alt Hacker NewsA factor not mentioned is Japan's cultural sense of duty and honour. I don't think employees in the West generally feel such dedication or perfectionism towards their company but in Japan it helped make all these efficient and meticulous changes possible, and avoids issues of privatisation like neglecting maintenance / short term profit maximisation.
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In the west the employee / employer social contract died sometime in the 80s. It's rare, especially in tech, to have employees with decades of tenure. You see Microsoft trying to buyout older employees recently.
Yeah and we would feel that way in the west if the company didn't lay us off every time the stock market twitched and gave us company housing.
The short term profit maximisation thing comes from leadership culture rather than employees per se
> A factor not mentioned is Japan's cultural sense of duty and honour. I don't think employees in the West generally feel such dedication or perfectionism towards their company
Diminishingly few.
It is a feedback loop.
And the concept of company families, of client corporations beholden to larger/older ones. They dont work together because of financial incentives or contractual obligation. The work together because they are fraternal organizations.
The flip side of that cultural sense of duty is unfortunately a rise in "black" companies (ブラック企業, burakku kigyo) and employee exploitation[1] leading to very long working hours (often unpaid) and high karojisatsu rates (suicide from overwork / stressful working conditions)[2].
At least in the past, companies like JR East were known for their worker exploitation and unfair policies, leading to decades of hostile labor disputes with Kokuro (the National Railway Workers' Union)[3].
In 2013, a family sued JR West after an overworked employee committed suicide. The family claimed he worked over 100 hours a month, and that during some months, he worked over 254 hours of overtime[4].
Japanese trains are renowned for being extremely punctual, but operators often punish employees for the smallest mistakes. They fine employees if the train is delayed by even a single minute, leading to one driver suing JR West in 2021[5].
I know the west likes to romanticise Japanese culture, but the reality of the working culture in Japan is far from romantic.
[1] https://izanau.com/article/view/black-companies-japan
[2] https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/karoshi-deep-look-japans-...
[3] https://www.jil.go.jp/english/archives/emm/2006/no.74/74_si....
[4] https://japantoday.com/category/national/family-files-lawsui...
[5] https://www.vice.com/en/article/japan-railways-lawsuit-late/