>Ironically, you've proved a deeper point about how amusing HN is: we all tend to project our fantasies onto the articles we're discussing, even if we didn't fully read or understand the article.

>>>The andon method is really the J-mode in miniature. Information flows laterally, authority to act is widely distributed, and the people closest to the problems are the ones who fix it.

Alright, Dan. To be completely honest, your sarcasm is genuinely offensive. My name is Dongwoo. Since you put your name on your profile, I will openly use my real name as well. I am Korean, a freelance developer of 7 years, and I write code on Upwork for $15 an hour.

I understand that people in the gaming industry tend to have a strong affinity for Japan—thanks to everything from Nintendo to their solid indie support scene—and because of this, they often assume the 'horizontal culture' glorified in this article is the actual reality of Japan. But in practice, the Japanese companies I have worked with (granted, my cumulative experience there is about 6 months, as I usually contract on-site work in 1-month chunks) were overwhelmingly and rigidly vertical.

That is exactly why I view this narrative as a fantasy. In Japan, mobility is fundamentally expensive, and relocating to a different region is much harder than outsiders realize. People tend to settle in one place and live within the boundaries of their socio-economic tier. (Moving in Japan involves massive upfront rental fees like shikikin (deposit) and reikin (key money), making the physical act of relocating extremely prohibitive.)

Consequently, people usually get jobs in their immediate local area, stay there for the long haul, and often inherit family trades. This geographic and economic immobility is what actually leads to that deep concentration of niche know-how. The longevity of historical Japanese enterprises is built on these exact socio-economic constraints, not on some enlightened 'horizontal' management theory.

I read your profile, and it mentions you are a text-based game developer. If your entire profession is 'text-based,' I would think you'd be capable of reading sentences a little more carefully.

> In Japan, mobility is fundamentally expensive, and relocating to a different region is much harder than outsiders realize.

Unless said mobility is paid for by the company.

As part of the job rotation mentioned in the article, larger Japanese companies are also notorious for reassigning job locations, often at short notice and with zero care for family dynamics. Hence the tanshin-fu'nin phenomenon, where the husband is sent off to work at some factory or regional branch in the sticks for years while the wife brings up the kids elsewhere.

How does the "concentration" of gamedev jobs look like ? In US and I think in most of EU countries that have noticeable gamedev it is usually concentrated in very few cities, so changing job does not necessarily consist a move. But other industries similarly usually have a niche and sometimes whole towns that rose around it.

I think main difference is that there is very little tradition of company thinking they own something to the workers, and (I think) far more of companies just buying out their competition and then gutting any tradition and institutional knowledge within

> (Moving in Japan involves massive upfront rental fees like shikikin (deposit) and reikin (key money), making the physical act of relocating extremely prohibitive.)

I don't think that part is all that different? While we don't have "key money" it's still a big deal to take your life and move it somewhere else