> In 2007, Mitsubishi UFJ Trust & Banking initiated a program to allow employees to go home up to three hours early to care for children or elderly relatives. After two years, only 34 of the company’s 7,000 employees had signed up for the program.
After two years, only 34 people were willing to be officially identified as people who go home early.
Unlimited vacation is an accounting trick. If a company is acquired, promised yet unclaimed vacation is a liability reducing valuation. Unlimited vacation means the company has not promised a set amount for the year and thus is not liable for it, paradoxically.
I know this is supposedly just lawyers and other specialists, although it sounds like it's not much better for other "salarymen." I'm having trouble corroborating the actual numbers, though. And if so many men are getting so little sleep, how is life expectancy still so high in Japan? Any other sources for this?
Work-life "balance" isn't... there's a finite budget of seconds that goes to this or that; so it's how you spend them, how impactful are their results... whether it's enjoyed / "success" by whatever is your interpretation of it's meaning. That said, maybe some people find some reward while simultaneously killing themselves to fit in like Walmart executives (whom jockey to arrive earliest) and newbie startup founders (hopefully they keep enough equity and retain/sustain passion to ship something people love and don't shut/meltdown when they succeed out of fear of the unknown) ... the two former conditions aren't necc. mutex. (It's only lack of self-awareness anticipating likely outcomes that would be a failure.)
It's not how early one comes in or late, how may hours, ... these are all "process people" behaviors that aren't focused on the content impact of their effort.
Finally, inspired by Sir Branson's take on work-life... it's the same thing, act in a globally-consistent manner. Much easier than the insecure, naïve person trying to wear "boss" or "worker" costumes... it's value-subtract business theater.
I could just be old or completely full of shit, either is fine.
I still find it really, REALLY bizarre and totalitarian that there are corporations that sing The Company Song at morning meetings.
That kind of thing just disturbs the ever-living shit out of me, and seems beyond abnormal.
Does that kind of thing still happen? It feels like a certain, painful breed of brainwashing, or B.F. Skinner-style operant conditioning, is needed to command behavior like that.
Yeah that sounds totalitarian to me. Like why would a country insist on all its citizens pledging allegiance to country every day! That is a bit North Korea sounding to me.
Samsung is the worst company to work for. Once you leave the company you can not join later. That is illegal but they do it anyway, because they are the boss.
You need to open your mind to differences. For me as a French, raising the flag and singing national anthem for no reason at school is also weird, but I heard it is common in the US.
Now that I have lived in China for >10 years I can tell you: people from different countries are different, and that's what makes life bearable. (They are different but also the same, obviously. For example, they all love their children.)
2) The vast majority of humans cannot survive with average sleep length of 4-5h per night on a consistent basis: We will literally, physically die. In reality, the Japanese sleep between 7 and 8 hours on average: http://www.nhk.or.jp/bunken/english/reports/summary/201104/0...
Re 1): Yup. There's a lot of focus, especially in Western press, on the salarymen and how much they work. But the vast majority of Japanese workers aren't salarymen. Assembly line workers at Nissan or Yamaha don't work 17 hours a day, that's for sure. Even other white-collar workers like doctors and teachers have schedules comparable to their counterparts in other countries.
The country wide average, assuming it's even accurate, is irrelevant. You can still have a significant percentage of the population working death marches.
I'd take those OECD numbers with a grain of salt.
People don't do "work" while "at work" for extravagantly long hours, but in many salaried industries they are "at work" for longer then 8-hours per day. Sometimes it's just schmoozing, waiting for the big boss or the little boss to leave, giving the rest implicit permission to leave --even if the boss is just waiting for the time they have to meet their date. Or, you may be obliged to go out with coworkers for drinks afterhours, even if you don't drink.
So, it's not uncommon to see people who you could imagine in the day were the quintessential salaryman passed out on the train home, possibly next to another one who puked and sprawled on the floor of the train. Also, stupidity during these episodes is forgotten, for the most part.
Pissing and vomiting in public is kind of accepted after certain times of the night. However, most the hanging out and drinking is for business reasons rather than hanging out with buds.
The numbers don't add up even using the ones in the article. 300 hours per month is somewhere between 60 and 75 hours per week, not the 105-hour weeks quoted here. Even 3000 hours per year works out to 60 hours per week with ten days' vacation.
I'm pretty sure you could walk into a white-shoe law firm in NYC and find similar stories.
