Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

In Japan, It’s a Riveting TV Plot: Can a Worker Go Home on Time?

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 192 posts

Re: In Japan, It’s a Riveting TV Plot: Can a Worker Go Home on Time?

#141

Post by Kluny »

maxxxxx wrote: post #91
reroute1 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is there is only a focus on toxic masculinity and men see it everywhere. It stands to reason there can be just as much toxic femininity, but you don't hear about that ever... or not much talk about positive masculinity but surely that exists also

Connecting bad traits with the same term as unchangeable traits makes no sense to. I am male and therefore have masculinity. Why connect demanding overtime to masculinity? It's super unspecific and not helpful. And no way you could ever use the word "toxic femininity" or "toxic blackness". People would go crazy,.

I've had many conversations about toxic femininity. It's a different thing, and often refers to learned helplessness or a victim mentality. But that's not what's happening in this case. Toxic masculinity is a cultural norm that requires men to be tough, to be providers, to never admit weakness, to be capable of everything that a "normal" person is capable of, and push the limits as well. And although it's called "masculinity", both people in the scenario described above could easily be women.

Re: In Japan, It’s a Riveting TV Plot: Can a Worker Go Home on Time?

#142

Post by e12e »

blondin wrote: post #135
jjuhl wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I work (Denmark); it's more the looks you get if you only take one or two weeks off or if you constantly stay in the office past 7hrs. Over working is not healthy and you are not productive anyway. Work (at most) the 37.5hrs/week (maybe 40 if there's a crunch) you are paid for and take your 6 weeks of yearly vacation that you are entitled to (plus holidays) - is what I'd recommend and what my manager pushes. I…

6 weeks of yearly vacation! you guys have it good lol

Plus holidays. If it's similar to Norway (we get "only" five weeks, and an extra week past... 60 years?) - there's about a week of holidays (Christmas day, Easter , New years day etc) that don't count towards the total (we have 10 of those in Norway - but as some move, and/or fall on days that are typically off for office workers, like Saturday, they don't amount to 10 work days off. Somewhat depending on contract and type of work).

Re: In Japan, It’s a Riveting TV Plot: Can a Worker Go Home on Time?

#143

Post by rosser »

belorn wrote: post #139
rosser wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The word has different meaning depending on... All words do, to some extent. "The greatest problem in communication is the illusion that it has happened at all." — George Bernard Shaw I'm not sure it's much like the n-word beyond the intent of the utterer, though. I've been called "My n-word " before, by people who "get" to use that word, yet I'm white. I still wouldn't presume to use it back (for myriad reasons, m…

It not really about the intent, but rather how the intent is perceived. The reason to not use the N-word is for me identical to toxic masculinity. Most recipients and people who happen to be near won't interpret it in any positive way. Both are unproductive for meaningful discourse and leads to a hostile environment. Since people who use those term is usually well aware of the reaction, it must be assumed that it is…

> Since people who use those term is usually well aware of the reaction, it must be assumed that it is the speakers intention is to cause harm.

People who talk about "toxic masculinity", in the academic sense, shouldn't use that term, because other people will have feelings about it? People should adjust their speech to the sensitivities of — not just their, but any — audience? Is that legit the position here?

Re: In Japan, It’s a Riveting TV Plot: Can a Worker Go Home on Time?

#144

Post by chris11 »

arkades wrote: post #116
chris11 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMHO, the only reasons to work long hours are - real emergencies (like the kind doctors and cops deal with, not the kind when some photo sharing app goes down for 15 mins) Even that doesn't make tech look great. Hours are bad for most doctors, but it seems like emergency medicine handles it a lot better. Doing some brief reading it looks like doctors can work 40 hours a week or under in the ER if they want to, and…

The problem with the way doc hours are handled is: there's zero back-up. Whether private practice or group or hospital, everyone is utilized at maximum. I had a colleague once get terrible food poisoning - and had to come in anyway. They crawled in. We saw them, stole a bed from the trauma surgeons' on-call room, stuck an IV in him, and told him to sleep. When he emerged two hours later, clinging to his IV pole, we w…

Yeah, on the whole I'd say doctor's WLB is a lot worse, especially considering what I've heard about residencies. And I think a developer can find a job with better WLB much easier than a doctor.

I just think that tech, especially startups, don't handle overtime well. A service might not need to have high availability, and if it does there a ways to manage operations well. Leadership focusing on quality, so that production issues are minimized is good. Explicit on-call schedules can provide benefits if it's not a ton of work, being on-call is definitely a negative. But knowing that you don't need to be available at all is better than not having an on-call schedule. Shift work, with the focus on explicitly dividing up the schedule between employees can provide that benefit.

I haven't worked at Google, but the Google SRE book mentions a lot of things I like. Like giving the option for cash compensation for overtime, requiring postmortems for on-call incidents, capping the percentage of ops work, and having multi-site teams to minimize night shifts all sound like great ideas.

I think there are a lot of situations where service reliability could be improved while making things easier on sysadmins and developers.

Re: In Japan, It’s a Riveting TV Plot: Can a Worker Go Home on Time?

#145

Post by fzeroracer »

belorn wrote: post #139
rosser wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The word has different meaning depending on... All words do, to some extent. "The greatest problem in communication is the illusion that it has happened at all." — George Bernard Shaw I'm not sure it's much like the n-word beyond the intent of the utterer, though. I've been called "My n-word " before, by people who "get" to use that word, yet I'm white. I still wouldn't presume to use it back (for myriad reasons, m…

It not really about the intent, but rather how the intent is perceived. The reason to not use the N-word is for me identical to toxic masculinity. Most recipients and people who happen to be near won't interpret it in any positive way. Both are unproductive for meaningful discourse and leads to a hostile environment. Since people who use those term is usually well aware of the reaction, it must be assumed that it is…

Are we really equating the usage of the N-word, a term which has massive historical racist baggage behind it, to the term 'toxic masculinity' which is a well-known and defined term which does not have any sort of baggage like that behind it?

