In Japan you guys wouldnt survive :)
You get 10 days vacation a year, and you will be damn lucky if you can take them all since it depends on the willingness of your employer to allow them when you want them. People usually work late and night and often on saturdays depending on the work pressure.
I am not saying whats wrong or right, but I know my friends back in Europe think its crazy to work such a long time.
Yeah, it can be nigh-impossible to get vacation time in Japan. Add to that the loyalty to their employer (I call it stockholm syndrome) and many won't even ask. My girlfriend is lucky if she gets 2-3 weekend days free a month, let alone any vacation days. On top of that it's not unusual to have to leave home before 5 AM only to not get home again until after 8 PM. For 2-3 days in a row. And she's not especially well-paid either. My and her mother keep prodding her to quit, but of course her position in the company is essential and she'd never want to "betray" her employer. No matter what explanation I try, she doesn't understand how it's her employer who's exploiting her...
I think Stockholm syndrome is an apt description of this condition. Maybe it happens because breaking the vicious cycle requires a person stuck in such predicament to acknowledge that their time, and to an extent their person, is a resource in the sad, neo-liberal sense.
Usually people have more heroic visions of their person and possibly this is where the honor and pride narratives stem from, such as "I pulled a 10th all-niter in a row ant helped the company make 0.1% more in profits" or "I can't betray my employer".
Another factor is that with a work schedule like that there is simply no time for a person to look for and apply for other positions, so suddenly quitting is a much harder decision to make without a fallback plan.
It's just generically incredibly difficult to switch jobs mid-career in Japan. The vast majority of hiring is done w.r.t new grads, who are then groomed (read: brainwashed) into drinking the company coolaid.
There are four options I can think of:
1. You are a bonafide superstar and manage to switch into a solid company (my boss when I was in Japan managed to do this).
2. You become a contract worker.
3. You go to a smaller (less prestigious, usually lower pay, less stable) company.
4. You go to a "foreign national" company (European/American companies' Tokyo office)
Exactly, switching jobs is generally not an option.
Sadly for many japanese, they see suicide as an easier out than trying to find a new job. Long hours and no vacation also clearly lead to depression. I'd rather see my gf drop down to a part-time job (baito) than give up completely.
The truth is that there are no laws or contracts preventing companies from laying off its workers en masse, yet the individual deludes himself into thinking that there is some concrete social contract exists. The thing is, when the economy was growing at 5% a year, companies could uphold this (ephemeral) social contract by employing people for a lifetime and guaranteeing a great pension.
I personally know CEOs of smaller companies in Japan who vowed to not lay off a single person during the tough times of 2008-2010. The C-suite guys took zero salary for at least 2008, and all other employees took a temporary 30% pay cut. However, this is not the norm. While outright firings may be more rare, things go on underneath the surface. Fulltime employment slots replaced with contract workers in factories, significant amounts of employment moving overseas to SE Asia, etc.
Layoffs aren't as common as the US, but that's actually not necessarily a good thing. Hiring of new grads has gone down significantly (the last graduating class with decent job prospects was the class of 2008), while the older workers (even those who underperform) are kept on board. Like kalleboo says, Japan is about "family". They are kind towards members of their family, and strikingly cold to those who are not. Those who are part of the company are "family", and are protected. New grads who cannot find work are not part of the family, and don't receive the same empathy. Even those who can find work, even at the best and brightest companies, are faced with a situation where their lifetime earnings will be significantly lower than those of the boomers. (on the order of $2.5MM vs $3~4MM lifetime)
There are no good figures about the employment rate of college graduates, but if you discount students who have gone onto become 'part time / contract' workers, the employment rate may be around 60%. (The problem is that all the stats are wildly skewed - for instance, employment rates that include 'underemployed' new grads, or only counting graduates from mid-tier colleges and above) No one really knows how bad the true youth unemployment situation is in Japan.
College students are very risk averse, particularly in the turmoil following the financial crisis. I recall that a poll among college students back in 2011 declared that they wanted to become public workers above all other options (public workers cannot be fired, afaik).