That wikipedia data for Japan is artifically low either because (1) overtime is often unreported and unpaid in Japan (more common in small companies but also true in highly profitable places, including my own former employer) and (2) much of the young workforce is underemployed much like in the States.
It is true also that the numbers will differ from industry to industry, tier to tier. The worst is probably the smaller System Integration "SI" shops. The Mizuho Bank System Integration work going on right now is one much project that will be a multi-year "death march". And yes, people do actually die in these projects. You don't get terms like Karoshi entering Western vernacular without cause. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kar%C5%8Dshi
Even at my former gig, there was a building occupied by the Integrated Circuits team that was called "The Castle with no Night" because the motion detection enabled lights never went out.
When a friend worked in an administrative building, word got around that the boss would drive around in the evening and note which offices had their lights on, and would credit the occupants with being hard workers.
After that, everyone just left the lights on when they went home for the day.
Not disagreeing with your point, but be wary when reading research/opinion about japan published by the NHK or any company relatively close to government influence inside japan.
Japan's journalistic integrity is sometimes a little lacking.
How can you be working just as efficiently as Western counterparts when you're napping? I don't know about being a lawyer, but in my own experience it is impossible for me to program effectively after about 10 hours. Wouldn't surprise me if there are rare exceptions, but generally the human body just does not handle that well.
This is solely based on my personal experience working in Japan. Reasons why people at my work place work over time:
1. For more pay. We don't get paid a lot (roughly 1,000 yen an hour for full time contracted lifetime employee), so overtime (2,000 per hour) helps.
2. Peer pressure. People generally look down on others who leave early. They will mockingly say things like, "wow I'm so envious that you don't have any work." Unless you have some "legitimate" reason (children, illness).
In NYC I worked at a firm where they had to lock the doors and do a security sweep at midnight to prevent people from sleeping under the desks so they could work more. This was a during a training class--not even real work! This wasn't even an investment bank or law firm--the two places in NYC most noted for such extreme "work ethic."
In Singapore there is a well-known phenomenon where employees will not leave the office until (just) after the boss leaves. It doesn't matter if there is nothing left to do--you must never be seen leaving first. For a year I arrived to work 1-2 hours earlier than everyone else, and you know what appeared on my year-end review? "Leaves the office too early."
As someone who lives in Japan, I thought I'd give some background information about the pictures included in the article. They're (edit: the pictures AND the captions) clearly chosen to give credence to the "Japanese salaryman"[1] who's always busy and "works to death."[2]
I'll go over the pictures in order displayed in the article, using their captions as a guide.
> Salarymen resting midmeal.
A common theme in the selected pictures is that the people in them are relaxing and I think the implication is supposed to be that they're working 105-hour weeks and they're trying to grab rest where they can.
This is not an unusual sight in Japan or America. You go out to eat with coworkers you like, then you sit back and chat. The Japanese image of someone who's really busy is someone who eats a lunch box or rice ball at his desk while working.
Edit: They're sitting on the floor because they're in a Japanese-style restaurant, so it's easier to lean back on your elbows because there's no chair.
> Staring into nothingness in Hakodate.
This guy isn't staring off into nothingness because he's depressed or so tired he can't think; he's smoking. People tend to stare off into the distance if they're smoking alone and not using their phones or something.
> Standing salarymen eating.
Crowded cities mean strangely-shaped shops with little room for seating. Sushi and noodle bars lend themselves especially well to this kind of standing restaurant since both can be prepared quickly and eaten while standing. All kinds of people eat at these places, not just salarymen. One of the best udon restaurants in my neighborhood is like this.
> Passed out on the train
Looks like a special express, almost definitely not a bullet train given the decor. If you're riding one of those, you're probably traveling for at least an hour. You don't have to be working 105-hour weeks to want to take a nap on a trip where you have nothing to do for an hour.
[1] The idea that there's a generic "Japanese salaryman" is ridiculous. The word itself just means someone who works in an office. Imagine if you gave a single label to every full-time employee in an office in America -- that's how it comes across when Western media uses it.
[2] Another popular "exotic, overworked Japan" meme that comes up is the fact that there's a compound word (過労死, karoushi) for "death by overwork." This is no more exciting than the fact that you can say "death by overwork" in English.
