The author of this book, “Why Young People Quit Their Jobs in Three Years?” published by Koubunsha-Shinsho, Mr. Shigeyuki Joe is a person who used to work in the personnel and other department of FUJITSU Japan. He retired his job in 2004 and became famous for his smash hit book called “Collapse of FUJITSU Performance-based System Seen from Inside” (Koubunsha Paperbacks).

This book can be summarized as follows: The company gained nothing by adopting performance-based system but the collapse of human relationships and the reduction of employee’s salary.

I, myself as an external board member in other companies, have had the same concern that those epidemic?”Compliance,” “Internal control,” “Governance,” or “Evaluation based on performance” are not only ineffective, but can be even fatally devastative to all the companies in Japan, if we fail to distinguish who gains and who loses in today’s world full of imported words. So I strongly recommend this book especially to young people and people under 40, the future victims of the society, as this book explains those problems that Japanese companies have very easily. Is the seniority system good for the society? Is the performance-based system just bad? These two are not necessarily irreconcilable. Anyway, the Japanese traditional seniority system has already been collapsed. This book tells us that even if you work for a first section-listed company or for a ministry after passing the hard civil service exam, there is no guarantee for you. That is, the old-fashioned escalating system, which we get higher education, get a job in a major company, get a good position until retirement in the same company and even after retirement in its subcontractors or other places and keep receiving the good salary without any big effort, has ended. This book explains this fact with examples.

After all, as today’s Japanese society is ruled by the law of the jungle, in which the weak companies become the victim of the strong like the dinosaur era, you cannot predict even 5 years after. His explanation is really convincing. In fact, the top-level Tokyo University graduates now prefer to work in foreign-affiliated financial firms that offer them several hundred thousand yen than to work for the government. Bureaucrats have lost their popularity among the young people.

As I look around, the victims are the young people around 40. My nephew had always been very superior in his major department store, but he had been feeling from the start that there was no ladder of success for him in that company, because it was controlled by Keio-University-graduate faction and he was from another university. His colleague would ask him, “Aren’t you going to the company’s Keio-graduate party?” He would have to answer, “No, I am from another university.” He stood this cruel situation for more than 20 years but the salary of department store was still unbelievably little. He wasn’t recognized even as a human being if he doesn’t buy everything he wears from his own high-class department store. Besides, a bad rumor would be around if a person in position cannot properly buy a one or two-million-yen engage ring. He quit the department store before 50, and got a job in his relative’s small, but well-performed company.

A son of another friend of mine was studying to become a international lawyer, but it didn’t go well. He decided to go back to Japan and start hunting for a job. But, he failed every one of them even though he is a graduate of Tokyo University. As written also in this book, Tokyo-University brand is only effective on the first job hunting. It’s a common sense of the personnel department of the major companies that they don’t adopt a person if the “resign for personal reasons” was written on the paper. But neither the parents, himself nor the cram school teacher knows anything about it, so they are still teaching that this world would always be springtime if you only have Tokyo-University brand. The situation is not like that anymore.

A son of another friend fortunately became a local public worker through the very highly competitive exam, but his salary is only 140 thousand yen after tax. He has to make a living with this amount of money while depositing it at the same time. I was surprised to hear it as he is actually proving Mr. Takuro Morinaga’s prediction, “the era of less than 3 million a year is coming”, by living with this amount of money. Moreover, he says the salary is raised only 3000 yen every year. If so, his salary ten years after will be only 30,000 yen more than now.

This means, his present salary, 200 thousand yen including tax, will be 230 thousand yen even ten years after.

I read on a newspaper today, that Japan was found to be the bottom of 60 countries last year in the survey to investigate which county has more power among young people to start business. And this year, we were 59th place.

This country has had a policy to teach its children to follow and cooperate with others. However, now that there can be found no stable positions anywhere in the Japanese society, many institutions are seriously needed to start educating the children in another way, that is to tell them “boys, be ambitious!”

I met my friend from high school the other day. He said that the most popular industries were steel and petroleum when he graduated university, but most of his friends who got a job in those industries at that time ended up to be transferred to subcontractors or became victims of downsizing in their 40’s. It is not very surprising because the most popular company has no way but to decline in its future. It seems same as the stock market. He also said that the government is dragging out the employment duration to turn the baby boomers who is in their 60’s now from the receiving side of pension to the paying side, because the government doesn’t want to pay pension. Most of the people hang on tight to their job even if the salary is reduced by half and drop to the position where they have to flatter their ex-subordinates, while saying he would choose another way. In this era of Japan’s severe social situation, we, both young and old, are needed to get as much information as possible and determine our way of life firmly by ourselves, understanding we are living in a era that procedures based on the common sense of past can no longer apply.

From this perspective, I strongly recommend this book, “Why Young People Quit Their Jobs in Three Years.”