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Samsung shifts executives to six-day workweeks to 'inject a sense of crisis'
- gnabgib 2y agoThe source (per HN guidelines - in the article) is: https://www.kedglobal.com/corporate-strategy/newsView/ked202404180009 https://www.kedglobal.com/corporate-strategy/newsView/ked202... .. posted 5 hours ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40081798 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40081798
- bdjsiqoocwk 2y agoDoes anyone have a theory why Korean currency is depreciating?
- simfree 2y agoIt's all about monetary policy, Japan is also affected by this as their interest rates are out of sync with North America, pushing people to leave the local currency to pursue higher interest rates in US Dollars.
- jddj 2y agoI'll take a stab, not much knowledge of the specifics. Relatively high household and govt debt levels + anaemic growth causing central bank to lag on increasing rates to the level that the market sees as worthy of the risk. Am I close? It's the AUD model but I figure it's close.
- raziel2p 2y agoOnly for executives? Sounds like a good move actually.
- rapidaneurism 2y agoThe shit trickles down. I foresee Saturday morning meetings for their direct reports, etc until everyone works 6 days, or signal themselves as disloyal non team players.
- boxed 2y agoIt's a pity managers see themselves as "up". They should see themselves as below the engineers and accountants and whatever. Managing is a supporting role if done properly. The boss mentality is corrosive.
- catoc 2y agoAs we say at home: "fallen upwards due to lack of weight."
- CraftingLinks 2y agoI tend to sympathise with this view. The "up" part is only justified if responsibility also falls on their shoulders when shit hits the wall due to their decisions.
- eviks 2y agoWhy do you see support being down? You can support from above
- boxed 2y agoLike a house, or a bridge. Yea, a bridge can be a suspension bridge but it ALSO has MOST of the support below the road.
- self_awareness 2y agoManager needs to access/modify the compensation information for the employee. Employee will never see the compensation info of the manager. This is why the manager will always be seen as being above.
- boxed 2y agoThat seems like a pretty big leap. Here in Sweden anyone can ask the state for the total income for anyone else at any time, so clearly that's not the case.
- rzr 2y agoHelping the boss is always on "voluntary basis" (aka there is no choice)...
- seanhunter 2y ago... because what everyone really needs is for their executives to have a sense of crisis. I'm sure that will help a lot.
- isoprophlex 2y agoThe more panicked and overworked the top layers are, the better the decisions they make. Clearly. /s
- pavlov 2y agoSimilar to what Musk did at Twitter with his “extremely hardcore” directive. Maybe we’ll soon see Samsung executives post pictures of how they’re sleeping under their office desks on a Saturday night, like happened at Twitter. The manager who posted those pictures was laid off from Twitter anyway a few months later. Performative crisis mode probably isn’t very useful to anyone.
- kombookcha 2y agoIt feels like corporate cargo cult behaviour to me. If everyone makes the right theatrical gestures at working super hard, productivity must go up right? Or not. Maybe it will appease the gods of the stock market for a while.
- jack_riminton 2y agoIt certainly makes it easier to fire people, which may be the whole point here
- rapidaneurism 2y agoThe beatings will continue until moral improves
- chilldsgn 2y agoI've been reading Cal Newport's stuff on Deep Work and Digital Minimalism and have some of his other books on my to read list. Considering the stuff he talks about and his new book on slow productivity, this move seems like a really bad idea. I'm curious to see the outcome of this. I've adopted a more deliberate, focused work day and already seeing some improvements in my work quality, energy, and creativity.
- sandspar 2y agoCal Newport has his theories, Samsung executives have theirs. Samsung executives' theories about how to run Samsung are more valuable than Cal Newport's because they know Samsung better than he does.
- chilldsgn 2y agoIt's why I said I am curious to see the outcome of this. Will it help the company or damage it? We'll see.
- Ma8ee 2y agoThat’s such a weird take. It’s like saying that I know more about repairing my car than the mechanic because I drive it every day. That the executives of Samsung run the company doesn’t mean that they are experts in how the brains of their employees work.
- sandspar 2y agoCal Newport is a self help author. He's not comparable to a mechanic. Samsung executives are working there. They are mechanics.
- Ma8ee 2y agoAre taxi drivers mechanics because they work in and with their cars all day? And while it’s not inaccurate to call Newport a self help author, he has studied, thought, and written about the subject for many years.
- mathverse 2y agoI hate Koreans for doing this to other Koreans. I will never ever get over how koreans basically turned the whole country into hell joseon and there is no escape. Korea would be a much better place if they allowed themselves some slack.
