friendly-neighborhood-ehrhardt:

canadiangold:

canadiangold:

best thing i learned today: “The Loud American” role in Japanese businesses

nobody asked but imma explain anyway

no idea how it came up, but my programming prof was talking about his friend who works for Nintendo Japan who’s secondary role is The Loud American, and my prof explained what that was and how it came about

see, in Japan you do not talk back to your boss. you just don’t, even if they have stupid ideas and want the company to act on them. Like Nissan did sometime back. But since the other employees couldn’t do anything about this terrible idea that would ruin the company, they called in an American who had no reservations about telling the boss that their stupid idea was a stupid idea

and that’s just become a role in Japanese businesses, where they keep an American on staff who plays up the American stereotype and tells the boss what the Japanese employees can’t or won’t out of societal norms

dream job.