I come from a country with the opposite work culture, Norway. We got short days. So does much of northern Europe including Germany. What I don't like about this work hour obsession is the idea that it indicates how hard people work. You can't tell that by hours worked each day. The Greeks work the longest hours in Europe but anybody who has been to Germany and Greece would probably tell you that the Germans probably work harder.
I have a family member who worked in Thailand, which like much of asia has long work hours. But he was far less stressed there than in Norway with his short work hours. In Norway there was no time for anything but work while at work. In Thailand he had lots of time at work to take care of non-work related tasks.
Especially if you got kids in Norway, you end up getting quite stressed even if you work short hours because you don't have the opportunity to dump the whole responsibility of children onto the wife like in Japan. You have to hurry back from work to pick up kids from pre-school/school, help with school work, make dinner, get them ready for bed etc.
Comparing to American work culture which I know best having worked with a lot of Americans I think in Norway we tend to mainly work while at work and socialize after work. While in the US there is a lot more of non-work related activity at work because people spend a lot more time at work. Nothing right or wrong with that. Earlier I worked a lot American style. Spending long hours at work but also socializing more with colleagues.
My point is that I don't think people necessarily should be worshiped for how many hours they spend at work. It is what you do that matters.
A relative who is a native German recently had to work with a partner in her native land. This was a joint effort between two international companies, the US counterpart was adaptable to hours to make a meeting happen, the German counterpart claimed upcoming vacation and other issues and the meeting would be 6-8 weeks out.
> The Greeks work the longest hours in Europe but anybody who has been to Germany and Greece would probably tell you that the Germans probably work harder.
I don't agree with the "work harder" motive. I'm a Portuguese guy, working for a German company. Half of my team is German and based in Germany, but we visit and are visited very often. As you certainly know, and much like the Greeks, Portuguese rank very high in the amount of hours worked, and very low in productivity. From my experience (and second-hand experience in the company), Germans don't work harder than Portuguese. I also wouldn't say that they work smarter.
I'm not really sure I can point you the exact reason why Germans are more productive (which we know they are, because econometrics et al - but they don't seem to be, working with me on a daily basis). The best I can come up with is systemic advantage. The whole social system seems to be wired for productivity, which isn't true in here (Portugal). It's hard to pinpoint reasons, but I'd say corruption, taking advantage of the state, and all the small things. Education doesn't seem to be working here in Portugal; we have an obsessive focus on STEM here, and end up producing very good engineers but very bad citizens. :)
It's the small things, really. Every day you'll notice traffic going slow because someone thought that it's legitimate to park in the road (instead of finding a valid parking place) just to grab some bread or groceries; it really seems a small thing, but embodies (IMHO) the problem: somebody thought that it's valid to make tens or hundreds of people slow down (and risk accidents) just to avoid wasting his personal five minutes to find a parking space.
> The Greeks work the longest hours in Europe but anybody who has been to Germany and Greece would probably tell you that the Germans probably work harder.
I've been to Germany and Greece, and I don't really concur. Germany is rich, so more people can afford to work part time or at least reasonable hours. Time off is a luxury, it's just a fact of life that the poor have to work longer hours than the rich.
The average productivity has more to do with money than with how hard people are working. Someone who sells a $1Bn credit default swap deal with a few mouse clicks is far more productive than someone who spends 16 hour work days digging a trench with a shovel, but which of the two is working harder?
Ha, ha. What a dystopian country. Except, wait, this is the very country I've been living for decades.
Where to start with? First, the language. The translation of the common phrase, "Otsukare sama desu" isn't "you look tired" (this is already a misleading and insidious tactic to set the whole tone). The phrase is roughly synonymous to "Gokurou sama desu" but with more sympathy. The literal translation would be "it's hardwork-sama (Mr/Ms. hardwork)", and there's a reason that we use honorifics, which is to admire one's effort.
I can't have a word for the gross exaggeration of the work hours in the article, but I'm certain that one of the big reasons for some people to overwork is not loyalty, but fear. It's often said in Japan "incompetent men tend to overwork" and I find it generally true. In this society of lifetime employment, getting fired or demoted at work has very serious consequences. So they often use their long work hours as an excuse or emotional appeal, which can (sadly) still work. But from what I've seen many managements actually hate the employee's over hours because it's costly and inefficient. It's just that it takes a time to change the people's mindset, but I think the situations are slowly getting improved.
