Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split • Hacker News Board

Re: Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

#191

Post by millirem » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 4:54 AM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #91

isatty wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s wrong with an hour long lunch? Isn’t that normal?

It is normal, but if you think about it, it doesn't really take an hour to eat lunch - and sometimes it would be preferable to eat in 5 minutes and leave at 4:05 instead of taking an hour to sit around the office. Every reasonable employer would permit this but I have learned from reading HN comments that not every employer is reasonable.

Break times also tend to be regulated in most countries I believe. I.e. here in Japan 60 minutes break time is required if you work for more than I think about 6ish hours.

Re: Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

#192

Post by dopidopHN » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 4:55 AM UTC

nickff wrote: post #180

dopidopHN wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss vacation so much. I just fly home from the US. And … I still have to work instead of just spending time with my parents that I haven’t seen in years. I earn more than 200k. ( not west coast ) it’s a decent salary right? Why can’t I have vacation, too? I asked and putted and asked again… All that will accomplish one thing: one day in the next 2 years I will wake up, look at my bank account. And quit. To have ac…

How much were you willing to sacrifice in salary in exchange for additional vacation? Was it a net-positive deal for your counter party (employer)? I ask because I hear this kind of thing all the time who want to make the same money, for less time at work.

Of course I would be willing to reduce my yearly salary for 2 or 3 weeks of extra time. Should not be that hard.

It’s worth more than the proportional time I would take off. It’s very valuable to me. Like 5k / week would be a good price tag. I have no debt and more stuff than I need. Now let’s me enjoy life while I still can ( and keep working on that job that I actually enjoy )

I’m not sure to understand about the net positive. The response I got was that taking time off without pay would 1) set a bad « example » or something of that sort and 2) make it hard to plan for resource availability.

Does that answer your question?

Re: Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

#193

Post by nickff » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 4:58 AM UTC

dopidopHN wrote: post #192

nickff wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much were you willing to sacrifice in salary in exchange for additional vacation? Was it a net-positive deal for your counter party (employer)? I ask because I hear this kind of thing all the time who want to make the same money, for less time at work.

Of course I would be willing to reduce my yearly salary for 2 or 3 weeks of extra time. Should not be that hard. It’s worth more than the proportional time I would take off. It’s very valuable to me. Like 5k / week would be a good price tag. I have no debt and more stuff than I need. Now let’s me enjoy life while I still can ( and keep working on that job that I actually enjoy ) I’m not sure to understand about the n…

By ‘net positive’ I mean willing to take a cut larger than is directly proportional to the reduction in hours worked. The reality is that reducing each person’s annual work will increase costs for the company overall, as it needs to pay additional overhead and benefits, which are related to employee count, rather than hours worked.

I think that everyone is a bit wary of setting difficult precedents in employment situations, as well as the possibility of creating rifts between people with different ‘deals’. That said, I think we should all place a higher priority on coming up with mutually beneficial arrangements.

Re: Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

#194

Post by vadym909 » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 4:58 AM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #91

isatty wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s wrong with an hour long lunch? Isn’t that normal?

It is normal, but if you think about it, it doesn't really take an hour to eat lunch - and sometimes it would be preferable to eat in 5 minutes and leave at 4:05 instead of taking an hour to sit around the office. Every reasonable employer would permit this but I have learned from reading HN comments that not every employer is reasonable.

it easily does- 20-30 min to walk/bike/drive back and forth to cafe / restaurant- 5-10 min to order/get food, 15-20 min to eat.

Re: Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

#195

Post by square_usual » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 4:59 AM UTC

failwhaleshark wrote: post #147

vxNsr wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would just toss that

It was his favorite keyboard. He would've cried, TBH. Consider it was a place where one guy hoarded 15 years of WSJ in his office. When staff are excellent professionals in the field, they get to do all sort of weird things.

Weekly Shounen Jump or Wall Street Journal?

Re: Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

#196

Post by irrational » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 4:59 AM UTC

ghshephard wrote: post #120

irrational wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s insane. I’m in the states, but my company treats us like adults. I roll in when I want, work out in the gym for 2 hours during the day, leave whenever I want. I can’t imagine working for a place that tracked my hours.

You've never worked at a job where you had to submit time sheets at the end of each week? Lots of "professional" gigs where people have to do that in order to accurately track time to customers - particularly when they are billing you out at $500/hour on the contract.

Nope. Never. I guess I've been lucky, but now that I know how pleasant work can be, I don't think I'd ever stay with a job that was that way.

Re: Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

#197

Post by bjustin » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 5:02 AM UTC

irrational wrote: post #106

xf1cf wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in the states most places require you to "make up" your lunch. So normally you'd show up at 8 and work until 5 to make up for an hour lunch. This is true for both hourly and salary.

That’s insane. I’m in the states, but my company treats us like adults. I roll in when I want, work out in the gym for 2 hours during the day, leave whenever I want. I can’t imagine working for a place that tracked my hours.