Japan's leaders are very talented at keeping a sinking ship afloat. But they can't avoid the inevitable. Like the country's debt problem, there will come a moment when things catastrophically implode.
For many many years it has been. People'd get picked up fresh from college and they'd be part of the companies "family". Nowadays, especially after the financial crisis... not so much. Companies now only hire part-timers so they can fire them at will. Youth unemployment is skyrocketing as in many other countries.
The other problem is the this seems endemic in Japanese culture. I would expect that her next employer might look unfavorably on her 'betraying' her previous employer (though I don't have experience to know for sure).
What next employer? How does one even go about finding a new job while working hours like that? Unless she gets fired, I don't expect she'd even have the time to conduct a job search if she wanted to.
You basically have no choice but to use your "paid vacation" days to conduct a job search.
If you're based in Tokyo, switching jobs is much easier because (a) there are a lot of companies in general there, (b) the culture of the companies are a little more westernized than the rest of the country, and (c) you have the option of going to a foreign national company.
I've also Tokyo seems more westernized in both culture and business, I guess due to offices having a lot of competition from foreign headquarters?
Sadly, my girlfriend lives in Kagoshima, at the ass-end of backwardness. Convincing her parents that I'm not going to murder their daughter is going to be hard enough! (Japanese news media's treatment of foreigners is rivaled only by Fox News I think). As a white, european male, it's been enlightening being at this end of racism.
I do think that's a factor. Also, in general Tokyo has a lot of cultural influence from the west, (having a decent number of foreign professionals there probably helps) and its inhabitants exhibit more western tendencies as a result. I think it's primarily at the individual level, rather than the corporate level though.
Kagoshima is so close to Okinawa, that I imagine there is some cultural undertones that have permeated from the controversies regarding the US Army's isolated (but still brutal) incidences of poor behavior. (iirc they were the subject of the relocation of the Futenma base as well?)
Kyuushuu people are pretty oldschool from what I understand. At least you're caucasian though, you would be truly doomed if you were non-Japanese & non-White. At least they treat you as if you're going to murder their daughter, rather than treating you as an untouchable :(
You only have one life. Why would anyone want to spend the vast majority of it doing work for someone else? The rare case is that they are passionate and care about the work. Anything else, and I just don't understand it.
Yeah, I realized I didn't write what I really wanted to say, which was, why would you stay at a job you hate? Or even a job that you barely tolerate? Or a job that you are apathetic about? One life, and most of your time is going to be spent at that job. It should be something you like at the very least.
but is there a genuine tournament-style approach to promotion and rewards.
For example - if she does work like a demon for 10 years, gets the promotions, will she be in tenure, exceptionally well paid etc. If so it may be a rational decision.
When I lived in Japan, I stayed with the head of Korean Air for Japan and with a mid-level engineer at Mazda.
The Mazda engineer left the house at 6 AM and got back at 7 PM or so.
The executive left the house at 10 AM and got back at 5 PM.
When I asked the executive about it, he told me that he had to come late and leave early so his entire staff could leave at a reasonable hour. It cascades - it never looks good if your superior is at work when you're not, so you make sure you get in before him and leave after him. The lower you are, the longer you're at work.
Out of curiosity, do Japanese companies not use multi-shift schedules? A former employer of mine ran three shifts, particularly for hardware testing, and I don't see how such a schedule could work with that sentiment.
Not for white collar jobs AFAIK. The salaryman is expected to come before his boss and go home after - work may extend to drinking after work to build team identity/loyalty.
This company kind of sucks. They dangle the typical japanese seniority pyramid in front of hires, but my girlfriend has been at this for 10 years now and it's not leading anywhere nice.
I'm European and I am certain that this is wrong, unethical, and bad for society as a whole. I'm not surprised that "death from overwork" is an isolated cause of death and has its own term in Japan (Karōshi).
As an employee in Japan I wouldn't want to survive.
>> since it depends on the willingness of your employer to allow them when you want them.
In Japan employers cannot refuse requested holidays unless it would damage the business (for low ranked people with no authority, this is not a problem). It is the peer pressure and subtle bullying in traditional organizations that keeps people from taking holidays.