- simfree 2y agoA small country that effectively operates as an island with angry nuclear-armed neighbors and no natural resources has figured out how to survive in the world through the skills nurtured within its own people. South Korea doesn't have the privileges that Canada and Finland both have of friendly adjacent neighbors and natural resources, which provide opportunities when Nortel and Nokia respectively stopped succeeding in the marketplace. That being said, there have been terrible knock-on effects from this societal policy. Brutal work culture, low birth rates and much more.
- wiseowise 2y agoFinland has Russia as a neighbor.
- enra 2y agoFinland’s largest land border by far is with Russia which is not generally viewed as that of a friendly neighbor. The border between Finland and Russia is 1,340 kilometers (832 miles). The border between South Korea and North Korea about 250 kilometers (155 miles). Also 5.5M people vs 55M people.
- DDiggler 2y ago>friendly adjacent neighbors As a Finn I laughed out loud.
- koonsolo 2y agoNot a Finn, but I found it quite funny too. There were so many other example countries, but they choose to pick to one with a neighbor that is constantly in an active war and has a huge nuclear arsenal.
- Mengkudulangsat 2y agoHow does working harder solve "rising borrowing costs and oil prices and a rapid depreciation of Korean currency"? Those are all exogenous factors.
- lwouis 2y agoWorking harder at something will create better outcomes. There is a lot to think about, mitigate, deal with. The more time you put on something, the better the results. For example, your crops are getting attacked by insects. It's exogenous yet if you wake up in the night to come out and kill them, you'll save more crops.
- badlucklottery 2y ago> The more time you put on something, the better the results. You'll rarely get worse results but it doesn't guarantee better results. Which is exactly the sort of calculus that leads to people pushing so hard they actually do get worse results. See also: crunch culture.
- Freedom2 2y ago> The more time you put on something, the better the results. So if I manually do a task rather an automate it, my results will be better?
- asplake 2y agoUgh - the “burning platform”. Is it ever used authentically? Does it ever go well? I do believe that its typically inauthentic use is mostly self-defeating – people can smell inauthenticity a mile away.
- thinkingemote 2y agoMaybe it's a kind of test where how and what you do during it is evaluated, not the stated objectives of fighting fire for the business. But as another comment pointed out with twitter execs sleeping under desks, even they got fired. Perhaps it's not even a test but a kind of warning that layoffs of managers will happen regardless. Given that, what would game suggest as an optimal playing strategy?
- wesselbindt 2y agoElsewhere on this topic someone wrote > Only for executives? Sounds like a good move actually. There's plenty of folks who fall for this, hook, line and sinker. There's plenty of Elon stans out there who actually believe he works 120 hour work weeks.
- scruple 2y agoMaybe if using Twitter while you own it counts as working there.
- _ZeD_ 2y agoyeah, because nothing makes you want to work - and work good - if not a "sense of crisis"
- Daz1 2y agoMost real executives already work seven days a week anyway.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoExecutives are often always working as the job can be demanding, but I think it is a real step backwards to make that the culture of the whole company. People need to be able to live their private lives, outside of working. And in creative work, productivity won’t increase with more hours - at best you can pull off a short term increase like if you’re getting ready to ship something. But beyond that, it’s counterproductive and naive leaders may end up rewarding people who make their extra hours visible over people who actually add value.
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- zik 2y agoSamsung is already known for its culture of over-work. This is just getting more and more extreme.
- bayindirh 2y agoAlso, crises makes people think less. They'll make more decisions without thinking. I don't think this will end well. I was thinking that despite I prefer iPhones, their SSDs were pretty good. I guess getting some of their 980s and 990s recently was a good investment for my (personal) IT budget. If they push people like this, I bet their products will become worse, not better.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- globalise83 2y agoThey should send the executives a pet hornet so they can also have a sense of continuous anxiety about the angry buzzing stingy thing in their room.
- ein0p 2y agoWhy the heck would anyone want to “inject the sense of crisis” into their company? That invariably leads to short term thinking and epic fails. Inject calm confidence instead.
- koonsolo 2y agoYes, this also sounds crazy to me: "Manage more and faster!". If my company would be in crisis, I would take the upper management into a quiet retreat, and then have a few meetings where we think creatively how we're going to deal with the situation. This is really about making the right decisions, not "Manage more and faster or we're all going to die!".
- eemil 2y agoMore of the same, that's the solution right? When what you're doing isn't working. Brilliant.