japanvisa.com/visas/japan-investor-visa

[3]https://www.meti.go.jp/english/policy/economy/startup_nbp/st...

> I've worked with tons of Japanese devs and English didn't hold them back much.

Survivor bias?

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