In theory, yes. But in reality, they can pressure you not to take too long of a vacation, limiting your opportunities to go abroad on vacation, for example.
Yeah, probably not. But why would I want to survive given that case?
I mean... that sounds just about as bad as actual slavery, but with the disadvantage that you still have to make ends meet.
And the other thing I keep hearing about that situation is that it has nothing to do with actually getting the work done, it's just to show that you're committed. And I think committed is the right word because that concept is CRAZY.
> high paid salary employee with a few weeks vacation
> a year
I'm not sure that we're reading the same thread. We're talking about how hard it is to get any vacation time in Japan, for any job, from low- to high-paid.
10 days of vacation equates to 2 weeks of vacation time, but from what I understand, working long hours and on the weekends is an implicit requirement of many (most?) jobs in Japan. So even getting the weekend off during that '10 days of vacation' could be problematic.
Sure, it's definitely not slavery, but it sure seems highly exploitative.
The salaryman can quit. A slave couldn't. We often focus on the fact that slaves were unpaid, but that is really the smallest injustice they faced.
Materially, in the US slaves often had higher material 'quality of life' than northern (free) factory workers. They had a better diet, lower pollution, better housing, and more time off. The plantation owners effectively viewed them as an investment. Really, if you want to talk about underpaid and overworked, a more apt comparison would be factory and mine workers in the 18th century.
The horror of slavery was that you had no choice in life. Who cares if you are fed well if someone else can decide to split your family up. Someone can kidnap you, drag you across an ocean (where you have a high chance of dieing) and put you in a country where you can't speak the language. Someone else can decide to move you to a new home. Someone else can decide whether or not you are allowed to read. Someone else can legally beat you.
The Japanese salaryman/women can quit her job if they want to. If they don't, that is their choice, but it is a choice. That is a massive difference. Any comparison between the two really papers over the horror of slavery. Much like any Nazi comparison, it drags the quality of the discussion down.
> The horror of slavery was that you had no choice in life
Your argument is all just semantics. Fine, slaves had no choice, and a large segment of Japanese (and other) society have no meaningful choice. Happy?
Slavery is a concept, anyway. You don't have to pedantically compare every single use of the word to some pet historical incident. I think it's entirely reasonable to compare sections of the working class's lives to slavery, and your attempts to "ban" the whole topic are really misguided and inappropriate, IMO.
Japan doesn't need better employees (the majority of my cowokers were very capable, and some of the hackers I have come to know in the past year are rather incredible), it needs better leaders.
My best guess is that additional work-ethic has diminishing or even negative returns past a certain point. That's certainly what hours-versus-productivity studies show.
It is not wrong, it is just what they have come to expect. (Entitlement perhaps?) Do you think the settlers of the new world, for example, were pissed they didn't get their 28 days off a year?
"ahh...that vacation really rested the milk cows. Oh!...my crops are dead :( "
Ethics and morality changes with time. Just because people were happy with something 300 years ago doesn't mean that it's OK to do it now. People used to be happy with lots of things that we now think of as wrong (e.g. slavery, aristocracy ruling the country, women as second class citizens, burning witches, racism, etc.)
I think there is nothing wrong about 10 days or 40 days. It is more important how something matches your expectations. If you expect 28 days and get less then that's bad.
As European I really enjoy long vacations and use them for personal development. I guess I could still do that in Japan without long vacations but I guess I would need to do that on time of company.
"I guess I could still do that in Japan without long vacations but I guess I would need to do that on time of company."
So in other words, you'd need more than 10 days of vacation.
I don't think expectations are important at all here. When vacation time is established at national, cultural levels, the expectations of the population will reflect that.
I think in IT you are creative person and you can't create more than you want to. You can be extremely productive but there is upper limit. If you get 10 days and don't get 28 days like European you get that 18 days in some other way.
There are about 15 national holidays in Japan. Also, if you stay at the same company (which most people tend to do if they can) you're entitled to an additional vacation day every year up to 20 days. So a person with a 5-year tenure will have 15 + 15 = 30 days a year.
I am not saying whats wrong or right, but I know my friends back in Europe think its crazy to work such a long time.