Dentsu CEO resigns after overworked employee commits suicide

http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/29/news/ceo-resign-employee-suicide-dentsu/index.html

by wjossey • 10 years ago

159 151 10 years ago

money.cnn.com

That's sad, especially since most of the extra hours are busywork and peer pressure from what I've read.

What happens in Japan if you put in a simple 40-hour week, do good work, and then leave at the end of the day? I also understand their government makes it very difficult to fire employees. And I can't imagine they'd reassign you to watch the paint dry if you're actually doing good work. Would you mainly miss out on promotions?

Is it just a social thing, or is it economic? Since it's harder to fire people in Japan, there's a lot of risk to hiring a new employee. So maybe the culture helps weed out uncommitted people, which helps derisk hires? Or, to a certain extent, lets you get more productive hours out of them.

vezycash• 10 years ago

Is it just a social thing

The little I know about Japan is from Anime, books, articles and online comments.

In Japan, leaving before the boss is distasteful. Also, going home early instead of socializing after work is frowned upon even by one's spouse.

I've also read that there's no job hopping. Employee for life is still a thing there. And an ex-employer's comment is heavily weighted by prospective employers.

Additionally, loyalty is highly valued, probably more than ability.

This Wikipedia article is a good summary of Japanese work environment - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_work_environment

throwaway2016a5• 10 years ago

In Japan, leaving before the boss is distasteful

My personal management policy is I get in before and leave after all my employees incase they need me and to show them that I am there for/with them (within reason - if someone is putting a really late night I may leave first).

The idea of not leaving before the boss leaves is weird to me. I get higher pay and more stock options, why should I be leaving early when my team is working their butt's off?

Edit: I realize this could be taken as a ploy from me to get the team to work more hours. But I also don't shame employees for leaving before me. It's not a contest. If they get their work done they shouldn't feel guilty leaving at 5:00.

martin_henk• 10 years ago

I live and work in Japan since 2011. The most part of this time in larger companies. Afaik Dentsu takes or took huge pride in being an elitist salaryman operation. People joining them couldn't be totally unaware of this. Keyence is another place with a similar reputation. Although you'll find more places like this, it is not that common. I am pretty sure every country has companies like this.

Further, Japanese people work long hours. Some will due to peer pressure. Some will cause they have nobody waiting at home. In some workplaces your colleagues are like friends. So, they socialize a lot during work hours. I think there is no single reason why Japanese people work longer hours than Europeans for example.

I am convinced however, that on the average a Japanese employee takes a huge amount of pride from doing a good job. The point: How to judge if a job was executed well or not? I experience this not to be so easy mostly due to the Japanese style of communication, which leaves a lot of space for ambiguity. Maybe long work hours stem from this.

vivekd• 10 years ago

If the Japanese are working so much that some a literally working themselves to death - why is their economy so bad? My guess is that a lot of that time is getting used up with unnecessary busy work rather than actual productive labor.

pgz3• 10 years ago

Several people argue that working long hours will have a negative impact on productivity.

For example if you look at EU countries, the ones with the economy in worse conditions are those with longer working hours (Greece, Italy).

maverick_iceman• 10 years ago

Correlation doesn't imply causation. Maybe people are forced to work more because the economy is bad.

jeremiep• 10 years ago

I recently switched jobs and now work 35h/week instead of 40. I get a lot more done in those 35 hours now than I did previously in 40.

The worst productivity I ever had was in frantic overtime rushes at the end of projects. There's definitely a link between working hours and productivity.

matt_wulfeck2• 10 years ago

That's such a weak correlation. Greek is in a crisis because people are working too many hours? Do you honesty believe that?

visarga• 10 years ago

those with longer working hours (Greece, Italy).

I think it should make sense to have extended working hours in tourism, but it doesn't make sense in office work.

jupiter900003• 10 years ago

From what I've read/heard about this in Japan, your guess is correct.

roymurdock• 10 years ago

Consider a simple production function:

===

Y = zF(K,L)

Output = Total Factor Productivity * Function of (Capital, Labor)

===

Think of TFP as all the environmental variables that make up "technological dynamism" or the economy's technological infrastructure (horse -> steam -> coal -> oil, human capital/education, etc.) that increase productivity in fundamental but intangible ways, and that can only be calculated indirectly.

If you hold TFP (z) and Capital (K) constant, an increase in Labor (L) (total number of hours worked) should increase output.

If investment in capital is decreasing (which it currently is) and subsequently the stock of capital decreases; or, if the TFP is decreasing (which is currently is), an increased amount of labor is required to keep output constant.

