The young Japanese working themselves to death
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* Foreigners get more leeway. I have colleagues that do a strict 40 hours/week.
* The overtime culture isn't strictly enforced. It comes about organically. Your team agrees to deliver a task with a tight deadline. You can go home early, but your colleagues will unquestioningly pick up the slack. Instead of them leaving the office at 10pm, now they stay to midnight. It is easy to feel guilty about leaving at reasonable time.
* There is a lot of praise and admiration for the employees that demonstrate hard work.
* There seems to be an unwritten rule that you stay till your boss goes home. Teams where the boss works a reasonable schedule, also seem to work reasonable hours. If you have a workaholic boss with no personal life then you are in trouble.
* For a lot of young Japanese it appears their colleagues are their only social circle.
* There is a lot of after-work demands on your time. It is common to have work-related dinners and drinks.
That's a fascinating (but sad) cultural value. Normally (in most prosperous countries) if you cared about your family, you'd come home early to spend time with them. Your spouse and kids put far more value on the time you spend building your relationship with them, hanging out/chilling with them, over any extra material/monetary gain you could bring them.
After a certain point, money doesn't bring you any happiness. If you have enough money to cover basic expenses, then your happiness is mostly going to be determined by the quality and depth of your human relationships, your social life, your community, etc.
I feel that this line of thinking (excessively working for your family) is something that makes sense in poorer/developing countries like India and China, but it seems like a bad cultural artifact/holdover in relatively wealthy country Japan.
In Japan I'd say your happiness is mostly determined by how your peers view you.
For many people the long hours is all year around.
If there's work to do, then they feel obligated to put in the APPEARANCE of working hard, regardless of how much actual work is being done.
Can definitely attest to everything else you've said. There is also an element of people not wanting to go home often because they have parents living with them (young and old) or their home life isn't all that appealing.
I always wondered why the overtime culture wouldn't slowly fade out as I imagined that top employees would certainly demand to work fair hours resulting in employers having to adjust in order to hire quality staff.
The aspect you mentioned could explain why nobody, including employees who could afford to do so, is really pushing for sane work hours.
On the other hand it's hard to understand that employers and employees alike aren't able to see that the current working conditions are neither healthy nor very productive - there's no way you're anywhere close to your full potential at the end of a 10 or 12 hour shift.
After he caught on to the fact that the reason his entire team was still there was because he was, he had a talk with them explaining that just because he had to finish something it was fine if they left early.
He ultimately found that no amount of talking about it would work. He said that if he needed to stay late to finish something he'd pack up and go to a local café for half an hour, then come back after that to work late on whatever he needed to finish.
We can. Earlier today, a post showed up here about John. It was flagged. I expect my comment to also be moderated, which will reinforce my feelings of being ignored by the world.
https://github.com/yeukhon/suicide
I investigated what's happening to him, and empathise with a lot of his struggles. We're overworked, underpaid, ignored, and rejected by the government.
He's got excellent work experience for Mozilla, and a good degree. Working for a tech company in New York. What's bad about that?
- He's still asking for a second job on weekends just to make ends meet.
May 22: "What part time job would allow me to work on Friday - Sunday with some rest in between? Need one so I can make up some cash."
- He can't afford anything more than a tiny room:
Apr 13: "if only @LifeOnPurple can release a full size mattress tonight I'd be able to purchase >_< my bedroom can't take a Queen size. #mattress"
- He cares about the world, but it makes him poor (me too - refusing to work for weapons manufacturers or oil companies has seriously limited my scope of potential jobs)
Apr 5: "I'd be interested in working at places where I can exercise social responsibility and making industry standard salary. Too hard."
- He's bored at work, probably because managers don't give him enough to do, or don't care enough to simply talk to him. ]
Mar 28: "When I don't seem to do much or making huge progress at work I wonder am I the new fossil at work? At age of 25? Really?"
