7 ms·

>Salarymen work large amounts of overtime, although much of it is for appearance’s sake That's just stupid. It makes me wonder, though: is the work culture sim

by gragas 10y ago

>Salarymen work large amounts of overtime, although much of it is for appearance’s sake That's just stupid. It makes me wonder, though: is the work culture similar for ex-patriots working in Japan?

vtange 10y ago
Reminds me of some college cultures actually. In architecture school you were almost expected to pull all-nighters for the sake of "being a dedicated architecture student". It is like hazing of some sort.
- chipperyman573 10y ago
  In college nobody knows if you really do pull an all nighter
  - vtange 10y ago
    Unless they're in your architecture studio. You basically live there while you work on projects.
  - jedberg 10y ago
    Just out of curiosity, how old are you/when did you attend college? I ask because "back in the day" everyone knew. If you were a cs student in 1995, you pretty much had to work in one of the basement labs. One of the profs liked to come to the lab at 3am before a deadline and laugh at us.
    - chipperyman573 10y ago
      I'm attending right now
    - pyromine 10y ago
      The crappy thing is that while this might be "back in the day", I still have to spend time cooped up in computer lab because software companies make the licenses way too expensive so we have nowhere else to do our homework.
      - closeparen 10y ago
        My alma mater offered RDP for those programs.
    - tdumitrescu 10y ago
      I started my CS degree in 95, and did most of my coursework from my dorm, telnetting in to one of the Sparcs we were expected to write code on, eventually using X11 forwarding too. Wasn't any different resultswise than sitting with everyone else at terminals in the lab, though I guess I missed out on the social aspects of plowing through assignments in the same room together.
      - jedberg 10y ago
        Yeah technically you could telnet in or do a remote X11, but you'd have to telnet to one of the machines in the lab, that someone was working on. So their processes would get priority since they were on the console, and sometimes people were asses and would boot you out so they could compile faster. Also we didn't really have many people with laptops, so if you had a group project meeting in the lab was pretty much the only way you could all get computers but still interact with each other.
    - protomyth 10y ago
      I was CS from 88-91 and everyone knew since we were either in the basement of one building or lab in another. Plus, everyone knew if you were online if you had the cash to be logged in from home. The joys of classes taught on an IBM 370 or VAX. The social aspects of the old labs made for many memories and lessons.
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  Never once pulled an all-nighter in college (ECE). I also never studied for more than 2-3 hours in succession. I always took a nice break between study sessions to let everything sink in. On the other hand, most of my peers consistently stayed up through the night during examinations. Most of my peers studied in groups. I sat in on a few sessions and discovered that for every hour of study, an hour was spent on petty discussions. I stopped attending them since. I'm now doing a PhD, so that may all change. I did fine during my first semester, so we'll just have to see.
  - matt_wulfeck 10y ago
    Some of my most memorable memories of college were those "petty discussions"
    - Cyph0n 10y ago
      Haha, yeah, I get you. It's probably because I don't like spending more time than necessary when it comes to studying. I'm a really heavy procrastinator otherwise.
  - __mbm__ 10y ago
    Keep it up. I had a similar experience. Even through my PhD at a top-tier school in applied math, I didn't do "all-nighters" or cram sessions. In fact, after my first 2 years of PhD (where I regularly put in 80 hours a week because of the course load), I toned it down to 40-50 hours. I also didn't use performance enhancing drugs meant to treat things like ADHD. I did (and still do) use a lot of coffee in the mornings. I also recommend going out to bars to have those petty discussions, so that socializing is reliably separated study.
  - Amezarak 10y ago
    YMMV - I was in college for six years, got a BS and MS in CS. I was surrounded by people who, like you said, regularly stayed up all night prior to exams. Sometimes we even scheduled that: the students would organize study-group sessions from 10PM-til. I had a policy then that, no matter what, I was going to get a full night's sleep. Period. Full stop. I think it served me very well. A quick refresher in the morning gave me probably as much recency in terms of memory, and personally, my brain just works a lot, lot better with plenty of sleep. Even if I didn't know an answer, it was a lot easier to stay calm and rationalize something that often turned out to be right or good enough. I only felt a little bad about it once - in a math class I left the study group right before my bedtime, while still getting the notes they'd put together the rest of the night. I felt a little uneasy about not pulling my weight, so to speak, but oh well. It could have been scheduled earlier and I would have gladly stayed. So I'd keep it up. Nowadays things are a little different for me - a lot of my job unfortunately involves being present regardless of whether there's anything to actually do. I worked two-and-a-half days straight a couple months ago. No overtime pay. :\
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  Yes, this is a common theme for noobs everywhere. The older, cooler guys will let you in -- after you've been through the ringer and proven you really want to be in their special club.
