Visiting San Francisco. 

Posted by Knz  at 2:58 AM
With the business related reason, I needed to visit San Francisco this week.
It was the 2nd time trip to the U.S, while the 1st time was to New York. Before visiting there, I heard from some people that the people in the west coast is quite different from the people in the east coast. And I realized that what some people told me was true. Because people in the east coast looked more bureaucratic like or more than Japanse people does. On the other hand, the people I met in San Francisco seems that they regard their life as very important and balancing the work and life is crucial for their decision to find a workplace. In that meaning that the people in the west coast is more similar to the people I met in Malaysia once.
However, the things that the people in the west coast different from the people in Malaysia is that they are in the very competitive talent market, as San Francisco is located very close to Silicon Valley or San Diego, then many welcoming calls from various kind of start ups and hot companies come to the people working in San Francisco, which makes Japanese companies that own the subsidiaries there very difficult situation, in terms of retaining the people in the same place. What I was surprised at was the people changing their jobs frequently are regarded as they have a adaptability to any companies. That aspect isn't familiar in Japan as Japanese companies tend to recruit the people having more royalty to the company, and moreover, it is often said that the applicants having over 3 companies experience within a very short term period, it'll make them very hard to find the better job as companies don't want job hoppers in their workplace.

Adaptability is worthwhile to know, however, I think that without staying in the same company with a steady career development and learnings of more and more knowledge in the particular company, it'd be very difficult to acquire the firm, general skills to exercise in any environment, as companies use so many tools and technical words that compose day to day operations, fundamental knowledge on so many stats would not be acquired in the very short term period like just a year or two years. Diving into the deeper aspects of business requires people to have both fundamental and applied skills. That exercise can't be possible without rigorous background in the particular company. I guess that job hoppers only can see the business quite superficially, which will reach the high plateau very soon and will make them very hard to drive the things so demanding and complicated.

Anyway, like I did in the past, I thought that someday written desk procedures will be necessary to make the tasks owned by the people in San Francisco smoothly taken over to the successors. Otherwise, deep smart inside of the company will be lost... What Japanese companies can do is that though trying to hold them by keeping the company attractive to them like attractive pay package and welfare, company's branding and culture, preparing the day that the people will leave us with short notice....

By the way, through the talks with the people there, I learned a lot.

-There are many rich, older women in San Diego or around San Francisco and they have no decent job, just doing yoga everyday and meeting with people, keeping themselves look young with continuous maintenance by plastic surgery... The background why such rich people exist is because they were often ex-wives of the very rich men whose company went through IPO. When such women divorced with such rich guys, they got a half of wealth, then became astonishingly rich.

-The city of San Francisco welcomes the corporations with a tax deduction recently. Then some well-known companies like "yelp" re-located there, though I don't know it's because of the tax deduction.

-I re-learned that I like Japan and the people in Japan, in terms of having decent manner(though some people don't), full of hospitality, and sensitivity... I flied with united airlines this time, whose service quality was horrible... so noisy and so rough while they are on the place..... They don't care about the customers' comfortableness in terms of various points of view........ I will manage to book other  air lines next time... but one thing that I learned is that we can know more comfortable seats if we check the seats that we must not take via the website...
On the other, I stayed at westin hotel, which was not horrible but not good as I heard from my friends. In Japan, staying at westin hotel is quite luxurious, but in the U.S. I believe it's quite ordinary. And I though the quality of their service is not so different from the ordinary business hotels in Japan... They wrote the wrong billing amount, they forgot to replace the amenities even if the amount reached scarce, they forgot to bring their detergent from the guest room.... I have never experienced such insensitive service at any hotel........

- The temperature there,  in the morning and evening, it was like winter.... even if traveling in this season......so outer and sweater are must to bring there. But I found that there are some fast fashion shops like H&M, Uniqlo around Union Square. So, even if someone forgets to bring warmer clothes, he/she would be able to purchase them there.


best regards,

Kenji.

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