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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

#501

Post by jannes »

handrous wrote: post #432
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.

The US provides EU-level social safety net benefits (healthcare, housing) to the lower classes—via employment in the military, which is in part a stealth jobs program that both major political parties support paying for. We provide a jobs program for white-collar folks through our excessively-large and exceptionally expensive healthcare system. We pay for whole categories of jobs that don't need to exist and are only…

That’s not really a safety net, because not everybody is physically fit to join the military.

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

#502

Post by Lio »

Tabular-Iceberg wrote: post #299
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…

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…

Yes it's well know in manufacturing management that there is a trade off between utilisation, capacity and cycle time.

Naively it looks like it's cheapest to get close to 100% utilisation by removing all slack from the system.

If you do that though you can't deal with shocks to the system and it costs you much more in the medium term. In the long term your company dies.

This is very well illustrated by John Sterman's Beer game[1]. That's aimed at supply chains in general but works well in any system you can make brittle via cost over optimisation.

This happens a lot because initially over optimisation makes accountants and managers look good to share holders. By the time the chickens have come home to roost they've moved on to another job.

1. https://www.isixsigma.com/training/training-materials-aids/t...

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

#503

Post by hvidgaard »

kqr wrote: post #473
hvidgaard wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not that simple, though. "What if our supply chain of X is disrupted?" always leads to a problem where one of the most obvious solutions is "Stockpile huge inventories of X!" That's what manufacturers had done ever since Ford tried to scale up his initial (very Toyota-esque) operation, and scaled it incorrectly but managed to inspire hordes of other manufacturers to repeat his mistakes. The novelty of Toyota et…

I think that is the easy way to answer that question. Obviously the first "What if .." should be try to source from somewhere else, or perhaps have multiple supply chains. For instance cloth is a commodity, and if they know they can get the quality they need from multiple vendors on all 7 continents - they don't need to do much except perhaps validate the supply chain of some selected to ensure they don't source from the same place. But if they are using a particular mineral that is only available from one location, something else must obviously be done.

Just stockpiling is not really an answer as much as it's trying to just do the least amount of problem solving and thinking.

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

#504

Post by Matumio »

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.

You seem to be misunderstanding what UBI is. This sounds more like a job guarantee, which is the opposite of UBI. The main point of UBI is to make sure nobody can ever be pressured into accepting such a job.

Those jobs hardly add any value to society (let alone economy). If you just hand out money instead, some people might find something more useful to do, or at least be better off for themselves. See also David Graeber's essay "On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs".

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

#505

Post by tothecore13423 »

This is a genius move. The problem with japan's work culture is that its very hard to change the longer work hours. The alternative is to reduce the number of working days. This becomes level playing field for everyone and so there is good chance this will work, if it becomes law.

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

#506

Post by tothecore13423 »

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…

You are subtly implying incorrectly that people are working lesser number of hours while working from home. This is farther from the truth. If anything all the time saved in commute is spent in coding

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

#507

Post by handrous »

jannes wrote: post #501
handrous wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US provides EU-level social safety net benefits (healthcare, housing) to the lower classes—via employment in the military, which is in part a stealth jobs program that both major political parties support paying for. We provide a jobs program for white-collar folks through our excessively-large and exceptionally expensive healthcare system. We pay for whole categories of jobs that don't need to exist and are only…

That’s not really a safety net, because not everybody is physically fit to join the military.

Yeah, I'm aware. It's a really sick way to give working-poor families access to universal healthcare, housing, and free education, which other OECD states mostly manage to do without that. But, it's what we've got.

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

#508

Post by arendtio »

isatty wrote: post #25
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…

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

I like one hour lunches.

My biggest issue is, that in an office environment I can't use it as effectively as I would like to. At home I tend to spend 20-30 minutes taking a short nap and it really pays off as it boosts my productivity for the afternoon. At the office, I don't have that opportunity :-/

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

#509

Post by roguas »

goldenchrome wrote: post #54
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…

Yes, if you're starting your own business then it could help you to work as much as you can. However, most people do not run their own business. Most people are low-level code monkeys in large firms where individual efforts aren't business critical. When your project gets cancelled for the 3rd time and you still get a raise, it finally clicks that your work doesn't really matter. This takes a psychological toll. As a…

very little work - 30 hours a week? I think "older" people at FAANGlikes put max 15 hours a week.

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

#510

Post by nsonha »

franciscop wrote: post #445
nsonha wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We definitely do, and I'm not against having extra people when it comes to safety. Simply putting on some signs is not enough, what about children?

How many people? The more people you put (let's say fixing a pothole) the safer it is. Would you put 1 extra? 10? 100? 1000? At what point do you stop? There's absolutely a limit where adding another person only adds marginal safety. For instance, children who don't know they should not jump to jump a barrier and then go into a pothole should not be allowed alone on the streets. We are not talking about a random hole…

> children who don't know they should not jump to jump a barrier and then go into a pothole

Here is the thing: there are adults who know all this and they fell into a potholes by accident, or momentary negligence

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