dizmox pretty much hit the nail on the head. Don't go to Japan if you don't have needed skill/experience. And to just state what should be obvious, English isn't a needed skill on its own.

I think erlog's take on things is a bit bleak though. Surely as a bilingual, western university-educated person you can do better than ending up in a typical inefficient, male-dominated Japanese company where your monthly salary will be your age x 10,000 yen.

If your career progression depends on filling your boss's beer mug and impressing your colleagues by how little you see your family during the week then it probably wasn't going to go very far anyway. There are better ways to make money if you're willing to put in the effort.

Whenever we have our Japanese partners come over from Japan to our office for meetings, we always finish work at 5:30 and they are sometimes there til 10pm.

Robik Wrote:

juniperpansy Wrote:So Shalom buddy, you prefer 50% longer work weeks, lower pay (as an employee) and less vacation time over joining a union? You sir are a true Japanese!

Can you back up you numbers with some evidence? IMO it is not the choice between terrible terrible stuff OR unions in the first place.

Well, it kind of is. The only reason things like the 40-hour work week, paid vacation, minimum wage, higher wages, bans on child labor, etc. exist is because of pressure from unions. These are things you might take for granted, but people literally died fighting for them.

Productivity in the US has skyrocketed over the past decades, but wages haven't. Company profits are the highest they've ever been in the US, but wages have barely been keeping pace with inflation. With the labor movement in the US dying out(or being forcibly crushed through legislation), there has been no force to provide upward pressure for wages or working conditions. Companies haven't found it necessary to pay workers commensurate with their productivity, and so wages have stagnated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_hist...ted_States

Countries with strong unions and strong union membership are generally countries that have better wages and better working conditions.

dizmox Wrote:I think erlog's take on things is a bit bleak though. Surely as a bilingual, western university-educated person you can do better than ending up in a typical inefficient, male-dominated Japanese company where your monthly salary will be your age x 10,000 yen.

I agree that as a foreigner you have more options than a typical Japanese person for leaving the rat race that is Japanese work culture. Like, you will most likely never experience those kinds of working conditions teaching English. If you start to move over into other industries, though, then those are the kinds of things that CAN happen.

It was just kind of a, "yo, watch out for these pitfalls..." kind of thing. If you're a person who is getting their first job in Japan it's something that can blindside you pretty hard. Those types of things are definitely not something they would ever state in a contract or tell you about at company orientation. Knowing how bad it can get is useful for knowing what kinds of questions to ask of people who are already working at the place you want to work.

The etiquette stuff like pouring beer for people who have seniority on you is a constant at every company, though. The big difference is that at a ブラック企業 company maybe that would come into play 3 nights a week, and at a nicer company it would only be a handful of times a year. It's a situation that happens to everybody working in Japan.

Knowing those kinds of things is really valuable for fitting in with your coworkers, and I would recommend that anybody wanting to work in Japan pick up any of the Japanese business etiquette books targeted toward Japanese people. Japanese people do not start their career knowing about a lot of these things, and many Japanese people even have trouble learning all the arcane rules.

Like, if you're giving your boss a ride in your car.. knowing which seat to offer him in order to show proper respect.

I work in the IT field as a system engineer, but started out in education.

A few personal observations:

-While on the JET program, I observed that most Japanese staff at public schools work well before and past the standard required hours. Between planning, grading, and then managing an after school club, most regular teachers spend long hours at work for no overtime pay. Despite this, most of the teachers I've encountered loved their jobs.
-If you are an ALT, your hours are often the same as the students. You may be required to come to morning meetings, and if you take part in a club of course your hours will be longer. But overall, it is a good position for the amount of work you have to do. These positions are especially good if you are a JET, pay and support may not be so great if you're with a private company like Interac.

-As a system Engineer, overtime is the norm. I took a week off of work recently, and then took another couple days off for golden week. My time sheet still showed an average of 6 overtime hours a week, despite having not even been in the office half the month.
-Contract workers seem to work slightly less hours at my company, but still put in overtime. I'm a seishain, so I don't know how their pay compares.
-My company has been very aggressive about hiring women candidates. I find this admirable in the IT industry. They are invited to drinking events, but often opt out.
-Performance is largely evaluated based on hours logged. But according to meetings this year, we are moving more towards a merit based evaluation system.
-Its not uncommon to work through the weekend, sometimes till midnight or 1am. Usually there is only one team doing this it a time though, depending on who has a project nearing the deadline. I don't have any experience working as a developer in the west, but I hear over time during crunch time is normal.
-Overtime is not paid, but we do get substitution holidays if we work on our days off.
-I haven't seen any Japanese take vacation at my company except for when they are sick or hospitalized.