It is probably true that we have more perfectionist/anal-retentive kind of people, but again they're generally the result of fear rather than enthusiasm or moral, because their anal-retentiveness doesn't necessarily result in quality work. A lot of lengthy and pointless paperwork, excess bureaucracy, etc, etc. I pity those people, and hope we have more social mobility to dissolve their anxiety.
Costly? I was under the impression that this kind of overtime isn't compensated in a lot of cases?
I've heard one reasoning that if they wouldn't do the (free) overtime, then there wouldn't be a company for them to work at, as it couldn't afford to pay their employees then. However, this was a mid-sized local business and not a multi-national corporation.
Yes, lots of unpaid overtime being worked in Japan by salarymen. At the very least, the recent college grads do it (I've heard first hand accounts, though I guess that's basically hearsay to anyone reading this).
The price of overtime to an employer isn't only (or even mostly) the pay - it's also the impact on the rest of the employee's work. Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister claim in "Peopleware" that "there will be more or less an hour of undertime for every hour of overtime".
While I don't actually live in Japan right now, I can guarantee you that the majority of time people spend at the office in Japan is not actual productive work time (though you could maybe say the same about white collar jobs like software engineering in the US).
While anecdotal, I visit relatively often, and every time I talk to friends at various types of companies in Japan (ex. an investment/securities trading firm, nikon, etc) about how work life is there, the complaints I hear the most are really just related to what has become ingrained in the work culture there.
Things like:
- Not leaving before your boss leaves
- Going to after-work functions that are optional, but not really
- Constantly maintaining the appearance of working hard by working long hours
- Lots of top-down bullying (ex. some manager asking a subordinate to completely redo some report for no reason other than to make them work)
- Lack of overtime pay from companies (if companies were properly paying overtime, they'd be in a hurry to increase productivity, not time spent at the office)
There are many more things like this that are just a part of the culture, that everyone has just accepted. Recent explosion of startup culture (and startups) in Japan is changing this, though, slowly and surely. Foreign companies in Japan already have good reputations for having great work/life balance because our normal work culture is so much more lax.
Another anecdotal but more specific example is a japanese friend that I know working in NYC -- this friend works for a Japanese company that has essentially replicated a lot of the bad parts of the culture they have there here, in the foreign office. This friend knows that just about any other business in the same sector (that wasn't a japanese subsidiary) would be way better.
It's pretty sad, really. This is actually a company sabotaging itself. Each additional hour of work isn't "free" for the company - you can't add an extra hour of work to someone and expect the other hours worked won't be affected. Sitting around waiting for a boss to leave or re-doing work just means that the employee is going to do the rest of his work worse whether he wants to or not.
Japan forcing overtime pay would probably be the single best way to boost their entire economy. I'm guessing they will never do it for unfortunate cultural reasons though.
> I can't have a word for the gross exaggeration of the work hours in the article
I'm assuming that it's true for a small subset of the lawyers who do the kind of work that the author is talking about and apparently has personal experience with... but it's definitely not true for the entire [edit: country].
This article about the Japanese workplace culture through the lens of an anglo-saxon person working there somehow echoes my experience as a Frenchman living and working in North America.
Long hours, not necessarily done efficiently, a culture of pride in the long hours you're putting in and a total disregard for the fact that the human brain needs rest to go full speed without burning out.
Balancing personal life, rest, family and physical activity just becomes unfeasible past 40 hours a week, ain't it?
This is mainly second-hand information. I haven't worked at a Japanese company, the closest I've gotten was interviews and a sort of off the record job offer. I have lived in the country for 1 year though, so I definitely saw the actual hours friends were at work or busy because of work.
1. Japanese business culture sees labor laws as guidelines.
2. Being overworked (meaning enduring or working extra hours) is seen as a "good" thing.
3. Doing anything to sabotage the team effort (including working fewer hours, not being available, not asking to help others) is seen as the worst thing you could do.
4. Being granted a week off by your company is seen as generous (even though you may be allocated 2 or more weeks a year). The corollary to this is not taking your allocated vacation hours is seen as a good thing.
5. You don't miss work due to a cold, you put on a mask and show up anyway.
6. Punctuality is in some ways more important than doing the actual job. This is why people go through great efforts to jam into a single train in order to not be late by even 5 minutes.
7. Apologies are expected, more than reasons or explanations. The message your superior wants to hear isn't that you screwed up, it is that you are inferior and have no excuse and he is superior to you (hence an apology). This is a legacy of Japan's feudal days; Japanese large corporations are essentially the transformation of what used to be feudal powers.
