Author: William Lise

I am a long-term (50-plus years) resident of Japan, and former electrical engineer, and I have been translating and interpreting for over four decades here in Japan.

What is it with the Microsoft thugs that own and run LinkedIn?

I trashed my account of about five years standing in October and LinkedIn sent me a “we’re sorry to see you go” email. Fine. I don’t need any emails from them, so I trashed the email alias on my company server that I had used as a contact address for that LinkedIn account.

Just today, probably seeing that email to the above-noted address is bouncing, these cyberlouts sent me a “You’re on a roll on LinkedIn” (subject line) email at a gmail address (mea culpa, mea culpa, mea big fucking culpa) I had once used as an address for LinkedIn things with an account I haven’t had for ten years, with a notification bell and number-of-notifications count, trying to get me to sign in (and revive?) the account.

If you click on it, a page pops us trying to get me to sign into that long-gone LinkedIn account.

To add stupidity to injury, the email telling me that I’m “on a roll” itself has two introductions to a cumstain trying to sell akiya (abandoned houses) in Japan of all things, to unsuspecting foreigners, the intended targets surely including, but not limited to, self-proclaimed digital nomad hipsters who look forward to interacting with their peers here, not realizing that it will be very difficult to find peers in Hachinohe or some other venue that has these lovely properties. Let the nomad beware. But I digress.

To borrow the phony formulaic openers used by self-proclaimed “founders” on LinkedIn, I am not thrilled, not excited, and not honored to get this garbage sent to me.

They have an Unsubscribe link to click on, but I suspect that clicking on it would just notify LinkedIn that there’s “somebody home” at that email address. I’ll let this sit for a while. The annoying thing is that this is not an alias address that can be conveniently trashed, but any email from them can be automatically trashed, and I will think of other ways they should be rewarded.

It’s good that the distance of cyberspace provides the Microsoft people avoidance of accountability and protection from people who would do them physical harm.

Entitlement and Linguistic Imperialism of Foreigners Wanting to Come to Japan

My recent participation on LinkedIn provided me a glimpse into how some foreigners—particularly foreigners who are having language-related employment problems in Japan or who want to come here to work but haven’t yet made it—view Japan and its “language problem.”

A complaint I often hear is that it is unfair for Japanese companies to require foreign employees to be Japanese capable. Some foreigners cite the requirement to pass a Japanese language proficiency test as being discriminatory. After all, they are highly educated, speak English, and have extremely valuable technical skills that don’t require Japanese ability, right?

I am not talking about farm or factory workers brokered into Japan from Asia—those people might have a compatriot gang boss to deal with—but rather people seeking work in jobs that call for a high level of education and skill; jobs such as programmer, but physically in a Japanese company, not on a farm in Tochigi or a factory in Aichi.

To my ears, the above type of comment is evidence of both entitlement and linguistic imperialism.

Where did these people get the notion that Japanese companies are obligated to treat them any differently from other employees?

I have spent a few years in Japan (somewhat more than 50, actually), have had professional interaction with hundreds of companies, and have yet to encounter a Japanese company that operates in English here, or that would consider a foreign employee in Japan incapable of communicating in Japanese to be a full member of their team.

Surprise! The language of Japan is Japanese, and almost everybody here, including me, thinks that’s just fine.

The people voicing displeasure at the language requirement would, as employees, be required to interact on a daily basis with Japanese employees, most of whom are not proficient in English, and that needs to be done in Japanese. Interacting with other employees is part of the job. Without Japanese, a foreigner will not be fully functional.

These disgruntled foreigners need to remember that Japanese companies are made not of computer programs, databases, and hardware, but of carbon-based humans who communicate in Japanese. I suppose an argument could be made that the foreigners could work remotely, but then they don’t need to be in Japan, and that would burst the come-to-Japan dream that many of these people are suffering from.

Why don’t Japanese speak English, some might wonder? Well, the short answer is that they don’t need to.

Additionally, although Japan never succeeded at conquering enough countries for long enough to force their language down the throats of many non-Japanese in a lasting manner, the situation with English is quite different. The success of anglophone incursions into countries and linguistic lives all over the globe has fostered a cohort of native English speakers who think that English is a given.

