People wonder why isekai is a popular genre. Hmm.

I used to be an officer in the Navy and this shit happens all the time in the military. I was always told I had to go to a lot of officer outings even though it was supposed to be voluntary. I was always the first to leave. Eventually I stopped going. I hated them. As a result, I was seen as not a team player and was ranked lower. I would always invite my division out to lunch on Fridays since it would mean not eating food on the ship and it was during the day, not night which is for them. I always emphasized that it's not mandatory and would bring back takeout for those that decided to stay behind because they were finishing work or just didn't want to go out. Also would sometimes use the lunch as a way to let some of them go home early if they didn't have anything left to do on the ship so they can get an early weekend. As a result, everyone worked really hard and my division was the only one with no problems. When I left, I was ranked pretty low amongst my peers, even though I got results and far exceeded expectations. Doesn't matter. My team trusted me and I trusted them and they knew I wasn't about playing politics. I fought for their leave times and made it work and would take the hit for being perceived as a lenient officer. I don't care. When we deploy, we don't get to have time away for our families and ourselves. You're damn right I'm gonna let them take whatever time off they need when we're not and I have the power to let that happen.

I noticed that anime has a habit of letting viewers know how full of shit things can be in Japan.

I'm not going hangout with my boss after work unless I'm getting paid for it, I'm not doing company shit unless I'm on company time and paid.

The fact that worker is obligated to treat the company as a second family is abyssmal. Where is any guranatee that the company won't just ditch it's workers, who put their soul into labor?

What's probably more interesting than comparing the countries with each other, is comparing the countries with themselves over time. You might also want to plot inflation on the same axis. I find people are more motivated when they are compensated fairly for their labour.

I'm a photographer currently in Japan and the thing is about the companies in Japan they take advantage of people and they pass thier mistakes onto the worker especially the older generation has a habit of doing this. That's the thing abou my husband's former company it was shut down and he was stressing out about the company. I legit told him that the companies fuck ups are not his problems and if they have the balls to put themselves into that situation where it costs the employees jobs and at least show some damn self respect of telling the truth of how got themselves into that situation in the first place. He was amazed of how I saw the problem he quit about 1 week later, and he had an IT job lining up, and now he's content with his job. Safe to say Japan needs to change I was never a fan of working under someone and I'm very vocal about.

Don't trust business owners to understand the mentality and emoitions of their employees. Of course they are going to downplay the severity of their toxic work culture, they are literally financially incentivized to say so.

I also notice this in Korean companies as well. When I worked at an after school academy, I had to basically work Monday to Sunday at times (at the academy or at home). I worked 12 hours but did not get overtime pay because it wasn't part of my contract. I don't fault my boss at all because it was her first time running an academy but let's just say within a year I worked there, my health got so bad (physically and mentally) that all of my doctors told me that I should quit. But even I felt bad "quitting" so I requested unpaid vacation off for a month.

I was teaching someone English a few weeks ago in Japan. I asked the guy why he hadn't had a lesson for a few motnhs and he told me he had just finishe dworking 70 days in a row from 8:30am to 12-2am everyday. Said he only had time to go home and sleep and didnt get paid overtime because its illegal to do that much overtime. He didn't report his company because it "would be bad for the company". So this coupled with constantly seeing elementany school students out late at night when i go home around 9:30pm because of Juku., I just can't comprehend this mindset

The thing I found quite funny about the japanese 'tradition' or 'culture' around working is the fact that it's not a tradition or anything. In the 70s when the economic bubble was at it's peak the way japan worked was kinda revolutionary, they were not afraid of introducing new ways and tech in their work environment. What I see around the 'working culture' nowadays in japan is just old dudes refusing to change the way they found in those years to manage business, because that's the way they found at those days to make business good, ignoring the fact that to achieve that economic position they needed to modernice their practices in the work environment but look at them nowadays still using fax believing it's still 1972 or something..

