[HN Gopher] Microsoft tried a 4-day workweek in Japan. Productiv...
___________________________________________________________________
Microsoft tried a 4-day workweek in Japan. Productivity jumped 40%
Author : heshiebee
Score : 285 points
Date : 2021-03-17 19:42 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnn.com)
| yosito wrote:
| On a related note: when I intentionally time-box just 2 hours for
| focused work in a day, I usually get more done than when I sit in
| front of my computer from the time I wake up until the time I go
| to bed.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Microsoft should probably try a 5 day / 40 hour workweek here in
| the US some time. From what I was told at a few interviews there,
| and from friends who work there, 50 hours a week is pretty much
| normal and expected. Sounds terrible, and I'm not sad to not work
| there.
| vbtemp wrote:
| I heard that they have the best work-life balance of any of the
| big tech co, in exchange for having the lowest salary/equity.
| Oh well...
| throwaways885 wrote:
| Isn't Google a better place for WLB? I too have heard bad
| things about Microsoft.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Google seems to be the gold standard.
| filoleg wrote:
| Were your friends working in Azure or were you interviewing in
| Azure? Asking because Azure is the only place where I've heard
| about it (and even then, rarely).
|
| I have friends all over MSFT (at their main Redmond HQ campus,
| not remote offices), and no one outside of Azure works over
| 40/week. The occasional overtimes/crunches happen so
| infrequently, they could count the number of those days per
| year on one hand. And even an average workweek frequently falls
| under 40/week (all engineering btw, cannot comment on other
| positions like PM or design).
|
| I honestly am baffled by your info, because Microsoft
| definitely has a reputation here for being one of the more
| "relaxed" tech companies. In fact, that's one of the biggest
| reasons I am staying, because I could definitely make
| noticeably more by switching to another tech giant, but I don't
| want to lose my work-life balance, as it isn't easy to find at
| all.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| I spent 8 years in engineering at MS in the 2000s--it was no
| worse or better than any other tech company. There was never
| an explicit expectation to work more than 40 hours, and most
| managers were good about not pressuring people into
| disturbing work-life balance.
|
| But, at the end of the year you were calibrated against all
| of your peers and WLB was not a criteria that mattered. If
| you just put in your 40 hours you probably wouldn't get
| fired, but you definitely were not going to be promoted when
| compared to the people cranking out more work per week. There
| was a big divide with the younger, fresher folks working all
| the time (and making their work very visible).
|
| Once you were a senior dev you kind of had a choice to make--
| if you wanted to keep a high 'promotional velocity' you had
| to keep working >40 hour weeks or be left in the dust. If you
| didn't want to climb that ladder then it was totally fine but
| you would never be promoted beyond another level or two. I
| knew folks who were senior devs for 10, 15, or even more
| years. In contrast the partners/high performers were all
| regularly getting promotions every 2 years or less and
| absolutely none of them I knew worked less than 60-80 hours a
| week. To get promoted up to principal and beyond levels
| required having a consistent history of promotions every
| couple years--there was no way to really pause or slow down
| without stopping your entire career development.
|
| From my friends still left there I don't think much has
| changed over the years. It's a somewhat subtle system where
| managers and HR can proudly point to never requiring people
| to work crunch time. They can trot out plenty of 10 year
| senior engineers to give quotes and talk about how it's so
| great to just work 40 hour weeks. But at the end of the day
| if you want to be successful and rise up the ranks at MS, you
| are going to be working all the time, period (at least until
| you reach partner level).
| jdsully wrote:
| I joined around 2010, the transition was in full swing at
| that time. Microsoft seemed like a much more aggressive
| work environment in the 90s/2000s. Around when I joined I
| didn't know anyone who got to senior without sleeping in
| their office for a few weeks getting their feature out. By
| the time I left that was unheard of.
|
| But everything is relative to which org and even which team
| your on. Windows vs Office are going to be completely
| different as will Azure.
| sshumaker wrote:
| Yes but this is true of all jobs. If you want to climb the
| ladder it requires extra work particularly between levels
| as you typically have to already be doing the job of the
| next level to get promoted into it.
|
| Work life balance doesn't mean 50-50. The balance is a
| personal decision and can even change based on life and
| career stage. Organizations with good WLB enable employees
| to make that tradeoff and accommodate a wide range of
| choices.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| My SO is on a team on Microsoft where they are expected to
| not infrequently work weekends and work until 8 PM.
|
| e: Thought this was outside of Azure, but I was wrong
| filoleg wrote:
| Sorry to hear that, and I realize that what I said is as
| much of anecdata as what you said, but this sounds more
| like an exception. Those exceptions do happen.
|
| For example, Amazon is known to be a brutal meatgrinder for
| engineers, and most of the experiences I've heard of from
| people I know irl support that assertion. That reputation
| isn't a secret to absolutely anyone. However, there are
| definitely those rare few teams at Amazon that are actually
| quite nice about work-life balance and are extremely
| functional, without any usual bs you would expect from an
| average Amazon team. But those teams are absolutely an
| exception.
