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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

#301

Post by ineedasername »

namdnay wrote: post #264
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…

Keep in mind that if the additional costs are applied to everyone, prices can increase without one restaurant in particular being penalised Demand is probably slightly elastic, but not that much (there are plenty of restaurants in France, despite very high cost of employment)

If we're just talking about restaurants in France, at least part of the higher employment costs are cancelled out-- relative to the US-- by not having to tip 20%, so the menu prices can be higher without actually passing all of that increase on to the customer.[1]

As for demand, it is always elastic. A lot of people eat fast food, and a lot of those people are going to be in a position where they're just barely fitting it into they're budget. Raise prices, and they're gone. That's not even getting to the actual elastic part where people actually have the money to decide either way if they're willing to pay at one price but not another-- that bottom group is simply gone.

Also you shouldn't focus just on the one example I chose. I happened to choose a discretionary spending activity because I knew fast food #'s off the top of my head, but the same thing applies to every single business with low margins and moderate labor costs. Even if you were right and every single one of them could raise prices without losing customers, that would also mean that the exact people we're trying to pay a living wage then have significant increases in their cost of living as everything around them raises prices.

[1] France may also not be the best example to compare to the US. Despite staggeringly astronomical wealth inequality in the US, it still has a lower poverty rate than France. Canada would probably be a better example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_percentag...

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

#302

Post by bob1029 »

oblio wrote: post #291
bob1029 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> absolutely no one is putting in a productive 40 hours of work a week You are being a little broad with this statement. One can easily put in 60+ hours for weeks on end and be incredibly productive while doing it. Its all circumstantial. If you have no family, are the sole founder in the company, and really enjoy what you are doing, why the fuck would you stop at a 40 hour work week? Not all of us loathe the thing w…

> If you have no family So that's... maybe 20% of the workforce? > are the sole founder in the company And with this we narrow it down to maybe 1% or less of the workforce. He can be broad because your conditions don't apply to the overwhelming majority of workers. Statistically, your conditions cover an insignificant group.

"Absolutely no one" and "1%" have entirely different meanings to me. I thought it important to highlight the "insignificant" case (of which I am a member) to avoid some notion that this applies to 100% of people in reality. The way we usually go on about work around here concerns me, and I fear we risk alienating a very energetic and well-meaning segment of the community.

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

#303

Post by xf1cf »

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.

You missed the OPs point in all your heavily laden snark.

There are (sad, imo) people whose entire lives revolve around work. Their friends are there, and they enjoy social outings with their work colleagues.

To me, social outings are just an unnecessary risk. I do not talk to my coworkers like I talk to my friends, I do not want my coworkers knowing too much about my personal life, and especially when booze is involved it's too easy to find yourself on the receiving end of something awkward, or witness to something awkward.

Meetings are simple: if it's important enough to take an hour of my day it's important enough to count as seat time. When my productivity drops and my manager asks why I tell them that meetings are taking up too much time. It's their job to make sure I have what I need to do my best work. If they tell me to work later I start looking for other jobs. It's so easy to get a senior developer job now, and there's really no long term benefit staying anywhere, that I'm not exactly sorry for leaving in this case.

I have literally zero interest in "culture". I wouldn't even work for a company if I didnt need the money to live. I don't understand how you've derived the dichotomy that you can either have mindless time sink "culture" bullshit OR an amazon warehouse slaveshop.

Call me a pessimist. I think people obsessed with "work culture" are sad. You shouldn't hate the 8 hours of work you do, but you also shouldn't center your entire life on it. Afterall, it could be taken away from you with a penstroke the next time the CEO needs to make room in the budget for their salary.

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

#304

Post by [deleted] »

ryanSrich wrote: post #137
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…

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…

[deleted]

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

#305

Post by blindmute »

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…

Yep, I've had full time six figure jobs where I was literally working 5 hours per week including meetings. I've never had a job where I worked more than 20 hours a week, including a hectic 7-employee startup.

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

#306

Post by supernova87a »

youeseh wrote: post #164
supernova87a wrote: post #152

How about they first do away with the culture of "have to show your face in the office until 7pm and then go drinking with your colleagues until midnight, or your wife will ask why you're home so early"?

How would the government of Japan do away with this? If it was more important than backing the 4 day work week, why don't you think it happened first?

It was kind of a snarky joke/commentary, I guess it was hard to convey the sentiment over text.

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

#307

Post by oblio »

bob1029 wrote: post #302
oblio wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have no family So that's... maybe 20% of the workforce? > are the sole founder in the company And with this we narrow it down to maybe 1% or less of the workforce. He can be broad because your conditions don't apply to the overwhelming majority of workers. Statistically, your conditions cover an insignificant group.

"Absolutely no one" and "1%" have entirely different meanings to me. I thought it important to highlight the "insignificant" case (of which I am a member) to avoid some notion that this applies to 100% of people in reality. The way we usually go on about work around here concerns me, and I fear we risk alienating a very energetic and well-meaning segment of the community.

HN comments (and in general, forum comments) are not PhD theses, they're generic, casual comments that in many cases try to tell a story.

Hyperbole is to be expected.

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

#308

Post by legulere »

kortilla wrote: post #240
legulere wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are still going to work more efficient when they work 32 instead of 40 hours in many jobs as fatigue sets in at some point.

No, there are jobs where you do rote things on demand or at particular intervals with no fatigue at 40 hours per week. Examples from my own employment experience: - front desk clerk at a hotel - fuel pump operator Both of these are pretty dull work that doesn’t exhaust you at all at the 40 hour work week. Most of the time is spent idle and the time spent working doesn’t require much going on upstairs.

I agree that not all jobs are like that, but the comment I was replying to was talking about retail workers, factory workers and people who fill in the holes in roads, which do suffer from fatigue.

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

#309

Post by MarkSweep »

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…

Some notably low-staffed places in Japan are Yoshinoya and Sukiyaki (beef bowel fast food, often 24/7). It seems there usually just one person working there at a time.

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

#310

Post by nrdvana »

lmm wrote: post #182
bob1029 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> absolutely no one is putting in a productive 40 hours of work a week You are being a little broad with this statement. One can easily put in 60+ hours for weeks on end and be incredibly productive while doing it. Its all circumstantial. If you have no family, are the sole founder in the company, and really enjoy what you are doing, why the fuck would you stop at a 40 hour work week? Not all of us loathe the thing w…

> One can easily put in 60+ hours for weeks on end and be incredibly productive while doing it. Do you have an objective measure of that? I've worked with plenty of people who thought they were being productive for 60+ hours/week, but none of their productivity actually stacked up. Founder/CTO types were the worst, they'd bypass process and cause outages but because of their position everyone had to coddle their ego…

I can do 60s in bursts, and the bursts have lasted as long as 2 months before. I usually burn out as soon as we hit the finish line, and work 10-20 hour weeks for a while until all the comp-time is used up. But I can really do a fantastic amount of programming when I dedicate my entire brain to the project and completely exclude all other thoughts. OTOH I have to admit that both of the biggest production screwups I ever made happened in those crunch times. But seeing myself hit those levels of productivity actually gives me a ton of satisfaction. Some of my normal 40 hour weeks when my head isn’t in the game are so un-productive that it depresses me.

You asked about objective measures, but I’m not sure how programming can really be quantified. All I can say is my “hyper-mode” has caused projects to reach deadlines that others on the team thought were unlikely.

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