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Samsung shifts executives to six-day workweeks to 'inject a sense of crisis'

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Re: Samsung shifts executives to six-day workweeks to 'inject a sense of crisis'

#31

How does working harder solve "rising borrowing costs and oil prices and a rapid depreciation of Korean currency"? Those are all exogenous factors.

Working harder at something will create better outcomes. There is a lot to think about, mitigate, deal with. The more time you put on something, the better the results.

For example, your crops are getting attacked by insects. It's exogenous yet if you wake up in the night to come out and kill them, you'll save more crops.

Re: Samsung shifts executives to six-day workweeks to 'inject a sense of crisis'

#32
post #15

I hate Koreans for doing this to other Koreans. I will never ever get over how koreans basically turned the whole country into hell joseon and there is no escape. Korea would be a much better place if they allowed themselves some slack.

A small country that effectively operates as an island with angry nuclear-armed neighbors and no natural resources has figured out how to survive in the world through the skills nurtured within its own people. South Korea doesn't have the privileges that Canada and Finland both have of friendly adjacent neighbors and natural resources, which provide opportunities when Nortel and Nokia respectively stopped succeeding…

Finland has friendly neighbors? There is a good reason why they have a draft. A simple check of who is on the other side of their largest border combined with any history book from the last 400 years would suggest the reason.

Re: Samsung shifts executives to six-day workweeks to 'inject a sense of crisis'

#33
post #15

I hate Koreans for doing this to other Koreans. I will never ever get over how koreans basically turned the whole country into hell joseon and there is no escape. Korea would be a much better place if they allowed themselves some slack.

A small country that effectively operates as an island with angry nuclear-armed neighbors and no natural resources has figured out how to survive in the world through the skills nurtured within its own people. South Korea doesn't have the privileges that Canada and Finland both have of friendly adjacent neighbors and natural resources, which provide opportunities when Nortel and Nokia respectively stopped succeeding…

That last part is a little bit of an understatement. With South Korea's birth rate at 0.8(!) they're effectively extinct in five generations. Economic and technical success can come and go, eliminating your biological and material basis for existence is the only non-negotiable thing if survival is what you're interested in. And it's a cliff. You can dig yourself out of a recession in a decade or two, once you've cratered your demographics you're done for the foreseeable future, because even if you raise the birth rate back to replacement, your cohort of young people in absolute terms is now so small is doesn't even make much of a difference.

Re: Samsung shifts executives to six-day workweeks to 'inject a sense of crisis'

#34
post #12

Ugh - the “burning platform”. Is it ever used authentically? Does it ever go well? I do believe that its typically inauthentic use is mostly self-defeating – people can smell inauthenticity a mile away.

Elsewhere on this topic someone wrote

> Only for executives? Sounds like a good move actually.

There's plenty of folks who fall for this, hook, line and sinker. There's plenty of Elon stans out there who actually believe he works 120 hour work weeks.

Re: Samsung shifts executives to six-day workweeks to 'inject a sense of crisis'

#35

I hate Koreans for doing this to other Koreans. I will never ever get over how koreans basically turned the whole country into hell joseon and there is no escape. Korea would be a much better place if they allowed themselves some slack.

Aren't Japan and China very similar? They are all societies where the group is valued as more important than the individual.

I’m not so sure about that.

I would say Chinese society values the family… people don’t really give a shit about others outside of family or friends.

My feeling on Japan is that they value their society and country much higher.

But I’m neither Chinese nor Japanese so take that with a grain of salt.

Re: Samsung shifts executives to six-day workweeks to 'inject a sense of crisis'

#36

Executives are often always working as the job can be demanding, but I think it is a real step backwards to make that the culture of the whole company. People need to be able to live their private lives, outside of working. And in creative work, productivity won’t increase with more hours - at best you can pull off a short term increase like if you’re getting ready to ship something. But beyond that, it’s counterprod…

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Re: Samsung shifts executives to six-day workweeks to 'inject a sense of crisis'

#37

I've been reading Cal Newport's stuff on Deep Work and Digital Minimalism and have some of his other books on my to read list. Considering the stuff he talks about and his new book on slow productivity, this move seems like a really bad idea. I'm curious to see the outcome of this. I've adopted a more deliberate, focused work day and already seeing some improvements in my work quality, energy, and creativity.

Cal Newport has his theories, Samsung executives have theirs. Samsung executives' theories about how to run Samsung are more valuable than Cal Newport's because they know Samsung better than he does.

Re: Samsung shifts executives to six-day workweeks to 'inject a sense of crisis'

#40

... because what everyone really needs is for their executives to have a sense of crisis. I'm sure that will help a lot.

The more panicked and overworked the top layers are, the better the decisions they make. Clearly. /s
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