|
| Is your SO on Xbox by any chance? Not asking it to
| invalidate what you have said, I am just genuinely curious.
| Plus, it would be another good datapoint for me to be aware
| of in the future. I was guessing Xbox because anything
| gaming-related is the first thing that comes to mind when I
| hear about insane work hours.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Ah okay - actually the team they are on is within Azure,
| my fault for getting that wrong.
|
| Seeing them WFH has been really eye-opening on how bad &
| micromanaging managers can get.
| snakeboy wrote:
| Is 50 hours that crazy? Does anyone else feel like these days
| they put in well above 40 hours a week doing WFH? Granted,
| during the day I can't stay 100% focused in my apartment, so I
| waste maybe an hour throughout the day online. Then I feel
| guilty and stay online well into the evening/weekends. I can't
| meet my deadlines otherwise.
| [deleted]
| peruvian wrote:
| Not really. I log in and 9am and close my laptop at 5pm. If I
| work more it's like 42 hours per week... I'm definitely not
| working an extra two hours per week day.
| lagadu wrote:
| Definitely crazy. I've been WFH for a few years now and I've
| created a method that works really well for me: I make a hard
| separation between work time and me time. During work time
| (which starts at 8:00 local time for me) I don't do anything
| else that I wouldn't do at the office, and this goes on until
| 15:30 (I have lunch during work), at which point I shut down
| my work computer and phone and never touch them again until
| 8:00 the following day.
|
| I'm actually more productive because I don't spend > 1hr
| socializing during the day, like I did at the office and have
| far fewer interruptions.
|
| Regarding deadlines, we plan our sprints and provide
| estimates for all tasks. Sometimes they slip but if I spend
| more time one day working on something, you bet your ass that
| I'm leaving that same amount of hours early next Friday. It's
| been years since I worked 40 hours in any given week.
| stefanmichael wrote:
| > I can't meet my deadlines otherwise.
|
| working for free to meet deadlines is more a problem with the
| deadline than it is with your working additional hours
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _Is 50 hours that crazy?_
|
| The collective agreement for IT service sector workers (incl.
| software developers) in Finland is 37.5 hours per week, so it
| sounds pretty crazy actually.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Plenty of people work 40 hours per week with a 1 hour (each
| way) commute. I think _that_ is worse than 50 hours per week
| with a minimal commute. Maybe some people have a job that is
| worse than sitting in stop-and-go traffic, but I 'm not sure.
|
| My current commute is about 20 minutes by car, which is the
| longest commute I've had in almost 20 years and I really
| don't like that. Prior to COVID I switched to biking to work
| and that was much more pleasant (40 minutes of exercise beats
| 20 minutes of driving hands-down for me, and we have showers
| at work).
| mikestew wrote:
| _Is 50 hours that crazy?_
|
| I dunno, an extra 25% over what is normally expected? What
| exactly _is_ your threshold for a ticket on the Crazy Train?
| DocTomoe wrote:
| In large parts of the western world, 50 hours is actively
| illegal and opens the company up for legal trouble with the
| state.
| haswell wrote:
| 50 hours can mean the difference between:
|
| - Getting a healthy amount of sleep or not
|
| - Having time to eat a proper breakfast or not
|
| - Having time to prepare dinner (vs. order out)
|
| - Getting that evening bike ride in before dark or not
|
| - And on and on
|
| I can't help but feel your response to this is part of the
| problem. 50 hours is a lot of hours, and we shouldn't
| normalize it.
|
| This was less clear to me earlier in my career. I held a
| similar viewpoint for awhile. As time went on, and I saw the
| long term impact on those around me, and eventually myself, I
| shifted my viewpoint greatly.
| Arrath wrote:
| >I can't help but feel your response to this is part of the
| problem. 50 hours is a lot of hours, and we shouldn't
| normalize it.
|
| While I absolutely agree with you, my career first as a
| union laborer and now a construction field engineer have
| really jaded me to the count of hours. It can be very
| different across different industries.
|
| On my current project Engineers are expected to be present
| to support field operations, which means starting before
| the craft workers to ensure everything is ready for the day
| (possibly as early as 0500) while still being here until
| 1700 like any other 'office job'; its pretty outrageous. At
| least when I was a laborer I was hourly.
|
| What can be done to fight the normalization of this? For
| myself, I fought my way to a senior engineer position and
| lobbied for a larger staff. Now I not only have enough
| people to do the job, but we stagger our shifts out to each
| get around 8hr/day while ensuring full coverage for our
| field guys throughout their shift. I've worked to instill a
| culture of "hey you've been here long enough, go the fuck
| home" with my team. But it took too long to get to this
| point, and much more tooth and nail fighting than it should
| have to convince higher ups of the need for what they saw
| as 'excess staffing', even for my department which is very
| much production critical.
| mynameisash wrote:
| I've been at Microsoft for about eight years (which still makes
| me a relative newbie). I've been on several teams (changing
| roles by choice) and had many managers (due to new roles or
| reorgs). Depending on my family life, commute, work projects,
| etc., I have had seasons where I would stay late. Many times,
| I've had my managers walk by my office and say, "Go home to
| your family. Work will be here tomorrow."