Its no surprise that the defenders are middle aged to elderly Japanese people. If the defence came from the young generation then that would be more convincing. Of course Japan placed last, various terms and concepts only exist or are very common in Japan, such as "death by overwork" black company" "hikkikomori" etc and these are failures of a society in which the work ethic is too burdensome and results in extreme societal pressure and a lack of work passion. Couple that with a weak economy and high cost of living, there is no or very little incentive to work hard or enjoy ones work. Those defenders are extremely out of touch, are privileged and are speaking on behalf of the rest of Japan. Japan needs to change. Employee satisfaction will increase as the gruelling work ethic lessens.

Im in the USA, and I have been working for about 20 years. I learned one lesson you won't regret time spent with loved ones, but you will regret time missed with them. A job will replace you faster than you can be put in the ground. If im not being paid, im not doing work "team building" if they cared so much about it they would pay me.

On the spot translation issue: Landstad→ Randstad. Is a big corp that does consulting for HR stuff; and that’s going to make the results a bit skewed, given that they also work for other consulting corps. And those tend to be soul-sucking jobs.

Drinking with your boss is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard. You want me to be more motivated? Pay me more.

Like my friend said about the fake employee passion in reference to FMA: "You ask them to sacrifice an arm and a leg, you get a fake person."

*looks at the current Nijisanji situation* yup, sounds about right

I don't understand how people can believe they are still in an economic bubble that happened nearly 40 years ago.

We had similar situations back in school with some events that were "voluntary participation" but if you don't participate you're made to be the odd one and everyone giving you the stink eye. And even during my apprenticeship as a horticulturist, my contract stated "workdays monday to friday" and "working on saturday and holidays during busy periods is voluntarily" but then it was always like "how dare you say you have plans and you're not gonna work on a holiday, while everyone else does". If my contract says to work on saturdays I have no problem with this, but don't give me this hypocritical "voluntary" crap that's meant to exploit herd mentality. And spending my free time and money with people I don't like, when I'm tired and just want to go home? F*** off! As for the Japanese people I guess a big part is just the changing times, after the war people had to work their ass off rebuilding their country, of course that gives you pride and hard worker mentality and then as you mentioned there was the economic bubble, but how can you convey and instill this in younger generations that haven't experienced this and live in a totally different world? you can't

As an American I can promise you we all hate working and wish we could just win the lottery.

Who would want to hang out with their boss? 😂 Unless your boss is like Joey or something.

This is happening everywhere. Working culture everywhere changed when COVID happened. People found new work patterns that they liked and refused to give them up when things started getting back to nominal. Over here in the States there was real culture shock from upper management when they found out that no, they couldn't treat their people like they used to, because they will leave (at least in the USA, where we have full employment). It led to a lot of very confused managers who were used to pushing people around to get their way, who suddenly found themselves without workers after they treated them badly. Before COVID they could push people around all they want because job flexibility was being kept rigid by the old school "that's the way we've always done it" culture. The good managers/companies realized that they had to start treating their people like they didn't want them to leave, which was 180 degrees from "the beatings will continue until morale improves". The bad ones doubled down on their bad treatment and found themselves without workers. They whined that "people didn't want to work", when the real problem was that their workers realized they could do better somewhere else and went there. You could say to them "No, they want to work, they just don't want to work for YOU". Which a bunch of hard-wired micromanaging managers found impossible to understand, after decades of being able to treat their reports like garbage. I imagine Japan is experiencing something similar, except without the full employment that the USA currently enjoys. (3% unemployment is full employment. Any lower and it starts to hurt the economy because companies can't find people to hire.) So they're stuck in the jobs that Americans would ditch in a heartbeat. We had the Big Quit after COVID passed, because managers expected people to come back into the office and continue to be treated like garbage, so they just went somewhere else. This is really the way the labor market is SUPPOSED to work. Companies shouldn't be dangling jobs in front of people like they're doing them a favor by hiring them. Workers should be making employers fight over them.

I live in Japan and have worked at 3 Japanese companies. The reason why we all hate the work culture (and the reason foreign workers very very rarely stay in Japan long term) is very simple; We work longer hours for the half the pay of other countries. Salaries haven't changed in decades, yet cost of living is increasing rapidly.

