121–130 of 157 posts
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I worked at a door factory. We worked 20% overtime for 6 months. We made 20% more doors. Works great for manual labor.
That's the thing though, it's an old-school Fordist concept that doesn't really apply to modern service/creative jobs. Time, like place, is not related to productivity anymore, modern employers need better metrics.
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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 There's a large population of NEETs who have withdrawn from the work force.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.
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>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!
Too bad I don't have perks of using foreignness there...
[0]: https://hideki.hclippr.com/2011/06/02/social-expectations-in...
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One of the most baffling mysteries of our time for me is the fact that this truth (more working hours = less productivity) is still being massively denied and the non-existent and strawman "arguments" against it have been beaten to death and debunked thousands of times... yet never fail to reappear in any discussion on the topic. It seems the economic pressure for supporting this bullshit story is still too strong. S…
Maybe it's because there's a lot of confusion created by people who claim that there's an inverse correlation between hours worked and overall productivity, instead of hours worked and marginal productivity. I have no trouble believing that (on average) someone who works 50 hours doesn't accomplish 25% more than someone who works 40 hours. I find it almost impossible to believe that they don't accomplish more overall…
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> In Japan, leaving before the boss is distasteful My personal management policy is I get in before and leave after all my employees incase they need me and to show them that I am there for/with them (within reason - if someone is putting a really late night I may leave first). The idea of not leaving before the boss leaves is weird to me. I get higher pay and more stock options, why should I be leaving early when my…
> If they get their work done they shouldn't feel guilty leaving at 5:00. Close but not perfect. My correction would be "even if they don't get their work done, they shouldn't feel guilty leaving at 5:00." The reason I say this is because one could easily argue that there's always more work to be done. That's always been the case for me anyway. But tomorrow is another day. When you've put in a full workday already, n…
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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!
And that's exactly why I can't work there.[0] (Though, it's funny I was actually very close of doing just that.) Too bad I don't have perks of using foreignness there... [0]: https://hideki.hclippr.com/2011/06/02/social-expectations-in...
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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.
I started my CS degree in 95, and did most of my coursework from my dorm, telnetting in to one of the Sparcs we were expected to write code on, eventually using X11 forwarding too. Wasn't any different resultswise than sitting with everyone else at terminals in the lab, though I guess I missed out on the social aspects of plowing through assignments in the same room together.
Also we didn't really have many people with laptops, so if you had a group project meeting in the lab was pretty much the only way you could all get computers but still interact with each other.
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…
I'm a bit conflicted by this... My American brain tells me this is an insane way to live. No work life balance. It's horrible inefficient, as you can't downsize, or compete international like this. You're forced to hangout with coworkers. However, having this long term stability with work is something that is sorely missed in the US. A pension? Job for life? No one gets these things anymore.
If you don't have a 401k benefit, you can fund an IRA yourself.
Many folks are learning the hard way that you really don't want to bet your retirement on a single company remaining both solvent and honest for the next 70 years.
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.
South Korea went even crazier and stole their consumer electronics business. (Both in terms of government subsidies and extreme working hours. And: contrary to the opinion of the united socialist workers of HN, extreme hours sometimes are sometimes actually needed in order to build something new, desirable - well before anyone else. The fact that "extreme hours" are also employed when that is not really the target do…