|
| When I was at Amazon, on the other hand, I was usually in the
| office about 6:30am and would go home about 4 or 5pm. (I was
| new to big tech and wanted to prove myself.) The younger guys
| on my team were more 11am - 8pm, so I was always seen as being
| the guy that left early. And it showed in my relationships with
| my manager and skip-level, which is a big part of why I left.
|
| So with my n=1 experience, Microsoft is _significantly_ better
| with work-life balance than Amazon. I can 't speak for other
| big tech. I know this hasn't always been the case - I've heard
| horror stories from earlier in the Ballmer years, but we're not
| in the Ballmer years anymore, thank goodness.
|
| I'll also say that there are plenty of times where I *love*
| what I'm doing and actively put in lots of time because it's
| fun, not due to pressure to do so. But I've done that at other
| companies, and I know lots of people that have that passion for
| what they're doing.
| moneywoes wrote:
| What team were on at Amazon? Seems like that can be a big
| fzctor
| paxys wrote:
| I have worked at Microsoft and no one I knew worked more than
| 30-40 hours a week. And this included at least an hour for
| lunch every day and multiple hours of just browsing the
| internet/wasting time, using office amenities or roaming around
| the campus. Some divisions are probably different, but calling
| Microsoft employees overworked is a joke.
| aasasd wrote:
| Seen plenty of such articles, but still waiting for a single one
| saying productivity doesn't drop back after a few months.
|
| (This is coming from someone who's been working remotely and free
| hours for quite a while.)
| yaseer wrote:
| If I were making socks in a factory, the more hours I put in, the
| more socks will be output (to a limit).
|
| If I were a creative, composing music, the relationship is not so
| linear. Your creative output may significantly benefit from more
| time off.
|
| The optimum number of hours is really going to vary with job
| role.
| hntrader wrote:
| It's going to vary significantly on an individual level as
| well. The best system would be where people opt-in to more
| hours but are evaluated solely on the quantity of quality
| output.
| yaseer wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| The idea we can jump from 40, to another arbitrary number for
| everyone, seems misguided to me.
| wnevets wrote:
| > The best system would be where people opt-in to more hours
| but are evaluated solely on the quantity of quality output.
|
| More hours will almost always look better to management
| regardless of output. Even if it was possible to evaluated
| solely on the quantity of quality output (we still have the
| socks vs creative problem) management will still tend to
| focus on "lost" productively.
|
| If person A is able to produce as much as person B but in
| half the time then management will tend to think person A
| should be able to product as twice as much in the same amount
| of time as person B! Person A isn't being a team player!
| hntrader wrote:
| This is why it's important to have good managers who deeply
| understand what their subordinates are doing. Detached
| managers can easily be gamed by maximizing metrics like
| hours-in-chair, which is pernicious because it makes people
| choose between making an impact and getting promoted.
| amir734jj wrote:
| I work at a financial company (200B assets) writing software to
| analyze bond market. When pandemic started and stock crashed, our
| software didn't expect such a market crash (obviously, it's
| called a pandemic ...), so I had to work 80+ hours to get it
| fixed as everyone else who worked on the application already left
| and the new people didn't have any clue. Fast forward to the
| post-mortem phase which also happened to be annual review time,
| my manager told me I am a toxic person and I made everything
| worse during the crisis.
|
| To make the matter worse the night when everything was fixed, I
| was on my way home at 3:30am and I got a speeding ticket for
| going 60mph over the limit. I fell asleep behind the wheel, thank
| God I'm still alive.
|
| I left that team immediately, and exactly one year has passed and
| they haven't been able to find another person to replace me but
| what bothers me is they promoted that manager because I left and
| he got all the credit.
|
| In summary, I will never ever work over 40 hours for any company.
| didibus wrote:
| > In summary, I will never ever work over 40 hours for any
| company
|
| Thank You!
| [deleted]
| fendy3002 wrote:
| > In summary, I will never ever work over 40 hours for any
| company.
|
| Even if anyone can, please don't (exception applies).
| Especially if you're a developer, 40+ hour a week will burn you
| out fast.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "In summary, I will never ever work over 40 hours for any
| company."
|
| In general I would say, don't generalize.
|
| If you are with a good company and in a great team, you might
| want to make exceptions again to succeed as a team.
|
| (exceptions as in at critical times, family would still come
| first)
| twodayrice wrote:
| Turns out that the productivity gain came from the fact that they
| wrote less code. Call me cynical.
| effnorwood wrote:
| Because only the worst employees actually took the 5th day off.
| Unencumbered by the usual idiots, productivity soared.
| arduinomancer wrote:
| Curious how HN feels.
|
| If you could work 4 days/week but your salary would be 1/5 less
| would you do it?
| Tepix wrote:
| In Germany you are entitled to part time by law.
| JetAlone wrote:
| No, I want to work 4 days/week with only a 12.5% reduction in
| salary to reflect the improved output per-hour my employer
| would anticipate due to improved conditions, and I want to keep
| all benefits, or no deal. I don't want the 4-day workweek to
| gradually morph into "people as a service", as I have my
| suspicions it may be intended to lead to.
