Almost One Year

It's almost one year since I started working in Japan doing R&D work. I'd have to say that time most certainly flies, that of course might imply that I've been having fun. To a degree, I'd have to say most definitely yes, but I'd have to say that most of my fun isn't work related, but I digress.

A few days ago, I form was sent out to me and to the other new recruits to prepare a form as a sort of a review of their work place, what the environment is like, what we do, personal satisfaction with the job and any other sort of comments that might help us do our job better.

The form needs to be submitted next week and the new recruits are going get together for some kind of meeting with the HR people. So I am going to take this time to write my own review of the year to help me put things into perspective.

The Environment

As far as it comes to working environments, my work place is pretty lax. I don't find myself super bogged down with work nor do I find myself working crazy hours or overtime which is stereotypical with Japanese work culture. I do, however put in about 1 hour of overtime everyday to try and get some extra pocket cash since base salary for new hires are pretty low as it would be nice to have a little extra spending cash for if/when I need it.

The People

The people are generally nice and I am fortunate to be in a fairly friendly team as we like to joke around from time to time while working. There are other small subteams in the group which aren't as lively so I am rather happy about that.

But having a little fun aside, I think there are some communication issues in the sense that there isn't a lot of it happening. I find the people in my team to be kind of in their own little world when it comes to work. I hardly hear from other people about what they really are doing aside from the things presented in the meetings (and simply attending meetings to learn is a terrible way to learn).

I also find that people tend to be quite unresponsive when it comes to new ideas. I've made some presentations on some ideas about what might be nice from time to time but usually it ends into either "we'll look into it" or "ok that seems interesting" and ends at that. For a company that is supposed to be about technological innovation, just passing up ideas or not acting on them is a sign of creative death. It also shows from the kinds of products they've been recently putting out... all of them are totally behind when it comes to the technological revolution curve.

On job satisfaction

Job satisfaction for me is directly related to the amount of inspiration I can derive from my work. Unfortunatly, I am not at all inspired by my work. After condisering what I do and what we are making, I don't see it as a leap forward in technology and at the same time, I am not finding a lot of interesting new ways of doing my job because I need to find a way to make time and get resources to do what I want to do (hence forth I am working on becoming very good with very cheap resources).

The other problem is sort of a lack of fresh and beautiful ideas. I've spoken with people from time to time and I don't feel a vibe of creative energy or vision. It kind of sucks when I have a lot of things that I want to try or do and have no one to talk with about it... or no good source of interesting ideas.

The company is a big place and there are probably lots of people that I haven't met yet that might be really interesting people. But from the people I've met so far, I don't know; something is missing.