Weak/declining output = slow/negative GDP growth = "bad economy"

The "Cobb-Douglas" output model takes this simple model one step further by embedding the output elasticities of labor and capital into the production function, allowing one to build in diminishing marginal returns. I.E. every hour of labor or unit of capital above a certain point produces less output than the previous hour/unit. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobb%E2%80%93Douglas_productio...

stale2002• 10 years ago

Why the downvotes?

This is the economic explanation for the diminishing marginal returns of labor.

jonknee• 10 years ago

Well that and they are rapidly aging which doesn't bode well for any economy.

johansch3• 10 years ago

South Korea went even crazier and stole their consumer electronics business.

(Both in terms of government subsidies and extreme working hours. And: contrary to the opinion of the united socialist workers of HN, extreme hours sometimes are sometimes actually needed in order to build something new, desirable - well before anyone else. The fact that "extreme hours" are also employed when that is not really the target does not really change things.)

oblio• 10 years ago

I'm not from the US and I'm definitely not socialist (had enough of that, thank you very much), but extreme hours has a specific role: crunch time. If you're in crunch time all the time, regardless of your field of work, something went terribly wrong somewhere.

cookiecaper4• 10 years ago

Of course. Oriental cultures place immense value on the concept of "face", that is, appearing adept, productive, and excellent in all things [0]. In the U.S., sometimes we think "it'd be a good idea to try to save face here" just as a sidenote, really. In Japan and China, "face" is a recognized thing with its own formalities and children are taught to avoid losing face even at significant personal cost. In such cultures, you can see how one guy pulling a bunch of overtime quickly escalates into forcing everyone else to do so too. This escalation is assumed so readily that this is just considered a given of the culture, as we read about in this thread.

[0] http://www.internationalman.com/articles/what-is-face-in-asi...

jpatokal• 10 years ago

Likewise, Caucasian cultures place immense value on signaling status by bloviating about things you barely know about on the Internets.

Somewhat less sarcastically, if you're going to attempt to apply "Oriental" concepts here, I'd go with wa here: there is a set order here and it's not the junior's role to disturb it.

unscaled• 10 years ago

China has a concept of face (面子 mianzi), but this concept is quite absent in Japanese culture, despite both of them being 'Oriental', and what you described right now will be quite baffling to a Japanese mind.

Sure, Japan has a strong concept of avoiding causing trouble to others, and of respecting your superior by waiting for them to leave, but that's not the main cause for overtime.

Excessive worktime (長時間労働) is a very hot topic right now in Japan and I've seen several surveys popping out in TV shows. Here are some I found online: https://jinjibu.jp/article/detl/manage/226/3/ http://www.jil.go.jp/institute/research/documents/research02...

All this surveys give more or less the same picture: the number one reason stated for working long hours is "Too much work to complete in normal working hours". "This type of job requires overtime by definition" and "I want to do my work properly" come second. Unlike Western tech companies, deadlines only come in the middle, and "Not wanting to leave earlier than my peers or my superior" comes dead last.

fmueller• 10 years ago

People have no time to spend the money.

novembermike• 10 years ago

Hours worked doesn't differentiate between the time I spend pressing the button on the widget machine and the time I spend hitting the widget machine with a baseball bat. It's not really a measure of work.

mrschwabe• 10 years ago

High taxation and high inflation are two main contributors IMO.

blakeyrat• 10 years ago

I "worked" 40-hour weeks at an insurance company with tons of process, paperwork, reliance on other teams with constrained resources, etc. for 4 months and accomplished nothing.

When I arrived the bug software had 40 open bugs. When I ended my contract, the bug software had 4 open bugs and 36 bugs awaiting QA resources to be assigned. I'm not exaggerating.

I've seen companies with departments that work 40 hour weeks, and accomplish pretty much nothing at all. For various reasons.

ryanSrich• 10 years ago

Their working conditions are horribly inefficient.

keithpeter2• 10 years ago

I gather that Japan has an ageing population and therefore issues with underemployment among older people. Spreading out the work among more people seems logical.

In some ways, I admire the French approach to work/life balance.

mikesickler• 10 years ago

Dentsu is exhibit A for what's wrong with the Japanese work environment. This isn't the first time they've been responsible for an employee's suicide through overwork. This young woman's tweets before her death are pretty revealing. References to her male superior telling her that she can't hack it because she's a woman, the toxic seniority system where you can't question those above you, 20+ hour days. Just awful.

Asooka2• 10 years ago

How long until people just start passively disobeying? I mean, if the choice is death by overwork or loss of career (maybe ending in death due to homelessness)...

labster2• 10 years ago

It's already happening. There's a large population of NEETs who have withdrawn from the work force.

rjeli• 10 years ago

Great blog post here recently on Japanese work culture: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan/

"Traditionally, salarymen (and they are, by the way, mostly men) are hired into a particular company late in university and stay at that company or its affiliates until they retire."