- He can't get insurance (me too) because of systematic mistreatment of foreigners by the government (me too):
Mar 5: I write software so I am denied for vision coverage. I am Chinese so I am denied for liver coverage. #preexistingconditions
Could you go into more details about this? Many of the others sound like very sad combo of really bad fit between city + job + goals, but the insurance stuff on an employer plan at a large company is news to me. Vision coverage usually isn't the most useful thing in the world (the expenses are too predictable), but I've still never been denied it and always have had employers that offer it, and I have no experience being foreign to speak to that, but again, even pre-Obamacare employer plans I saw for middle-class+ jobs usually had some level of preexisting condition coverage (generally along the lines of "if your insurance has lapsed for 3+ months, then there's a 6-12month waiting period for coverage specific to that condition") and my foreign co-workers didn't seem to be on a different set of plans than anyone else.
I currently live in Taiwan. It costs me 3 months savings to buy a plane ticket to visit family. I can afford to do that once or twice a year. That doesn't matter much though, because I only get 8 days of annual leave anyway.
I'm a British citizen by descent (born in Switzerland to parents resident in France). My future children cannot be British. I cannot become Taiwanese without giving up my previous nationality. I would also have to do military service, and learn how to kill foreigners. There is a conflict of interest here, because I am a foreigner.
I have a Masters of Engineering from Lancaster University, UK. I started Ph.D. at KAIST in Korea, but dropped out when they refused to pay my scholarship.
I wanted to move to Canada for the Express Entry programme, but now they got too many applications from the US. They changed the rules, and now they require me to be a senior manager.
I wanted to move to New Zealand for the Skilled Migrant Category visa. They asked for 2 years work experience. During my 2nd year here, they increased that to 3 years. Now they require 75,000 NZD per year salary (4x my current salary). I don't think any company will pay that.
It is extremely difficult, and getting harder, to take a foreign spouse to the UK.
The US "asked me to leave" (one step short of deportation) when my exchange student visa petition was denied, because I didn't have $25,000 cash in the bank. Thankfully the process was so slow that I finished a whole year at UCSB before they kicked me out. I can't go back any more though.
I also don't think I can afford to get married, because it's just too expensive (300,000 NTD would take me one year to save up).
The politics and finance problems means I don't think I can marry my Taiwanese girlfriend. I believe in chastity, so this probably means that I'll die a virgin.
I've decided that rather than ending my own life, and having no voice, I can at least speak on behalf of those who struggle. The older generation are rich (owning cars and houses, having children). Most people I know who are my age are not able to afford such luxuries. Why should I pay for pensions to support these rich old people? Why should I pay for insurance to extend my life, when I'm not even satisfied with the situation I'm in? I expect that there will be a war soon. I refuse to fight in it, but I hope that here in Taiwan, I'll be on the front lines, and it'll be over for me soon.
My dad worked at CERN, an EU research institute, for over 30 years before retiring last September. He bought a house in France, but his office was in Switzerland. We crossed the border every day - him to go to work, me to be born/go to school. It's a Geneva thing. He couldn't get French nationality because he wasn't working in France.
Now the UK is leaving the EU, he is likely to lose the right to live in France. He finally paid off the mortgage on his house, but he's probably about to lose it all. He's also considering New Zealand, but immigration there becomes much more difficult after age 55.
Trying to get PR in an EU country would take at least 5 years. The Express Entry and Skilled Migrant Category visas for PR in Canada and NZ are much faster (about 6 months of processing time if I have the prerequisites).
Rent is also much cheaper in Taiwan (only 20% of my salary). Electronics are cheap, so that saves some personal expenses. When I did summer jobs in Switzerland and Austria before, I had less net income, after rent & food. At least here I'm breaking even. I just don't expect that I can ever find a place where I could earn enough to pay to learn to drive/marry/buy a house/etc.
This is very unlikely. While much about Brexit is unclear, it seems nearly certain that there will be provisions that British nationals can continue living in the EU and vice versa. No country involved wants to change the status for people who already emigrated. Discussions focus more around the exact rights (e.g. if the European Court of Justice remains responsible for EU citizens in the UK) and about movement of people after Brexit.
