5 ms·

10+ years in Japan. The message here is much deeper from my perspective. “Let’s jump on the call” is not the solution. The guy was stripped off of his face. I l

by adeptima 11mo ago

10+ years in Japan. The message here is much deeper from my perspective. “Let’s jump on the call” is not the solution. The guy was stripped off of his face. I love Japan for being human. Small business bar or restaurant with 3 tables. Not everything should be streamlined for a quick call solution… the process was pushed on his head. Google nemawashi decision making process

alwa 11mo ago
I did as you suggested with respect to “nemawashi.” I read about that and “ringi,” and I’m glad I did. Even to get just the gist of what I’m sure is a thin interpretation: that nemawashi refers to a “laying-the-groundwork” process of circulating a proposal between peer-level counterparts, before formalizing it and proposing to act on it. Much less crashing in with it in the form of a “SumoBot,” as Mozilla seems to have done to its non-English communities… (with the disclaimer that I have zero insight into Mozilla’s process here outside of this writer’s account). It puts a name to a considerate consensus-based way to approach change, that seems humane (and effective) in any culture—leave it to the Japanese to have a specific term for it…
- martin_henk 11mo ago
  common sense... no real need for digging into japanese culture and so on. really no idea why Mozilla is so disrespectful to it's volunteers. well, that sweet 400m a year from Google... no need for volunteers anymore, eh
  - alwa 11mo ago
    For sure. Common sense <> common, etc… although it does seem relevant that it was specifically a Japanese-language sub-community who were reacting here. I have to say it feels like a really familiar, NGO-flavored disrespect, though: “we’re doing this favor for underrepresented language communities,” regardless of whether they want/need it or not. “There’s only X number of you having to shoulder the load in XX sub-community, don’t you want us to impose a bunch of ‘help’?” Well, no, if the choice is between a formidable volume of slop and a smaller but well-executed volume of volunteer labor-of-love… (…I say as a person very much without all sides of the story, and shooting from the hip a bit. I don’t mean to impugn anybody’s intentions, and I imagine at the end of the day we’re all on the same side here.)
    - shaky-carrousel 11mo ago
      Enlightened despotism, all over again.
      - toyg 11mo ago
        mixed with good ol' white-man-saviour attitudes.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- TheJoeMan 11mo ago
  That reminds me of internet RFC’s… like by the time they are formally published, no the author is not interested in your “comment”.
  - Arnt 11mo ago
    I've written a few RFCs. For any RFC, there will be a "comment" after publication from someone who did not take earlier comments seriously enough to read them.
    - eschatology 11mo ago
      Exactly the attitude described by GP comment Mind boggling
      - Arnt 10mo ago
        You may be relieved to hear that there's a straightforward process to have an RFC revised. Step 1 of that process, however, is reading the the RFC and the archived email about the RFC. You can't just arrive after publication, ignore what others said before you, and expect anyone to listen to you.
  - alwa 11mo ago
    …and, for that matter, there was an earlier draft phase where the author was R’ing For your C. And you could have jumped in then and been more-or-less welcome.
    - hunter2_ 11mo ago
      Sounds like RFC ought to be the name of that draft phase, rather than a name encompassing all phases, especially not the final phase in which C's are no longer R'd.
      - eesmith 11mo ago
        Times changed. Historical names did not. "many of the early RFCs were actual Requests for Comments and were titled as such to avoid sounding too declarative and to encourage discussion.[8][9] The RFC leaves questions open and is written in a less formal style. This less formal style is now typical of Internet Draft documents, the precursor step before being approved as an RFC." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Request_for_Comments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Request_for_Comments
- pengaru 11mo ago
  We Americans call this garnering buy-in.
  - antonymoose 10mo ago
    I’ve more typically heard it as “consensus / coalition building” - but in any case it’s such a sane way to work. No one wants a rude surprise, so why make one for your teammates.
- p0w3n3d 11mo ago
  I predict that these times of excessive trust in AI during decision making will be written in history books at some point of time. Providing that there will be books at all. I already suspect that Duolingo destroyed real people's recording of Spanish conversations and replaced them with AI. For example I can quite often hear continental Spanish accent which has never been taught to me before (as I started with Duolingo as a freshman) - it used to be always American Spanish accent. Wrongly cut conversions is another matter.
- xaedes 10mo ago
  > It puts a name to a considerate consensus-based way to approach change When reading about nemawashi I immediately thought about its usage in software refactoring. This is something you often intuitively do when making bigger refactors. Lay the foundations before actually doing it. Affected code parts and stakeholders should not be surprised by one big change. Instead they should be consulted before hand, building consensus, modify the planned big refactor itself and preparing the individual parts for it by small changes. Otherwise you will encounter a lot of friction, introduce bugs, etc. It is very nice to have a proper term for this.
ekianjo 11mo ago