"The employee hereby promises the company: Your first obligation, in all things, will be to your company. You will work incredibly hard (90+ hour weeks barely even occasion comment) on their behalf."

"Salarymen work large amounts of overtime, although much of it is for appearance’s sake rather than because it actually accomplishes more productive work. Depending on one’s company, this overtime may be compensated or “service overtime” — “service” in Japanese means “thrown in for free in the hopes of gaining one’s further custom”, so your favorite restaurant might throw in a “service” desert once in a while or you might do 8 hours of “service” overtime six nights a week for 15 years."

The whole post is a great read that comes from a first-hand experience.

gragas• 10 years ago

Salarymen work large amounts of overtime, although much of it is for appearance’s sake

That's just stupid. It makes me wonder, though: is the work culture similar for ex-patriots working in Japan?

vtange2• 10 years ago

Reminds me of some college cultures actually. In architecture school you were almost expected to pull all-nighters for the sake of "being a dedicated architecture student". It is like hazing of some sort.

msbarnett2• 10 years ago

> Salarymen work large amounts of overtime, although much of it is for appearance’s sake
That's just stupid.

That's overtime. Almost all overtime, even in the US, is as much about the appearance of working hard rather than any real gains in productivity.

I've lost count of the number of times I've been involved with or seen a startup that "crushes code 100 hours a week because we're out to win, man", with most of those late nights spent with a room full of people online shopping or on HN.

jupiter900003• 10 years ago

Talking with recruiters there it sounded like it depends on the company more than the employee (traditional Japanese companies expect more 'loyalty'/hours than young and/or foreign-founded companies). However I've also heard that foreigners can 'get away' with more, whatever that means.

viral0072• 10 years ago

Generally Japanese companies will send their liaison to the host country and having experienced this first hand I can say that liasions are expected to be available throughout the Japan day time.

hkmurakami4• 10 years ago

If you are seen as being "Japanese" you are expected to conform. If you are seen as a foreigner, you get a pass.

If you ever find yourself working in Japan, use your foreignness to an advantage!

prodmerc2• 10 years ago

Ex-patriots

Expatriates.

jacalata• 10 years ago

A friend told me about their time in a New York finance company, where people showed up to the office on Saturday and watched TV on their computer because even if there wasn't any work to do you had to be seen putting the time in.

gleenn• 10 years ago

I worked in Japan for a year at a 100 person startup (all Japanese people except for me). Anecdotally, people did seem to work a lot of hours but it was also felt like one of the most laid back environments in a way. It seemed like working all those hours allowed them to not be rushed. They were also pretty successful, and had as one of their goals to be like a "San Francisco startup" which may have made them a bit more of an exception instead of the rule. Also I worked primarily in SF at a lot of startups so that made it an easier transition for me.

I definitely saw salarymen on trains falling asleep or all heading out in packs to bars though, so I have no doubts about there being a very hard-working middle-class that also has extra-office obligations.

greggman2• 10 years ago

Expats often have "I'm not Japanese" as an excuse and a lower expectation of conformance.

To be clear this is not just a company issue it's a cultural issue. If the company does not have a policy of "go home at 6pm" the default culture everyone expects is "work late", especially for men.

nihonde• 10 years ago

As a former Big Law lawyer, I can assure you it's currently the case in America, too.

viral0072• 10 years ago

After visiting Japan on several occasions for company related work, I can confirm this is true. However, there are labor laws that prevent certain types of workers from working overtime or even the weekends. However, the labor laws do not seem to apply to the management. Unclear on how the law works, but these were my observations.

hkmurakami4• 10 years ago

Yes at some companies you start as a member of the union as a junior employee (even if you're an engineer or finance person), and after you're promoted to a certain level, you're part of management and are no longer part of the union.

hkmurakami4• 10 years ago

One of my interview questions as a new grad was "are you going to work here until retirement?" ;)

kilroy123• 10 years ago

I'm a bit conflicted by this...

My American brain tells me this is an insane way to live. No work life balance. It's horrible inefficient, as you can't downsize, or compete international like this. You're forced to hangout with coworkers.

However, having this long term stability with work is something that is sorely missed in the US. A pension? Job for life?

No one gets these things anymore.

madeofpalk3• 10 years ago

I'm young (24), so I guess I'm coming from a different mindset (entitled millennial here!), but the thought of working at a single place for life gives me nightmares.