msbarnett 10y ago
> > Salarymen work large amounts of overtime, although much of it is for appearance’s sake > That's just stupid. That's overtime. Almost all overtime, even in the US, is as much about the appearance of working hard rather than any real gains in productivity. I've lost count of the number of times I've been involved with or seen a startup that "crushes code 100 hours a week because we're out to win, man", with most of those late nights spent with a room full of people online shopping or on HN.
- flamedoge 10y ago
  reddit. a few braver on 4chan
- shams93 10y ago
  Yeah my current startup, no overtime, and all our projects are on schedule, everything is going great. Previous company required 80-100 hours a week basically for show, they would break more than got fixed because at 100 hours a week your body and brain reach the breaking point, completely unproductive.
- brianwawok 10y ago
  I worked at a door factory. We worked 20% overtime for 6 months. We made 20% more doors. Works great for manual labor.
  - axtscz 10y ago
    Yeah, generally overtime in manual labor type jobs yield more production. Source: woke in construction
  - toyg 10y ago
    That's the thing though, it's an old-school Fordist concept that doesn't really apply to modern service/creative jobs. Time, like place, is not related to productivity anymore, modern employers need better metrics.
    - Bombthecat 10y ago
jupiter90000 10y ago
Talking with recruiters there it sounded like it depends on the company more than the employee (traditional Japanese companies expect more 'loyalty'/hours than young and/or foreign-founded companies). However I've also heard that foreigners can 'get away' with more, whatever that means.
viral007 10y ago
Generally Japanese companies will send their liaison to the host country and having experienced this first hand I can say that liasions are expected to be available throughout the Japan day time.
hkmurakami 10y ago
If you are seen as being "Japanese" you are expected to conform. If you are seen as a foreigner, you get a pass. If you ever find yourself working in Japan, use your foreignness to an advantage!
- dvcrn 10y ago
  We are lucky enough to work in a very modern field with a different mindset in contrast to other jobs. I'm at my 3rd company in Japan now and while some of my previous experiences were bad, it was really more the fault of the company with things you could easily find in other countries as well and not "because Japan".
- unsignedint 10y ago
  And that's exactly why I can't work there.[0] (Though, it's funny I was actually very close of doing just that.) Too bad I don't have perks of using foreignness there... [0]: https://hideki.hclippr.com/2011/06/02/social-expectations-in-japan-and-why-i-cant-ever-live-in-japan/ https://hideki.hclippr.com/2011/06/02/social-expectations-in...
  - qbert 10y ago
    You could work for a foreign company within Japan.
    - unsignedint 10y ago
      That would have been tolerable for me, but considering I have been experiencing difference in overall sociological expectations by just visiting there, I don't know if I would have been truly happy if I were in that situation. I wasn't exactly "fit to their spec" back when I was living in Japan at young age, either.
      - hkmurakami 10y ago
        I've worked there. It definitely did a lot of damage to my psyche. Even if you work for a foreign company, the way personal relationships work is very different from the states. That had taken me a decade to realize. I'm glad you didn't make the same mistake I did.
prodmerc 10y ago
> Ex-patriots Expatriates.
- seanmcdirmid 10y ago
  I love this mistake though.
jacalata 10y ago
A friend told me about their time in a New York finance company, where people showed up to the office on Saturday and watched TV on their computer because even if there wasn't any work to do you had to be seen putting the time in.
- huac 10y ago
  Most banking analysts (read: first 2 years out of college) have similar need to have 'butts in seats' for ~ noon to maybe 4 pm. In the morning you have to finish the work you didn't finish last night or your boss wants redone, and you get more work around 4 or 5 when the older people start leaving. But there's a few hours midday where you have absolutely nothing to do except browse the internet or try to sneak off to the gym.
gleenn 10y ago
I worked in Japan for a year at a 100 person startup (all Japanese people except for me). Anecdotally, people did seem to work a lot of hours but it was also felt like one of the most laid back environments in a way. It seemed like working all those hours allowed them to not be rushed. They were also pretty successful, and had as one of their goals to be like a "San Francisco startup" which may have made them a bit more of an exception instead of the rule. Also I worked primarily in SF at a lot of startups so that made it an easier transition for me. I definitely saw salarymen on trains falling asleep or all heading out in packs to bars though, so I have no doubts about there being a very hard-working middle-class that also has extra-office obligations.
greggman 10y ago
Expats often have "I'm not Japanese" as an excuse and a lower expectation of conformance. To be clear this is not just a company issue it's a cultural issue. If the company does not have a policy of "go home at 6pm" the default culture everyone expects is "work late", especially for men.
nihonde 10y ago
As a former Big Law lawyer, I can assure you it's currently the case in America, too.
zxcvb 10y ago
Same thing used to happen with a lot of the consultants at Accenture - I hear it's the same at PwC too.

