
Layoffs Taboo, Japan Workers Are Sent to the Boredom Room (2013) - milankragujevic
https://nytimes.com/2013/08/17/business/global/layoffs-illegal-japan-workers-are-sent-to-the-boredom-room.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0&referer=http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan/
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lukeschlather
For a smaller company I can see how this might be a problem, but Sony is a
sprawling tech company with tons of divisions. That they're paying 40 people
to sit around in a room with nothing to do is simply a failure of management.
It's pretty cool that Japan has such a strong social contract, that executives
have responsibility to and for their workers. But the social contract isn't
the problem there, it's a lack of imagination.

~~~
Retric
Exactly, large companies are going to get more than 5% turnover per year
simply from people retiring / dying. If they cut back on hiring they can
fairly quickly shrink and retraining is cheap when your willing to let a 50
year old worker sit in a room at full pay.

The real issue is older workers are expensive and companies want a cheap
workforce not lower headcount. Society on the other hand benefits when older
workers are employed and can't supply unlimited quantities of well trained and
cheap workers.

~~~
ryandrake
If you let attrition drive headcount, you're going to end up with only the
people who can't quit and find another job. Seen it happen.

~~~
sago
Yup, voluntary redundancy was jokingly called the 'muppet retention policy' in
a previous job. You announce to your staff that the company has some trouble,
and allow all the bright, motivated, and in-demand folks to jump ship with a
redundancy package, then you get to soldier on with everyone who's left, but
now thoroughly demotivated.

The side effects of labour laws (and, to be clear, I am a big supporter or
social / economic justice) can be really difficult.

------
vivekd
>In February, just two years shy of Mrs. Sato’s retirement, a manager had
blunt news: “Your job no longer exists.” She refused to quit, and was
dispatched to the chase-out room.

Well of course there are going to be problems when you try and lay off someone
just a few years before their retirement. I don't see any big cultural
differences the article references here. This just sounds like a company
trying to rip off their long term workers out of their full retirement
package. I'm sure if these retirement packages referenced in the article were
anywhere close to what the workers would get on full retirement, of course
they would take it rather than going to boredom rooms. The author of this
article seems to have simply taken Sonys word that the "retirement packages
were generous."

~~~
chaostheory
They also fail to mention that for many ' lifetime' salary man positions, the
hours are really long but the pay is low.

~~~
smallnamespace
'I heard a great line about this once, and unfortunately I cannot remember the
source:

“Most people want to become wealthy so they can consume social status.
Japanese employers believe this is inefficient, and simply award social status
directly.”

The best employees aren’t compensated with large option grants or eye popping
bonuses — they’re simply anointed as “princes”, given their pick of projects
to work on, receive plum assignments, and get their status acknowledged (in
ways great and small) by the other employees.'

From [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-
japan/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan/)

~~~
Flammy
Really interesting, thanks for sharing.

Does anyone know of any equivalents from other cultures of similar practices?

~~~
smallnamespace
I mean, Chinese society also values social status quite a bit. But nowadays,
being wealthy buys social status rather easily in China -- hence the almost
gold rush mentality in trying to get wealthy.

I guess what I'm saying is that social status and wealth are two
distinguishable things, and in some societies they correlate really well, but
in others they don't, and they also have different relative values.

In the US, you can't really buy social status through money directly -- being
an anonymous millionaire doesn't get you much more service or adulation than
what you're willing to pay for directly.

~~~
jacobush
No, you flaunt the markers. Bespoke suit, or super-huge gold jewellery and a
L-L-Lamborghini, depending on your clientele.

~~~
smallnamespace
Yeah but that's a big turnoff to a large portion of the American population.

Flaunting wealth -- much more acceptable in China.

~~~
jacobush
Got it.

------
patio11
This is not irrelevant to startups in Japan, either. If you attempt to fire
someone who you (unwisely) brought on as a full-time employee, and they
contest the firing, you will be brought before a local government functionary
to make your case for it.

"They're incompetent at their job." is insufficient grounds for firing. (You
need to add "And we spent substantial documented effort retraining them and
moving them to other positions, but we have not been able to find one where it
worked out.")

~~~
mikekchar
I have a tiny company (just me and my wife) in Japan and my accountant tells
me never to hire a full time employee. What's the startup culture like in
terms of hiring? Do people accept contract positions, or do you need to hire
them full time?