Sure, companies 'evolve' (for better or worse) and theoretically your job changes as you climb the ladder, but surely you job learning and loving work if you do the same thing for 40+ years?

I guess this is the difference between people who see work as an obligation vs an opportunity.

shas3• 10 years ago

Many large company jobs are de facto jobs-for-life. But things sometimes get boring mid-way into careers.

greggman2• 10 years ago

They don't get them in Japan either as companies go out of business.

YokoZar• 10 years ago

If you have a 401k benefit, you have a portable pension that you can take with you from job to job -- roll it into an individual retirement account when you're done.

If you don't have a 401k benefit, you can fund an IRA yourself.

Many folks are learning the hard way that you really don't want to bet your retirement on a single company remaining both solvent and honest for the next 70 years.

binarymax• 10 years ago

Do I read this right, 105 hours of overtime implying a 145 hour work week (if accounting for a regular 40 hour week)?

marsrover• 10 years ago

105 hours of overtime in the month

Asooka2• 10 years ago

Over one whole month, so that's more like 61 hours per week. Which, judging by the rest of the comments in this thread, isn't unexpected for a Japanese white collar worker.

noarchy• 10 years ago

Over one whole month, so that's more like 61 hours per week.

How many of us know people in North America who are putting in those kinds of hours? You know, gotta "go the extra mile" for the startup, and all.

madengr• 10 years ago

Hell, I spent the month of December on a "karoshi" project with types of hours. Fuck that! I took two week off to recover. At least they paid me overtime for the hours between 45 and 60, which is highly unusual.

sologoub2• 10 years ago

For context, from the article: "Takahashi had clocked about 105 hours of overtime in the month leading up to her death, authorities found."

Japan has a 40 hour work week and a max of overtime a person can volunteer for. In a month this limit is an additional 45 hours. An employee can agree to more overtime but the source refers to some labor safeguards that are supposed to kick in: https://www.jetro.go.jp/en/invest/setting_up/laws/section4/p...

So in essence, she worked more than double the allowed overtime (around 65 hours per week total work time).

arkitaip• 10 years ago

Many Japanese companies pressure their employees to report significantly less hours than they actually work. So not only will they work you to death, they are stealing money from you along the way.

sologoub2• 10 years ago

Thanks! Article definitely fails to mention this and it's an important angle to understand.

WhitneyLand• 10 years ago

How does this reconcile with the difficulty of firing people? I've heard they have rooms where people just come in and watch tv all day because a company doesn't want to fire them.

So how can people feel a need to work 100hrs?

unsignedint5• 10 years ago

Lack of career mobility has been cited nunerous times of why their is this problem exists to begin with.

It is very difficult if not impossible to move one company to other mid-career, especially past certain age (job listing in Japan may can list upper age limit), as Japanese hires are very focus on graduates on given year.

One reason is because it is not easy to fire people, one wouldn't find opportinities elsewhere, so they are often forced to put up with their situations without much controls.

People who get sent to those "do nothing" room (they call it many ways to sounds politically correct, things like "career development department") are those company wishes to fire. There are scandals on these time to time, but instead of letting them watch TV all day it usually consists of meaningless tasks or simply forbidding to do anything to force them quit voluntary, but these are certainly newsworthy extremes.

I will omit reasons for long hours as these are discussed elsewhere in other threads.

joe563323• 10 years ago

No wonder Japan's birth rate is falling. Who in their sane mind would want their children's to have a difficult life. High time for Universal Basic Income.

swiley• 10 years ago

Japan has a serious problem that would prevent that: who would pay? They already don't have enough to pay for current subsidies.

padator• 10 years ago

Suicide seems a bit extreme. Could she not just quit? Also everyday people commit suicide. Why do we blame CEOs for that?

madeofpalk3• 10 years ago

You're right! Suicide is very extreme. That's kind of the problem that's being discussed.

dylz• 10 years ago

And never have another job again?

iopq4• 10 years ago

And? Is that any reason to kill yourself?

shard972• 10 years ago

This is an interesting difference compared to Denstu Aegis (which I worked for) which has been pushing from the top a lot of "Work-Life balance" principles.

Ronin354• 10 years ago

Looks like Japan might be the best place to start a company. People never quit, work long hours, does not have life outside work.

markonen• 10 years ago

I filmed this clip of the Dentsu HQ almost 10 years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX6--sQtsA

In it, you see how all the lights automatically turn off at 10 PM. You can judge how many offices still have workers in them by the lights being turned back on.

hacker_9• 10 years ago

Kind of sad people think they have to work past 10 PM, just to bump up their company image and bosses bonuses. This is what slave labour looks like in the 21 century.

Dentsu CEO resigns after overworked employee commits suicide

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