JET Program, meet chopping block

The JET Program sent me to Japan. There are many ways to go to Japan these days to do entry-level work like teaching English, but this is the preferred way to go since it's the only one with Japanese government backing.

Japan got a new prime minister earlier this summer, and the buzzword of the day is "fiscal responsibility," which led to the extension of a government-wide review of a huge range of government programs. Naturally, JET came under review. There's a really good writeup of events on jetwit.com by a JET alum and Columbia SIPA graduate. I've taken a few bits and added some commentary and things that you should consider if you're a JET-watcher, alum, or prospective participant:

Snippet: During the course of the proceedings, the JET Program was criticized as being ineffective in raising the level of Japan’s English education. One of the more publicized comments called for the elimination of the Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) portion of JET. 
Translation: This assessment is pretty much correct - as far as educational programs go, it's about as close to worthless as you can get. If you took fancy new American educational metrics to JET-subscribing schools, I'd bet good money you'd see virtually no correlation with English skills among the students or graduates. The common observation among alums is that each class has one super-star child, who would have been awesome at English with or without an awkward white person standing at the front of the room every day. This is why the overwhelming majority of school districts have dropped JET in favor of less costly private dispatch providers such as Interac. Seen in this light, JET looks like a pretty poor investment for the Japanese government (who go to enormous cost to hire teachers through embassies, fly them to Japan, and pay them way above local cost of living).

Snippet: In its June meeting in Washington, D.C., the US-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Exchange (CULCON), a joint US-Japan “wisemen’s commission” scathingly criticized the shortsightedness of any move to cut the JET Program, issuing a statement that [strongly endorsed the JET Program].
Translation: A handful of policy wonks who do work of questionable value, are likely all JET alums, and have their employment thanks to that status desperately want to see the program live. 

Snippet: For its part, the US State Department also seems to be taking the position that the JET Program makes valuable contributions to the long-term underpinnings of US-Japan relations and cutting it will be harmful. 
Translation: State Department employees focused on Japan likely include a significant population of alums from JET or similar programs in other countries. If they can't work on fun cultural exchange stuff like JET any more, they'll be sent back to the passport division, and that would suck.
 
 

Snippet: The general sense was that the JET Program was being evaluated as an educational program with the exchange component being given short shrift, since its impact is difficult to quantify and assess.  
Translation: Hai, there's the rub. JET stands for Japan Exchange and Teaching. In truth, the State Department is right to observe that the demise of JET would adversely affect US-Japan relations in the long run. But I believe that the effects of JET can be observed, and it wouldn't be very hard at all. Ignore the financial sector for a minute and look at the Westerners working in bilateral roles between Japan and Western countries. I'd wager that the JET alums in general (a) are in roles of greater import and (b) leave their Japanese bosses more satisfied than non-JET alums (both of which are statements you could measure with a simple employer survey).

I'd predict this has a lot to do with the Japanese government's treatment of JET members as opposed to those cheaper dispatch teachers. Dispatch teachers come over to do a job. JET members, on the other hand, have their existence acknowledged by the Japanese government and often arrive in their villages as de facto government employees, which confers much greater degrees of both respect and responsibility. They're paid well, which keeps them more comfortable.

And there's an even simpler metric: look up all the Japan specialists (current and former) from top-tier international relations grad schools. You'll get a wide pool of people: business people and entrepreneurs, journalists, nonprofit managers, international institution members (ranging from obscure UN organizations on Equal Rights for Toasters to the World Bank) and yes, policy wonks who sit on self-serving conferences like CULCON. How many are JET alums? How many are Interac alums?

I think you know my prediction. 

There are petitions circulating the English-language Web, but this is really a matter for the politicians. The JET Program is a child of the LDP (the party that lost power last year and held onto power forever using a massive aggregation of local pork), and make no mistake: JET money that went to rural governments was a clever form of pork. 

If I had to make a prediction about the program's fate, I bet it'll be left alone. Two reasons:
-The government is completely deadlocked, and even moreso after the Upper House election of a couple weeks ago.
-JET has been on a slow decline for about a decade as local governments unilaterally decide to go to private dispatch. If the problem will take care of itself in time, why step on a political mine?

Those of you who want to involve Japan in your professional lives, jump on the JET wagon while it's still a valued asset. We could be the last generation of professionals who get to benefit from it.

Pics from both coasts

Here, have a few random shots from life lately. Included are:

 
-A trip to the beach in the new wheels
-A hike up a mountain on the edge of San Diego
-The nicest non-premium airport waiting area ever: shiny HDTVs and leather chairs!
-The High Line, a linear park in Chelsea
-My lovely cousin Kelly, who is positively tearing it up in the world of journalism. Apparently the NYT and WSJ have a little rivalry going, and Kelly keeps scoring points for her employer, the Journal.
-Some graffiti on the UCSD campus showing love to Nujabes. I approve.
-It's noisy, but a club in San Diego had a Daft Punk night. You can make out our DJs, wearing the outfits and everything. Good clean fun.
-What's more ridiculous than Rex Douglass wearing one pair of huge silly 3D glasses? Rex Douglass wearing two pairs.
 

A new look for summer

Facebook readers, ignore this note now. This is actually about my proper blog.

For readers on the real deal, welcome to the summer design! I wanted to brighten things up a bit, plus I've always wanted to play with blue.

This could be a big shift: For years upon years I kept the design consistent, because I felt that was the right thing to do. But posterous has added a ton of really great designs lately and they've shown no sign of letting up. So I just might be able to change the design on a seasonal basis, which would be pretty snazzy. 

In the meantime, enjoy some blue.

To Colorado!

In my previous post about Blizzard I alluded to having a different summer job. 

This is it.

