Slacker Nation? Young Japanese Shun Promotions | Hacker News Reader

Slacker Nation? Young Japanese Shun Promotions

online.wsj.com

46 pointsprakash29 comments

"Miya Matsumoto, manager of the laid-back Mr. Nishikido, says she's tried everything -- from screening success-themed films like "The Devil Wears Prada" to throwing after-work drinking parties -- to push her subordinates to be more ambitious."

They missed the point of Devil Wears Prada. The movie showcases what happens when you occupy yourself with only work. Thats the last movie you want to screen to motivate employees to work harder

Next up, Office Space :-)

Probably have to show them Ferris Bueller's Day Off before they get the point.

"Law firms say the trend has companies scrambling to seek legal counsel on whether they can fire employees who refuse promotions."

That made me chuckle.

"CyberAgent Inc., a Tokyo-based Internet advertising agency, is offering the unambitious a different way out. The company puts these workers on a 'specialist' track where they can remain rank-and-file employees but have similar salaries as managers. This ensures the company 'doesn't lose qualified employees by pressuring them to accept promotions,' says Tetsuhito Soyama, general manager for personnel at the company."

I like their style!

It is a matter of corporate structure. The best employees barely need managing; give 'em a project and set 'em loose. Their manager just needs to sign off on their expenses, basically.

If you go into any investment bank, you will see that practically everyone has the title 'Vice President'. They got vice presidents answering the phones! Promotion for promotion's sake is just silly.

Scient (or one of the high flying consulting companies) used to do this in the dot-com days, people could stay at the same position for how ever long they wanted.

Plenty of tech companies do this, I think: offering both an engineering and a management path. Yahoo (where I worked) was one (offering a "management" and "architect" path), several places I've interviewed and the place where I accepted are the same way. I heard Google and Microsoft are similar as well.

In addition there are tracks/careers for managing technologies as opposed to managing people (project/program/product management).

It's would be a waste to put a talented hacker into a management position - and likewise there are people who are excellent managers despite not being the world's strongest hackers.

Japanese executives often have desintoxication "cures" when they come back from Europe or the US, so that they don't become addicted to "the good life". The culture of work is insane over there. Calling them a "slacker" nation is a misunderstanding of the nature of Japanese work culture.

I don't really see this as a bad thing. I know personally I would hate to work for a company that expected me to put them first in my life. It finally looks like work life in Japan is headed off in a saner direction.

Apart from the obvious disillusionment and realisation that a corporate career is often equivalent to a corporate shafting, maybe another factor is that you need less money nowadays to enjoy your leisure time. For example, one reason I was excited to work in computing was access to expensive equipment and systems which I couldn't afford to buy myself. Now, I have half a dozen computers in my house and can pick up another system unit for <$100 on eBay.

The availability of cheap hardware and broadband access means you can do anything from collaborating on software, to "meeting" people online, to playing WoW and other games. For tech-savvy people, their sense of identity and self-worth is probably more bound up in those things than who they supposedly are at work.

Yes - the first mainframe I programmed on had a big box - 7'x4'x4', which held a megabyte, and cost a megabuck! I still remember the thrill of playing lunar lander on a Selectric terminal attached to that beast.

This is kind of not surprising, I'm even seeing it here in the US in some very odd circumstances. One of my life long friends just took a job doing less work than his previous job, but pays more (higher profile company).

I worked full time at a law firm before getting my company off the ground and it was pure hell. I dreaded going in because while I got to enjoy smoke breaks, the entire time my work cell was going off, emails coming in, people needing more and more.

The work world is getting grueling. Whoever said this fast paced culture was right, but Japan isn't the only culture experiencing work-related jetlag. We're in an accelerated culture as well and we're working people into the ground, but paying them more to do it. I don't miss the 9-5 one bit.

I find it odd that that the more people there are in the world, and the more technology there is, the harder we all have to work. It seems counter-intuitive.

The more people there are in the world, the larger the supply of labour. The more technology, (usually) the more productive people can be. This means that people from developing (i.e. poorer) countries are able to do more at lower prices, forcing everybody else to work harder overall to keep up.