by gragas 10y ago

>Salarymen work large amounts of overtime, although much of it is for appearance’s sake That's just stupid. It makes me wonder, though: is the work culture similar for ex-patriots working in Japan?

vtange 10y ago

Reminds me of some college cultures actually. In architecture school you were almost expected to pull all-nighters for the sake of "being a dedicated architecture student". It is like hazing of some sort.

chipperyman573 10y ago
In college nobody knows if you really do pull an all nighter
- vtange 10y ago
  Unless they're in your architecture studio. You basically live there while you work on projects.
- jedberg 10y ago
  Just out of curiosity, how old are you/when did you attend college? I ask because "back in the day" everyone knew. If you were a cs student in 1995, you pretty much had to work in one of the basement labs. One of the profs liked to come to the lab at 3am before a deadline and laugh at us.
  - chipperyman573 10y ago
    I'm attending right now
  - pyromine 10y ago
    The crappy thing is that while this might be "back in the day", I still have to spend time cooped up in computer lab because software companies make the licenses way too expensive so we have nowhere else to do our homework.
    - closeparen 10y ago
      My alma mater offered RDP for those programs.
  - tdumitrescu 10y ago
    I started my CS degree in 95, and did most of my coursework from my dorm, telnetting in to one of the Sparcs we were expected to write code on, eventually using X11 forwarding too. Wasn't any different resultswise than sitting with everyone else at terminals in the lab, though I guess I missed out on the social aspects of plowing through assignments in the same room together.
    - jedberg 10y ago
      Yeah technically you could telnet in or do a remote X11, but you'd have to telnet to one of the machines in the lab, that someone was working on. So their processes would get priority since they were on the console, and sometimes people were asses and would boot you out so they could compile faster. Also we didn't really have many people with laptops, so if you had a group project meeting in the lab was pretty much the only way you could all get computers but still interact with each other.
  - protomyth 10y ago
    I was CS from 88-91 and everyone knew since we were either in the basement of one building or lab in another. Plus, everyone knew if you were online if you had the cash to be logged in from home. The joys of classes taught on an IBM 370 or VAX. The social aspects of the old labs made for many memories and lessons.
Cyph0n 10y ago
Never once pulled an all-nighter in college (ECE). I also never studied for more than 2-3 hours in succession. I always took a nice break between study sessions to let everything sink in. On the other hand, most of my peers consistently stayed up through the night during examinations. Most of my peers studied in groups. I sat in on a few sessions and discovered that for every hour of study, an hour was spent on petty discussions. I stopped attending them since. I'm now doing a PhD, so that may all change. I did fine during my first semester, so we'll just have to see.
- matt_wulfeck 10y ago
  Some of my most memorable memories of college were those "petty discussions"
  - Cyph0n 10y ago
    Haha, yeah, I get you. It's probably because I don't like spending more time than necessary when it comes to studying. I'm a really heavy procrastinator otherwise.
- __mbm__ 10y ago
  Keep it up. I had a similar experience. Even through my PhD at a top-tier school in applied math, I didn't do "all-nighters" or cram sessions. In fact, after my first 2 years of PhD (where I regularly put in 80 hours a week because of the course load), I toned it down to 40-50 hours. I also didn't use performance enhancing drugs meant to treat things like ADHD. I did (and still do) use a lot of coffee in the mornings. I also recommend going out to bars to have those petty discussions, so that socializing is reliably separated study.
- Amezarak 10y ago
  YMMV - I was in college for six years, got a BS and MS in CS. I was surrounded by people who, like you said, regularly stayed up all night prior to exams. Sometimes we even scheduled that: the students would organize study-group sessions from 10PM-til. I had a policy then that, no matter what, I was going to get a full night's sleep. Period. Full stop. I think it served me very well. A quick refresher in the morning gave me probably as much recency in terms of memory, and personally, my brain just works a lot, lot better with plenty of sleep. Even if I didn't know an answer, it was a lot easier to stay calm and rationalize something that often turned out to be right or good enough. I only felt a little bad about it once - in a math class I left the study group right before my bedtime, while still getting the notes they'd put together the rest of the night. I felt a little uneasy about not pulling my weight, so to speak, but oh well. It could have been scheduled earlier and I would have gladly stayed. So I'd keep it up. Nowadays things are a little different for me - a lot of my job unfortunately involves being present regardless of whether there's anything to actually do. I worked two-and-a-half days straight a couple months ago. No overtime pay. :\
cookiecaper 10y ago
Yes, this is a common theme for noobs everywhere. The older, cooler guys will let you in -- after you've been through the ringer and proven you really want to be in their special club.

