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

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

#281

Post by TrackerFF »

nkssy wrote: post #220
skhr0680 wrote: post #184

The social contract in Japan was that you’d give your life to your employer in exchange for a fair wage and stable employment until you retired. Neither of those things are true now. Wages are low and companies either ignore their legal obligations or hire people as contractors, who have less rights than full time “employees”. Now, many people, especially women* and young people are finding that it’s possible to run…

I think it says a lot about Japanese workplace pay if a small business at 3-4 days per week can outperform it. Not that I doubt it in any way: I've just started my own sideline and I'm already at 25% of my job income yet only putting in 5 hours of effort to do so.

Yes, but for how long though.

Many of these Japanese firms are many hundreds of years old, and will probably stick around for some hundred more years.

Being able to run a small business for 5-10 years is very possible, but there's no guarantee you'll be able to do that for 20-30-40 years.

We often hear about the success stories, when it comes to small businesses and startups, but there are unfortunately those that will fail after N years, even if they had some pretty good years.

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

#282

Post by whateveracct »

ghshephard wrote: post #122
whateveracct wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working 60hr/week for a startup is completely illogical. It's the sort of thing you only do drunk on kool-aid.

I would say the opposite - the only job I can imagine (outside of the first two years of investment banking) working 60+ hours/week would be a startup - where each and every hour in those first 2-3 years can make the difference between building a Billion dollar company or just getting left behind.

Most startups aren't engineering-bound though

Amdahl's Law

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

#283

Post by [deleted] »

EE84M3i wrote: post #74

I think people might be a little confused about what the government is telegraphing here. Japanese labour regulations are very strict, in particular around hours worked. Basically all employees (yes, including engineers) need to clock in and out, the concept of a "salaried worker" doesn't really exist, although normally engineers are paid for a certain number of hours regardless if they are actually worked. Primarily…

[deleted]

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

#284

Post by gombosg »

Animats wrote: post #231
vincnetas wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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. CleverControl employee monitoring pitch: "This software offers powerful features: keylogging, screen recording, live viewing, remote settings, clipboard control, Skype monitoring, and more. The software records time that was spent on this or that acti…

I heard about these tracking software and I sincerely hope they won't get any more prevalent. As I see they are somewhat present in the contracting world.

I treat it as a total, humiliating devaluation of creative engineering work (and thus their identity!) to that of unskilled factory workers.

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

#285

Post by ineedasername »

ajmadesc wrote: post #257
ineedasername wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our country is wealthy enough That's really going to depend on the business. Plenty of businesses-- specifically ones with a lot of customer-facing staff-- would not be able to sustain labor cost increases up to 20%. To take an easy example where I already know the #'s in the US, labor costs at a fast-food restaurant are around 25% of costs. Net profit margins range from 5% up to around 20%, but that top end is for M…

Yeah but why not just have literal slaves and not require that people have health insurance. The reductive "race to the bottom" can go both directions

I'm honestly not sure what you mean by this comment. I used a real world example of businesses with high customer-facing labor costs relative to their net profit margins.

If you're getting into the everyone-deserves-a-living-wage side of things, that's a different conversation, one I tend to agree with, but is much more complex than the current discussion about whether current business could manage this if they operate with low margins and moderate customer-facing labor costs.

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

#286

Post by asah »

franciscop wrote: post #235
onion2k wrote: post #213

I think a lot of the replies in the thread so far have focused on tech (understandably, this is HN after all) but that's missing something obvious - the 4 day week would apply to everyone. In tech it's very likely someone going from 5 days to 4 days could still achieve the same amount of actual work. As other commenters have said, many tech workers don't do productive work all the time they're present. Retail workers…

I fully agree with your comment overall, but as someone who lives in Japan I'd like to point out that specifically "people who fill in the holes in roads" is a running joke in Japan since small street constructions always seem way over-staffed. It's amazing because they do finish a lot faster than in western countries, but you can definitely remove 20% of the people in street-level construction and would see little d…

Um, actually construction appears to lay people as "overstaffed" due to safety, breaks, inspections and synchronization of people, tools and materials.

https://qr.ae/pGFloE

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

#287

Post by adamlett »

franciscop wrote: post #272
kqr wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I think what passes for appropriately staffed in the West is actually understaffed. What's called optimal staffing in the West is just at capacity, which is a nice way of saying "with no spare capacity." Of course, with Japan being the land of just-in-time, one could argue that spare capacity is bad -- but that's an oversimplification. Necessary spare capacity is good. What's bad is not being able to addres…

It's what the market demands in the end of the day and why I don't understand Japan too much (yet). If a company hires 4 people just for road signaling, and another 0, I'd hire the second one since it's going to be cheaper. That's why I believe these market forces push to at-capacity, because if someone has spare capacity or a lot of profit another company is going to come in at a lower margin and win the market. Yes…

Isn’t it oversimplifying it to suggest that all “the market” rewards is low prices? Doesn’t the market also sometimes reward quality and timeliness?

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

#288

Post by hypertele-Xii »

SilverRed wrote: post #269
fy20 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of these customer facing jobs will be abandoned or optimised away in the next few decades. Front desk work could be done away with mostly by electronic systems (most of the time when I "check in" it's just picking up a ready made room card as I checked in online). You could even centralise the "talking to a human" part in a call center operating a number of hotels, who delegate to staff on the premises (house ke…

As far as I can see. These front desk jobs exist as theft/crime deterrent and to handle edge cases. Sure you could fully automate fuel stations but who is going to call the police when kids start spray painting the windows unless you have someone sitting at a desk watching cctv all day. And who is going to deal with customers who are trying to report something is wrong with a pump. These jobs have already been automa…

> but who is going to call the police when kids start spray painting the windows unless you have someone sitting at a desk watching cctv all day.

A neural network trained to classify spray-painting kids?

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

#289

Post by maeln »

SilverRed wrote: post #269
fy20 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of these customer facing jobs will be abandoned or optimised away in the next few decades. Front desk work could be done away with mostly by electronic systems (most of the time when I "check in" it's just picking up a ready made room card as I checked in online). You could even centralise the "talking to a human" part in a call center operating a number of hotels, who delegate to staff on the premises (house ke…

As far as I can see. These front desk jobs exist as theft/crime deterrent and to handle edge cases. Sure you could fully automate fuel stations but who is going to call the police when kids start spray painting the windows unless you have someone sitting at a desk watching cctv all day. And who is going to deal with customers who are trying to report something is wrong with a pump. These jobs have already been automa…

There is a lot of 24h/24h fuel station here in France with no staff and it is working out.

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

#290

Post by blarg1 »

nsonha wrote: post #260
franciscop wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully agree with your comment overall, but as someone who lives in Japan I'd like to point out that specifically "people who fill in the holes in roads" is a running joke in Japan since small street constructions always seem way over-staffed. It's amazing because they do finish a lot faster than in western countries, but you can definitely remove 20% of the people in street-level construction and would see little d…

wow is that 8 people for painting a line?

1 to paint the line and 7 to make sure it's straight
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