Despite the fact this is actually illegal in the "host country" they still did it with no overtime paid(or claimed) . I had many Japanese friends in this company over the years and I knew they would much prefer to be off at 5pm as we were, but every time we talked about it it turned out they are 100% powerless to change it. The company not only provides a prestigious job (which was extremely important), but also provided housing in the host country, a visa, good schools for the kids etc. Additionally, every time we discussed it I got an impression they really have it easy here in comparison to how much they would have to work back in Japan. So all those people really didn't want to be sent back.
On the rare occasion when I had to work on a weekend and overnight, HR contacted me asking me to fill the overtime form :-o
I write this not as a complaint. I considered it one of my best jobs and if not that I wanted to be in a different role I would still be there, but even now years later I still remember having this weird feeling of there being a very real discrimination against other people on the basis of culture and not being able to do anything about it.
The time was paid, though. It wasn’t “time and a half,” like in the US, but people were paid for the time.
Managers weren’t paid for extra hours, but engineers were.
If we take this statement in the link:
> the intention of the Plaza Accord was to correct trade imbalances between the U.S. and Germany and the U.S. and Japan
Then:
a) Why were Britain and France interested and why are they completely omitted from the article?
b) Why didn't Germany end up in the mire like Japan?
It seems to me that Japan's officials agreed to something that either didn't suit its economy or the management of its economy was subsequently mishandled (not hard to believe given the ~25 years of finance scandals that are linked to the heart of government[1] - it's not hard to imagine things weren't any better in the preceding 15). As such, I'd also be very interested to know what OP was referring to because I'd find it hard to believe if it was the Plaza Accord.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/17/business/international-bu...
Apparently overtime is... included in advance taking the average for the company, so people feel obliged to do it since technically they already got paid.
It's basically like that team-building exercise with a dozen people trying to move a broomstick down when each person is holding it with one finger. The default reaction is to send it flying.
In any case 40% of Japanese workers are part-time - I've met one - she lived in Italy and her line of work was writing articles about life there and she couldn't pick up more hours even if she wanted to. She said it was increasingly common for people to be employed like that.
It's actually 45% of Japanese women workers. The percentage of men being part time is much lower around 12%. A big reason why your friend struggles finding anything else is that she's a woman and that Japan is an intensely sexist society.
While I get what you are trying to say, but this is not always true. There have been times where I pulled up all nighter and produced good work, specially during college or some project I am deeply invested in. But similar thing can't be achieved in a big org though. If I am expected to work for more than 5-6 hours a day to meet deadline in the office, the quality of work invariably declines.
John Carmack also defended working long hours, and admittedly he is one of the most productive developer.
“We have an emergency, the service is screwed, we really need it not to be”
“We have to deliver by the end of the week but we haven’t finished testing everything, we need some extra effort for the next couple of days to fix and validate as things come up”
These can work, in my experience, but it can’t become routine and you have to be prepared for a higher than average error rate from your people.
Exactly this. From first hand experience, when forced to deliver under time pressure, I cut corners.
This means, I might be able to deliver the feature. But the tradeoff is it adds technical debt and physical stress, which needs to be dealt with afterwards.
Furthermore, if you have a family, it also takes a toll on family life.
But in terms of actual productivity, I observed lots of activity and little actual achievement. What buoyed their productivity was the technology of a freshly rebuilt economy and industry post-WW2, which, coupled with a few innovative ideas, gave Japanese industry a powerhouse advantage to the point that it almost didn't matter what the workers did. They could have worked 2 hours a day and still had the same output (not the factory line workers, of course).
When the economy went sour in the 90s, there was no change in work ethic; people still worked late into the night, and still had the same levels of activity with the same levels of achievement, but the technological industrial advantage had dissipated over the years and they were no longer competitive. Same input, less output.
Long hours work against you. We've studied this to death, and the results are clear.