Maybe they think that having to learn Japanese places them at an unfair disadvantage with respect to native Japanese speakers. Fair or not, they are correct about the disadvantage and just need to suck it up.

Expanded Thoughts on My “LinkedIn Experience”

Executive Summary:  For any freelancer (and not limited to translators) not totally locked into sitting in front of their computer and hoping work arrives, LinkedIn is as useless as tits on a bull. In fact, even (and perhaps particularly) if you are locked into that strategy, LinkedIn is pretty much useless.

Some uselessness of LinkedIn not directly attributable to Microsoft:

  • Usage of LinkedIn by Japanese individuals and entities is insignificant compared to the anglophone world, hence the small number of JA-EN translators I encountered there. One of the reasons I rejoined LinkedIn was because of the lack of online venues with active interaction between Japanese/English translators. LinkedIn did not fill that need.
  • Almost all of the hundreds of connection requests I receive (and almost universally ignore) are from people in the Global South, some of them involved in activities not easily discernible from their profiles, but many ostensibly being translators. Surely, they saw my profile and company name and erroneously thought I had translation work to give them; I do not.

Uselessness of LinkedIn directly attributable to Microsoft and its business model:

  • Countless ads for AI systems.
  • Countless ads for jobs training AI systems by annotating data.
  • Many ads for training you to achieve “AI success” by learning how to prompt AI.
  • Incessant promotion by Microsoft itself of AI and AI promoters.
  • Phoniness and bluster are everywhere and rewarded by Microsoft with reach that leads to engagement. These are characteristically from people claiming to be the best things since sliced bread and also fighting against tremendous odds and never losing. I feel some of these people have serious self-confidence problems, but I digress.
  • AI-generated posts clearly uploaded to farm engagement and often about topics totally unrelated to anything the poster’s profile might indicate that they do when they are not posting AI slop.

Uselessness of LinkedIn attributable to general users:

  • A large portion of users present themselves as consultants, coaches, and trainers.
  • Countless formulaic posts, many starting with the overworked expression of thrill, excitement, or honor about just about anything and everything. They often end with silliness such as “Hi, I’m Danny Deluder, and if you need…”
  • An increasing number of posts that include images stolen and unlawfully republished, probably by people who will conveniently tell you that the image was on the Internet, so it was “public domain.” These people should be beaten about the head and shoulders with a heavy shovel, but I digress.
  • Account owners who reply to every comment to a post they make using AI, easily discoverable from not only the vapid text, but also the lengths of the responses, the dispersion of which often no more than one or two words. It’s as if they told an AI to reply in N words.
  • Incessant posts from “LinkedIn coaches,” purporting to coach you in achieving “LinkedIn success.”
  • Countless posts by people self-identifying as

Uselessness and annoyance of LinkedIn attributable to translator users:

  • Many desperate and delusional translators chanting the “culture mantra,” which claims that, because translation requires an understanding of cultural nuances, humans will not be replaced by AI. These people apparently don’t know or want to know that most translation that is purchased is not affected by culture. Bless their hearts, but I have given up on trying to educate these people.
  • Ads by translators working the aisles of desperate translators and looking to take money from them for coaching.

Annoyance regarding a specific group related to business in Japan:

  • There is a Japan business group that has a few members who know about Japan and make sensible comments based on the real world, but almost all of the many thousands of members are silent, and the group appears to be generally populated by non-Japanese people looking to do business in Japan or, in many cases, just get a cover story to be able to come and live in Japan.
  • Because of the above demographic, there are Japanese members of the group selling services to foreigners trying to acquire residence status in Japan.
  • Again, because of the above demographic, there are complaints that Japan is not fair to foreigners, including some comments about the unfairness of requiring proficiency in Japanese to gain employment. I will write about that particular silly entitlement at another time.

For translators specifically, I can say that, with translation quickly winding down as a realistic activity for most freelancers, the type of clients the few survivable translators will need to acquire are not going to be acquired by having a LinkedIn account or posting there. Many more—and much different—things are going to be required.