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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

#361

Post by Kiro »

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…

> Sure you could fully automate fuel stations

Where are you from? I thought fuel stations in most Western countries were fully automated already. In Sweden there are loads with no people at all but even the ones with a store you just pay at the pump. You only go inside if you need to buy something else.

Very strange example to use and kind of invalidates your whole point.

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

#362

Post by greyman »

garden_hermit wrote: post #351
greyman wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find fascinating is why government should have such an authority to be able to mandate this.

"encourage"

That's the title says, but we see similar initiatives in EU as well, and it would basically mean that the employee can choose that he wants to work only 4 days. Of course, even now anyone can also have 4 days workweek, if employer agrees to it. But in this case it is something mandatory.

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

#363

Post by jstummbillig »

andyferris wrote: post #354
jstummbillig wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crux here is, of course, that one week of your time is a lot more valuable than 5k to your employer if they pay you 3.7k per week, and probably a lot more than you would be willing to part with or find reasonable (think 20k+ a week) It's a pretty infuriating setup. From the employers perspective, the amount of money you lose by having someone not work is so obscene, so quickly, that you have to fight your monkey…

Honest question: why does it “cost” the employer so much to have you on leave? I heard this argument in North America but not here in Australia. I mean, small businesses might require critical people at critical times, but generally in larger orgs this shouldn’t be too hard.

Say your employer makes 20k a week of the produce of your work. This means you having a single, unpaid week off will directly cost your employer 20k. Even if you would willingly take a (from your perspective) pretty hefty pay cut of 4k for that week off, the employer would still be down 16k compared to before.

This is the weird and intuitively wrong stuff that happens, when employers make more through their employees work than their employees do, even after factoring in their salary.

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

#364

Post by hvidgaard »

AlbertoGP wrote: post #330
Tabular-Iceberg wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My pet conspiracy theory is that Toyota's liberal knowledge sharing with competitors is really a psy-op to keep the competitors perpetually on the edge of ruin while they laugh all the way to the bank. They don't even have to be deceptive about it. Just in time is obviously about not having undue spare capacity, not about not having any spare capacity at all. But Toyota knows this nuance is going to be lost on buzzwo…

I’ve heard recently (in a video that I don’t know how to find again) that that’s exactly what happened with the automotive industry’s chip shortage: Toyota was the only one that built a stock of chips in advance, and now are the only ones that can keep producing cars without being limited by the shortage. Edit: found the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1JlYZQG3lI&t=804s At 13 min. 24 seconds: > Just in time i…

What is amazing about this is that it is a super simple game of "what if?". What if our current supply of chips are disrupted? It would mean production halts, there is a non negligible risk and we cannot source new chips in less than 6 months, so stockpile that to keep uninterrupted service. That conclusion probably take quite a while to get to, but the kick off question is really simple.

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

#365

Post by ratww »

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…

> 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 difference.

Maybe the 20% extra people is the reason they always finish a lot faster.

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

#367

Post by dsq »

The main driver for this may be Japan's demographic implosion, as stated in the first paragraph:

"...improve the balance between work and life...family care".

A three day weekend would give the salaryman/person some time with family.

Other countries are making policy changes as well. China is also planning to remove all caps on births to combat what they see as problematic demographics.

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

#368

Post by jlokier »

yupper32 wrote: post #296
ryanSrich wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We offer equity comp, health stipend, and equipment stipend for anyone contracted on a 20 hour per week minimum. Sick/vacation days are harder because we pay for whatever I get an invoice for. Since we don’t track what people do on a day by day basis (I often don’t even know if someone is working that day until I reach out to them or slack, or vice versa), there’s nothing stopping them for billing me for extra hours.…

> I often don’t even know if someone is working that day until I reach out to them or slack If you don't know if they're working, don't fucking slack them. How about you check their calendar or send an email. Slack is not for asynchronous communication. It's amazing how high and mighty people can be and then they ping people for non-emergencies while they're on vacation.

> Slack is not for asynchronous communication.

Depends on the organisation.

Where I'm currently working, we use Discord. Discord is similar to Slack.

It is explicitly for asynchronous communication. We are supposed to not expect immediate replies to questions and comments on Discord, especially as other teammates are in different timezones. Sometimes there's real time chat, but it depends who is on at the time.

I posted some comments yesterday. There was one reply within a few hours, and two more this morning.

Email is pretty much deprecated. Nobody uses it, except to set up calendar entries for meetings, and formal things like HR and invoices.

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

#369

Post by [deleted] »

greyman wrote: post #348
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…

What I find fascinating is why government should have such an authority to be able to mandate this.

[deleted]

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

#370

Post by gjhh244 »

varjag wrote: post #339
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…

No it's not just that. The minute we got off the plane in Tokyo we were met by a greeter pointing people to the escalator. Not that you could miss it, that was the only exit. In the city you could see people guarding potholes. Bus stations (not particularly busy) would have a couple men at each station that would help arrange the passenger luggage: something usually helped by the driver in the West. Once we took a ni…

The alternative is to pay people for doing nothing, like many EU countries do. In the end it's not cheaper.
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