~~~
patio11
Your accountant gives advice very similar to the advice of my accountant and
the accountants of my friends.

Japan has, essentially, a bifurcated employment market [+]. There exist people
that accept contract positions; contract positions appear to be widely used
within e.g. Tokyo startups. There also exist people who would not countenance
a contract position.

One of the key hiring challenges in Japanese startups is finding folks who are
both a) productive and b) willing to participate in the half of the labor
market that people-the-system-views-as-productive do not normally participate
in. (One is not normally afforded huge flexibility in switching between these
systems.)

\+ Slightly more fractured than this suggests.

~~~
gommm
There's also the fact that people accepting contract positions are at a
significant disadvantage regarding banks if they want to get a loan to buy a
house. It's considered lower status to not be a seishain.

But, on the other hand, when it comes to Software Engineering, salaries for
contract positions tend to be higher and, in my experience, being a seishain
or being a contract worker has no bearing on the competence of the person.

~~~
Bartweiss
As a new (American) grad I briefly looked into working in Japan. The companies
I was interested in were posting for Americans specifically, but they were
still hiring people on as salarymen. The rates, even COLA-adjusted, were
shockingly low. Like, top-flight companies offering bottom 10% salaries in
American terms.

That whole experience has come to make way more sense as I've learned about
the contractor divide, and the expectation that salaried workers will "start
at the bottom".

~~~
mikekchar
Even at the top end, salaries in Japan are shockingly low AFAICT. Especially
if you come out here to the countryside, most programmers are working for
insurance companies, etc. I know people with 10 years of experience making in
the 3-4 million yen (just over $30-40K USD) range. It's one of the reasons I
do remote contracts.

------
elvinyung
Oh, huh. Interesting.

In the first season of Silicon Valley, there's a part where (spoilers) a main
character gets "unassigned" from a Google parody, and it's mentioned that it's
inspired by some Japanese management technique.

I didn't know that was _actually_ true.

~~~
fennecfoxen
This is also what happens to teachers in the New York City school system after
they've been caught out reading the newspaper while their students spend all
class gambling. They call it the "rubber room".

Technically these teachers are awaiting reassignment, pending arbitration.
This is very slow, and I understand that there is a backlog from a long period
of time where very little arbitration happened, because the school system was
not paying their arbitrators. (Also, they may have decentralized the rubber
room in recent years to inhibit visibility.)

~~~
davidlee1435
The article mentions that the practice was discontinued in 2010

------
wimagguc
Strong laws that aim to protect labour seem to end up being contra-productive.
I've seen it in Germany, for example, where it's pretty difficult to fire
full-time employees. Berlin startups therefore either force their workforce to
be self-employed, or, routinely hire people with a 6-months probationary
period just to fire them the week before.

~~~
bryanlarsen
History teaches us what happens without any labour protection, so that's not
an option.

But a viable alternative to labour protection is a strong welfare system.
That's the classic Denmark vs Germany comparison. Taxes are high in Denmark,
but it's easy to hire and fire somebody. Which hurts business more?

~~~
aianus
> History teaches us what happens without any labour protection, so that's not
> an option.

What, you become the richest, most powerful country in the world? (I think
America has the weakest labour laws in the developed world).

~~~
bryanlarsen
America became the richest, most powerful country before any country had
substantial labour protections.

~~~
ch4s3
> America became the richest, most powerful country

More accurately, this happened because every other power was laid to waste by
two successive world wars. You'd have been hard pressed to find a standing
factory in Germany, Britain, or Russia in June of 1945.

~~~
bryanlarsen
The manufacturing output of the US passed Britain to take first place in 1890.

