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

#421

Post by ratww » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 2:12 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #384

ratww wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Or the reason everything in Japan is so clean and actually efficient and reliable. You won't see the casual litter and degraded infrastructure that is commonplace in US and Western Europe - everything is kept in tip-top shape, because why not? When you have the wealth and workforce to spare, in practical terms it's just better to allocate capacity for this sort of tasks in quantities that might look sub-optimal on a…

Yep, exactly. I completely agree with you.

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

#422

Post by CountDrewku » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 2:16 PM UTC

formatjam wrote: post #201

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…

meanwhile, China is doing 996 - 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week. Obviously people hated it. But it is happening and no wonder China tech is catching up fast / winning in some areas already.

Winning what? A totalitarian government where the people are all treated like shit? They may be winning the GDP game but that's not translating to any improvements for their citizens or the world.

The only people winning in China are the people at the top of the communist party.

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

#423

Post by andrewmcwatters » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 2:43 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #408

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say you loan someone some money, and they just… don’t pay it back. Well, who cares right? After all, it’s just a number in your bank account.

Nation state finances are not the same as household finances.

This meme is just foolish and overly repeated. If we just printed money forever we’d be like Germany or Venezuela.

Do you really think that at large scales the need to watch spending just dissolves? Why do you think nations have budgets? Do you think it’s all a fun game?

If what you’re suggesting doesn’t work, people don’t just go back to work longer hours.

Some people die, some people lose their homes. Incredible.

But hey, just rows in a database. Tell that to families scraping by.

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

#424

Post by Noos » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

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 don't think it's true though. A lot of jobs you simply can't reduce the hours no matter how advanced you are without corresponding loss in service. There's also serious staffing issues in many blue collar jobs which simply won't be able to be filled by enforcing them to work less hours; there isn't a huge supply of people wanting to do menial labor to pop up to work part time and pick up the slack.

Retail and factory work already has low wages and high turnover, forcing them to try and make up a 20% loss in staffing hours is probably not going to happen over just cutting operating hours and shifting to models designed to work with less staff; retail stores for example may just be open 20% less or be constantly understaffed and understocked.

Or eventually a lot of them just close and the bigger ones absorb the surplus workers to keep full hours.

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

#425

Post by toomuchtodo » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #423

toomuchtodo wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nation state finances are not the same as household finances.

This meme is just foolish and overly repeated. If we just printed money forever we’d be like Germany or Venezuela. Do you really think that at large scales the need to watch spending just dissolves? Why do you think nations have budgets? Do you think it’s all a fun game? If what you’re suggesting doesn’t work, people don’t just go back to work longer hours. Some people die, some people lose their homes. Incredible. B…

I think it’s reasonable to iterate and experiment with policy without devolving to extreme positions such as your comment.

We’ve forgiven $3 billion in student loan debt in the US, for various legitimate reasons, without consequence for example. Yes, the US has more power to do this because it’s a reserve currency, and no you can’t do it forever, but there is room to experiment when you’re a nation state.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2021/06/16/biden-h...

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

#426

Post by avidphantasm » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 2:53 PM UTC

ehnto wrote: post #326

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…

From my experience visiting, there were lots of jobs that were "nice to have". Like the man making sure people don't fall in the hole, or the person standing by the carpark exit making sure the way is clear. You could probably do without them, but it's a nice thing to have. There's lots of examples of that, people doing things that you would see brutally optimized out of western city and those cities I feel are worse…

Case in point: I saw once an older man washing traffic cones in Japan. I don’t think traffic cones get washed in the US.

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

#427

Post by DSingularity » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 2:55 PM UTC

8note wrote: post #135

ghshephard wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The only time id do that is if I was the founder. Employees are too likely to be screwed over, even if the company is successful

Define screwed over? Because in my view getting screwed over is joining the industry on promise of working on deep tech and ending up a tiny cog in a machine.

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

#428

Post by loonster » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

jason0597 wrote: post #376

tjpnz wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it make sense from an economics standpoint? Perhaps not. But there are benefits to society as a whole. Quite often the people doing those sorts of jobs are getting on in life, if having that job means the person can stay active that could represent a few additional years where they won't be a burden on the health system.

Honestly, giving people these unproductive jobs seems to me like a way of giving out UBI without people even realising it. Because at the end of the day, these jobs are just UBI. They don't add much to the economy.

It promotes a better culture. I would support this system over USA's welfare.

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

#429

Post by mywittyname » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

kqr wrote: post #341

NGRhodes wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toyota knows it competitive edge is its culture. Culture to change, to be retrospective, to improve. Lean, JIT, Kanban etc were derived from a culture of striving for perfection and to develop the optimal processes for a specific company is something that takes decades and is never ending, not something that can be read in a book, taught on a course in a short period of time.

There's also that story from back when Toyoda was making sewing machines or whatever it was, and a competitor stole copies of the engineering drawings for their latest model. Toyoda shrugged and said something to the effect of "So what? The really valuable knowledge are the mistakes we made coming up with those drawings, and that's not in the drawings. By the time our competitors have managed to get their copy of our…

> None of that was stolen, so after this model, they will just keep repeating the mistakes we made.

The competitor probably could have purchased a sewing machine and replicated the engineering drawings themselves. Teardowns of competitor products is common today, and I'm sure it was back then as well.

I think Toyota's "helpful" attitude comes from the Western paranoia in the 70-90s that Japan was going to completely dominate worldwide manufacturing. After all, their rise was fast: in the mid 60s, Japanese manufactures were practically begging to sell rudimentary formed metal components in the USA, but by the early 80s, they were a leader in the high-tech manufacturing. That rise caught many people off guard and I've heard it said that the "lost decade" in Japan was the result of American trade policy specifically designed to curtail Japan's growth in manufacturing.

Viewed in that light, it makes sense that Japanese companies would appear "helpful" to American ones. Why else would Toyota co-build a plant with GM in order to teach GM their Kaizen philosophy for manufacturing?

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

#430

Post by tristor » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 2:59 PM UTC

varjag wrote: post #378

gjhh244 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's called welfare, which has an advantage of not masking unemployment. (but to be fair am unsure if people doing traffic cone jobs in Japan are considered employed) Anyhow my point is it has little to do with system redundancy.

Welfare / UBI ignores that one of the realities of the human condition is that we are social creatures that have a desire for purpose and utility to those around us, and having that purposes in a society that recognizes us helps give us dignity and a place in society.

It's not important that all jobs are high value, it is important that we as a society have a way to create and recognize purpose for individuals to support their mental and personal wellbeing. While welfare / UBI may ensure they have basic needs met to sustain life, it does nothing to support their mental and personal wellbeing, which is why these systems often results in the creation of delinquent behaviors that are mostly absent in a system like that in Japan.

It may be the the same economically, but socially it is much better to have someone doing an "unnecessary" job that is recognize as valued by society vs simply collecting a check.