And even if you only move to Europe in a few years, it's likely that you will get a visa much easier than with a non-European passport.
Why does it cost so much to get married in Taiwan - is that the fee for a marriage license? Could you just fly to another country where it's cheaper and get married there?
http://taiwanexplorer.blogspot.tw/2011/09/everything-about-t...
It's not a legal fee, it's the price of the wedding and dowry.
Besides, marriage doesn't even matter for immigration. "Partnership" means sharing the same bank account and address for 1 year. That means persuading her and her parents to let her move out of a comfortable rent-free family house, and into a small room with some foreign boy.
I want to wait until marriage before I have sex, and sex is the first thing I'll do after I get married. If I marry her first, then I risk having children before I get the PR in a developed country. (I don't trust contraception, because I was a mistake when I was accidentally conceived.) So now I'm in a catch-22 situation - she won't move out until she gets married, but I can't bring her to another country unless we've been living together.
I know this is a site about hacker topics and it's not my place to question your life choices, but it seems like sex is pretty important to you. That being the case, wouldn't you want to find out if you and your partner are compatible in bed before getting married? You can always use multiple forms of contraception in tandem to all but eliminate the risk of an unplanned pregnancy.
No, I don't want to commit fornication in order find out whether we're "compatible in bed". That is partly due to the political problems, and partly due to my religious beliefs.
My parents had a chance to kill me before I was born, and it would have been called "contraception". They didn't. I will choose to abstain from sex until I get this political mess sorted out though, so I can deny them the joy of grandchildren.
You have an easy solution: get some work in the UK. If your girlfriend loves you she'll manage to follow you. If not I guess she's not really marriage material.
She's not super rich, and she works in fashion design. That's not on a skill-shortage list. My salary isn't super high.
I worked in the UK before, as an unpaid missionary. I quit because of serious cultural differences (I wasn't allowed to cook dinner for a female friend - not romantic - in my free time). I studied there in university, and was shocked at how racist people were towards immigrants. They didn't realise that I've always been an immigrant. Just because I look British should force me to live in that country. The British government won't ever let me upgrade my citizenship to let children born overseas become British, no matter how long I live there. That country rejected me, so I'm trying to find another place where I belong.
Many people have problems moving to the UK, some of whom write about it here:
Why do you want to live and adhere to the customs of your current country? Do you really need to get married? If the UK is a problem what would be the problem with forfeiting your UK citizenship to acquire the one of you future wife?
There is a moment when you have to commit to a choice and stop living "le cul entre deux chaises" (the ass between two chairs).
Who said that you aren't allowed to cook dinner for someone in the UK? Maybe your friend didn't want that but it's certainly not typical for the UK.
Despite what rumours online may say, getting a work visa is not hard. You only need to have a university and a company willing to employ you and then you're good to go.
The salaries may not be as high as Silicon Valley or London, but it's very possible to have a good quality of life. The path to permanent residency is clear (if a little long).
There's also no military service to speak of. The majority support pacifism, which seems to align with your values. If you understand Chinese writing then Japanese is not too bad to pick up.
Germany seems nice (I've only visited, not worked). But Germany doesn't allow dual nationality. I'd have to give up my current half-British second-class citizenship in order to get the privilege to live there for the rest of my life. Now the UK is leaving the EU, I can't rely on being allowed to live there permanently.
The Dutch government is good. I spent 1 month in Amsterdam in 2013, trying to find jobs. I failed. I also felt excluded because of being a foreigner (I heard actual racist comments twice during that month). I was welcomed by the foreign and squatter community, but they were mostly drunk and/or high (I don't do drugs or drink). In the end, I got a job in China, so I flew there to work for 5 months before starting that ill-fated Ph.D. programme in Korea.
But, since you need 6-8 years to live in Germany until you get your citizenship, by the UK will be no longer EU, so..
I am living in a town 80km south west of Munich and I pay for a full house with garden less than a one bedroom app in Munich. I find this really expensive. Kindergarten you are expected to pay about 1000 euros a month for a place, because there is a shortage. Meanwhile, my local kindergarten cannot fill its quota of children. Life quality is amazing since you can buy most of the food locally.