11:30 Just a quick note, "writing code" is a very creative job (unless you ended up in some sort of dystopian soulless company.) Therefore it's very hard to do without motivation. This may be difficult to understand if you have no idea how coding works, but that's how it is. People code for fun, in fact most of the open source software was written that way, from Linux to Firefox and KHTML (which later became Chrome), not to mention videogames, and this is a trait shared with other creative endeavours. How many people do accounting for fun?

6:50 That's Josephine Teo... a Singaporean Politician. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Having passion for your job can be a slippery slope, not to say you can't have enthusiasm for your work but from what I have experience and picked up from others over time is when you put a lot of energy day in and day out for a job it can easily lead to burnout unless the employer takes steps to mitigate it. In this modern age of work, productivity and the bottom line dictate the work environment, this comes at the cost of the worker's mental and physical health by making them less efficient to perform at their best. I feel the pressure for Japanese people(if not many other Asian countries) from a young age to adulthood is trying to push hard upwards to succeed to get a good job. Then still pushing hard again to meet social norms in their workplace. This is why I'm not surprised that there are high levels of depression and unaliving in their society.

My asocial self would quickly become a pariah. Once I'm off the clock, I'm going home. I've got errands to run, meals to cook, animals to feed, household chores, exercising. I'm gonna see those coworkers the next morning. They are not my family. If a company wants me to think of them like one big happy family, then I want to see my name listed on the CEO's Will since I'm supposed to be family. Having a friendly boss and being able to talk about what you did over the weekend is great. But going out for dinner with them every week, that's like some weird mental game. Errs on the side of Stockholm syndrome. If someone has the power over my promotion, I'm not clinking beer glasses with them and discussing my unhealthy obsession with kpop. It's also grossly "old boys club". Like, it's all about playing the game and who you know, rather than how hard you work. In that sort of work culture, I'd assume everyone in management only got there because of their ability to network and not their actual talent or skill. In a skill based work environment, socializing after work wouldn't be so emphasized. That's my hot take.

All I can hear in my head is just an employer asking "what you don't like working all day and having no life outside of us? What's wrong with you?"

Very interesting topic. I was a salaryman in Osaka in early 90s. I moved from Florida out of if Uni with 4 years of Japanese and a Japanese minor. Even then i saw this lack of passion. It seemed everyone was doing what they needed to do to for appearance rather than performance. One example of this was how everyone stayed after end if day bell unril the boss left. Sorry i did not folllow this rule😊 when i did stay late, i noticed most people weren't necessarily working but just looking busy until he left. Except of course rhe females who were forced to clean and make coffee and snacks I also had the exact experience of being required to go to after work party. A person i didn't even know was retiring about 3 weeks after i started. My work friend said i had to go. Fortunately, i had nothing else to do so it was rarher happy to go. But the obligation to drink alcohol was so different from USA business. It wasn't just i had to go i had to do what everyone else was doing. Again, i loved it, had a great izakaya experience but i also felt weird cuz i had to do it. Another interesting thing was the lack of work i was given. My first 2 months i would sit at my desk and translate Le Mis...yes seriously, they were paying me to sit there and read a book. I started reading the instruction manuals and suggestions on fixing the English translation which was sometimes wrong. They didn't care at all. Eventually, i asked fir something to do so they had me join the blueprint group and file away blueprints once a week. The 12 of us would go to meeting room and correlate the blueprints into piles. Then the mass junken *rock,paper, scissors* to get the pecking order. Then first would oick smallest pile and so forth. I soon started picking all the large piles cuz i was looking for something to do. I always believed it wasn't that japanese people work really hard they just are expected to be visibly working an exordinate amount of time. Yes, you dodged a bullet lol. The life of a salary man is its own world 🌍 Really enjoy your content and TT etc. even tho i dont watch anime 😢. And i lived in Japan before Pokemon 😊

Ive known the fact about Japanese workers going out and drinking with peers/bosses but it still baffles me to this day. As an introverted adult, im totally fine talking all day at my 9-5 and sometimes an hour after i clock out if im atill chatting with someone, but what if the workers are also introverts, or don't drink or need to spend time with people outside of the workplace? Personally I think it's incredibly unhealthy, mostly mentally. I've always hated the culture of how you're giving a "bad image" if you wanna go home after work. Can't really force a whole country to change tho, it's a country with wildly different perspectives compared an American, like me. 🤷‍♂️

Same old same old. Japan was living in the 2000s in 1980s, and got stuck there since.