| iainctduncan wrote:
| I do and have been now for almost 3 years. Actually, I work 3
| days for 60% (on average that is) and oh my god it's so much
| nicer than when I was working at companies for 80-100% time.
| And I'm actually learning again, coding for fun, doing a
| graduate degree, reading SICP, you know .... BEING A HUMAN
| BEING.
|
| I will tell anyone who will listen in tech to work less, learn
| more. If you learn the right things, your salary will likely
| catch up in the long run and you will be happier, healthier,
| and smarter. I hardly ever sleep until my alarm now.
| lagadu wrote:
| Definitely.
|
| It even has an extra bonus: I'd effectively get more than one
| extra week of vacation each year, because despite the number of
| days being the same, the one extra day a week would mean a week
| and a half extra off, pretty nice!
| JetAlone wrote:
| One day a week would be somewhere between 48 and 52 days off,
| that's over a month of time off.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Yes. I actually will do it after my paternity leave. Not sure
| if I would do it without a kid though but I want to believe I
| would value "life" more then money.
| vardaro wrote:
| You could use the extra day to work on a side project that may
| produce more than 1/5 of your salary.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Wrong place to ask probably, since I bet most folks on HN are
| well above the median salary where they live in. It's easier to
| cut down on your income when you have a lot to begin with.
|
| Japanese median salaries (at least for young workers) are, by
| all measures, relatively low.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Why didn't they try it in the USA?
| t-writescode wrote:
| Probably because there's historical over-working happening in
| Japan and that's less of a problem in the States.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Does anyone have any links to a different study on 4-hour work
| weeks?
|
| I've seen this same 4-week trial shared on every discussion of
| 4-day workweeks for years. It was such a small and short trial
| that the results look more like an outlier than a long-term
| trend.
|
| If I was an employee at one of these companies and management
| hinted that we could have Fridays off as long as it didn't
| decrease productivity during a 4-week trial, I would definitely
| work extra hard during those 4 weeks. I don't know if we can
| extrapolate much from this short trial among sales people.
| wngzro wrote:
| Recent article from Bloomberg on the topic:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-02/four-day-...
| mrtksn wrote:
| Findings like these that suggest a fundamental shift in our work
| life dramatically makes things better for everyone(be it the
| schedule changed or basic universal income or remote work) keep
| appearing all the time but we don't see a mass adoption of any of
| it, maybe with the exception of remote working after being forced
| to do it due to Covid-19.
|
| Are there any follow ups to the "Finland gave everyone living
| wage regardless of their employment and the productivity doubled"
| or "Denmark switched to 3 days a week and the profits actually
| increased" sort of stories?
|
| The article is from 2019, did Microsoft actually recouped the
| returns that %40 increase from the 4-day workweek brings?
|
| I'm getting numbed down to these stories, just like the ads about
| this one weird trick that makes you rich or helps you to be
| instantly liked by all the men/women.
| Stupulous wrote:
| For real, I've been seeing "working less increases
| productivity" articles and headlines for over a decade now. Are
| these articles wrong, and, if not, why hasn't our efficient
| capitalist machine moved in to get it done?
|
| Looks like it took about 30 years to get the five day workweek
| from testing to full deployment, with some industries getting
| it done in 20. But my understanding was that that was a moral
| crusade. Leaving money on the table while making people's lives
| worse feels like the kind of thing that should correct more
| quickly.
| didibus wrote:
| I'd be curious to see a similar study for a 6 day workweek. In a
| way, if a 6 day work week increases productivity as well, it
| becomes more curious that 4 day would too.
|
| I say that because I think the challenge here is measuring
| productivity, and people are just mentally skeptical that less
| working hours could equal more productivity. I hope it is true,
| but I too feel like really?
|
| So maybe a counter data-point could make things clearer. If the 6
| day experiment has worse outcome, at least we'd start to suspect
| that overworking might be detrimental to output. And that could
| reinforce the theory of 4 day work week.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| At that point, I'd prefer if they would also toss in any kind
| of scheduling to begin with. Where I live, 5x8 9-5 gets
| emphasized a lot, and any alternative that isn't working
| earlier or reducing the days gets incredible backlash. I'm
| young and fairly carefree outside work, I'd love to try more
| extreme patterns like 3x12 (especially with WFH) and have more
| days I can turn my head off completely regarding work,
| including a shift so I don't get chastised for coming in at
| 9:30. Someone else might prefer 6x6 starting from 6:30 and quit
| a bit before noon.
| kgin wrote:
| I might be misunderstanding, but I think they're talking about
| productivity in the sense of work output / time worked. A big
| part of the productivity increase could be explained by
| Parkinson's Law of the same amount of work getting done in less
| time. I don't think they're saying that 40% more work was
| completed overall.
| didibus wrote:
| Someone else said it is measured by: sales revenue per
| employee
|
| So I think you're right. I still think people will be
| suspect. Like why couldn't more work be done in a 5 day week
| compared to a 4 day week? Why would 4 day produce the same
| work which result in the same sales as 5 day?