8. Confrontation is avoided at great lengths. This is why Japanese have a hard time of saying "no". This implies that if your boss asks for work to be done, you will undoubtedly agree without complaint.
9. Women are paid significantly less than men, but the trade off is a woman can quit her job to rear children and not be "penalized" from a social standpoint. Men get paid more than women but Japanese culture expects that the man of the family will pay for his wife and children in full through retirement even if the woman doesn't work a single day.
10. Since men are the de facto breadwinner, and women often don't work to take care of the household/children, men are expected (even by their own families) to work longer hours in order to advance the entire family. It is not uncommon for the father of a family to live/work in a city 2-3 hours away from where his family resides.
11. "Black" company (in Japanese) is a term that refers to businesses that have mandatory overtime (12+ hour days). I guesstimate roughly half of all companies in Japan are Black companies.
12. Companies often have "Nomikai" (drinking parties). They are not mandatory per se, but like everything in Japan, social pressure is often used to force people to attend. This is considered a work function even though no actual work takes place.
13. Most employees in Japan are part of "sales". This doesn't imply selling a product, rather it means wining and dining to the customer (Business to Business). This includes things like taking the customer on dinners, karaoke, golf, etc all "on the house". Failure to do this mean strain on the customer relationship. Strain on the relationship implies loss of business.
14. There's a "right" way of doing everything. Japan is a society that values process and manners. For example when you, a Japanese national, go on an interview, and must enter an interview room, you first knock exactly 3 times, yell "excuse me", wait for an invitation, open the door, yell again "pardon me", then enter the room, promptly close the door, wait to be invited again to take a seat, then proceed to take the seat. Failure to do this correctly exactly as listed looks bad.
15. Japanese (the language) continues to require honorific/humble language in addition to polite language. In school, children must address students senior to themselves using polite language. In the workplace, employees must be able to address superiors and custom...
I like the author's writing style. However, it's misleading to make such sweeping generalizations about Japan. I lived in Kyoto for six years. My children went to the local school, and I knew many of the fathers. Nobody I knew was in the situation described here.
The subway at 5-6pm was crowded with salarymen returning from their jobs.
The life of a salaryman lawyer in downtown Tokyo does not extend to the entire country. The author himself, to his credit, might not fully realize this yet.
I also concur with the comments I've read here from other residents of Japan.
I lived one year or so in Japan and could not stand it, after living in Korea for some time and China for 5 years or so. I am European.
When talking with European friends about Japan, they joke about the religion of Japan not being Shinto, but Shigoto(work).
Being alien in the country, with knowledge they did not have, gave me freedom that locals could not dream but I suffered a lot for them. Working to a certain point and your productivity becomes negative in an objective way.
But you can't change it because you have to fight against society. The worst thing is that in lots of ways the US is increasingly going down the same path.
It used to be that this was common in Soviet Russia, the output of your work did not matter as much as your input. A tank was "two times better" if it required double quantity of materials, or double assembly hours. So "acting like they were doing a good job" was more important that doing a good job.
It looks like the natural consequence of central planning.
There are early Apple/Jobs stories about working "90 hours a week and loving it". I know people that put in 80 hours a week here in the U.S. The most I have ever put in was 65-70 hours for a job that I really liked.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 102 ms ] threadAfter two years, only 34 people were willing to be officially identified as people who go home early.
It's not how early one comes in or late, how may hours, ... these are all "process people" behaviors that aren't focused on the content impact of their effort.
Finally, inspired by Sir Branson's take on work-life... it's the same thing, act in a globally-consistent manner. Much easier than the insecure, naïve person trying to wear "boss" or "worker" costumes... it's value-subtract business theater.
I could just be old or completely full of shit, either is fine.
That kind of thing just disturbs the ever-living shit out of me, and seems beyond abnormal.
Does that kind of thing still happen? It feels like a certain, painful breed of brainwashing, or B.F. Skinner-style operant conditioning, is needed to command behavior like that.
http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/08/tripping-through-ibm...
(Safe for work, though pretty depressing)
Now that I have lived in China for >10 years I can tell you: people from different countries are different, and that's what makes life bearable. (They are different but also the same, obviously. For example, they all love their children.)
1) Average annual hours worked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Average_annual_ho...