Ever heard the term Hō-Ren-Sō 報 - 連 - 相? Apparently communication is also an issue. I don’t mean they suck at it. Quite the opposite. No, this mantra is what makes it very stressful. It’s a business practice on how you report to your superiors and colleagues. Managers make it such a huge deal that it eliminates motivation. Anything that goes against their moral compass will usually view it negatively. I sort of had experience with it, not in Japan but in a Japanese company in the US. Not much of an issue but I can feel where that practice atmosphere came from.

Motivation and passion are absolutely essential for a productive worker, especially in the long run, take it from a burnt out and fed up programmer.

I think what most businesses, big or small forget, is you are hiring adults. Most structure and rules are antiquated things to keep the employee in line and know their place. A lot of companies that treat their employees like adults get better results

Just one fix - developers also need passion to create a software. If we are not motivated you can expect a heavy drop on productivity. I can't code anything if I don't feel motivated or the project I am does not feel interested. I believe all jobs, not just creative ones, need passion to deliver anything.

As an intern programmer I can definitely tell you one thing. Your passion definitely influences the quality of your code 🧑‍💻

US person here, I can say that every other American I've met who isn't an insane person or over the age of 50 hates everything about their job or almost everything about it and feels stuck or hopeless about said job. Work is work, you clock in do what you have to and clock out just for the pay check, because otherwise you risk literally losing it all. Especially right now when so many people are struggling to find jobs or move up to better positions within their work environment, i 100% believe that the US citizens in the survey results lied, there's so much performative positivity and hiding your struggles here. We also don't know the demographics for the survey either, so it could be a bumch of wealthy people who consider themselves extremely motivated and hard working, I don't know. Being an employee just fucking sucks in general for most people I've met.

I love going to Japan. It is a cool place, amazing food! but I would never live there. The work/life balance is the worst, and people in general are too into their own thing.

Japan needs a paradigm shift, regarding work culture. It is no wonder the birth rate collapses, when people don't have the money, time and passion left to care about a family.

i think the two things that might result in this issue is one the hours worked and two if you look at how company's like sega and konami and how extremely determine to go the way they want and are completely unwilling to listen to suggestions or ideas

I'd rather live in a shed made out of cardboard than STAY after work and do exactly what? I don't drink and would rather save my money than using it on eating out.

Based on various studies conducted over nearly a century now, the ideal work day is about 6 hours. Your employees will come in, get their work done, and go home, stopping possibly for lunch with coworkers. A 6 hour day provides them with adequate time to care for their families. And they will be productive in that time, and not waste your electricity and time watching videos on youtube. If we designed, say, a 10 hour work day with a morning shift of early risers who start work at 7 and leave at 2, and an evening shift who starts work at 11 and leaves at 5, you would probably have the most productive situation with an overlap of 2 hours plus the lunch hour for people to interface with everyone at the company. But companies don't think like that and think longer hours at work is better.

Me: *Looks at description* Also me: I’ve got so many good products from Japan. I wouldn’t think they’re the worst workers. They should be paid more than what they’re currently earning, too.🤔🙂🇯🇵

I know seven people in Japan all of them immigrants from different countries who have been living there for 7 years the least to 15 years the most and they tell me almost only positive things. Vietnamese, British, Greeks and an Italian, all of them very satisfied. According to their opinion, the reason is that they are willing to talk to their bosses and demand better salaries and benefits waaay more than their Japanese colleagues. The job satisfaction problem Japanese people have is almost all cultural not economic or political.

You can see how deluded managers and business owners are in other countries too e.g. in the home office / return to office debates. They have no idea what motivates their workers or what the workers even do or which ones are actually productive.

Being able to have a night out with your workmates once in a while can help with team cohesion and general morale. However the stereotype I get is that this is expected to happen after pretty much every work night. That is way too much to be viable and is only going to encourage a workplace full of people who are sick of each other and probably have liver problems. Once a month or once a quarter would be a much more balanced way of handling this. In the UK this pretty much only happens at Christmas parties or if there is some special event that the company is signed up for.