|
| And it's hard to logically argue for or against. But if you
| tried a 6 day week, you could try to answer: well does more
| working hours result in more work with more sales output? And
| if not, then maybe the truth is that there's a max budget of
| real work per week for employees, and more work hours just go
| to waste. And in turn that could explain why 4 day over 5
| didn't see a big change on sales output.
| orblivion wrote:
| A Japanese acquaintance once told me that an office he worked at
| once instituted a strict "go home at the end of the day" policy
| to prevent people from staying late. I guess there's a sort of
| cultural pressure not to be the first one out of the office
| (which I can actually _sort of_ understand; I feel weird leaving
| early).
|
| Apparently it worked out really well. Either similar or improved
| output. However after a management changeover things went back to
| as before. It's a cultural hurdle, sounds like.
| mcaravey wrote:
| That pressure is alive and well at places I've worked (USA). I
| used to finish my work day at 3pm, and I always made sure to
| leave at exactly 3pm. I would often get sideways looks and
| jealous vibes from my coworkers, even though everyone knew I
| was done at 3. No one ever really paid attention to the fact I
| was showing up to work at least a couple of hours before them,
| and the feeling that I was "cheating" by leaving early never
| really went away. The pressure was there all the time to stay
| longer, and honestly it really irritated me. We were given core
| hours to be in the office but because others made the choice to
| come in later I was left feeling like I did something "bad" due
| to comments and other implied communication.
|
| These days I run my own place, but the pressure to work longer
| hours is due to so much needing to get done that can't be
| completed in 8 hour days. Self-inflicted pressure is way worse
| because I can't get up and leave it behind.
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _I guess there 's a sort of cultural pressure not to be the
| first one out of the office (which I can actually sort of
| understand; I feel weird leaving early)._
|
| AFAIK, the big cultural pressure in Japan is specifically
| leaving before your boss does.
| XorNot wrote:
| The sheer number of times I've left a frustrating problem at
| work for the day, and come back in the next day and solved it
| in 5 minutes, makes me believe this would be the case.
|
| Beyond a certain point you really aren't achieving anything.
| [deleted]
| mywittyname wrote:
| When we overwork, the line between work and personal time blurs
| such that they eventually become the same. So you don't feel
| guilty about slacking off.
|
| Long hours in an office setting promote procrastination. Why do
| something now when you are going to be here at 8PM anyway and
| will need something to occupy your time?
|
| Once you stop procrastinating, because you know you can't be at
| work late, then you build up work inertia. This is probably
| where all the efficiency gains are.
| peruvian wrote:
| Yup. I am always more productive when I force myself to log
| off at 5pm.
| ekianjo wrote:
| In Japan, staying long hours at work is not about
| productivity, as I explained in my other comment. It's to
| make sure to understand that now, your office, your peers =
| your life. That's for the exact same reason you invite co-
| workers and your boss to make a speech at your wedding once
| you get married: your work is your new family (whether you
| like it not).
| humanlion87 wrote:
| That's a great point. This explains why I have not been able
| to get anything done after lunch during this extended WFH
| situation. I used to think it was because I ate too much or
| something similar, but this had never been the case when I
| was in office. Now I need to figure out how to trick my mind
| to believe that I can't login after 5pm :(
| missedthecue wrote:
| _" While the amount of time spent at work was cut dramatically,
| productivity -- measured by sales per employee -- went up by
| almost 40% compared to the same period the previous year "_
|
| Is sales per employee really an appropriate proxy for
| 'productivity'? The original report is entirely in Japanese, so
| I'm not really sure exactly how they are calculating
| productivity... is this a sales office?
|
| https://news.microsoft.com/ja-jp/2019/10/31/191031-published...
| Tarsul wrote:
| if they compare to the last year, they could have at least gone
| so far and compare to last month as well (probably did, but not
| in the cnn article, maybe someone who speaks japanese can say).
| It's a little daunting to just believe a 40% increase only due
| to cutting 1 day per week, would be quite phenomenal. Also,
| they cut down on meetings which was probably more decisive
| regarding improved productivity :) Article is from 2019 btw.
| getoj wrote:
| The productivity claim has been removed from the Japanese
| report you link. An erratum at the bottom of the page dated
| November 8, 2019 says this:
|
| "In the announcement dated October 31, one of the listed
| "improvements" from the 2019 Summer Work-Life Choice Challenge
| was an increase of 39.9% in labor productivity (sales revenue
| per employee) in August 2019 compared to August 2018, with a
| graph below.
|
| While this number is factual, it is not solely the result of
| this challenge, and was achieved due to a number of different
| factors.
|
| To avoid misunderstanding, we have removed that claim from the
| above summary of the direct effects of the challenge."
|
| Edit to add: >is this a sales office?
|
| "Every Friday in August 2019 was designated an office holiday.
| Permanent employees received special leave for those days, and
| all of the offices were closed."
| ajcp wrote:
| You should post this in the main thread, it is incredibly
| germane and enlightening.
| paxys wrote:
| For a sales team I think counting number of sales per employee
| is the perfect measure for productivity.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Only if there nothing else at play like a new good product.