> nemawashi Long time in Japan too, I would not consider newamashi as being Japan's strengths.
- krick 11mo ago
  I can imagine what you mean, but since I am not in Japan, it would be interesting why you feel that way.
  - jack1243star 11mo ago
    Not OP but the phrase in Japanese also carries a negative connotation, that important issues are decided by a shadow process hidden below the surface, beforehand by those in the loop. Meetings are just for show.
  - rtpg 11mo ago
    long and slow consensus building that weighs existing stakeholder's opinions heavily vs doing "the right thing" from the outset. So you move slowly and end up having very annoying conversations and compromises instead of just pushing something through. And the formal process is just a formality anyways, so then anyone not in the informal chatter just gets to experience the capriciousness anyways The sort of consensus building ultimately involves having to do stuff to make people's opinions feel taken care of, even if their concerns are outright wrong. And you end up having to make some awkward deals. Like with all this "Japanese business culture" stuff though, I feel like it's pretty universal in some degrees or another everywhere. Who's out there just doing things without getting _any_ form of backchannel checking first? Who wants to be surprised at random announcements from people you're working with? Apart from Musk types. But of course some people are very comfortable just ripping the band aid off and putting people in awkward spots, because "of course" they have the right opinion and plan already. Why context matters in judging whether some practice is good or not.
    - armada651 11mo ago
      Move fast and break stuff didn't work out much better though.
ezoe 11mo ago
Exactly, this is just a 面子(face) problem. Also, his demanding of not using his work for AI training is nonsense. Because entire articles, this one included is published under a Creative Commons license. Didn't he agree on that? Mozilla must reject his further contribution because he stated he don't understand the term of Creative Commons license. His wish granted I guess.
- kuschku 11mo ago
  Is the AI published under the same CC license, with attribution?
  - ezoe 11mo ago
    CC only works on things that are copyright protected works. Is ML model binary file a derivative works of the learning source? I don't think so.
    - AlexandrB 10mo ago
      Why not?
      - ezoe 10mo ago
        Because it doesn't. The Japanese copyright law clearly stated decades ago and recent US court favors Anthropic on this regard. Copyright isn't granted on mere information or thought. If you take somebody's copyrighted writing, analyze it and publish information such as how many words or sentence in it or other information about that copyrighted work, that's not a derivative works of original copyrighted work.
- wartywhoa23 11mo ago
  Creative Commons License was created without any AI in mind. And > Licensees may copy, distribute, display, perform and make derivative works and remixes based on it only if they GIVE THE AUTHOR or licensor THE CREDITS
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
rester324 11mo ago
I am not sure I am buying this. There is nothing human about japanese business procedures. Most japanese business procedures usually only serve micro managing purposes, and the nemawashi procedure is basically stripping people who were not consulted before, from giving their honest input and impact in the decision making. In my opinion it creates more problems than it solves
jesterson 11mo ago
> Not everything should be streamlined for a quick call solution If you have a better solution to correct an error or solve a problem than having a call/meeting and openly discuss situation and possible resolutions - I would love to know about that.
- port11 11mo ago
  The response was condescending and very… American. The call ensures what, that you'll be more receiving to their grievances? That nothing is on the record? A lot of people don't want to jump in calls, ever. The initial response should've validated that the community feels slighted, that they should've brought them onboard for the decision making, etc. Acknowledging the mistake immediately seems like a good start.
  - jesterson 11mo ago
    Ok, how the perfect reaction would be if you were at charge? I understand people have sympathy inclination to victims, so everyone would assume the victim is good and other side is bad. I have worked long enough with japanese people knowing they can throw unpredictable tantrums. As a manager, what would be your best course of action to deal with similar situation?
    - port11 11mo ago
      Acknowledging the mistake immediately seems like a good start, as I've said. Life doesn't always have to be from the perspective from “a manager”, these are community volunteers doing untold hours of unpaid work. Just be a person, whose acquaintance is upset you replaced their handmade postcard with an AI-generated one.
      - jesterson 11mo ago
        Acknowledging a mistake, no matter genuinely or not, doesn't solve the situation. It just makes victim feel good a bit. Agree on manager view, I was rather putting situation in a wrong perspective. It doesn't change the questions though - what would you do to resolve the situation (not to make the other side feel good)?
trallnag 11mo ago
"I love Japan for being human". What does this even mean? Immediately followed by something about food?
- pezezin 10mo ago
  Be glad he didn't mention that Japan has four seasons...
skeezyjefferson 10mo ago
[flagged]
stackedinserter 10mo ago
[flagged]
agnishom 10mo ago
Isn't "nemawashi" just a term for building rapport and sensible networking practices, but in Japanese?
guicho271828 10mo ago
Japanese here. You got it right. That message is an ultimatum. No mercy for the dishonorable.