I think it may be cultural as japanese people are humble too. But I will say Japanese people (not all but all i have worked with and spoken too) that it is important to look busy, even if there is nothing to do. Many times we have had to come into work when we have had no electric, no internet. We could have gone home to do our work, but was told how could people (general population) trust us to do our work, they may think we are relaxing. So I was told we had to stay all day, most of my coworkers just slept at their desk or played games. I would say Japanese people have very low productivity, due to the micro-managing and honestly so many of them are finding it brain killing the lack of trust, lack of common sense and just the dismissal of change is destroying soul and workplace.

It’s kind of notorious for anyone who lived here some time (and it’s a good observer) that the Japanese work system is very flawed, in so many levels. Their inefficiency towards tasks that should be simple, they like to make into a complicated procedure. And the old culture of “having to go for a drink” with your boss and coworkers is just terrible.

A few thoughts - Not changing work culture is probably rooted in the (probably older) owners thinking "well if my business has been around for X number of years, clearly I'm doing something right." To some extent, sure there's probably something they're doing right that's keeping their business alive. But probably not the work culture. - The people who are arguing against this study may have anecdotal bias. They just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Of course, you could question the pool of people the study looked at, but I like to think they did a more or less random selection. - Regarding the "who would you hire?" question, if I had no other choice, I'd rather take someone who has a good personality. You can always teach skill. You can't teach personality.

As a Japanese American having lived in the Bay Area and Los Angeles for the last 24 years, I have dated and have Japanese friends. The ones in Japan have the most ridiculous work schedules, like my ex who was a patisserie, and I couldn't fathrom her work schedule which was like a 14-16 hours day, and she would only sleep 4-6 hour a day. The way I see it, it's a lot of SHOW versus being effective like show that you can be at work for 12-14 hours a day (people pleaser face), whereas some other worker in Korea, the US, do the same work in a 1/3rd or half the time.. the biggest proof is that the vast majority of Japanese companies do not out perform companies globally.

Hey! Writing code all day is quite exciting! I don't know how many devs you know, but most devs are very passionate about their code.

Pretty sure this shit happens everywhere to varying degrees. For example, over here in Germany, they keep complaining about people not returning from part time to full time. Most blame it on the financial aspect, and happily overlook the time aspect. Same goes for home office. Despite many studies proving how less rigid work times improve productivity. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's gotta be really annoying to be more or less forced to go out drinking with your boss who does far less work than you and gets paid more.

I feel like the survey in itself was flawed by the nature of the questions themselves. Someone may very well be very passionate on what they do for work, but may still hate it due to outside factors, for example, someone who works in the gaming industry may love making games, but hates how they have to listen to their higher up's decisions, and live in constant fear of being laid off. On a situation such as that one, what would you answer towards the question: "Are you passionate about your work/ or work conditions?" Depending on how you interpret the question, to what you put more emphasis in, your answer will differ. So, without knowing how they did it, I can see how the results could be skewed.

I find it telling that people can’t see that a work culture also faces burnout. So that’s what’s happening in Japan. The only thing that can save them is a personal expression of discovery. Corporations always kills the personal identity of its employees. Expression of identity is the only way for this particular issue. Ps; I’d say the only reason Americans work harder and are more passionate is because they will do no more then what they’re paid for. They’ll quit the moment you impede on their time and title. You can’t mess with American employees cause Americans have already had the labor laws and protests to protect employees legally

Recently seen a video on Japanese economics which described Japan as being stuck in the year 2000 since the 1970th. Of course it's a very simplified summary.. but it certainly feels that way sometimes.

Great hate employers who want to treat their employees like family. I want to be treated like a professional and paid like it. People require purpose, respect and compensation for their labor. When you say I call them like family, all you're doing is stripping those three things and replacing it with obligation.

It's great that Joey's very passionate about his brand, Nonsense. :)

The thing about work surveys, or surveys in general, I recommend avoiding them if at all possible. You might think results are anonymous when they're not, and they can have loaded questions in them that can be used back against people.

There's a reason why so much anime is set at high school age or younger: freedom ends after that. 80hr salaryman or housewife is pretty much the end of the line, the ideal goal to reach. By the time you're 20. Status quo after that, forever.

