Until 2022, U.S. companies had a real competitive advantage.
Software developer salaries in Japan are depressed—other roles too, but especially engineers. Without digging too deep, perhaps the previously unfavorable (now roughly equal) tax treatment of was perhaps a contributing factor.
Also Japan is still very hierarchical, so old ideas change much slower. I would say the combination of these 2 are the main reason software is not as valued as in e.g. America, but there are many others like lack of international competitiveness due to the low English skill, ZIRP, and the ones you note seem totally valid ofc.
This is a very interesting recent report about salaries in Japan (e.g. foreigners, and/or foreigner companies get paid/pay a lot more):
https://www.tokyodev.com/articles/software-developer-salarie...
Nonetheless, if reports are to be believed the post-rule change decline is significant, and I can’t help but wonder how big of a positive feedback loop—in other words a bubble—was being created. The gap was, after all, built up over several decades.
The usual culprit you mentioned, perhaps aren’t as much of a factor as we usually ascribe to them.
Just speculating.
Thanks for sharing the report.
This is the first instance I’ve heard of where salaries aren’t considered remuneration for basic labour. It’s a fairly weird interpretation of reality that spending $200k on a human’s availability results in a guaranteed $200k of capital being created, regardless of which country this kind of tax law exists in.