Fujiko Suda: Worklife

Those who leave soon

Feb 28, 2004 19:40 pm / Add a comment

Recently, I had a good con­ver­sa­tion with my long time busi­ness friends. One of them is a direc­tor of design at a preste­gious inte­ri­ors design firm in Japan, and we talked about the change of atti­tude toward work by col­lege recurites.

They leave, she said. She meaned notable per­cent­age of their fresh out of col­lege recruites. Her com­pany hires employ­ees younge peo­ple fresh out of famous col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties. But obvi­ously, there has been big increase in a gap between the type of peo­ple a large com­pany needs, and new recruites. After they start to work, some of them say within a year that they are not happy with the job, with their range of respon­si­bil­i­ties. It used to be that after one joined a com­pany, one grid his/her teeth and stayed, because that was what every­one (seemed like, any­way) did. But by doing that, one learned basic busi­ness man­ners, picked up on tacit knowl­edge at work, and just like a bal­let dancer doing bor­ing bar exer­cise and bit by bit learns the move and expands into real dance, one learned real work. Now, before learn­ing the basics of busi­ness, new employ­ees leave.

Prob­a­bly, out of frac­tion of per­cent­age of peo­ple who leave a com­pany like that will learn on their own and suc­ceed any­way. Some will find out that stay­ing put and learn­ing the basics are nec­ces­sary in their sec­ond or third jobs. Some will drift. But thats noth­ing new. There has always been peo­ple who drifted.

It seems like mat­ter of per­spec­tive. When we com­pare how work sit­u­a­tions were in Japan 500 years ago, 100 years ago, 20 years ago, difi­nitely, things changed. Some of the com­pa­nies will real­ize that they need to edu­cate the new recruites dif­fer­ently and suc­ceed. Those hang­ing onto the old (how old?) ways or not able to change might not fare so well.

I per­son­ally know maybe a dozen young Japan­ese peo­ple who quit rel­a­tively shortly (1 year to sev­eral years) after they joined big and preste­gious com­pa­nies. They are learn­ing mar­velously well. We all learn one way or other.

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