alwa 11mo ago

I did as you suggested with respect to “nemawashi.” I read about that and “ringi,” and I’m glad I did. Even to get just the gist of what I’m sure is a thin interpretation: that nemawashi refers to a “laying-the-groundwork” process of circulating a proposal between peer-level counterparts, before formalizing it and proposing to act on it. Much less crashing in with it in the form of a “SumoBot,” as Mozilla seems to have done to its non-English communities… (with the disclaimer that I have zero insight into Mozilla’s process here outside of this writer’s account). It puts a name to a considerate consensus-based way to approach change, that seems humane (and effective) in any culture—leave it to the Japanese to have a specific term for it…

martin_henk 11mo ago
common sense... no real need for digging into japanese culture and so on. really no idea why Mozilla is so disrespectful to it's volunteers. well, that sweet 400m a year from Google... no need for volunteers anymore, eh
- alwa 11mo ago
  For sure. Common sense <> common, etc… although it does seem relevant that it was specifically a Japanese-language sub-community who were reacting here. I have to say it feels like a really familiar, NGO-flavored disrespect, though: “we’re doing this favor for underrepresented language communities,” regardless of whether they want/need it or not. “There’s only X number of you having to shoulder the load in XX sub-community, don’t you want us to impose a bunch of ‘help’?” Well, no, if the choice is between a formidable volume of slop and a smaller but well-executed volume of volunteer labor-of-love… (…I say as a person very much without all sides of the story, and shooting from the hip a bit. I don’t mean to impugn anybody’s intentions, and I imagine at the end of the day we’re all on the same side here.)
  - shaky-carrousel 11mo ago
    Enlightened despotism, all over again.
    - toyg 11mo ago
      mixed with good ol' white-man-saviour attitudes.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
TheJoeMan 11mo ago
That reminds me of internet RFC’s… like by the time they are formally published, no the author is not interested in your “comment”.
- Arnt 11mo ago
  I've written a few RFCs. For any RFC, there will be a "comment" after publication from someone who did not take earlier comments seriously enough to read them.
  - eschatology 11mo ago
    Exactly the attitude described by GP comment Mind boggling
    - Arnt 10mo ago
      You may be relieved to hear that there's a straightforward process to have an RFC revised. Step 1 of that process, however, is reading the the RFC and the archived email about the RFC. You can't just arrive after publication, ignore what others said before you, and expect anyone to listen to you.
- alwa 11mo ago
  …and, for that matter, there was an earlier draft phase where the author was R’ing For your C. And you could have jumped in then and been more-or-less welcome.
  - hunter2_ 11mo ago
    Sounds like RFC ought to be the name of that draft phase, rather than a name encompassing all phases, especially not the final phase in which C's are no longer R'd.
    - eesmith 11mo ago
      Times changed. Historical names did not. "many of the early RFCs were actual Requests for Comments and were titled as such to avoid sounding too declarative and to encourage discussion.[8][9] The RFC leaves questions open and is written in a less formal style. This less formal style is now typical of Internet Draft documents, the precursor step before being approved as an RFC." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Request_for_Comments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Request_for_Comments
pengaru 11mo ago
We Americans call this garnering buy-in.
- antonymoose 10mo ago
  I’ve more typically heard it as “consensus / coalition building” - but in any case it’s such a sane way to work. No one wants a rude surprise, so why make one for your teammates.
p0w3n3d 11mo ago
I predict that these times of excessive trust in AI during decision making will be written in history books at some point of time. Providing that there will be books at all. I already suspect that Duolingo destroyed real people's recording of Spanish conversations and replaced them with AI. For example I can quite often hear continental Spanish accent which has never been taught to me before (as I started with Duolingo as a freshman) - it used to be always American Spanish accent. Wrongly cut conversions is another matter.
xaedes 10mo ago
> It puts a name to a considerate consensus-based way to approach change When reading about nemawashi I immediately thought about its usage in software refactoring. This is something you often intuitively do when making bigger refactors. Lay the foundations before actually doing it. Affected code parts and stakeholders should not be surprised by one big change. Instead they should be consulted before hand, building consensus, modify the planned big refactor itself and preparing the individual parts for it by small changes. Otherwise you will encounter a lot of friction, introduce bugs, etc. It is very nice to have a proper term for this.

ekianjo 11mo ago

> nemawashi Long time in Japan too, I would not consider newamashi as being Japan's strengths.