| An increase in sales and decrease in productivity is not
| mutually exclusive.
| ekianjo wrote:
| 2280 employees in microsoft Japan, let me wage without being
| too wrong that 60% at least of those are NOT sales people. So
| this metric is completely nonsensical if you mix sales and
| non-sales.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Ok, do you know if this was offered to all employees or
| sales people?
| ekianjo wrote:
| As far as I know it was applied to all employees of
| Microsoft Japan. And then they made big headlines out of
| it. Pure PR move (PR always does this kind of thing -
| that's their raison d'etre).
| agumonkey wrote:
| does productivity compose ? because reports of WFH improving
| productivity by 22% would make a nice bump on top.
| getoj wrote:
| Posting to a top-level comment: The productivity claim has been
| removed from the Japanese report[0]. An erratum at the bottom of
| the page dated November 8, 2019 says this:
|
| "In the announcement dated October 31, one of the listed
| "improvements" from the 2019 Summer Work-Life Choice Challenge
| was an increase of 39.9% in labor productivity (sales revenue per
| employee) in August 2019 compared to August 2018, with a graph
| below.
|
| "While this number is factual, it is not solely the result of
| this challenge, and was achieved due to a number of different
| factors.
|
| "To avoid misunderstanding, we have removed that claim from the
| above summary of the direct effects of the challenge."
|
| [0] https://news.microsoft.com/ja-
| jp/2019/10/31/191031-published...
| ekianjo wrote:
| > was achieved due to a number of different factors.
|
| How surprising that something is used as a single variable
| explanation by a PR department. I for sure have never seen that
| before. Glad to know they backtracked on that, but it's too
| late since the news has been out there already for a long time
| and this CNN article perpetuates it.
| soneca wrote:
| I would not blame solely company PR departments for this,
| often the press exaggerates claims for clicks.
|
| I remember working on a non-profit that provided philanthropy
| advice to millionaires. Once we hosted a small conference and
| we ran a very informal poll about the said millionaires
| satisfaction with their own philanthropy.
|
| The result was something like 32 out of 40 wanted to donate
| more money annually than what they were currently donating
| (as opposed with "satisfied" with the amount or wanted to
| "donate less").
|
| We mentioned the result to a journalist covering the event
| and of course the newspaper headline was _"80% of Brazilian
| millionaires want to donate more"_. No mention that it was a
| poll during the event with only 40 people that were highly
| selected to people wanting to donate more (the purpose of the
| event was teach how to donate well). On the contrary, someone
| reading would have the impression that our organization
| funded a well-done proper research covering a significant
| sample of all millionaires in Brazil.
|
| That was not our PR, that misleading headline was solely the
| journalist creation. The event itself was pretty boring, so
| they went with that headline to justify their time investment
| in covering it I think.
| didibus wrote:
| True, that said, I think it's a good data point towards a 4
| day workweek none the less. I feel most people would have
| predicted the outcome to be negative or hurt by the four day
| workweek. So we don't know if it's sufficient to increase
| productivity, but it clearly isn't sufficient to decrease it
| either. And that's already pretty promising data.
| beforeolives wrote:
| I don't think that you can make that conclusion. How do you
| know that a 5-day week with the other interventions still
| in place isn't better than a 4-day week? Or how do you know
| that keeping everything the same and moving to a 4-day week
| wouldn't have a negative/neutral effect?
| didibus wrote:
| > How do you know that a 5-day week with the other
| interventions still in place isn't better than a 4-day
| week?
|
| That we don't know.
|
| > how do you know that keeping everything the same and
| moving to a 4-day week wouldn't have a negative/neutral
| effect?
|
| I don't know why we'd want to keep everything the same.
| What we do know here at least is that a four day work
| week implemented as it was in the experiment did not
| result in negative or neutral effects. And that's already
| quite the positive outcome which means more
| experimentation is mandated as it seems there's hope for
| four day work week being practical and realistically
| implemented by companies without hurting their output.
| beforeolives wrote:
| > I don't know why we'd want to keep everything the same.
|
| To actually find out whether a 4-day week is better than
| a 5-day week.
| didibus wrote:
| Well, that's something we could find out. But to me the
| more interesting thing to find out is: is there a work
| process that is as good or better then the current work
| process in output produced yet allows me to only work 4
| days.
|
| Now sure you could say, all productivity boost were due
| to other process changes and the benefits of this boost
| should not go to employees, but if you wanted to be more
| attractive to talent, that be a good benefit, and knowing
| that your business wouldn't be affected compared to how
| it's doing currently is the first step to consider this
| benefit as a viable one.
| econnors wrote:
| > What we do know here at least is that a four day work
| week implemented as it was in the experiment did not
| result in negative or neutral effects.
|
| We don't know that, though. Maybe sales would've increase
| 10x with a 5-day work week and the 4-day week hurt
| significantly.
| didibus wrote:
| I'm saying negative or neutral to absolute growth, not to
| opportunity.
|
| Basically, what would you have said prior to knowing
| about this experiment if I asked you: "What do you think
| will happen if we do this experiment to productivity?"