You have a platform that can really connect and bring some shade of empathy from the world to Japan's reality (and more). But for that please try not to be superficial with your commentary or your videos' ideas. I love your content and would really enjoy to see more content that actually depicts conversations, images, film and other stuff about Japan, trying to SHOW us the situation in Japan along with your comments on it. I know it can be challenging for you to try new things from a suggestion of mine, specially since I'm just a viewer and I'm sure you've thought about this. Anyways I know that you have the ideas and the capacity to find a great way to bring Japan's reality to YT. Keep up the great work!

More than anything, I think this has a way of showing how different countries view employment. Two countries could be doing the exact same work with the exact same output, but could score completely different based on the culture and work ethic inherent to the people within. It may be a metric of how the people in the company feel at this moment, but it's only one of many metrics. If your society tells you work should be like a second family, that may not be reflected in a survey like this, but could affect the overall feeling of satisfaction the employee would have in relation to their job. However, if the society around an employee puts more emphasis on something like output or growth, that employee could feel very different towards their job and reflect as much on a survey like this. More than anything, this can be an amazing baseline of research over employee feelings in certain regions over years or even decades. Not so much comparing everyone to these others involved, but having an amazing database of feelings of satisfaction and completion to local social norms that ebb and flow over time. You can watch how countries, or regions of a larger business, flex in time to meet (or not) employee needs as businesses continue on.

Even if a job does not require passion to get decent results, passion is needed for job satisfaction. Not the only thing, but it is a factor. I think this argument got off track with the passion question, the point of these surveys seem to be "Are you satisfied with your job? Do you like working at your company doing what you're doing now?" I don't necessarily need passion to do my job, but the day certainly goes by faster and is overall more enjoyable when I'm actually enjoying my current tasking and the people around me aren't zombies waiting to collapse from mental and physical exhaustion.

As a programmer I can say that motivation is very important if you want to do the job well. Programming requires a lot of creativity and if you do things just to get by, you will end up with mediocre and inefficient code.

Damn that japanese man is on that good shit, wish I could cope like that

Amazing that japan seemingly refuse to aknowledge that their work culture is also a huge factor of their population decline. Most households now require 2 incomes and the work culture of doing overtime until late evening or totally not forced socilizing after work is entirely anti-family. Younger people literally do not have the time or the financial situation to start a family.

Bruh, that is so weird!! In the America, I heard similar terrifying stories!! It’s super awkward to be friends or go out with bosses and co workers!! I was shocked to hear that some places, you have to “ BE FRIENDS” with coworkers or bosses outside of the company’s working hours! Are you kidding me?!? Working in stressful job in the company is more than enough yet these CEO wants separate relationship outside!! They’re out of their minds!! Employees has their own private life too you know!, just because they’re working, bosses has no right to strip away their private life like that! It’s freaking weird! I can’t imagine getting a call from a coworker outside of my working time just to hang out or talk. NO!! Keep these two things separate please!! Work and personal space should be separated not privileged!!

Japan is very gerontocratic which makes change in government and Business hard as old people are less likely to adapt to change and new ideas. I just hope Japan will find a way to reform their government and work culture same for Korea.

I hate parties in general so I'm glad in the UK we don't have to go to work parties and the like

I've been saying this for years but here it is again: West vs East Individual vs Collective I always put two countries each extreme as an example, USA and Japan IDEALLY they should both be in the middle but true balance is impossible so they each should move 15% towards the middle. If Murca cared more about others and the community, then there wouldn't be so many karens, so many selfish snowflakes, they'd line up properly and respect the rules, which is so baffling to think they consider Japan as "respectful" just because they stand in line, those are just BASIC MANNERS Similarly, if Japan cared more about its people rather than "preserving the peace" they would start teaching that standing out is NOT a bad thing and they would instead teach WHEN to stand out such as at work: Feeling stressed? No need to suicide, just quit, eff the company that doesn't care about you Too much work? Just quit or go on vacation instead of literally dying from overwork Being bullied? You'll definitely talk to HR or report to the police Tired? Take ALL of your vacation days and don't do your pointless "overtime" just sitting around At a meeting and the boss said something stupid? Speak up and call him on his bs (in a respectful way), eff the hierachry, productivity is more important in this case By also not working as much they'd have more time to go eff around, quite literally, and make more babies, also cheating less theoretically speaking It's as simple as that.

