Japan wants its hardworking citizens to try a 4-day workweek | Hacker News Reader

Japan wants its hardworking citizens to try a 4-day workweek

apnews.com

69 pointsrntn28 comments

They can't even do a 9 to 5 day and we are to believe that they can go to a 4-day week just because the government suggests that they do so? This is literally a marketing campaign with no law changes or subsidies or anything. Public policy vaporware

I spent a few weeks as a salary man in Japan (just working alongside them), and noticed how quite a few people would just stare at their monitors and pretend to do work, without ever actually doing anything. Then they’d run to the printer (to look busy and stressed), only to run back to their desks and stare at the same A1 excel cell they’ve been staring at for the last 3 hours.

Imagine spending your entire professional career doing that.

I think I'd prefer that over "Yes, Jim, that idea sounds great. Let's try that out" knowing full well he's doomed to fail... but has to see it for himself. Only letting the conversation end once they hear my support. The warnings and outright plea for a change in direction are ignored.

Above is how 99% of my days/meetings go in the US. Equally futile but requiring ongoing [and ignored] input. At most a pep talk.

I dream for that level of autonomy and honesty. Choosing when to get up/return? Not being goaded into saying something that's ultimately ignored? Oh, yea! When can I move?

edit: Oh, the other 1%? Watching people double check the things I said I did. It's like there's no trust or purpose... because there isn't. Give me the spreadsheet.

Interesting to see Greece taking population decline one way - more work days, and Japan the opposite.

Hopefully Japan is right.

All 4 day week pilots to date have been overwhelmingly successful [1]. This should be a no brainer considering existing productivity levels combined with Parkinson’s Law (“work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion“). With process improvements and scheduling, the biggest hurdle is ideology around work. You see this emphasized in the US with people bragging how hard they work themselves, in Japan it’s not leaving until the boss leaves and similar [2].

Tangentially, as the working age cohort shrinks, labor has more power in this regard, and Japan’s labor force continues to shrink due to structural demographics decline [3].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39992783 (citations)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_work_environment (“Wikipedia: Japanese work environment“)

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_market_of_Japan (“Wikipedia: Labor market of Japan“)

For anyone swayed by the level of citations, I'd advise you to spend the time to actually, legitimately, research into them for yourself.

In my experience once you investigate down into them they're always unconvincing. They either have an abysmal sample size, or are opinion pieces with no data behind them, or are multiple presses releases which all link to the same one single horrible study as their proof, or they have non-sensible methodology performed by the most biased group imaginable, etc.

Since you've already looked into it, do you happen to have studies of particular quality for or against reduced work hours?

Is it that work expands to fill the time allocated, or is it that the time allocated isn’t enough for completion because it was decided by people who have no idea what they’re talking about?

If you ask me to draw you a picture of a cat, I can do that. If you give me 30 seconds, it’ll be a doodle, maybe drawn in coffee-stain on a napkin but I’ll get you your cat. Give me 30 minutes and it’ll be on a piece of paper by pen or pencil. Give me 30 hours and I’ll give you several thumbnail sketches with options to choose from, maybe some more exotic mediums like highlighter on a sunny window. Maybe some documentation to go along with it. Give me 30 days and I’ll get some art supplies, maybe do some research into popular cat drawing styles, we’ll workshop it a few times. I’ll make a cat drawing design document for the next cat drawer. Give me 30 months and I’ll take some classes and study cats, we’ll make the best damned cat picture anyone’s ever seen and we’ll build this thing out to be scalable, the foundation for a drawing powerhouse of the animal drawing industry.

Give me 30 years and I’ll dedicate my career to creating a series of cat drawings that will change art and the human perspective forever or I’ll die trying.

As long as I’m getting paid, I’m fine with any of these options, you just gotta let me know when you need it by.

It is more of, management decided that they want to feel involved, so they added more meetings on top of unrealistic deadlines to fillup all hours, so it appears that we actually need more time or employees are working less, because now deadlines are not being met and output/productivity is low.

From what I read, Greece's policy was (partially) due to labour shortages during the tourism season, while Japan has lots of workers who work many unproductive hours (some just go to the office for the sake of going). I'd say they're different policies for quite different contexts.

They're starting from different baselines. Japan has a widespread culture of overwork, and Greece is notorious for the extreme opposite.

Greece is always on top of those "hours worked per month" statistic for Europe. So at least the data strongly contradicts that notion.

I think "hours worked per month" and "hours _reported as work_ per month" do not have to correlate.

Greeks are also kings of faked misrepresented data so that doesn't mean much.

When I took a bus in Greece, 4 people were needed for a bus: 1 in a ticket shop, 1 selling tickets on the bus, 1 validating tickets, and 1 driver. None were in any kind of hurry. In Belgium, there is only the driver and maybe on the busiest locations a ticket shop.

Ah, the lazy Greeks stereotype at it again. A myth spread by the creditor states' governments, namely Germany's Angela Merkel, when in fact the Eurozone is broken by design.

https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/design-failures-eurozone

Maybe faking most of the data to join the Eurozone is not such a good idea then, Greece. So is also not kicking them out the second the swindle is realized, EU.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/23/world/europe/greece-admit...

The EU was complicit in pretending that Greece's data could be taken without a mound of salt.

Guess who helped Greece hide their debt? Goldman and Sachs. And guess who worked for Goldman during that time? Mario Draghi, who was rewarded with a term as the ECB president afterwards.

https://www.politico.eu/article/mario-draghi-ecb-trichet-ban...

For someone to be complicit, the other party had to be instigator of the crime, right? Poor Greeks, forced into corruption, they would NEVER do that by themselves!

One side presents current conditions as empathetic patriots fighting for their country's progress, the other side presents the new approach as "I like being able to go to the doctor"

Although in practice Japan currently has 5 days workweek, but in law it’s 6 days (Saturdays included).

Funny, it's the same in Germany.

Wait, post-covid there are actually people working Fridays?

Why do you think that post-covid no one is working Fridays?

Is there a special name for these purposefully imprecise meme like terms? "4 day work week" means 10 different things to 5 different people.

People sick of capitalism are like, finally some kind of relief?

Business owners are like, yeah great everyone can work 12 hours days and i pay less office heating.

Japan is like, if you are a good quiet slave you may get fake praise for your incredible dedication worth well over 100 hours a week crammed into 4 days.

Greece is like, enough of this communism they will work more days by force!

Everyone has their own different flavor of propaganda around it: like people stating "studys" without thinking for one second people arent so desperate for change they would try to game that study at all costs

Strange - some years ago a visiting Japanese Engineer was asked "What do you do on the weekend?" and answered with an eye-roll "In Japan, week is Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday-Friday-Friday-Friday".

What matter if they make it four 'Fridays'?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com