About two months ago, Monosus welcomed its first employee to celebrate 10 years of continuous service. That person is Yasuo Sakamoto, who will be featured in this article.
It's hard to believe that it's been 10 years since he joined the company, but it feels like the time has flown by, and yet, there are so many events that happened in the last 10 years that it would be impossible to remember them all.
The job interview took place when Monosus had just been founded and was still just a small private business.
It was the company's first employment interview, and it took a lot of courage on my part to decide to hire him, but I still feel it was a strange fate that he decided to join a company that was quietly operating out of a single room in an apartment building that was even smaller than the room he was living in at the time.
Ten years have passed since then. I asked him, "Why did you decide to join this company back then?"
The answer was, "Because I was the first to receive the job offer during the recruitment process." Very simply. But perhaps it is in these situations that fateful encounters can occur.
Just like in an RPG, you keep clearing one difficulty after another.
I secretly imagine that for the fun-loving Sakamoto, work and life itself might be seen as a role-playing game (RPG).
He always seems to be gathering allies and searching for weapons, just like the main character in a RPG.
He says he is often asked for directions both in Japan and abroad. No doubt people feel the urge to call out to Sakamoto, who seems to be looking around for a friend.
Also, when I go out with Sakamoto, I often bump into people he knows on the street. It makes me wonder just how many friends and acquaintances he has across Japan, and indeed the world.
We become friends with people who ask us for directions, and when we go out drinking we make plans to meet again with the person we happen to sit next to, and in this way we seem to be filling the stage of the RPG called world with our allies.
On a more serious note, even in terms of work, he is diligent in gathering allies and weapons.
There are many people in the company who have stories like, "I was able to work with peace of mind because Sakamoto was on a project with me," or, "When I was at my wit's end and thought I couldn't do it, Sakamoto showed up and encouraged me, which helped me get through it."
The trust he builds one by one in this way, and the ability to maximize the abilities and skills of each person he has built a relationship with, become Sakamoto's weapon when the time comes, and also increase his own power level.
So even when Sakamoto is faced with a difficult situation or a pinch, he never gets depressed or gets terrified. Rather, the higher the hurdle that would normally make someone flinch, the more he thinks, "Here comes the boss character!", gathers everyone's strength, bravely faces it, and continues to clear it.
I do my thing,
You do your thing
With in-house project members.
I think there is something uniquely interesting about Sakamoto's approach to building project teams. While he wholeheartedly supports members who are truly struggling, he rarely lends a hand to members facing certain specific difficulties.
For example, during a meeting, when the client and the director disagree and the director asks the salesperson, Sakamoto, for help, Sakamoto responds with a surprising lack of confidence, saying, "Were you asleep?!" Also, even if the production staff is working overtime late into the night every day for a project that he received as a salesperson, he goes home early at the regular time.
At first glance, this behavior may seem cold, but in reality it is the result of Sakamoto's trust in his team members, encouraging them to maximize their abilities in their own positions.
It might be the best encouragement possible: "I've entrusted it to you, so I'm counting on you. You can do it even without my strength."
This allows the members who are entrusted with the task to persevere until the end, give it their all, and produce results as an entire project team.
Such a positive cycle seems to have been created around Sakamoto.
"Sunny man" Yasuo Sakamoto
Make everyone's mood "sunny" along with the weather
Sakamoto is full of energy and ready to carry the mikoshi (portable shrine) at the annual festival of his local Nakano Hikawa Shrine.
Looking back, it seems to me that as the company grew, Sakamoto was the one who led the way and overcame many of the first-time projects that seemed enormous.
He built the site from scratch, moving from table coding to CSS coding for the first time, and incorporated now-common WordPress and MovableType, all with only a large bookstore near his company at the time as his mentor.
It's hard to believe now, but in the early days of Coding Factory, we worked hard for weeks, often staying up all night, on a 300-page project, and when we outsourced overseas for the first time, what was meant to be a quick inspection and sightseeing trip ended up with us being stuck in a hotel with the local staff helping with the delivery.
There are still many more things that have happened recently, but anything more recent than this is too vivid for me to mention here (laughs).
Even though these memories may seem painful when put into words, they can be recalled as funny stories because they are fond memories for everyone involved in the project.
It was difficult, but we pulled together and got through it.
It was tough, but it was an opportunity for me and the team to take a step forward.
It was tough, but in the end we received words of gratitude and praise from our customers.
I'm sure it remains a memory for all of us, and probably for Sakamoto as well.
No matter how difficult the situation, they show a bright light. Even in the midst of a rainstorm, they show everyone a brighter tomorrow.
This power is perhaps the true talent of Yasuo Sakamoto, the rare sunny man.