msbarnett 10y ago

> > Salarymen work large amounts of overtime, although much of it is for appearance’s sake > That's just stupid. That's overtime. Almost all overtime, even in the US, is as much about the appearance of working hard rather than any real gains in productivity. I've lost count of the number of times I've been involved with or seen a startup that "crushes code 100 hours a week because we're out to win, man", with most of those late nights spent with a room full of people online shopping or on HN.

flamedoge 10y ago
reddit. a few braver on 4chan
shams93 10y ago
Yeah my current startup, no overtime, and all our projects are on schedule, everything is going great. Previous company required 80-100 hours a week basically for show, they would break more than got fixed because at 100 hours a week your body and brain reach the breaking point, completely unproductive.
brianwawok 10y ago
I worked at a door factory. We worked 20% overtime for 6 months. We made 20% more doors. Works great for manual labor.
- axtscz 10y ago
  Yeah, generally overtime in manual labor type jobs yield more production. Source: woke in construction
- toyg 10y ago
  That's the thing though, it's an old-school Fordist concept that doesn't really apply to modern service/creative jobs. Time, like place, is not related to productivity anymore, modern employers need better metrics.
  - Bombthecat 10y ago

jupiter90000 10y ago

Talking with recruiters there it sounded like it depends on the company more than the employee (traditional Japanese companies expect more 'loyalty'/hours than young and/or foreign-founded companies). However I've also heard that foreigners can 'get away' with more, whatever that means.

viral007 10y ago

Generally Japanese companies will send their liaison to the host country and having experienced this first hand I can say that liasions are expected to be available throughout the Japan day time.

hkmurakami 10y ago

If you are seen as being "Japanese" you are expected to conform. If you are seen as a foreigner, you get a pass. If you ever find yourself working in Japan, use your foreignness to an advantage!

dvcrn 10y ago
We are lucky enough to work in a very modern field with a different mindset in contrast to other jobs. I'm at my 3rd company in Japan now and while some of my previous experiences were bad, it was really more the fault of the company with things you could easily find in other countries as well and not "because Japan".
unsignedint 10y ago
And that's exactly why I can't work there.[0] (Though, it's funny I was actually very close of doing just that.) Too bad I don't have perks of using foreignness there... [0]: https://hideki.hclippr.com/2011/06/02/social-expectations-in-japan-and-why-i-cant-ever-live-in-japan/ https://hideki.hclippr.com/2011/06/02/social-expectations-in...
- qbert 10y ago
  You could work for a foreign company within Japan.
  - unsignedint 10y ago
    That would have been tolerable for me, but considering I have been experiencing difference in overall sociological expectations by just visiting there, I don't know if I would have been truly happy if I were in that situation. I wasn't exactly "fit to their spec" back when I was living in Japan at young age, either.
    - hkmurakami 10y ago
      I've worked there. It definitely did a lot of damage to my psyche. Even if you work for a foreign company, the way personal relationships work is very different from the states. That had taken me a decade to realize. I'm glad you didn't make the same mistake I did.

prodmerc 10y ago

> Ex-patriots Expatriates.

seanmcdirmid 10y ago
I love this mistake though.

jacalata 10y ago

A friend told me about their time in a New York finance company, where people showed up to the office on Saturday and watched TV on their computer because even if there wasn't any work to do you had to be seen putting the time in.

huac 10y ago
Most banking analysts (read: first 2 years out of college) have similar need to have 'butts in seats' for ~ noon to maybe 4 pm. In the morning you have to finish the work you didn't finish last night or your boss wants redone, and you get more work around 4 or 5 when the older people start leaving. But there's a few hours midday where you have absolutely nothing to do except browse the internet or try to sneak off to the gym.

gleenn 10y ago

I worked in Japan for a year at a 100 person startup (all Japanese people except for me). Anecdotally, people did seem to work a lot of hours but it was also felt like one of the most laid back environments in a way. It seemed like working all those hours allowed them to not be rushed. They were also pretty successful, and had as one of their goals to be like a "San Francisco startup" which may have made them a bit more of an exception instead of the rule. Also I worked primarily in SF at a lot of startups so that made it an easier transition for me. I definitely saw salarymen on trains falling asleep or all heading out in packs to bars though, so I have no doubts about there being a very hard-working middle-class that also has extra-office obligations.

greggman 10y ago

Expats often have "I'm not Japanese" as an excuse and a lower expectation of conformance. To be clear this is not just a company issue it's a cultural issue. If the company does not have a policy of "go home at 6pm" the default culture everyone expects is "work late", especially for men.

nihonde 10y ago

As a former Big Law lawyer, I can assure you it's currently the case in America, too.

zxcvb 10y ago

Same thing used to happen with a lot of the consultants at Accenture - I hear it's the same at PwC too.