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Comment by MichaelBurge | Hacker News Reader

That's sad, especially since most of the extra hours are busywork and peer pressure from what I've read.

What happens in Japan if you put in a simple 40-hour week, do good work, and then leave at the end of the day? I also understand their government makes it very difficult to fire employees. And I can't imagine they'd reassign you to watch the paint dry if you're actually doing good work. Would you mainly miss out on promotions?

Is it just a social thing, or is it economic? Since it's harder to fire people in Japan, there's a lot of risk to hiring a new employee. So maybe the culture helps weed out uncommitted people, which helps derisk hires? Or, to a certain extent, lets you get more productive hours out of them.

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I live and work in Japan since 2011. The most part of this time in larger companies. Afaik Dentsu takes or took huge pride in being an elitist salaryman operation. People joining them couldn't be totally unaware of this. Keyence is another place with a similar reputation. Although you'll find more places like this, it is not that common. I am pretty sure every country has companies like this.

Further, Japanese people work long hours. Some will due to peer pressure. Some will cause they have nobody waiting at home. In some workplaces your colleagues are like friends. So, they socialize a lot during work hours. I think there is no single reason why Japanese people work longer hours than Europeans for example.

I am convinced however, that on the average a Japanese employee takes a huge amount of pride from doing a good job. The point: How to judge if a job was executed well or not? I experience this not to be so easy mostly due to the Japanese style of communication, which leaves a lot of space for ambiguity. Maybe long work hours stem from this.

>Is it just a social thing

The little I know about Japan is from Anime, books, articles and online comments.

In Japan, leaving before the boss is distasteful. Also, going home early instead of socializing after work is frowned upon even by one's spouse.

I've also read that there's no job hopping. Employee for life is still a thing there. And an ex-employer's comment is heavily weighted by prospective employers.

Additionally, loyalty is highly valued, probably more than ability.

This Wikipedia article is a good summary of Japanese work environment - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_work_environment

> In Japan, leaving before the boss is distasteful

My personal management policy is I get in before and leave after all my employees incase they need me and to show them that I am there for/with them (within reason - if someone is putting a really late night I may leave first).

The idea of not leaving before the boss leaves is weird to me. I get higher pay and more stock options, why should I be leaving early when my team is working their butt's off?

Edit: I realize this could be taken as a ploy from me to get the team to work more hours. But I also don't shame employees for leaving before me. It's not a contest. If they get their work done they shouldn't feel guilty leaving at 5:00.

If they get their work done they shouldn't feel guilty leaving at 5:00.

If they get their work done, should they feel guilty leaving at 3:00?

My experience is, there's always more work to be done if you finish your tasks early.

Yeah, you can always do some of tomorrow's goals, and continue until you hit some more difficult problem, at which point your work in advance will let you spend more time working on that problem.

People who don't like what they do won't do this, of course.

When I was a manager? Nope.

I had people who got in at 7, left at 3. No problem.

Nice subversion. But I was poking at the relationship between duration, rather than offset.

Should they feel guilty leaving early if they finished their work?

Should they feel guilty leaving late if they haven't finished their work?

Serious answer... if they really have nothing else to work on then sure. But that's obviously rare. So more realistically... if the project was early I'd actually suggest to them that if they want to take some PTO time they can.

"If they get their work done they shouldn't feel guilty leaving at 5:00."

Good for you. Do you spread this message widely? OA5[1] on a t-shirt or something?

[1] Scott Adams Out at Five as an organising principle.

Or perhaps a motivational poster? ;)

No, but as I pointed out in another post. The average number of hours worked is barely more than 40 so I think people get it.

As far as "out at five" goes... we have flex hours so some people don't even get in until 10:30... if they left at 5 it would be a very short week for them.

> The idea of not leaving before the boss leaves is weird to me. I get higher pay and more stock options, why should I be leaving early when my team is working their butt's off?

For two reasons:

- You get higher higher pay because hopefully you are more useful to your company than the other people in your team.

- You are probably forcing your team to work longer than they would if you left before them.

As I pointed out in another post. The average number of hours worked is barely more than 40 so I don't think people feel pressured. And related to that, we encourage people to use their vacation time.

Are you a manager in Japan?

At the company I work for, managers are encouraged to keep normal hours so as not to set a bad example for employees. Your reports may take a different message from your long work hours than you intend. "This is what it required to make it to the next level." "He's judging me when I leave." Just something to consider the next time you evaluate this decision.

While I understand that is a real risk (which is why I added my edit)... the average time someone in our company works is 45 hours with most being closer to 40 so I don't think it is having that effect.

More precisely, some people come in late (10:30 or so) and some people come in early (7AM or so)... I come in before the 7 AM people and leave after the people who came in at 10:30. But none of them work excessively. (except for me)

> If they get their work done they shouldn't feel guilty leaving at 5:00.

Close but not perfect. My correction would be "even if they don't get their work done, they shouldn't feel guilty leaving at 5:00."

The reason I say this is because one could easily argue that there's always more work to be done. That's always been the case for me anyway. But tomorrow is another day. When you've put in a full workday already, nobody should make you feel guilty for leaving just because there's more work to do. There's always more work to do!

Problem of Japanese employment is that employment often do not carry clear "job description" or it may be taken so lightly. So regardless of whether you are done with your work for the day, your boss may approach and say "hey, your fellow co-worker is still not done with their tasks, why aren't you helping them before you leave?"

I'm sure that's what the parent meant - I understood "get their work done" to mean "they are working productively over a long period" and not "they finished all assigned tasks for the day"

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