Long work hours is pretty much the culture in Japan. Especially for IT it seems. If they customer wants something by 3PM Monday and its already 7PM on Friday, its just understood that you will work non stop till its finished. Management sees this as a way to be competitive.

For those coming to Japan that want a non English teaching job with reasonable pay, I recommend start-ups or Foreign based subsidiaries. Younger companies seem to be a bit better about work life balance, and foreign companies tend to have the very best compensation packages.

A friend working for a new publishing company in Tokyo told me about how they literally cut the power in the office at 5:30PM to force the workers to go home. During lunch, they are locked out. Seems extreme, but sometimes you have to force change.

Friends that work for Msft in Japan don't even have to come into the office. They can work from home and participate in meetings via phone. The pay is also incredibly good, about 5x what I make at a regular Japanese company. I myself make less now than I did as a teacher.

erlog Wrote:

Robik Wrote:

juniperpansy Wrote:So Shalom buddy, you prefer 50% longer work weeks, lower pay (as an employee) and less vacation time over joining a union? You sir are a true Japanese!

Can you back up you numbers with some evidence? IMO it is not the choice between terrible terrible stuff OR unions in the first place.

Well, it kind of is. The only reason things like the 40-hour work week, paid vacation, minimum wage, higher wages, bans on child labor, etc. exist is because of pressure from unions. These are things you might take for granted, but people literally died fighting for them.

Productivity in the US has skyrocketed over the past decades, but wages haven't. Company profits are the highest they've ever been in the US, but wages have barely been keeping pace with inflation. With the labor movement in the US dying out(or being forcibly crushed through legislation), there has been no force to provide upward pressure for wages or working conditions. Companies haven't found it necessary to pay workers commensurate with their productivity, and so wages have stagnated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_hist...ted_States

Countries with strong unions and strong union membership are generally countries that have better wages and better working conditions.

Wages and poverty:

Child labor:

These videos are short, there is of course more elaborate stuff, out there.

kerosan41 Wrote:I don't have any experience working as a developer in the west, but I hear over time during crunch time is normal.

It's normal, but you can take a leave when the project is done to compensate (or these hours are paid).

kerosan41 Wrote:Long work hours is pretty much the culture in Japan. Especially for IT it seems. If they customer wants something by 3PM Monday and its already 7PM on Friday, its just understood that you will work non stop till its finished. Management sees this as a way to be competitive.

Can happen, especially if the required stuff is !IMPORTANT!, but management is expected to keep weekends in mind when they are planning the work, so this can be viewed as their failure. And customer who is doing this stuff on regular basis (request at Friday expecting results at Monday, just because) would be frowned upon -> It can make your best workers to leave for another employer or want a raise, so it might be better to send him to ruin your competition instead.

Disclaimer: This is from experience from where I worked. So I am not talking for entire west.

I usually opt out drinking events too... too exhausted after 11-12 hours of work to drink until 3am. ~_~

My hours are the same as western ones for finance though.

kerosan41 Wrote:-Performance is largely evaluated based on hours logged. But according to meetings this year, we are moving more towards a merit based evaluation system.

This is great news. I feel like I read an article somewhere about this happening at more companies. I think I might be a little too excited though because I remember thinking "This will mean the efficient workers can go home early and still have the marks" but I doubt that.

Quote:For those coming to Japan that want a non English teaching job with reasonable pay, I recommend start-ups or Foreign based subsidiaries. Younger companies seem to be a bit better about work life balance, and foreign companies tend to have the very best compensation packages.

I'll keep this in mind. And definitely the case with foreign companies and compensation, but they are also hard to get jobs at. I know Google Japan pays their engineers over $100k a year and that's excessive by most standards of IT salaries in Japan.

juniperpansy Wrote:So Shalom buddy, you prefer 50% longer work weeks, lower pay (as an employee) and less vacation time over joining a union? You sir are a true Japanese!

Get it right, my username is a fantasy-style RP name, not a word...

