Privacy note: Company names, locations, personal names, exact ages, headcounts, distinctive benefit amounts, and specific assignments have been removed or generalized. Compensation figures are rounded into broad bands where appropriate.
1. Of course I want to know where a former coworker went
A former coworker, close to my age, left some time ago. Where did they go? I want to know. Actually, I really want to know.
When I was the one leaving, people kept asking, “Where are you going?”, “What will you do?”, and “How much will you make?” At the time I thought: why is everyone so interested in someone else’s next employer?
Now enough time has passed, and I have become exactly the same person.
The reason is not pure gossip. Someone of a similar age, with experience from the same company, is an unusually useful piece of labor-market data.
2. Employer guessing becomes a surprisingly entertaining puzzle
Give me a few fragments: “Apparently it’s a large company,” “It’s a manufacturer,” “Something mechanical,” “They commute to some industrial area.” Suddenly a list of candidates appears in my head.
I check company size, products, job postings, pay, overtime, and benefits. Then I start narrowing the field.
“With these conditions, isn’t it probably this one?”
It is basically a corporate detective game. The longer you work, the better you become at it: “This industry and this scale leaves five companies. That job description leaves two. That particular benefit leaves… wait, is it you?”
It is slightly absurd to apply full corporate-research skills to someone who left months ago, but it is also genuinely fun.
3. The problem: I had scattered plenty of clues myself
Looking back at my own job change is more embarrassing. I did not reveal the company name, but I casually mentioned things such as a large manufacturer, a broad manufacturing field, a large pay increase, the broad job function, strong housing support, relocation support, and generous benefits.
At that point, the company name is technically hidden, but the answer may already be embedded in the question.
A manager who knew the industry once guessed my destination. At the time I thought the person had impressive intuition. Now that I am doing the same puzzle with someone else, I understand what really happened:
The detective was competent, but the suspect had distributed too many clues.
Exact numbers are especially dangerous. “Cheap company housing” matches hundreds of firms. A distinctive monthly amount can become a search term.
4. A former coworker is a live salary benchmark
Why do these destinations matter so much? Because they are benchmarks.
A salary model on a recruiting site is abstract. A real person who worked in the same company is concrete.
“If someone slightly younger than me could move to a company of that scale…” “If the same background can reach that compensation band…” “If that experience is valuable outside our company…”
Those observations can reset a person’s perception of what is possible.
Inside one company, its pay table can start to feel like the entire world. Then one coworker leaves, lands somewhere better, and suddenly there is a hole in the wall.
Oh. We can actually get out of here.
That single observation can be more powerful than a hundred generic career articles.
5. The biggest jump is often switching salary tables, not climbing one
The most important part of a major job change is sometimes not a normal raise. It is entering a different compensation structure.
When annual income moves from the four-million-yen range into the six-million-yen range, the effect can resemble skipping several internal promotion stages at once.
Trying to reach that level entirely through internal promotion might require several ratings, examinations, openings, years of service, and luck. A job change can replace the whole pay table at once.
Instead of climbing five steps internally, you enter the landing five steps higher from the side.
That creates strange results. A younger employee can suddenly earn in the same band as much older supervisors or senior staff at the previous company. The person has not changed overnight. The price tag has.
A ¥2.5 million annual gap sustained for twenty years equals ¥50 million before tax in a simple calculation—roughly the price of a house in many places. Real life is more complicated, but the scale shows why the pay table matters so much.
6. Once you reach the six-million-yen band, sideways can matter more than upward
Should the next goal always be higher pay? Not necessarily.
Beyond a certain point, another ¥1 million may come bundled with people management, more meetings, more coordination, longer hours, transfer risk, more difficult work, and responsibility outside normal hours.
You buy ¥1 million of salary and receive ¥3 million worth of responsibility for free.
No thanks.
A better strategy can be lateral movement: maintain at least the same compensation band while improving overtime, commuting, transfer risk, job fit, flexibility, and vacation access.
The game changes from “maximize salary” to “find the easiest seat inside the same salary league.”
7. ¥6 million is enough—if it means today’s ¥6 million
Personally, I do not need endless salary growth. Roughly ¥6 million in today’s purchasing power is enough. The important phrase is today’s purchasing power.
I do not mean a nominal ¥6 million frozen for thirty years. That is where inflation enters the story.
With 2% annual inflation, maintaining the purchasing power of today’s ¥6 million would require approximately:
| Years from now | Nominal income equivalent to today’s ¥6m |
|---|---|
| 5 | ¥6.62m |
| 10 | ¥7.31m |
| 15 | ¥8.08m |
| 20 | ¥8.92m |
| 30 | ¥10.87m |
Two percent sounds harmless. Thirty years later, it does not look harmless at all.
8. Even an ¥8 million non-manager ceiling is not enough if it never moves
A pay table where non-managers can reach around ¥8 million sounds reassuring. But suppose prices rise 2% each year and that nominal ceiling never changes.
Fifteen years later, ¥8 million would have purchasing power equivalent to only about ¥5.94 million today.
So even a seemingly generous ceiling can quietly erode. The real requirement is not merely a high ceiling. The whole salary table has to move with prices.
9. A 2% raise during 2% inflation is basically maintenance
- pay +1%, prices +2% → real purchasing power falls;
- pay +2%, prices +2% → roughly unchanged;
- pay +3%, prices +2% → real purchasing power rises slightly.
A headline saying “2% wage increase” may therefore mean little more than repairing the armor after taking damage.
The number went up. The lifestyle did not. Inflation has terrible manners.
10. Management pay can become a subscription to responsibility
One obvious solution is to become a manager and earn more. I am not convinced.
Management often adds vacancies, personnel issues, ratings, meetings, coordination, crises, and psychological availability outside normal hours.
Promotion is therefore not only a pay increase. It can also be a subscription plan for recurring responsibility. And cancellation is inconvenient.
If a senior non-manager can maintain roughly ¥6–8 million while preserving time and mental space, that can be a better deal in effective hourly value and quality of life.
11. Which leads to the final conclusion: union, please do your job
After thinking through career strategy, lateral mobility, compensation bands, and inflation, the final answer becomes strangely simple:
Union, please fight for the base pay.
If the salary table itself rises, employees do not need heroic promotions every year just to preserve purchasing power.
Employee: I am not particularly interested in management.
Company: We will continue normal step increases.
Union: We secured a base-pay increase.
Inflation: …
Inflation, nobody asked you.
12. Conclusion: curiosity about someone else’s new employer is also curiosity about the market
Yes, there is some plain nosiness in wanting to know where a former coworker went. But it is also useful data.
When someone with a similar age and history leaves the same company and receives a certain valuation elsewhere, that is a live observation of the labor market.
And once you have personally experienced a major shift in salary tables, your goal can change. Not “higher, higher, higher,” but:
“If I can preserve this compensation band, I can move sideways toward the easier life.”
Less obsession with titles. More freedom. Less obsession with maximum income. More stability.
The only opponent that cannot be ignored is inflation.
Employers can be changed sideways. Management can be declined. But please, somebody keep the pay table moving.