Sorry just ridculing the whole concept of nation states as tribes, while every ideology ever currently tries to get out of that old concept.
> Earlier this year the government introduced 'Premium Fridays', encouraging firms to let their employees out early, at 3pm, on the last Friday each month. They also want Japanese workers to take more holiday.
That's a single digit number of hours every month. It's meaningless if workers are still doing massive amounts of unpaid overtime.
> Earlier this year the government proposed limiting average overtime to 60 hours a month though firms would be allowed to up this to 100 hours during "busy periods" - well into the karoshi red zone.
And suddenly every period is a "busy period".
> Critics say the government is prioritizing business and economic interests at the expense of the welfare of workers.
Not even. I'm sure they could actually be more productive if they weren't literally working their employees to death.
Here's an idea. Make companies pay extra compensation if employees work overtime. I guarantee you companies will be literally pushing their employees out the door at 6 PM then.
At least it's likely a high single digit.
This is the standard practice at many (but not all) Japanese companies with an overtime culture. "Service overtime" (サービス残業) -- uncompensated overtime -- is widely perceived to be abusive, and the abusiveness of this practice is deployed by defenders of the status quo as "We're not abusive; we paid every one of those 80 hours at time and a quarter."
It's priced into the expectations, literally -- my offer letter from my previous employer in Japan had two columns in it, the "formal offer" and the "offer assuming overtime pay[+]", with the number quoted at me being the total salary inclusive of their estimate of overtime. (30 hours of compensated overtime a month.)
(This was... ahem... an optimistic estimate.)
It seems like raising the mandatory pay rate for overtime would really reduce the issue. A sliding scale that increases the overtime pay rate for additional hours would nip this in the bud and improve the labor market.
Something like 1.5x for > 50 hours/week and 2x for >60 hours /week would put tremendous pressure on companies to hire more staff rather than working their employees to death. Also it wouldn't nuke the salaries of those depending on overtime pay to make ends meet. Fewer overtime hours, same pay.
Most companies already do pay extra compensation for overtime, at least in theory. The reality is that there's an informal pressure for employees not to declare their overwork time or they could use various loopholes that make them technically "not overwork".
Officially, Japanese labor laws look pretty good on paper. In Japan, most obstacles are informal which apparently the government can't really regulate.
Here's an article[0] that promotes "Premium Fridays" that states:
> [The] Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which is pushing the idea, hasn’t decided yet if its officials will get to join in.
[0]http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/01/02/national/bid-cur...
I'm in a startup in Japan. Our offices are in offices provided by the city to encourage startups. I don't know anyone who is doing premium Friday here. I held a little party for the first premium Friday. A few people came at 3pm, but everyone went back to work after.
This is not uncommon in the US either, in the finance industry, at startups, at much bigger competitive companies, in medicine. I'm actually surprised there isn't more suicide, burnout, and depression from overwork in the US, or maybe the people just aren't as open about it in the US as they are in Japan.
I find most people in America that worked overtime felt that it was necessary to work because of all the tasks that needed to be completed. In Japan the overtime seems more "required" just to work overtime (not always the case of course). I think Americans get a lot more self-satisfaction when they finish their overtime shift (although they don't like it they know it was something that needed to be done).
I think there's a lot of stress and depression in the states from overwork (not as much depression from my group of friends), but not as much as Japan for a few reasons. One guess is that I find people in America more social than Japanese. Most of the "friends" relationships I see in Japan are more-so forced as they are coworkers who just go together and drink. I could be completely wrong here but I feel like they don't share their feelings and talk to reduce stress/depression as much as Americans.
One last thing about overtime is I feel most US companies have bursts of overtime when work needs to get done. Japanese companies often just have "permanent" overtime setting the mentality that they will be doing it forever.
A better question is what happens if a young college grad in Japan chooses work no unnecessary overtime?
N=1 anecdote from a traditionally managed Japanese company.