No, I prefer having individual rights over getting screwed from all directions (job, Union, government). Where I live, hard work is rewarded, not whinging over minimum wage (hint: minimum wage jobs aren't supposed to be careers. Only school teachers truly get screwed on career wages, but that's a nationwide problem, unions or no...)
As for wages, if it's useful for business (STEM, management, etc) it easily pays well, if not, it's up to the individual to make it profitable (if you just look at the different in opportunities available to fresh BA and BS recipients, it's pretty clear what most companies value here).
Artists have very few corporate opportunities and their only real choices early on are 'go it alone' and 'teach art classes'. While engineers (especially electrical, chemical, and nuclear) can get good paying jobs straight out of college, or even before they graduate.
As mean as it might sound, it's not the job of business to give people money just for showing up; if you don't make yourself worth the pay you want, you shouldn't cry over not getting it.

But yes, Unions did good when they were fighting for safety regulations and labor laws, but that was then. Now, at best, they are a necessary pressure on the government and business to uphold their agreements. But you know what? All those jobs being lost to overseas competitors are a direct result of Unions. While, granted, they're pretty crappy jobs that I can't imagine many people wanting, manufacturers don't want to pay $8 an hour (plus all the costs associated with making the job safe enough to comply with regulations) for a job that isn't worth $8 an hour to them or their customers (notice how things that say 'Made in USA' are so expensive compared to everything else, even at the same quality?)
Not that I think that those jobs would be worth losing regulations over, but it does illustrate that having more regulations doesn't make everything better.

Also, heads up if you're a Union member: in a 'right to work' state, you will have a much harder time getting hired than if you aren't.

As I've said, I prefer personal freedom over what unions offer, and I'm perfectly happy to take advantage of living in a place where you aren't all but forced to join one. It's my opinion (and one shared by many in my community), but it's one I can justify with current facts. Everyone else, of course, will have their own opinion.

Anyway, the point of my original post (other than to state my opinion) was to say that, in Japan, there isn't enough pressure from either the government or workers for the culture of overwork to change.

EDIT:

Robik Wrote:Wages and poverty:

Child labor:

These videos are short, there is of course more elaborate stuff, out there.

Interesting videos, thanks for sharing.

Yo, sholum, nobody cares about your personal philosophy regarding unions and it has nothing to do with Japan. So if you'd like to talk about it I would appreciate you making use of your personal freedom to make your own thread instead of de-railing this one with anti-union nonsense with nary a citation to be found.

erlog Wrote:Yo, sholum, nobody cares about your personal philosophy regarding unions and it has nothing to do with Japan. So if you'd like to talk about it I would appreciate you making use of your personal freedom to make your own thread instead of de-railing this one with anti-union nonsense with nary a citation to be found.

Did I hurt your feelings? I'm sorry, I thought that I was allowed to explain myself after making a relevant post and then being questioned on it. I've made four posts on this entire thread (including this one); the first two were completely relevant to my opinion and understanding of Japanese work culture, the third was the one you're complaining about (still slightly relevant), and this one is to call you out for being an ass.

Put simply (because I have better things to do), you've been a dick to everyone who disagrees even slightly with your view on Japanese (and international) work culture. You seem to think "Oh, if you don't use statistics [incorrectly] as I do, you must not have a good argument, so I'm going to use all sorts of verbal tricks to make you [and myself] look like an idiot".

Passionate discussion and argument are perfectly reasonable, but your behavior is not. You are displaying the worst tendencies of discussion on the internet.

Please don't insult other users.

The salt is real in this thread

Flamerokz Wrote:The salt is real in this thread

I've spent much of my life around the sea, what else could one expect?

Mrbarnarne12 Wrote:But what would happen if you would just leave when your supposed to for the day?

I totally forgot to even answer OP's question. The answer is, generally not much will happen to you. And I mean that both negatively and positively.

Being a foreigner you can get away with a bit more, sneak out a bit earlier. But your coworkers won't appreciate it. As long as you are getting your work done and pulling your weight, it won't be too much of a problem. But it won't do you any favors at your company to skip overtime if you're trying to move up, get the projects you want, or max out your bonus.

In IT in particular, work that is due the next day often comes in at quitting time. If you leave, it just means your coworkers have to work harder to fill in for you. This is definitely a planning problem created by management, but your coworkers won't be complaining about 部長, they'll be grumbling about where you've disappeared to.

I know personally that if I stayed as late as my supervisors every day, my life would fall apart. I can't afford to work every weekend either. They have families who take care of their household for them. If I don't do it, there's no one to take the garbage out, do laundry, clean, and pay bills.

TLDR Not much bad will happen, but you won't help your career if you go home on time.