I worked for years as an engineer and manager at a legendary Japanese corporation, known for their quality.
It was a frustrating experience. Their obsession with quality made even the smallest tasks difficult and tedious. 3,000-line testing spreadsheets, where even one failure pooched the whole deal.
But you can’t argue with the results.
Good quality is difficult and tedious. I like to think that the work I do is of exceptional quality, but I am often met with outright hostility by American engineers, when I talk about my methodology.
I’m not being snooty, or projecting onto others. I’m merely talking about what I do, and I’m treated as if I’m eating a ham sandwich in Temple.
It's funny, because this is the kind of philosophy that makes software engineering in Japan so difficult, but is very ideal for automotive mass production.
> Their obsession with quality made even the smallest tasks difficult and tedious. 3,000-line testing spreadsheets, where even one failure pooched the whole deal.
Yes. It taught me a lot. I am still obsessed with quality, to this day.
That obsession was not the problem. Frustrating, but it set them apart.
Note that I worked there for many years. That indicates that we probably shared many values, and that I was respected; despite sometimes holding orthogonal points of view.
I do feel as if we could have done more with software, though. What works for hardware does not necessarily scale to software.
It was a frustrating experience. Their obsession with quality made even the smallest tasks difficult and tedious. 3,000-line testing spreadsheets, where even one failure pooched the whole deal.
But you can’t argue with the results.
Good quality is difficult and tedious. I like to think that the work I do is of exceptional quality, but I am often met with outright hostility by American engineers, when I talk about my methodology.
I’m not being snooty, or projecting onto others. I’m merely talking about what I do, and I’m treated as if I’m eating a ham sandwich in Temple.