I'm working on All Points Bulletin, which is basically Grand Theft Auto Online. If you're reading on my proper website, here's a YouTube video with some promo stuff on it:

I'm doing some business-y stuff, some data manipulation, some economic analysis, and even a touch of finance. If I were working full-time, my job description would look like this.

So this means that I'll be in Boulder, CO, for the summer. I was a little hesitant at first, considering it's not the west coast, but I've been convinced to be psyched for it for several reasons:

-Nice weather
-Everyone's outdoorsy and eats well and is, not surprisingly, gorgeous. I need to get into this culture and try to do the same. I'm pudgy. :3
-Mom spent her 20s in this area and considers it the prime of her life.
-It's looking like I'll be living with family friends as a boarder. I'm starting to like this idea. I could use the presence of some good people, and a house, and dogs. The sensation of family is one I very rarely get, and I don't mind getting a dose of it this summer.

I'm really, really psyched to be in the industry in a respectable, serious position. 

And by the way - I have this job thanks to the one and only Nick Sivo. So Nick, I owe you like 20 beers. There are other people who deserve huge thanks as well, but the ball never would've been rolling if Nick hadn't thought of me when his VC partner needed a gamer. You've just jump-started my career, dude. <3

A visit to Blizzard

I've been putting this one off for a long time. But now that my summer job search is over I can breathe a little easier and share one of my favorite moments in the search: an invitation to the Blizzard campus. Not that I'll be working at Blizz this summer, but I'll explain myself in the post right after this one.

(If you don't know: Blizzard makes World of Warcraft. That's all the background you get. If you're not on board, this train's leaving the station without you because we're headed to Awesome Town and it's an express.)

Even if you are in the know, consider this: WoW has made Blizz rich. Dirty, rotten, filthy, stinking rich. It's changed the way they think and do things. It's spread wealth around the company. It's shifted the balance of power in the office politics. It's affected their game design and their corporate culture way more than a merger with Activision has.

These things become evident from the minute you get past the huge Hollywood-esque gate that looks like it's serious about protecting something. Everyone gets free valet parking. This is less of a "we don't want you wasting time on such plebian things" perk than a matter of necessity. Their parking lot is so overcrowded that they have to have professionals whose job it is to park cars as physically close together as possible. Cars are double- and triple-stacked everywhere you look.

Except for the front, by the entrances to the three buildings on campus. A few top execs park their exotics in the spiffy spots, and there's one spot with a special sign:

"Reserved for /loot winner"

I wasn't kidding about WoW affecting the culture around here.

So my meeting was with a pair of recruiters over lunch. Like a lot of top-notch companies, they had a lovely cafeteria that served a great club sandwich. I nervously chatted about school and what I hoped to do, what games I played, and so on, and my two recruiters quickly let on that they don't just require talent at Blizzard. They require fanboys. This wasn't me. One recruiter took a break from the conversation to make a quick phone call. In hushed tones, I heard talk of a "WoW box," but I strained to make conversation with the other recruiter while that was going on anyway. 

Afterward, I was given a tour of one of the office buildings. There are three: one for the WoW team, one for everything else (Warcraft, StarCraft and their top-secret stuff) and one more for support facilities such as IT, the cafeteria, and the gym. I got a walkthrough of the WoW building.

These are some truly great offices. The mood lighting is fantastic, couches abound, it's extremely well-designed, everyone's in a comfy environment, and every developer I was introduced to had the exact same thing to say: "This is the last job you'll ever have." As my guide (their amazingly awesome and generous senior recruiter, who I'll sing the praises of more later) walked me out of the UI department, one of them yelled, "Can you bring some more Kool-Aid?" Buncha jokers, those UI guys. In all seriousness, very few people ever leave Blizzard, which makes their recruiting process very strenuous since they only get one shot to fill a job.

I even had the chance to meet the producer of WoW. The guy got pretty high praise from others inside the company, and right from the handshake he had a different vibe from everyone else in the company. While I had mostly met with laid-back developers lazily working on a quiet day in the office, this guy J. was business. He was very nice, but certainly intense. His time was not to be wasted. And yet, with a prod from my wonderful guide, he offered some advice to an aspiring producer: "Let yourself be pigeonholed into what it is you want to do."

That may have been the best part of that visit. That message - persist in what it is you want to do - is as much a part of the game creation culture as rags-to-riches story are part of the American cultural heritage. But to hear it that one time, from a man so respected and in a position so admired, was reaffirming beyond words. The way he phrased it made it much less a case of "You've gotta fight to get to where you want" than a case of "The tides will knock you around; let them guide you into the place you want to be." The idea is hard to get across at 1am. But it's gaming Zen, I promise.

My tour concluded with the back corners of campus: the surprisingly active basketball and volleyball courts. Blizz, for being a place full of white males, has more than its fair share of physically active people.

And then my tour really was over and I was sent back to the valet stand. "Oh, wait!" my recruiter exclaimed. "Do you have a minute?" she asked. 

Of course I did.

I followed her back into the WoW building, but this time didn't follow her behind closed doors. I waited at the reception desk for what must have been 15 minutes. Finally, she came back out with a Blizz goodie bag. Inside was the usual stuff you get at industry events - t-shirt, hat, that kind of thing.

But this bag was much heavier. Also inside was a copy of WoW, the first expansion, strategy guides for each, and a one-year subscription. That phone call that had been made over lunch was for my sake.

"If you want to work for us?" started the recruiter, pointing to the game. "Get cracking."

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As a post-script to this story, I kept in touch with the recruiter. It was obvious that I wasn't a "culture fit" for Blizz, in HR-speak, but she was more than happy to set me up with her corporate cousins at Activision. I gave her my mailing address, and in March arrived my very own pass to GDC. It was my first time for that conference, and it was a blast.