If you (a twenty-something Japanese man) happen to say お先に失礼します。(announcing you're leaving) at 6:00 PM in front of the company's CEO during a site visit, and the CEO says, in a shocked voice, "I suppose you have somewhere more important to be right now.", and you say "Yes, I'm going on a date.", you can look forward to six months of nuclear-tipped ostracism from your colleagues and, when you complain to management about it, they will tell you "[Foreign employee] is more Japanese than you are; ask him."
Just to give you a taste of this: In a previous job in Japan there was a work party on the weekend. I told my boss "I can't got, I have something to do" (A very normal way to refuse something in Japan. The expectation is that no one will ask what your vague reason is). This boss tries to pin me down on exactly why I won't be spending my day off on this event. This leads to 6 months of going over my work with a fine tooth comb, review periods and so on.
I'm surprised your boss tried to pressure you for info. Usually the companies that are more traditional ('non-mandatory' aka mandatory outside activities) will follow cultural norms and just do the punishment without the asking.
This is kinda true but also kinda not. It glosses over that there are all kinds of "foreigners" and they aren't treated the same or thought of the same. You are using "foreigner" to mean (white) Americans/West Europeans.
I can assure you that Japanese don't feel that way about, say, Vietnamese or Malaysian foreigners. (I live in Vietnam, which has a fair number of Japanese companies. I have a Malaysian friend who left at 6pm one day and had a meeting with HR the next morning at 9am.)
My guess (based on admittedly little real evidence) is that they would also be less understanding of Asian-Americans who leave at 5pm than they are of white Americans who leave at 5pm.
One of the most surprising things I've found living in Asia is the large amount of racism pretty much everywhere. I've seen Chinese restaurants with signs saying "No Japanese allowed". I know a Vietnamese girl who puts in her online dating profile "Don't message me if you are Chinese". Heck, even regional "rivalries" are...rough. I was a cafe in South Vietnam where they refused to serve a group of customers from North Vietnam. The North Vietnamese asked, "Do you have tea?" The staff replied, "Yes, but only Southern tea" and walked away without taking their order.
The person telling me about him said while nobody showed any outward hostility towards him, he was kind ignored when it came to camaraderie between the staff, and perhaps even ostracized in a way. He seemed okay with not being too close with his coworkers though.
At the same time, I wasn't really there, so there could be more to it.
I'm now working in a Japanese programming company (where no one speaks English) and the environment is completely different.
I'll note that the man in this case was Japanese.
Is it anywhere near 25% of the US companies, though? I doubt it.
Finance and startups are high-risk, high-return endeavors. It's one thing to work 80 hours of overtime as a trader/VP/software engineer earning good money, having a sense of autonomy and accomplishment, etc. And if you quit or your startup fails, you can always get another job, change fields or even take a break. It won't be a black mark against you.
It's a very different thing to work 80 hours of unpaid overtime as a courier [0], with no autonomy and virtually no career progression. Sure, you can quit. But the perception is, "why would I quit if the alternative is just a different delivery sweatshop?".
FWIW professions/companies that have strong unions tend to have less problems with unpaid overtime, but they're a minority.
[0] http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/03/04/business/corpora...
http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan/
Further, I would really like people sticking up more for themselves, putting up with this nonsense normalizes exploitation and makes it worse for everyone.
Perhaps the root of the problem is the high cost of living, no?
The market here revolves around hiring university graduates up to a year before they graduate and then training them from the start in whatever position you want them to do. Very few people change jobs and if you jump from jobs every 3-5 years its seen a negative sign on your CV.
Also talked to couple other startups that have normal NA hours, their pay was crap though. Also some big web companies have some pretty reasonable hours.
Having said that in lots of other places it is hell.
Last data point I usually work from collaboration space. Heading home around 5-6pm. It is massive traffic jam around that time.. people heading back home. Maybe to drink? Last train is always hilarious experience, but nobody is mean drunk which is nice.
[1]: http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20170413-we-had-to-give-the...
If you're going back to an abusive spouse, a crowded house with inlaws and kids, no privacy at all or other problems, I can see why some people might hide at work.