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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

#291

Post by oblio »

bob1029 wrote: post #35
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…

> 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.

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

#292

Post by Chyzwar »

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…

It is more like: our people are overworking themselves to death and taking holidays is not socially acceptable. Let's force everyone to work less, and hopefully they will have time to make more babies.

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

#293

Post by rjzzleep »

adamlett wrote: post #287
franciscop wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think you're right, I went through a E40m construction project once and the leaders kept saying how they have to chose the lowest bidder. But that was actually a convenient lie they did to avoid having to do due diligence on the bidders.

Mid and long term cost actually turned out a lot higher than if they had chosen the better slightly more expensive bids.

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

#294

Post by Cthulhu_ »

Do they get paid the same though? I mean where I live, as an employee you have the RIGHT to work part-time if you want to - 40 hours is the norm, 36 is common (either one day off every two weeks or some manage to work 10h 4 days/week), some work 32 hours. But they get paid, vacation time, bonuses etc accordingly.

I went to 36 hours when I started my new job, but went back to 40 this year because I can manage with working from home, and because of the pandemic there were no pay raises last year - while cost of living is spiraling upwards because of rapidly increasing housing prices.

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

#295

Post by Ekaros »

maeln wrote: post #289
SilverRed wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Here in Finland even the full-service 24h stations have automated self-service and that might even be most used option.

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

#296

Post by yupper32 »

ryanSrich wrote: post #166
mjcohen wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about benefits such as health insurance, vacation days, sick days?

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.

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

#297

Post by ineedasername »

deepsun wrote: post #275
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…

Low margins are indication of saturated supply. If _everyone_ raise their prices, consumers would likely eat that, in my opinion, because people who really count food money usually don't go to restaurants anyway.

Fast food was what I knew off the top of my head, but this applies to all businesses with low margins and moderate customer-facing labor costs. They can't all just raise their prices to pay higher labor costs, because then the people getting paid more just have to pay more for everything as well, at least partially if not fully cancelling out the benefits.

Then there's the fact that raising prices will still lose fast food places customers: For every person not buying it because it doesn't fit their budget, there's someone who just barely fits it into their budget that will stop buying it when prices rise.

This isn't theoretical: Companies analyze the price elasticity of their customers and understand roughly how raising prices X% will lose them Y% customers, and the amount of revenue Y customers represent, and whether that is higher or lower than the revenue generated by X. I don't work in the food industry or retail, but I have run that analysis myself in my own field.

I'm all for a living wage, but simply paying low paid workers more & raising prices to cover it is by no means a complete solution. Raising minimum wages is a bandaid solution. (And I'm not saying we shouldn't do that-- only that it's short term, and we need more comprehensive answers)

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

#298

Post by Dylan16807 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #160
XorNot wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't have to, but the most likely outcome in a startup is it goes bankrupt, what you did disappears into the dark hole of failed ideas, and no one sees it. It's a suckers game: the default behavior needs to be "when the founders get greedy and kick me out...what will I do then? How will I feel about that time?"

> what you did disappears into the dark hole of failed ideas If the work is for financing a life outside it, yes. But if the work is rewarding in itself, then said failure is—while highly disappointing—balanced by the relationships, stories and skills gained therefrom. This is absolutely a risk tolerance and personality matrix thing. I just want to push back against this recently-popular philosophy which idealises th…

Working 60 hours a week probably leaves you with less relationships+stories+skills than working 40 hours a week.

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

#299

Post by Tabular-Iceberg »

kqr wrote: post #247
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…

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 buzzword-loving PHBs and greedy management consultant firms. You see the same thing happening with corporate Agile.

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

#300

Post by myspy »

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…

Grinding everyone done in a 40 hour work week is a bigger problem though. And it's not like you work highly efficiently in a 40 hour work week. Or if management did enforce that all 40 hours are busy time, the people burn out.

I've worked a factory job and have seen it there, I work in white collar now and it's the same.

If you say 40 hours you'll only get around 30 because workers have to bounce between working and getting down a little or else they burn out.

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