2) The vast majority of humans cannot survive with average sleep length of 4-5h per night on a consistent basis: We will literally, physically die. In reality, the Japanese sleep between 7 and 8 hours on average: http://www.nhk.or.jp/bunken/english/reports/summary/201104/0...
So, it's not uncommon to see people who you could imagine in the day were the quintessential salaryman passed out on the train home, possibly next to another one who puked and sprawled on the floor of the train. Also, stupidity during these episodes is forgotten, for the most part.
Pissing and vomiting in public is kind of accepted after certain times of the night. However, most the hanging out and drinking is for business reasons rather than hanging out with buds.
I'm pretty sure you could walk into a white-shoe law firm in NYC and find similar stories.
It is true also that the numbers will differ from industry to industry, tier to tier. The worst is probably the smaller System Integration "SI" shops. The Mizuho Bank System Integration work going on right now is one much project that will be a multi-year "death march". And yes, people do actually die in these projects. You don't get terms like Karoshi entering Western vernacular without cause. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kar%C5%8Dshi
Even at my former gig, there was a building occupied by the Integrated Circuits team that was called "The Castle with no Night" because the motion detection enabled lights never went out.
After that, everyone just left the lights on when they went home for the day.
Japan's journalistic integrity is sometimes a little lacking.
1. For more pay. We don't get paid a lot (roughly 1,000 yen an hour for full time contracted lifetime employee), so overtime (2,000 per hour) helps. 2. Peer pressure. People generally look down on others who leave early. They will mockingly say things like, "wow I'm so envious that you don't have any work." Unless you have some "legitimate" reason (children, illness).
In Singapore there is a well-known phenomenon where employees will not leave the office until (just) after the boss leaves. It doesn't matter if there is nothing left to do--you must never be seen leaving first. For a year I arrived to work 1-2 hours earlier than everyone else, and you know what appeared on my year-end review? "Leaves the office too early."
I'll go over the pictures in order displayed in the article, using their captions as a guide.
> Salarymen resting midmeal.
A common theme in the selected pictures is that the people in them are relaxing and I think the implication is supposed to be that they're working 105-hour weeks and they're trying to grab rest where they can.
This is not an unusual sight in Japan or America. You go out to eat with coworkers you like, then you sit back and chat. The Japanese image of someone who's really busy is someone who eats a lunch box or rice ball at his desk while working.
Edit: They're sitting on the floor because they're in a Japanese-style restaurant, so it's easier to lean back on your elbows because there's no chair.
> Staring into nothingness in Hakodate.
This guy isn't staring off into nothingness because he's depressed or so tired he can't think; he's smoking. People tend to stare off into the distance if they're smoking alone and not using their phones or something.
> Standing salarymen eating.
Crowded cities mean strangely-shaped shops with little room for seating. Sushi and noodle bars lend themselves especially well to this kind of standing restaurant since both can be prepared quickly and eaten while standing. All kinds of people eat at these places, not just salarymen. One of the best udon restaurants in my neighborhood is like this.
> Passed out on the train
Looks like a special express, almost definitely not a bullet train given the decor. If you're riding one of those, you're probably traveling for at least an hour. You don't have to be working 105-hour weeks to want to take a nap on a trip where you have nothing to do for an hour.
[1] The idea that there's a generic "Japanese salaryman" is ridiculous. The word itself just means someone who works in an office. Imagine if you gave a single label to every full-time employee in an office in America -- that's how it comes across when Western media uses it.
[2] Another popular "exotic, overworked Japan" meme that comes up is the fact that there's a compound word (過労死, karoushi) for "death by overwork." This is no more exciting than the fact that you can say "death by overwork" in English.
I have a family member who worked in Thailand, which like much of asia has long work hours. But he was far less stressed there than in Norway with his short work hours. In Norway there was no time for anything but work while at work. In Thailand he had lots of time at work to take care of non-work related tasks.
Especially if you got kids in Norway, you end up getting quite stressed even if you work short hours because you don't have the opportunity to dump the whole responsibility of children onto the wife like in Japan. You have to hurry back from work to pick up kids from pre-school/school, help with school work, make dinner, get them ready for bed etc.
Comparing to American work culture which I know best having worked with a lot of Americans I think in Norway we tend to mainly work while at work and socialize after work. While in the US there is a lot more of non-work related activity at work because people spend a lot more time at work. Nothing right or wrong with that. Earlier I worked a lot American style. Spending long hours at work but also socializing more with colleagues.