krick 11mo ago
I can imagine what you mean, but since I am not in Japan, it would be interesting why you feel that way.
- jack1243star 11mo ago
  Not OP but the phrase in Japanese also carries a negative connotation, that important issues are decided by a shadow process hidden below the surface, beforehand by those in the loop. Meetings are just for show.
- rtpg 11mo ago
  long and slow consensus building that weighs existing stakeholder's opinions heavily vs doing "the right thing" from the outset. So you move slowly and end up having very annoying conversations and compromises instead of just pushing something through. And the formal process is just a formality anyways, so then anyone not in the informal chatter just gets to experience the capriciousness anyways The sort of consensus building ultimately involves having to do stuff to make people's opinions feel taken care of, even if their concerns are outright wrong. And you end up having to make some awkward deals. Like with all this "Japanese business culture" stuff though, I feel like it's pretty universal in some degrees or another everywhere. Who's out there just doing things without getting _any_ form of backchannel checking first? Who wants to be surprised at random announcements from people you're working with? Apart from Musk types. But of course some people are very comfortable just ripping the band aid off and putting people in awkward spots, because "of course" they have the right opinion and plan already. Why context matters in judging whether some practice is good or not.
  - armada651 11mo ago
    Move fast and break stuff didn't work out much better though.

ezoe 11mo ago

Exactly, this is just a 面子(face) problem. Also, his demanding of not using his work for AI training is nonsense. Because entire articles, this one included is published under a Creative Commons license. Didn't he agree on that? Mozilla must reject his further contribution because he stated he don't understand the term of Creative Commons license. His wish granted I guess.

kuschku 11mo ago
Is the AI published under the same CC license, with attribution?
- ezoe 11mo ago
  CC only works on things that are copyright protected works. Is ML model binary file a derivative works of the learning source? I don't think so.
  - AlexandrB 10mo ago
    Why not?
    - ezoe 10mo ago
      Because it doesn't. The Japanese copyright law clearly stated decades ago and recent US court favors Anthropic on this regard. Copyright isn't granted on mere information or thought. If you take somebody's copyrighted writing, analyze it and publish information such as how many words or sentence in it or other information about that copyrighted work, that's not a derivative works of original copyrighted work.
wartywhoa23 11mo ago
Creative Commons License was created without any AI in mind. And > Licensees may copy, distribute, display, perform and make derivative works and remixes based on it only if they GIVE THE AUTHOR or licensor THE CREDITS

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

rester324 11mo ago

I am not sure I am buying this. There is nothing human about japanese business procedures. Most japanese business procedures usually only serve micro managing purposes, and the nemawashi procedure is basically stripping people who were not consulted before, from giving their honest input and impact in the decision making. In my opinion it creates more problems than it solves

jesterson 11mo ago

> Not everything should be streamlined for a quick call solution If you have a better solution to correct an error or solve a problem than having a call/meeting and openly discuss situation and possible resolutions - I would love to know about that.

port11 11mo ago
The response was condescending and very… American. The call ensures what, that you'll be more receiving to their grievances? That nothing is on the record? A lot of people don't want to jump in calls, ever. The initial response should've validated that the community feels slighted, that they should've brought them onboard for the decision making, etc. Acknowledging the mistake immediately seems like a good start.
- jesterson 11mo ago
  Ok, how the perfect reaction would be if you were at charge? I understand people have sympathy inclination to victims, so everyone would assume the victim is good and other side is bad. I have worked long enough with japanese people knowing they can throw unpredictable tantrums. As a manager, what would be your best course of action to deal with similar situation?
  - port11 11mo ago
    Acknowledging the mistake immediately seems like a good start, as I've said. Life doesn't always have to be from the perspective from “a manager”, these are community volunteers doing untold hours of unpaid work. Just be a person, whose acquaintance is upset you replaced their handmade postcard with an AI-generated one.
    - jesterson 11mo ago
      Acknowledging a mistake, no matter genuinely or not, doesn't solve the situation. It just makes victim feel good a bit. Agree on manager view, I was rather putting situation in a wrong perspective. It doesn't change the questions though - what would you do to resolve the situation (not to make the other side feel good)?

trallnag 11mo ago

"I love Japan for being human". What does this even mean? Immediately followed by something about food?

pezezin 10mo ago
Be glad he didn't mention that Japan has four seasons...

skeezyjefferson 10mo ago

[flagged]

stackedinserter 10mo ago

[flagged]

agnishom 10mo ago

Isn't "nemawashi" just a term for building rapport and sensible networking practices, but in Japanese?

guicho271828 10mo ago

Japanese here. You got it right. That message is an ultimatum. No mercy for the dishonorable.