[https://www.quora.com/Economic-History-At-what-point-did-
the...](https://www.quora.com/Economic-History-At-what-point-did-the-US-
become-the-biggest-economy-in-the-world)

~~~
Retric
Minor nitpick _1916, the year U.S. output overtook that of the entire British
empire._ And that was in the middle of WWI.
[http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/12/the...](http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/12/the-
real-story-of-how-america-became-an-economic-superpower/384034/)

Further, the US has had several boom and bust cycles people only really hear
about 'the great depression' but there have been plenty of major slumps in the
US economy for example around the Civil War. So, a nominal lead in good times
is not that meaningful.

So it was only during WWII that the US went from near parity to a massive and
sustained lead. And it did not take that long before we gave that up to either
China or the EU depending on how you want to slice it.

------
donquichotte
As a European, I am always amazed to hear about the agility in the US job
market. i.e. quitting/getting fired with < a week's notice, being used to a
3-6 month's notice. It's interesting to see that the other extreme also
exists.

~~~
inanutshellus
On the flip-side, it's described as a terrible, terrible risk to hire anyone
in a European country, because you're signing up for _so_ much responsibility
for them. You'd better _really_ need someone before you hire them. You'd
better _really_ vet them because getting rid of a bad egg is nigh impossible.
(Or so the narrative goes.)

~~~
J-dawg
In the UK I sometimes feel like we get the worst of both worlds.

There's a _perception_ that it's nigh impossible to fire someone and that jobs
are very secure, which leads to fairly conservative hiring policies and quite
low wages (in the tech sector anyway - definitely low relative to contracting
here or the equivalent job in the USA).

In reality, jobs really aren't that secure after all. I personally worked for
a rather cut-throat small company that fired at least 4 people during the
short time I worked there. They'd all worked there for less than a year. I
knew all of them personally, and none of them were terrible at their jobs or
really deserved to be fired. I'm convinced one of them was fired just because
his project came to an end and he was no longer required.

You can't make a claim for unfair dismissal until you've worked somewhere for
at least 2 years, so if you're fired before that time you've got very few
options legally.

I can't speak about after the 2 years has elapsed because I've got no
experience of that. Maybe then it really does become very difficult to fire
someone. But people move around more often these days, I'm sure a large
percentage of most employers' workforces are under the 2 year mark at any
time.

~~~
bitmapbrother
IBM and all of their massive "redundancy" layoffs are a clear indication of
how easy it is to get rid of people in the UK.

~~~
chimeracoder
> IBM and all of their massive "redundancy" layoffs are a clear indication of
> how easy it is to get rid of people in the UK.

No, it's an indication that a massive company with lots of resources is able
to cover its legal bases enough that it can lay off large numbers of people in
batches. That doesn't mean it's easy by any means.

------
SeanLuke
Very similar to the Rubber Rooms in various school districts around the US.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rubber_Room](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rubber_Room)

~~~
mc32
To note though, that's due to the strong unions in unionized school districts,
lest anyone think its a regular feature of the American labor market.

------
mc32
With an aging population, how can you simultaneously have too many workers? Or
how can you allow such misallocation of workers? These workers have a good 10
to 20 productive years left in them but instead they ate left to while away
time rather than have them be productive for another company which is
understaffed.

~~~
toyg
_> With an aging population, how can you simultaneously have too many
workers?_

Automation.

 _> how can you allow such misallocation of workers?_

Try telling a "sarariman" that from tomorrow he's supposed to be a janitor.
"Workers" are people, and over a certain age most people simply don't like
change, let alone change _for the worse_. It's not as simple as reallocating
bodies.

~~~
mc32
I understand the implications but at the same time simply whiling away time
unproductively has to take both a mental and physical toll. The companies are
essentially saying "we don't need you/want you, but we're obliged to keep you,
even though we'd rather not". How can you even socialize with productive
workers who likely see you as a kind of parasite (parasites having currency in
Japan as people who mot only don't contribute but take away).

------
bitmapbrother
>Mr. Tani’s managers at Sony are already upping the ante. Starting this month,
the company has ordered him to work 12-hour shifts on an assembly line at a
Sony plant in Toyosato, more than an hour’s drive away. He says he will
comply.

Now might be a good time to take that 54 month severance pay offer.