I used to want to live in Japan, but I honestly do not think I could handle the Japanese work culture. The whole drinks after work thing for example. I don’t want to drink every night. I have to wake up early the next day to get ready for work. It makes absolutely no sense to stay out late the night before drinking with my boss. I’d rather leave work on time and get a good nights rest so I can do my job the next day without feeling like a zombie. Isn’t that just common sense? I don’t know…

I work for a Japanese-run factory in the US. You know what you get for working 66hr workweeks for years? They graciously allow you to keep doing it until you die or are replaced by a robot. Purgatory, but with stability.

Wow wow wow I'm gonna stop you right there, programming is a creative field and a lot of people are passionate

man. I'm in the US and actually in a situation where the micromanaging is borderline abusive. With statements such as "you're replaceable!" being thrown out there. I was also told we were purposely given uncomfortable chairs so that it would force us to get up to move around more, potentially to clean or something. Lots of ridiculous stuff, I can feel old mental health issues rearing it's ugly head but, I'm able to hang in there. I wonder how common this is in general or if overall work vs life balance is declining as the years have been passing by.

IDK - Nintendo pretty passionate on sue'ing everyone they can :D

It's almost as if stressful work conditions promoted by draconian work culture is bad for productivity. You can definitely over micromanage, to the point where your workers feel like robots. We are very good at organizing work patterns but awful at sustaining those same patterns over time, while leaders pay little attention to evolution of the work place.

i work in a company which is located in many places in the world. every year we are asked to complete standard summaries. it's kinda a normal usa mentality for them to give better results whan how they REALLY think. if you wanna answer good you have to take one of the best answers where a "good" option is a middle for us. top answers are "wow, amazing, wonderful, cannot be better" so in reality we bearly never use them. so even though not true i totally see why usa scores so high, same as when you ask someone "how are you?" and you cannot be truthful about it, have to go with standard "great! and you?" which also btw makes no sense in my country. when we are asked "how are you?" we usualy assume it's because you are interested in our life. so to say: if the study just asks these questions then it's not really viable

As a game programmer I’m a little offended, I’m pretty damn passionate, but I get your point 😂

I must admit, from the perspective of a psychotherapist, this is a deeply insightful survey. Thanks for sharing, Joey!!

Most people have to do a daunting task in a menial job that we don't want to. As long as I work as a full time job worker, I don't feel happy. But most people have to do it for minimum wages. That's all. If we get minimum wages by doing 4 hours work in a day, that would solve so many issues.

If you pose the questions in the right way, and restrict those questions to a specific set of people, you can get any result you darned well want. Even when canvassing random people on the street, the results can be manipulated. If you restrict answers to a, b, c or d, you can control the results because people are forced to choose what answer is closest to their truth. If those surveyors had gone and asked a bunch of artisans how they feel about what they do, the results in each country would be massively different. So regardless of the results, don't bother taking them seriously until you look at who and how they posed the survey to get the results they are claiming.

I work as a Supervisor at a US company that has decent culture (I only speak for my department, which is IT). Leaders or 'owners' in a company are extremely important. It is your responsibility to ensure you are meeting someone's goals, seeing where you can push them, and where to provide more support (like Joey said, treating them like people). Also advocating for your people when you can. Additionally, always challenging the status quo and asking 'why' is a huge part of why I like the culture where I work. It adds creativity for solutions and I like playing 'devils advocate'. I am excited to hear more about Joey's experiences in starting his own business! Being a leader is hard, but rewarding :)

Has hafu myself I agree that many people in Japanese society feel conflicted between the public tatemae self and their honne true self. Even in America at some jobs it's hard to be passionate because they just want you to pump out crap. Some companies are just grinding machines but other companies really want you to do a good job. Many companies are somewhere in between. I worked part-time for a Japanese business when I was a teen on weekends. Being a small business owner he cared about how I did along with my coworker who is also hafu. We translated between Japanese and English for the Americans who came to shop at his Booth for bargain electronics.

