I’d set the maximum work hours for a sustainable, happy family life at 40 hours per week (including travel time). Anything more than that and you’d be missing too many family meals and family time for my liking.
I’d also question how effective anyone is working after 10 hours or so. Personally I blame time-based billing.
The problem is that with travel time and breaks it easily comes to 50 hours for a lot of people. Some jobs don’t cover breaks so you are at work 9 hours, plus with a half hour commute each way that is 5 a week hours.
Also I don’t consider the morning when you are getting ready for work to actually be meaningful time (at least to me). I use that half hour to prepare for work. So I would add that into work time, so 52.5 hours a week of commuting, breaks and prep for a 40 hour a week job.
Plus the half hour a day of decompression after getting home. That is 55 hours a week of being at, prepping for, commuting from/to and decompressing from work for a 40 hour a week job.
Many don’t consider it “abuse”. They consider it “paying their dues” on the way to a more lucrative position. There are plenty of 9 to 5 corporate jobs but there are tradeoffs. They might be dull or not have as much prestige or upward mobility.
For entry level jobs in finance, medicine or law where you are trying to build your career, I would agree (although I don’t support it). I was more referencing jobs in middle management where the people had not had a promotion in years because there are no open jobs above them within the company.
That is basically the position I am in. I absolutely do not want to be promoted however. I chose what I do in IT and high-tech biomedical manufacturing because I like doing the actual work. The people above me spend all their time on budgets and status reports plus managing people problems and that has absolutely no appeal. I am good at my job and get to run my own show of the time with no oversight. Why would I possibly kill myself to get a promotion that would destroy my freedom and entail more work, especially the kind that I have no interest in? I don’t even need the money.
A) I would bet that that’s the case. But I have no way of either documenting it or proving it objectively outside of making a documentary. I’m aware that all I’m offering here is my anecdotal evidence that this is true.
B) I’ve had friends and acquaintances — both Japanese and foreign — across all sectors. Factory workers, clerks, teachers, office workers, receptionists, taxi drivers, truck drivers, construction workers, warehouse personnel, government office workers, among others. Every single person I’ve ever met and talked to about work in Japan has complained about unpaid overtime, “voluntary” overtime, compensated but borderline abusive overtime, weekend work, holiday work, involuntary double shifts, etc. Overtime officially starts at every job I’ve ever heard of at one hour or more after the official quitting time — if any such thing as an official quitting time is even stated.
Part of the stress of working here is that you never actually know when it’s okay to go home. And this is not just talking as a foreigner living in Japan; I’ve heard the same from Japanese who entered the workforce or began working at a new job. For the first few months or longer, you don’t know when you can get away with leaving the office. It’s all based on social cues. Usually the new guys have to work really long hours. Go home “on time” too often and you’ll be treated like absolute dirt, befitting your perceived selfish asshole attitude. Go home too early relative to other people — which is a sliding scale adjusted according to your status and seniority — and you get shit from your co-workers. And you will probably get handed way more work than everyone else until the hours required to do your job are adjusted to appropriate levels.
I can’t say that my experience is universal, but considering that I’ve conservatively met and talked to at least a couple-hundred people in various jobs, I’d say it’s so close to reality as makes no difference. I honestly don’t know where to get any real estimates of work hours here, since the official stats for foreign consumption are so clearly at odds with anything reflecting reality, as anyone who ever worked here would be able to tell you. I doubt the domestic figures from the Department of Labor, Health, and Welfare are any better; they’re probably the source of that laughably improbable 1700 hour figure.
By the way, as I read your post, I was nearing the end of a 2.5 hour meeting that started at 20 minutes before “quitting” time. I’ve got another hour or two of work to do. Lovely, lovely 12 hour days. Looks like a 70 hour work week for me.
Given that 1700 hours is less than a 35-hour work week (with two weeks’ holiday), I find it extremely unlikely that it’s really the average for paid workers in Japan.
People who are extremenly successful have a very different mindset from many of the people here or those who work in 9-5 companies. People in 9 to 5s treat their job as a necessary chore they do so they can pay their bills. They expect to be told what to do, they learn to follow the rules and hope to get a bump in pay and a relatively meaningless title increase every few years. After 20 years at the same company, they hope to at least be a Director or Vice President of some group of people. But most of the actual work is just layers of managers filling out status reports, project charters and mind-numbing meetings with steering committees, PMOs and whatnot.
People in real management positions or other positions with real responsibility have to work long hours because the work needs doing and other people are dependent on them. Does a good CEO go home at 5pm to go play with his kids? Or does he take that 2 hour meeting with that potential client who will grow his business?
Are Italian companies like this, too? My husband works for the US branch of an Italian company and they pull crap like that all the time.
I’ve never been at a performance review where more hours worked ever made us give a higher rating or more money. Output is what counts. Someone doing 110% in 40 hours is going to come out ahead of someone doing 100% (or 95%) in 50. Yes, managers often work longer, often because they get stuck in more meetings. But I think output and leadership count here also. I’ve seen plenty of crappy managers who have worked long hours.
And of course if the quality of your output goes down due to long hours you are not going to come out ahead. Sure everyone thinks they are doing a great job in their 60th hour, the same way they think they drive just fine while on the phone. The reality might be different.
That’s why I included travel time in my 40 hours. I disagree about mornings not being meaningful - having breakfast together as a family, everyone geting ready and the like is pretty meaningful to me. As for decompression, I’m probably lucky to have a fairly sweet job, but making dinner or playing with the kid is decompression enough for me.
For the last half of the last year, I clocked about 55 hours per week, and I was reasonably happy doing it. I say that I clocked that much time because I do receive a shift minimum of 3 hours for some jobs, and on a good day they take less than that. 50 hours per week was about average. On a bad day they take more, but bad days are rare. I also have no kids at home, and I’m only a couple years out of college, so working long hours is a great way to learn skills and network in the industry, which is important. If my girlfriend didn’t live some hours away, I’d be excited to get the chance to do so again next year. I don’t have kids, which changes things, of course. I live only eight minutes drive from work, so commuting is minimal.
That said, I like my job. When I’ve had shitty jobs in the past, a thirty-five hour work-week felt grueling. If I won the lottery tomorrow, I’d continue in my job in precisely the same way; same company, same hours. There are pieces I don’t like, but I like it better than unemployment and there’s no other job I prefer.
Can people actually be creative doing this?
Love your handle, BTW!