Kazuo Hirai To Assume CEO Position At Sony 52
thomst writes "Cnet's Stephen Shankland breaks the news that Sony will replace the lamentable Howard Stringer with Kazuo Hirai, the (now former) head of its electronics division. Better yet, the changeover will take place on April Fool's Day. Stringer, who was appointed CEO of Sony in 2005, will become Chairman of its board, and Hirai will become a board member. Hirai has been the leader of Sony's consolidated electronics group only since last year. He was in charge of all Sony electronics products, including the Playstation Network, which famously suffered a massive security breach that compromised its unencrypted user data on his watch."
Re:At least they didn't make Stringer commit seppu (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope. It's the Dilbert Principle [wikipedia.org] working its magic IRL. Promote the incompetent to limit the amount of damage they can do.
Also this is Sony (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure if the explanation is as much "that's Japan" as "that's Sony."
For the last decade (at the very least) Sony has acted like a bad stereotype of the guy obsessed with not losing face, and always being right. Every single bad decision, PR gaffe or just someone from Sony putting his foot in his mouth in an interview, they've dug themselves deeper and deeper just to not admit "ok, it was dumb." They'd rather put the other foot in their mouth too than admit that the first one was a foot after all.
I'm not even sure it has anything to do with Japan per se. While Asians generally are more careful about not losing respect, I don't think they're anywhere near the bad caricature that Sony has become. Plus, I see lots of us westerners doing the same too. I think it's more about hubris and/or insecurity than anything particularly Japanese.
But, anyway, I can actually see some guys at Sony prefer to promote him than admit that he might have said anything stupid ever.
Actually, something like that, except sadder (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I've seen stuff like that in action, except the (sadder) underlying assumption isn't just that they're now somehow immune, but that they've got experience.
As a trivial example, just think of companies and/or designers who've fucked up two MMOs in a row, and then suddenly get a third, bigger budget MMO to make, because, hey, they're the guys who have experience with making MMOs. And when that turns out to be a fuckup too, hey, lookit all that experience they have making MMOs, someone actually gives them money to make a fourth. (And if you think that that's a totally made up example, and nobody would be that stupid, it's actually the verbatim story of Funcom.)
Though an even better example is Michael Brown of FEMA fame, the guy who majorly fucked up during two disaster recoveries in a row and had to resign... consulting as a disaster recovery expert afterwards.