Lucky for me, I’ve had the same experience at multiple jobs. I’ve kept these kinds of “lax” habits at places where other people spend 9+ hours at their desks every day. I always thought it was a waste for other people to work long hours when it wasn’t even a company policy and I never got flak for my hours. Maybe more people at bigcorps can do this if they explain it and show they can still be productive.

Re: Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

#198

Post by vincnetas » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 5:02 AM UTC

yakireev wrote: post #168

ryanSrich wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We did this at my new company. One 30 minute scheduled standup. That’s the only meeting we have all week. Of course people are free to jump on a video call to work through stuff, but scheduled meetings are generally discouraged, and to date we only have the one. Since everyone is contract, we’re seeing an average of about 26 hours per week. It’s by far the most productive team I’ve ever been on or have built. We ship…

> I think the contract only + no meetings + no HR (no culture bullshit, no “get to know people” social events) So, gig economy. Or, at best, hourly wage at Amazon warehouse, but for developers. I heard those warehouses are super extra no-bullshit efficient.

If you would treat devs like warehouse workers right now,all devs would run away. I mean force them to be 100% effective all the 8 hours and track every move they make. On the other hand allow warehouse workers flexible schedule and decent pay so they could live decent life by puting in 20 hours a week (even while measuring every move they make) and i bet there would be devs who would convert to warehouse workers.

Re: Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

#199

Post by Andrew_nenakhov » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 5:03 AM UTC

paxys wrote: post #17

It's an open secret at least in the tech world that absolutely no one is putting in a productive 40 hours of work a week. This was true well before the pandemic and is more pronounced than ever now. Everyone needs to be "present" for 8 hours a day 5 days a week, but spends their time in pointless meetings, preparing documents and powerpoints that no one will read, faux social/teambuilding events, hour long lunches, g…

It is an open secret that people who are productive only 2/3 of the time in 40 hours/week would be productive only 2/3 of the time in 32 hours/week as well.

Re: Japan's government plans to encourage 4-day workweek, but experts split

#200

Post by cableshaft » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 5:08 AM UTC

PraetorianGourd wrote: post #84

cableshaft wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's with this obsession to 'get back to where we were before'? Where we were before was broken, and the pandemic helped reveal that. Poor work/life balance, income inequality, industries built on JIT processes which fail spectacularly when the unexpected happens (see lumber, shipping containers, semiconductors, etc), an unfortunate wake-up call that even with entire industries shut down and almost no flights and c…

Honestly, I can only imagine this is informed by a relatively privileged place in society. First of all, your focus on this boogeyman of work/life balance assumes that all but a small percent of the global population even has enough autonomy in their employment to enjoy any balance whatsoever. Most everyone in the world is at sustenance levels of labor, "work/life balance" is the work of being alive. Secondly, JIT ev…

I mean, this is Hacker News, most people here are in a privileged place compared to the rest of the world. That's kind of the audience.

I'm fully aware not everyone is in this position to request or push for work/life balance. I've worked a decent amount of shitty jobs in my day, in fast food, retail, shipping/receiving, warehouse work. I've gone through periods where I was so physically exhausted after work I didn't do much more than go home and pass out and wake up and go back to work again. It sucks. And I don't know what they can do exactly, I'm too far removed from that now.

I believe I did say that shutting down and working remotely brought our emissions down only 13%, not "solving the global emissions crisis". I said it was a painful wake-up call that even with all that happened last year, it wasn't anywhere near enough. So we need to try to do as much of that as possible and a lot, lot more if we are to get anywhere close.

I don't know what that might be. I was listening to Bill Gates' 'How to Avoid a Climate Catastrophe' and he thinks there's several technologies that can possibly get our emissions to zero in the next decade or two. But after listening to that book I'm more dubious than he is. It sounded like even with his optimism he just inadvertently kept making a case for how fucking hard it is, how every piece of the solution has downsides and problems to overcome to work at scale, and how there's no way we're going to change enough hearts and minds or provide enough incentives to do enough to get us to 50% reduction in the next decade, or all the way down to zero by 2050.

I don't think just staying home means we solved it, not by a long shot. We (and I mean corporations in this too, they're the bigger culprits than individuals) need to be doing all the things and a whole lot more, if possible, and even then I don't see it being enough totally avert catastrophe. I'm just hoping instead of like, 4-8 degrees warming (and likely human extinction or near extinction), maybe we'll somehow bring it down to only 2-3 degrees of warming. And that will still lead to terrible things.

And it'll be hard to give up creature comforts. I'm failing pretty hard at this more than I'd like to myself right now. I'm trying to get better, though, but even if I do, it's going to make such a tiny, unnoticeable difference by itself.

We can expect things to get fucking bad regardless, I think, I'm just hoping we can make things slightly less bad instead of everyone just shrugging our shoulders and accelerating and steering directly into the iceberg.