It's initially counter-intuitive, but ultimately this is supply and demand. You can coast, but while you do, other people with higher incentives (e.g. more desperation to get out of their poorer living conditions) are working harder.

We have now more technology and more people than in the 19th century and people work less and have higher salary. Why would it be different in the future ?

Generation Y has seen its parents live comfortable lives. Those parents have had to work day in and day out to make a good living, but it's been a comfortable living overall.

But.. why are Generation Y's parents so hard-working? Probably because they saw their parents struggling. Unlike those of us under the age of 30, our parents had to experience (or were at least constantly reminded of) the problems with food rationing and scarcity in the 40s and 50s (especially in Europe).

So, I wonder.. is generation Y becoming lazy and self centered because they've seen their parents do well, and assume it'll work out that way for them too no matter what?

interesting, very interesting indeed, but are you really surprised? Given the unthinkably fast pace of Japanese work culture such a burnout was bound to happen..

I suspect it isn't actually burnout, but a shift in culture. Namely, the attitude towards work and what it means in one's life. The culture change is quite unthinkably fast though. First you have freeter, then neet, then hodo-hodo-zoku. Continuing this trend, expect a new term in another few years.

Freeter and neet are basically the same thing, whereas hodo hodo zoku are at least out of the house... I kind of feel they've pretty much got the whole spectrum of "don't find work enjoyable" covered. (Unless theres a way to be extra-unemployed...)

Exactly. I wouldn't call them "Slackers." Who the hell wants to work past 10 PM??? That is enslavement. I would call them smart.

> unthinkably fast pace of Japanese work culture

Not sure where you're getting that idea. It's slow as molasses; hours of pointless meetings and such. They just work ridiculous hours.

It has been noted that rice agriculture is extremely labor intensive compared to the much more capital intensive european farming modes, and that perhaps this is reflected in the different modern businesses approaches of east and west.

"He says he was especially turned off when he learned she had left her sick baby at home with her husband to come to the office (Ms. Matsumoto says work emergencies sometimes must come first.)

'That's definitely not the life I want,' Mr. Nishikido says. 'No way.'"

I'm proud of him, and I hope he's the future.

Work to live, don't live to work.

From hacker news to slacker news.

sounds like they started to watch Fight Club...

this is my favorite scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhnwU91QuQA

> They say these workers, mostly in their 20s and early 30s, are sapping Japan's international competitiveness at a time when the aging country must raise its productivity to keep the economy growing.

How dare these young workers question their enslavement to the much larger retiring generations. Don't they realize they have to work hard to keep my checks coming in the mail?

The best part of the article is that it bases its premise that the entire country's economy is going to fail on three interviews and a comic book.

This slacker thing could backfire and people in line jobs could get paid less. That'll make'em work harder!

But seriously:

In software engineering, my colleagues don't want to be managers. When I worked in IT, they did want management. I think this difference is a function of the work satisfaction, pay differential. If you make six figures already (most of my software engineer friends do or are close to that figure), there just isn't enough motivation in a few more grand to become a manager.

When will corporations understand that they have made work all about money and therefore have to pay. There is no loyalty, no sense of sticking it out during rough times. So all we can afford to value is the cash.

That's not our fault. And I'm not a slacker because of the changing value system I had nothing to do with.

Could this difference between development and IT be due to a differing need for managers? It seems like modern agile development methodologies have reduced the number of managers necessary by automating things that managers used to do and by making individual contributors more self organizing. You still need some project and functional managers, but not as many as with when following a waterfall methodology under a command-and-control structure.

By contrast it seems like IT still requires a lot more active management to be done well. If you've got to install a new corporate backbone network or consolidate a bunch of servers you need top-notch managers actively driving the projects forward or else you'll end up with a huge mess.

I see this coming to the West very soon. When the socially engineered 'everyone is a winner' generation AKA Generation-Y realises real life bears no relation to the one they are taught in school and increasingly college/university, we may be in for a shock. We may find we have a generation of young professionals who run a mile when presented with the prospect of management.

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