I'd guess that instead of going for the Big Co career path you choose to start a business instead. And a startup might not carry the same status in Japan as in the West?

I found the title weird when I read the article. Startups is nothing but status in my book. People work almost for free as long as they can tag themselves as startup people. Must be a cultural difference.

"I am a cofounder" is the new "I play in a band"

I guess Japanese society values stable trajectories in life more than money, whereas in the US the common trope is "you work for someone — you never get rich" and since getting rich is the only definition of success we have this hustle culture.

haha absolutely.

I even noticed this with a black and white picture of some AI startup group picture google bought. It looked exactly like a band picture from the 90s. Everyone all serious looking, different fashions, the lead singer/ceo a little bit more forward and center in the photos.

Another amusing cultural thing is I remember the saying like "even CEOs of big business want to be in the music industry".

Now it is the opposite and even the biggest music artists in the world want to be CEOs.

> People work almost for free as long as they can tag themselves as startup people.

I guess for most people, startup equates with potential.

My personal gripe with startups is that most think of themselves as "high-tech" startups, when all they have is some CRUD website, or some stylized game, or even a deep learning classifier, which just uses a standard library under the hood.

I would also add advertising companies to that list.