------
georgeecollins
I would love to be hired by Sony (even on commission) to figure out something
valuable for those forty holdouts in the story to do. There is probably
something you can do with that talent that is better than having them sit
around.

~~~
rwmj
Yup it's odd isn't it. I bet more than one of them has an idea for a Sony
product or other start up idea, and the rest of them have all the time in the
world to develop it -- on full pay, no less. And if they don't have the
skills, well they also have plenty of time to learn.

It also sounds to me like a management failure.

------
falcor84
A probably silly question from someone without any understanding of the
relevant laws: I'm assuming that it is ok to fire employees when a company
goes bankrupt, even when that company is fully owned by another company that
is still doing well. Would it be possible to create a new subsidiary for each
new employee?

The subsidiary's CEO (only employee) would need to generate revenue as
dictated by the company's chairman of the board, which would effectively be
the employee's direct manager.

I imagine there would be tons of complications, but wonder whether that could
work in theory.

~~~
whatnotests
This seems like a page right out of Catbert's book of management tricks.

------
witty_username
Labor regulations are counterproductive because by making firing harder they
make hiring harder.

~~~
andy_ppp
I do think it's a balancing act though - we are incredibly lucky in tech where
we can have infinite flexibility in what we do. If you are working at Walmart
I actually think reasonable protections should be provided.

~~~
witty_username
Why?

"Reasonable" protections unduly impose costs on companies and may cause
disemployment effects.

Now I know you'll say "companies are evil", but shareholders and banks loan to
companies. When companies make profit some people make a profit.

If you have noble goals of helping the poor, a NIT (negative income tax) which
transfers money to the poor would be more efficient.

~~~
andy_ppp
Sure, protect the disadvantaged is my only goal - it's definitely worth trying
your idea to do it.

------
rpeden
Sounds a bit like what John Sculley did to Steve Jobs.

------
emodendroket
Remember the Rubber Rooms in NYC schools?

------
Neliquat
I feel like I have worked with people in corporate who sought these situations
out. A no-work job was their goal, and boy did they work hard trying to
achieve it.

~~~
drakenot
I've always found it surprising how easy it is to find _yourself_ in a no-work
situation like this at a large corporation, without even trying!

Projects will end, people and managers will get shuffled around and suddenly
you have no direct work responsibilities for months and months. Sometimes
years if you were to let it go on like that.

It is something that sounds great, but if you have any drive at all it will
drive you crazy after a month or two. I'd hop on Hacker News only to find all
the links were already visited. I would try to learn some new technologies but
it didn't have the same impact that learning them out of necessity had.

Eventually you have to sound the alarm to people that you don't have work to
do, sometimes repeatedly, before they will 'fix' the problem by assigning you
somewhere else.

I honestly think that this is the default state that workers settle into at
many large companies. There are some small percentage of highly productive
workers doing a ton of work, and a lot of very low productivity workers making
up the rest of the ranks.

I've never worked at a startup, but one of the things that I think I would
find appealing about them is that there are so few people that everyone's
function would be important and that situations like the above would be
difficult to go unnoticed.

~~~
otikik
I did this for a Big Co for some months.

In retrospective, it was probably the best time I had in that company. That's
how I got back into programming after spending several years "consulting"
(sending emails, doing powerpoints and excel spreadsheets, doing meetings,
blegh), which was a very good way to get my startup up and running when I was
finally laid off.

The only bad part was when someone came looking for "someone unassigned".
These were really dull tasks which literally anyone could make, like moving
data from paper to spreadsheet.

Or that time when I had to "help" a this guy with a MS Access database that he
had been working on for weeks. It was such an atrocious thing. I remember
there was a column called "Money". Sometimes it had a number. Others it had a
currency name. I redid the whole thing in an afternoon, with Excel. But the
guy was someone's son and was impossible to let go.

So they let me go.

The severance package was great, a good safety net for my startup, so it was
ok at the end :)

------
fpig
I _almost_ automatically closed the tab because it looked like a paywall. Why
do I have to click "Show full article" to see the article on the page for that
article? O_O

~~~
0xcde4c3db
Depending on who you ask, it's one or more of:

1) So that the "free articles this month" counter doesn't decrement for
stories you don't actually read.

2) So that they get metrics on which articles people actually read vs. loading
in a tab and forgetting about.

3) Forcing an interaction manipulates your psychology so that you pay more
attention to the page, increasing engagement.

