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Dentsu CEO resigns after overworked employee commits suicide

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Re: Dentsu CEO resigns after overworked employee commits suicide

#81

Post by chaostheory »

flamedoge wrote: post #78
chaostheory wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's already plenty of evidence that working beyond 40 hours a week translates into a reduction in productivity. This is not some new, revolutionary insight; it's old news yet so many people and organizations ignore it at the cost of efficiency. The 40 hour work week is not just for your sake, but it's in the company's interests as well. I could be wrong but a lot of the data from was from WWII. When your country'…

I would dangerously extrapolate that it's not just productivity that suffers, but also correctness. Anecdotally I made more mistakes and was off mark the longer I extended myself.

Yeah that's accounted for as part of productivity as defined by the researchers. Still it's a good point since I didn't mention it.

Re: Dentsu CEO resigns after overworked employee commits suicide

#82

Post by jacalata »

gragas wrote: post #31
rjeli wrote: post #16

Great blog post here recently on Japanese work culture: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan/ "Traditionally, salarymen (and they are, by the way, mostly men) are hired into a particular company late in university and stay at that company or its affiliates until they retire." "The employee hereby promises the company: Your first obligation, in all things, will be to your company. You will work…

>Salarymen work large amounts of overtime, although much of it is for appearance’s sake That's just stupid. It makes me wonder, though: is the work culture similar for ex-patriots working in Japan?

A friend told me about their time in a New York finance company, where people showed up to the office on Saturday and watched TV on their computer because even if there wasn't any work to do you had to be seen putting the time in.

Re: Dentsu CEO resigns after overworked employee commits suicide

#83

Post by mrschwabe »

vivekd wrote: post #5

If the Japanese are working so much that some a literally working themselves to death - why is their economy so bad? My guess is that a lot of that time is getting used up with unnecessary busy work rather than actual productive labor.

High taxation and high inflation are two main contributors IMO.

Re: Dentsu CEO resigns after overworked employee commits suicide

#84

Post by shams93 »

msbarnett wrote: post #38
gragas wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Salarymen work large amounts of overtime, although much of it is for appearance’s sake That's just stupid. It makes me wonder, though: is the work culture similar for ex-patriots working in Japan?

> > Salarymen work large amounts of overtime, although much of it is for appearance’s sake > That's just stupid. That's overtime. Almost all overtime, even in the US, is as much about the appearance of working hard rather than any real gains in productivity. I've lost count of the number of times I've been involved with or seen a startup that "crushes code 100 hours a week because we're out to win, man", with most of…

Yeah my current startup, no overtime, and all our projects are on schedule, everything is going great. Previous company required 80-100 hours a week basically for show, they would break more than got fixed because at 100 hours a week your body and brain reach the breaking point, completely unproductive.

Re: Dentsu CEO resigns after overworked employee commits suicide

#85

Post by seanmcdirmid »

prodmerc wrote: post #67
gragas wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Salarymen work large amounts of overtime, although much of it is for appearance’s sake That's just stupid. It makes me wonder, though: is the work culture similar for ex-patriots working in Japan?

> Ex-patriots Expatriates.

I love this mistake though.

Re: Dentsu CEO resigns after overworked employee commits suicide

#86

Post by labster »

h1d wrote: post #55
labster wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's already happening. There's a large population of NEETs who have withdrawn from the work force.

Doubt they withdrew after having undesired working conditions. Many just do not actively seek jobs.

There are lots of reasons people choose not to seek jobs. A person can just look at their parents, decide they don't have the fortitude or attitude to integrate into the sarariman lifestyle, and rationally opt out.

PROTIP: one can look for remote programming work in the U.S. or Europe, earn a decent living, and still engage in a NEET lifestyle. I have a steady diet of HN, anime, Perl, and reclusiveness and it works great for me.

Re: Dentsu CEO resigns after overworked employee commits suicide

#87

Post by pgz »

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #58
pgz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several people argue that working long hours will have a negative impact on productivity. For example if you look at EU countries, the ones with the economy in worse conditions are those with longer working hours (Greece, Italy).

That's such a weak correlation. Greek is in a crisis because people are working too many hours? Do you honesty believe that?

Of course I don't believe these countries demise is caused by longer working hours. I know Italy a bit more than Greece and the main problem there is decades of widespread corruption at all levels of society.

But in some way it's a small reflection of an inefficient society.

Re: Dentsu CEO resigns after overworked employee commits suicide

#88

Post by closeparen »

pyromine wrote: post #77
jedberg wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just out of curiosity, how old are you/when did you attend college? I ask because "back in the day" everyone knew. If you were a cs student in 1995, you pretty much had to work in one of the basement labs. One of the profs liked to come to the lab at 3am before a deadline and laugh at us.

The crappy thing is that while this might be "back in the day", I still have to spend time cooped up in computer lab because software companies make the licenses way too expensive so we have nowhere else to do our homework.

My alma mater offered RDP for those programs.

Re: Dentsu CEO resigns after overworked employee commits suicide

#89

Post by dvcrn »

hkmurakami wrote: post #53
gragas wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Salarymen work large amounts of overtime, although much of it is for appearance’s sake That's just stupid. It makes me wonder, though: is the work culture similar for ex-patriots working in Japan?

If you are seen as being "Japanese" you are expected to conform. If you are seen as a foreigner, you get a pass. If you ever find yourself working in Japan, use your foreignness to an advantage!

We are lucky enough to work in a very modern field with a different mindset in contrast to other jobs.

I'm at my 3rd company in Japan now and while some of my previous experiences were bad, it was really more the fault of the company with things you could easily find in other countries as well and not "because Japan".

Re: Dentsu CEO resigns after overworked employee commits suicide

#90

Post by Amezarak »

Cyph0n wrote: post #45
vtange wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of some college cultures actually. In architecture school you were almost expected to pull all-nighters for the sake of "being a dedicated architecture student". It is like hazing of some sort.

Never once pulled an all-nighter in college (ECE). I also never studied for more than 2-3 hours in succession. I always took a nice break between study sessions to let everything sink in. On the other hand, most of my peers consistently stayed up through the night during examinations. Most of my peers studied in groups. I sat in on a few sessions and discovered that for every hour of study, an hour was spent on petty…

YMMV - I was in college for six years, got a BS and MS in CS.

I was surrounded by people who, like you said, regularly stayed up all night prior to exams. Sometimes we even scheduled that: the students would organize study-group sessions from 10PM-til.

I had a policy then that, no matter what, I was going to get a full night's sleep. Period. Full stop. I think it served me very well. A quick refresher in the morning gave me probably as much recency in terms of memory, and personally, my brain just works a lot, lot better with plenty of sleep. Even if I didn't know an answer, it was a lot easier to stay calm and rationalize something that often turned out to be right or good enough.

I only felt a little bad about it once - in a math class I left the study group right before my bedtime, while still getting the notes they'd put together the rest of the night. I felt a little uneasy about not pulling my weight, so to speak, but oh well. It could have been scheduled earlier and I would have gladly stayed.

So I'd keep it up.

Nowadays things are a little different for me - a lot of my job unfortunately involves being present regardless of whether there's anything to actually do. I worked two-and-a-half days straight a couple months ago. No overtime pay. :\

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