|
| I think a lot of people would have said probably you'll
| see a decrease. But instead we saw a 40% increase.
|
| Now I'm assuming Microsoft has YoY data, so I don't know
| if 40% yearly increase is the norm, above the norm or
| below and that be interesting to know.
|
| But still, this 40% increase is surprising to what I
| think I would have guessed and assume a lot others would
| have too, that you'd see a decrease or maybe neutral.
|
| So I'm not saying it tells us 4 day work week is better
| then 5 or 6 or 7. But it seems like a viable model that
| still allows for quite a bit of productive growth. And
| that's already a good start for it, one I'm a little
| surprised about.
|
| Cause it means that possibly time worked has minimal
| impact on productivity, at least within a 1 day margin.
| It seems other factors might be more important, maybe
| simply strategic decisions, cutting out of time wastes
| like useless meetings or discussions, etc.
| harikb wrote:
| > In addition to reducing working hours, managers urged staff
| to cut down on the time they spent in meetings and responding
| to emails.
|
| > They suggested that meetings should last no longer than 30
| minutes. Employees were also encouraged to cut down on meetings
| altogether by using an online messaging app (Microsoft's, of
| course).
|
| If I am told I am part of an experiment, I would do my best to
| make it a success and make my 3-day weekend permanent :)
| mmcdermott wrote:
| I've wondered about this. In some limited areas, it seems
| like change helps keep things fresh and people off of
| autopilot. From that perspective, it's possible that if
| prolonged the results would level out.
|
| And, yes, I say this as someone who would rather have a four
| day workweek.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Autopilot is nothing bad. For repeative tasks that cannot
| be improved with reasonable amount of ressources, you are
| better off in autopilot. It saves energy for critical
| times.
| MikeTheGreat wrote:
| There's even a name for this: Hawthorne Effect From
| Wikipedia: "The Hawthorne effect refers to a type of
| reactivity in which individuals modify an aspect of their
| behavior in response to their awareness of being observed."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect
|
| (Yes, the Hawthorne Effect is more general than the specific
| case here where people want to influence the outcome in a
| particular way, but it's still cool that this is known to be
| a thing)
| lupire wrote:
| That's not the Hawthorne effect, that's people responding
| to incentives.
| [deleted]
| trhway wrote:
| i'd guess that while a 4-day week de-jure, it was de-facto a
| 5-day week with 1 day being free of meetings, manager's
| micromanagement, communication&collaboration (like being able to
| ignore Slack for the whole day) and other corporate crap. In this
| case it would mean that the productivity in that 1 day grew 3x to
| result in that 40% growth for the whole week. Those 3x estimate
| pretty much matches my experience of how big the corporate crap
| is a drag on productivity.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > The initiative is timely. Japan has long grappled with a grim
| -- and in some cases, fatal -- culture of overwork. The problem
| is so severe, the country has even coined a term for it: karoshi
| means death by overwork from stress-induced illnesses or severe
| depression.
|
| I love the ignorant CNN contributors there. You can really see
| the full effect of people commenting about cultures they do not
| know or do not understand.
|
| First, 'overwork' is not what you think. Most of work done in
| Japanese companies is not busy work. Long hours are often the
| result of excessive bureaucracy and long meetings, and the
| expectation that you'll go out for dinner (maybe not everyday,
| but regularly enough) with your peers as a form of social bonding
| at the end of the day (something that is not really a thing in
| other cultures). If you don't understand that aspect of the
| culture, well you don't understand anything at all really.
|
| As for coining words. Japanese people have a coin word for
| everything under the sun, even mundane things that foreigners
| would have no expression for. It's a culture that loves making
| new words, new expressions, new acronyms - very much in the DNA
| of the Japanese language, so there's no "even coined a term for
| X" that remotely means anything at all. Niche phenomena also
| coined specific words, and it does not mean there's a massive
| trend going on.
|
| You should be a lot more concerned by the number of suicides in
| Japan than by the number of people dying from overwork - it's not
| even on the same scale at all.
| ath92 wrote:
| Do you think the suicide rate could be related to the cultural
| pressure to work long hours?
| ekianjo wrote:
| Just like every problem, there's tons of factors at play.
| Let's not try to reduce everything to a single variable,
| because then we are surely mistaking ourselves.
|
| Top of mind, I would say the following factors probably play
| a role:
|
| - social pressure to conform
|
| - social pressure to be successful
|
| - depression not being very well treated in Japan
|
| - work/school being too much in one's life compared to other
| things
|
| - lack of support/encouragement - isolation
|
| - fatalism ('you can't do anything about that') kind of
| belief
|
| But even that list is too short, I feel. I think by living in
| Japan you grasp a little more what is at play but as I said,
| it's a whole package, not just a few factors.
| causality0 wrote:
| _Long hours are often the result of excessive bureaucracy and
| long meetings, and the expectation that you 'll go out for
| dinner (maybe not everyday, but regularly enough) with your
| peers as a form of social bonding at the end of the day_
|
| You...you know that's worse, right?