My point is that I don't think people necessarily should be worshiped for how many hours they spend at work. It is what you do that matters.
There is work day and then there is "process".
I don't agree with the "work harder" motive. I'm a Portuguese guy, working for a German company. Half of my team is German and based in Germany, but we visit and are visited very often. As you certainly know, and much like the Greeks, Portuguese rank very high in the amount of hours worked, and very low in productivity. From my experience (and second-hand experience in the company), Germans don't work harder than Portuguese. I also wouldn't say that they work smarter.
I'm not really sure I can point you the exact reason why Germans are more productive (which we know they are, because econometrics et al - but they don't seem to be, working with me on a daily basis). The best I can come up with is systemic advantage. The whole social system seems to be wired for productivity, which isn't true in here (Portugal). It's hard to pinpoint reasons, but I'd say corruption, taking advantage of the state, and all the small things. Education doesn't seem to be working here in Portugal; we have an obsessive focus on STEM here, and end up producing very good engineers but very bad citizens. :)
It's the small things, really. Every day you'll notice traffic going slow because someone thought that it's legitimate to park in the road (instead of finding a valid parking place) just to grab some bread or groceries; it really seems a small thing, but embodies (IMHO) the problem: somebody thought that it's valid to make tens or hundreds of people slow down (and risk accidents) just to avoid wasting his personal five minutes to find a parking space.
I've been to Germany and Greece, and I don't really concur. Germany is rich, so more people can afford to work part time or at least reasonable hours. Time off is a luxury, it's just a fact of life that the poor have to work longer hours than the rich.
The average productivity has more to do with money than with how hard people are working. Someone who sells a $1Bn credit default swap deal with a few mouse clicks is far more productive than someone who spends 16 hour work days digging a trench with a shovel, but which of the two is working harder?
Where to start with? First, the language. The translation of the common phrase, "Otsukare sama desu" isn't "you look tired" (this is already a misleading and insidious tactic to set the whole tone). The phrase is roughly synonymous to "Gokurou sama desu" but with more sympathy. The literal translation would be "it's hardwork-sama (Mr/Ms. hardwork)", and there's a reason that we use honorifics, which is to admire one's effort.
I can't have a word for the gross exaggeration of the work hours in the article, but I'm certain that one of the big reasons for some people to overwork is not loyalty, but fear. It's often said in Japan "incompetent men tend to overwork" and I find it generally true. In this society of lifetime employment, getting fired or demoted at work has very serious consequences. So they often use their long work hours as an excuse or emotional appeal, which can (sadly) still work. But from what I've seen many managements actually hate the employee's over hours because it's costly and inefficient. It's just that it takes a time to change the people's mindset, but I think the situations are slowly getting improved.
It is probably true that we have more perfectionist/anal-retentive kind of people, but again they're generally the result of fear rather than enthusiasm or moral, because their anal-retentiveness doesn't necessarily result in quality work. A lot of lengthy and pointless paperwork, excess bureaucracy, etc, etc. I pity those people, and hope we have more social mobility to dissolve their anxiety.
I've heard one reasoning that if they wouldn't do the (free) overtime, then there wouldn't be a company for them to work at, as it couldn't afford to pay their employees then. However, this was a mid-sized local business and not a multi-national corporation.
While anecdotal, I visit relatively often, and every time I talk to friends at various types of companies in Japan (ex. an investment/securities trading firm, nikon, etc) about how work life is there, the complaints I hear the most are really just related to what has become ingrained in the work culture there.
Things like:
- Not leaving before your boss leaves
- Going to after-work functions that are optional, but not really
- Constantly maintaining the appearance of working hard by working long hours
- Lots of top-down bullying (ex. some manager asking a subordinate to completely redo some report for no reason other than to make them work)
- Lack of overtime pay from companies (if companies were properly paying overtime, they'd be in a hurry to increase productivity, not time spent at the office)
There are many more things like this that are just a part of the culture, that everyone has just accepted. Recent explosion of startup culture (and startups) in Japan is changing this, though, slowly and surely. Foreign companies in Japan already have good reputations for having great work/life balance because our normal work culture is so much more lax.
Another anecdotal but more specific example is a japanese friend that I know working in NYC -- this friend works for a Japanese company that has essentially replicated a lot of the bad parts of the culture they have there here, in the foreign office. This friend knows that just about any other business in the same sector (that wasn't a japanese subsidiary) would be way better.