As a foreign employee working in a manufacturing company in Japan, I really don't like that they don't have the job title for your position. You did the job hunting, you got accepted then basically you were told to do anything for whatever project they needed people the most. Of course, they will teach you but do you like it? Might be yes might not. But I hate it. Last time, I told my manager I would like to do this job because I learned this at university (electronic related) at the same time I started to look for another company that matches my interest. I think they noticed that, so they "SAID" they would move me to another group that does exactly that. We'll see thou. But as for now, me doing things I have no interest in, obviously going to the office or work is like a dead sentence. But recently I've been noticing a lot of millennials from my department change jobs, and I think I think it changes my company perspective a little. Not really sure.

I don't need passion for my work to do a good job. If having passion for your work was a requirement then I would be unable to find work. It is impossible to have passion for working for someone else.

Did Joey just imply that coding isn't creative? 11:30

Japan's work culture needs significant reforms. These surveys definitely act as a wake-up call to trigger change in their outdated work structures.

It's spring, I just got in a Japanese company and participated thier new grad orientation. I'm what they call a second new grad but a lot of my 同期s are fresh out of college, and when the HR people were lecturing us about how once we enter the company we are no longer just ourselves, that even during private we should have the company in mind etc. The guy next to me, I could see the excitement of getting his first job vanish from his eyes.

10:05 I feel like their comparison is lacking. The second person can bring in results but lacks passion, so he'll bring in results for the first month or year, then may switch jobs or mentally exit and underperform. while the first person although lacking results would be 10x better after a year and may be with the company for the next 10.

Honestly Japanese are hard working ppl, include increase wages and better work/life balance

I've worked for many years in child related businesses (dance schools, gymnastics, after school care, sport clubs...) I find it very interesting that all these have their own version of tatemae, we referred to it as putting on your 'Disney Face'

I can't speak for Japanese, but I worked in a industry with a lot of Asians of different nationality's. This is just my own observation but I feel like there was a big difference in work ethic between East vs West. I found that the Asians I worked with were more then willing to put in long hours without hesitation. But when you actually looked at their output and performance they actually did a lot less work then their Western counterparts. It's about pacing. For example if you catch a Westerner sleeping at their desk or on the job they are probably gonna get fired. But I have read that in Japan sleeping at your desk in normal. So instead of putting in 110% in 8 hours, they are putting in 75% for 10-12.

Based on my limited knowledge of statistics, results are meant to be anonymous. For the very reason people aren't as honest if they know others can know their answer. Also on a personal note, passion is necessary to some extent to make sure people stay with a job. Whether that is passion for the work or passion for the money is up to them.

Passion and enthusiasm comes from future prospects and career development. Majority of people doesn’t like to work for money (even the creative jobs - be honest) However if your job leads you into better future with good compensation, it doesn’t matter what kind of job it is. This survey is not about Japanese workers, it is about state of Japanese companies offer no future with little gains to workers.

Having worked in a large company in Japan, I felt like the emergency brake was engaged all the time. If I did too much work in one day, my coworkers would try to distract me or get me to slow down. But probably the hardest thing about working at a large company in Japan was overseas management who had no idea how to do business in Japan, and really didn't care to learn.

Horrific!

Meh, they're not that bad. Been in Spain visitingfamily and oh god...

I get along with my boss well enough to hang out outside of work, mainly because he treats me like a person. Japan's hierarchical system means the bosses treat their employees like underlings, their old work mindset means they're working so many hours they sometimes don't get to go home for weeks on end. It's no surprise they don't want to go out drinking with their overlord after work.

> Me trying to read the article > the jump cuts and suddenly scrolling of the page 😵‍💫

Another layer is that many companies have internal "anonymous" surveys on employees happiness once a year. It asks questions about feeling supported, how good the moss is, work life balance, etc. And I mark everything with the highest score even if I don't want to put of fear of it being used to sack me from a job I genuinely like and need. I feel these surveys, specifically the ones at my job, are to see who they should let go. And by who I mean anyone who doesn't rate their experience high or has genuine feedback out of care.