| ekianjo wrote:
| I'm not judging either way. Just stating the reality, and
| Japan is not a country where individualism is prized as much
| as in the US, for example. Being part of a larger community
| is very important here.
| serial_dev wrote:
| I like criticizing CNN as much as the next guy, but nothing
| what you wrote really contradicts what you quoted from the
| article.
| ekianjo wrote:
| I just explained at least that "coining words" means nothing
| in Japan. That's a clear refutation of what they insinuated.
| BadInformatics wrote:
| Though I agree on the cultural ignorance point (especially not
| choosing to localize terms so that they sound exotic), needless
| overtime and the 996 culture are absolutely a problem. It's not
| so much that the work is tiring as the hours are unnecessary
| and prohibit people from doing stuff outside of work. 20-30
| years ago, bonding with peers after work was still pervasive in
| China/Japan/SK, but the hours were nowhere near as crazy as
| they are now.
| koyote wrote:
| > Long hours are often the result of excessive bureaucracy and
| long meetings, and the expectation that you'll go out for
| dinner
|
| I don't think it matters what the work is. If you spend most of
| your awake hours either in the office or with your colleagues
| then that deprives you from resting and relaxing (and of course
| seeing your family, engaging in leisure activities etc.).
|
| > You should be a lot more concerned by the number of suicides
| in Japan than by the number of people dying from overwork
|
| And how many suicides in Japan are work-related?
| ekianjo wrote:
| > And how many suicides in Japan are work-related?
|
| Hard to say. Since there are a lot of suicides among students
| and retired people too, I'm sure work is not the only
| problem.
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _And how many suicides in Japan are work-related?_
|
| Probably no hard statistics on this but here's something from
| Japan Times on karoshi:
|
| _> Over the past decade, more than 300 people each year have
| been awarded compensation under work-related accident
| insurance after suffering either heart attacks or strokes. In
| 2013 alone, 133 of such people died. A growing number of
| workers also win damages for work-induced mental problems,
| with the figure hitting 436 last year, including 63 who
| either committed or attempted suicide._
|
| https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2014/11/15/editorials/g.
| ..
| jasode wrote:
| At least 2 other things to think about when reading workplace
| experiments like this:
|
| 1) Hawthorne Effect when workers are aware of being observed in
| response to a novel change:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect
|
| 2) Difficulty and disagreement in measuring the _success_ of a
| change: E.g. France has had 20+ years of the 35-hour work week
| and there 's _still debate_ on whether it was successful. :
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/35-hour_workweek#Criticism
| wnevets wrote:
| I wonder what the percentage of any perceived productivity
| increase is due to the reduction of time spent in meetings.
| Management has less hours to appear they're doing management
| things so they're forced to have less meetings. I feel like my
| productivity is so much higher when I don't need to worry about
| meetings.
|
| "No point digging into this important task, it's 30 minutes
| before that meeting. I guess I'll kill time looking at hacker
| news"
|
| "I'm exhausted from having be part of that meeting, I need 30
| minutes or so to recharge before I dig into that important task."
|
| "There's a follow up email to that meeting, I guess I should I
| should read it before digging into that important task"
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| I can also imagine less meetings cause less bureaucracy, less
| mental fatigue from playing social theatrics, more satisfaction
| in actually doing things for people who hate meetings, etc. A
| meeting rarely if ever is "just" a meeting, and those that are
| "just" a meeting tend to be superfluous for the majority of
| participators (no preparation needed, no reflection
| afterwards).
| tpmx wrote:
| Why are you reposting news from November 2019 without labelling
| it as such?
|
| I remember it being heavily discussed back then:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21433710 (210 comments)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21441689 (242 comments)
| t-writescode wrote:
| Wow! Thanks for sharing these couple other instances of it
| happening, I wouldn't have seen them otherwise! This is
| certainly the first time I'm seeing this news.
|
| I'm always excited to see more reason for us to shorten our
| working hours and I think it could help lots of the problems
| we've been or may soon be having in society!
|
| Thanks for bringing more examples of the conversation for me to
| look through!
| tpmx wrote:
| I do remember the consensus being that it worked out well
| because a (quite capitalistic!) _sales_ team did the 4-day
| workweek experiment in question.
| vardaro wrote:
| I worked at a large co that did a 4/10 work week schedule. I
| didn't feel any more productive but I was certainly happier
| overall.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Careful. Some cultures in Asia have a strong culture of appearing
| to work hard solely based on time spent in the office.
|
| The Japanese salaryman comes to mind [0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salaryman
| torcete wrote:
| They have plans to try a 4 days working week here in Spain, and
| I believe the working culture is quite different. We will see
| how it works.
| ekianjo wrote:
| If one believes that less time spent working increases
| productivity, then by all means let's go down to 1 day a
| week. We'll see HUGE productivity gains there... right?
| president wrote:
| Though not as extreme, this happens in the US as well,
| especially in Silicon Valley. My last few gigs in large
| enterprise software companies were like this.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I wonder if cutting official hours allows people to drop some
| of that pretense.
| ipnon wrote:
| I find it _hilarious_ that Americans don 't seem to think they
| do the same thing.
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-03-17 23:02 UTC)