Japan forcing overtime pay would probably be the single best way to boost their entire economy. I'm guessing they will never do it for unfortunate cultural reasons though.
I'm assuming that it's true for a small subset of the lawyers who do the kind of work that the author is talking about and apparently has personal experience with... but it's definitely not true for the entire [edit: country].
Long hours, not necessarily done efficiently, a culture of pride in the long hours you're putting in and a total disregard for the fact that the human brain needs rest to go full speed without burning out.
Balancing personal life, rest, family and physical activity just becomes unfeasible past 40 hours a week, ain't it?
1. Japanese business culture sees labor laws as guidelines.
2. Being overworked (meaning enduring or working extra hours) is seen as a "good" thing.
3. Doing anything to sabotage the team effort (including working fewer hours, not being available, not asking to help others) is seen as the worst thing you could do.
4. Being granted a week off by your company is seen as generous (even though you may be allocated 2 or more weeks a year). The corollary to this is not taking your allocated vacation hours is seen as a good thing.
5. You don't miss work due to a cold, you put on a mask and show up anyway.
6. Punctuality is in some ways more important than doing the actual job. This is why people go through great efforts to jam into a single train in order to not be late by even 5 minutes.
7. Apologies are expected, more than reasons or explanations. The message your superior wants to hear isn't that you screwed up, it is that you are inferior and have no excuse and he is superior to you (hence an apology). This is a legacy of Japan's feudal days; Japanese large corporations are essentially the transformation of what used to be feudal powers.
8. Confrontation is avoided at great lengths. This is why Japanese have a hard time of saying "no". This implies that if your boss asks for work to be done, you will undoubtedly agree without complaint.
9. Women are paid significantly less than men, but the trade off is a woman can quit her job to rear children and not be "penalized" from a social standpoint. Men get paid more than women but Japanese culture expects that the man of the family will pay for his wife and children in full through retirement even if the woman doesn't work a single day.
10. Since men are the de facto breadwinner, and women often don't work to take care of the household/children, men are expected (even by their own families) to work longer hours in order to advance the entire family. It is not uncommon for the father of a family to live/work in a city 2-3 hours away from where his family resides.
11. "Black" company (in Japanese) is a term that refers to businesses that have mandatory overtime (12+ hour days). I guesstimate roughly half of all companies in Japan are Black companies.
12. Companies often have "Nomikai" (drinking parties). They are not mandatory per se, but like everything in Japan, social pressure is often used to force people to attend. This is considered a work function even though no actual work takes place.
13. Most employees in Japan are part of "sales". This doesn't imply selling a product, rather it means wining and dining to the customer (Business to Business). This includes things like taking the customer on dinners, karaoke, golf, etc all "on the house". Failure to do this mean strain on the customer relationship. Strain on the relationship implies loss of business.
14. There's a "right" way of doing everything. Japan is a society that values process and manners. For example when you, a Japanese national, go on an interview, and must enter an interview room, you first knock exactly 3 times, yell "excuse me", wait for an invitation, open the door, yell again "pardon me", then enter the room, promptly close the door, wait to be invited again to take a seat, then proceed to take the seat. Failure to do this correctly exactly as listed looks bad.
15. Japanese (the language) continues to require honorific/humble language in addition to polite language. In school, children must address students senior to themselves using polite language. In the workplace, employees must be able to address superiors and custom...
The subway at 5-6pm was crowded with salarymen returning from their jobs.
The life of a salaryman lawyer in downtown Tokyo does not extend to the entire country. The author himself, to his credit, might not fully realize this yet.
I also concur with the comments I've read here from other residents of Japan.
When talking with European friends about Japan, they joke about the religion of Japan not being Shinto, but Shigoto(work).
Being alien in the country, with knowledge they did not have, gave me freedom that locals could not dream but I suffered a lot for them. Working to a certain point and your productivity becomes negative in an objective way.
But you can't change it because you have to fight against society. The worst thing is that in lots of ways the US is increasingly going down the same path.
It used to be that this was common in Soviet Russia, the output of your work did not matter as much as your input. A tank was "two times better" if it required double quantity of materials, or double assembly hours. So "acting like they were doing a good job" was more important that doing a good job.
It looks like the natural consequence of central planning.