Re: In Japan, It’s a Riveting TV Plot: Can a Worker Go Home on Time?

#146

Post by reroute1 »

fzeroracer wrote: post #134
dTal wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to me that if you're taking completely non-gender-specific toxic behavior like belittling employees for not staying late, and assigning it the label "masculinity", it is you who is engaging in the harmful stereotypes.

But this behavior stems from toxic masculinity. The culture of overwork in Japan has been predominantly a male phenomenon which is why Karoshi tends to occur among men. However as women enter into the workforce they have to adapt these same norms in order to survive which is how toxic masculinity affects them as well. The culture of overwork stems from the masculine stereotype of a man having to be the sole provider…

It's a function of men being the main family provider for most of history, that's a fact not a toxic element of masculinity.

Saying that has negatively affected people and assigning it a label is fine, but how is this issue related to you being insulted for your appearance? How is men being the sole providers throughout history toxic? It in itself isn't and the concept of working hard is also not exclusively a masculine idea, just because in Japan male workers literally kill themselves doesn't mean that overworking yourself to death is a masculine idea does it?

And outside of Japan I don't see how it's a gender issue at all.

Re: In Japan, It’s a Riveting TV Plot: Can a Worker Go Home on Time?

#147

Post by fzeroracer »

reroute1 wrote: post #146
fzeroracer wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this behavior stems from toxic masculinity. The culture of overwork in Japan has been predominantly a male phenomenon which is why Karoshi tends to occur among men. However as women enter into the workforce they have to adapt these same norms in order to survive which is how toxic masculinity affects them as well. The culture of overwork stems from the masculine stereotype of a man having to be the sole provider…

It's a function of men being the main family provider for most of history, that's a fact not a toxic element of masculinity. Saying that has negatively affected people and assigning it a label is fine, but how is this issue related to you being insulted for your appearance? How is men being the sole providers throughout history toxic? It in itself isn't and the concept of working hard is also not exclusively a mascul…

That's literally the definition of masculinity! The entire definition of masculinity is that it is the set of traits and attributes that a culture defines as being characteristically held by men.

So if one of the traits a culture holds is 'men must work themselves to death', then that's a toxic idea. It's an idea associated with what society expects of men, which makes it a masculine trait for that culture. Combined, these two form 'toxic masculinity'.

It's related what I mentioned because it all ties back to what a culture considers to be masculinity, which is the traits that a man has. Some of these traits can be positive, some can be negative. When we discuss 'toxic masculinity', that means things like men being called 'gay' because of their appearance, men having to be away from their family in order to appear like a hard worker for arbitrary reasons and so forth.

Re: In Japan, It’s a Riveting TV Plot: Can a Worker Go Home on Time?

#148

Post by jackvalentine »

walshemj wrote: post #58
komali2 wrote: post #7

>In addition to cultural attitudes about the value of hard work, she said, some employers reduce costs by relying on overtime, and employees work the longer hours for the extra pay and to please the boss — promotions often depend more on time spent at a desk than actual productivity. Agggh hits to home. Arrogant American me rolled into a Taiwanese job expecting to skyrocket up the ladder on results alone. Nope, becau…

How does relaying on Overtime reduce costs? That's just an invitation for workers to indulge in Spanish practices.

They don't get paid for their extra labour.

Re: In Japan, It’s a Riveting TV Plot: Can a Worker Go Home on Time?

#149

Post by barry-cotter »

reroute1 wrote: post #90
maxxxxx wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then don't call it "masculinity" and be more specific. Anything related to "masculinity" will be connected to males.

I think the problem is there is only a focus on toxic masculinity and men see it everywhere. It stands to reason there can be just as much toxic femininity, but you don't hear about that ever... or not much talk about positive masculinity but surely that exists also

https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Toxic_femininity

> Toxic femininity is a term used by Men's rights advocacy activists to construct a False equivalence between Toxic masculinity (a manifestation of Patriarchy that both harms men, and causes men to be violent and aggressive against women and occasionally other men) and patriarchal limitations on women's gender presentation and expression.

Re: In Japan, It’s a Riveting TV Plot: Can a Worker Go Home on Time?

#150

Post by reroute1 »

fzeroracer wrote: post #147
reroute1 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a function of men being the main family provider for most of history, that's a fact not a toxic element of masculinity. Saying that has negatively affected people and assigning it a label is fine, but how is this issue related to you being insulted for your appearance? How is men being the sole providers throughout history toxic? It in itself isn't and the concept of working hard is also not exclusively a mascul…

That's literally the definition of masculinity! The entire definition of masculinity is that it is the set of traits and attributes that a culture defines as being characteristically held by men. So if one of the traits a culture holds is 'men must work themselves to death', then that's a toxic idea. It's an idea associated with what society expects of men, which makes it a masculine trait for that culture. Combined,…

OK I understand the definition, but the idea men should work themselves to death is not one actually held by society at large. Is it only Japanese Male toxicity? Why don't other places have this idea is it just because Japan is not enlightened?

I don't think so. In my opinion it's about the workforce being traditionally male, not that it's a masculine idea to overwork yourself. That's why the argument doesn't hold water to me across a global population. That's why it's not a masculine idea and not toxic masculinity, men don't believe it and it's not a generally held belief about men. In my experiences men and women go home at roughly the same time and there are not problems relating to gender there.

And you can't blanket your argument by saying 'when we discuss toxic masculinity this is what we mean' because that is exactly what is being debated. I was strictly talking about the article not your personal issues they are not the same thing.

Post reply on HN