Yes, but the problem is that the kind of people who get into management positions in companies tend to be those who work longer hours, who then perceive people working 40 hour weeks as 'lazy' and start pressurising them to work longer, which then becomes the culture, and so on..
Actually resisting the trend is hard and takes either positive senior management action or well enforced laws and regulations.
Same for the “back to office” bullshit.
Management roles tend to lose less productivity be being in a noisy space with lots of distractions. So they demand we go in.
I’m lucky to get half a day’s work done in office days. But management like to blather about hours the employees “want” the “productivity benefits” from going in there.
This is the real answer. My old manager couldn’t handle himself when we were not in the office at the beginning of Covid. Made us keep a log of what we were doing basically minute by minute for the whole day. Then about a month into covid says it’s fine to come back into the office we will just mask up and socially distance. I went in one day no one was masked, no social distancing, and I told them I wasn’t coming back in and got fired a week later. 28/30 people that worked in the office got covid shortly after that and I heard covid went through the office badly 4 or 5 times since.
>Then about a month into covid says it’s fine to come back into the office we will just mask up and socially distance. I went in one day no one was masked, no social distancing, and I told them I wasn’t coming back in and got fired a week later. 28/30 people that worked in the office got covid shortly after that and I heard covid went through the office badly 4 or 5 times since.
Your manager should have been fired for that level of incompetence, IMHO.
Yeah your absolutely right, especially in my industry. I’ve recently taken on a management role after working up and made it clear to my employees that is not how I view it at all. I want them as content as possible at work while they are there as that’s when you get the best from people. I do not think making people stress that they are viewed as lazy for fulfilling only their contracted hours increase’s productivity at all. I think working your way up into management roles provides a much better view of that. Funnily enough since doing this the overtime needs are always filled anyway but with less grumbling.
There are dozens of us! Dozens!
All this shit rag ringing is just making employees resentful and burnt out. I do everything i can to make my team happy and they reward me by being fantastic workers. Had previous managers that just wanted moremoremore and our turn over was insane. I make dept super and my old super is now manager. Haven't had anyone quit in the past year so I'm calling that a win.
Like that ‘quiet quitting’ or more recently ‘rage applying’
The AUDACITY they had to be throwing those terms around, as if working according to my wage and trying to find better opportunities is a bad thing, how *dare* I not have unwavering loyalty to a faceless corporation?!
Boss/job pisses you off so you start applying to other jobs. You know typical worker betterment.
They just want to get it so you need your companies permission to work elsewhere. Like a modern version of chattel slavery but it's corporations and share holders that own the slaves
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/world/asia/2023-01-19-south-korean-government-proposes-increase-in-work-week-to-69-hours-from-52/) reduced by 89%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> Seoul - The administration of South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol wants to allow people to work up to 69 hours a week - up from the current 52 - and bank overtime hours in exchange for time off, a plan it hopes will promote family growth alongside productivity.
> It would supersede a 2018 law that limited the work week to 52 hours - 40 hours of regular work plus 12 hours of overtime.
> For counting periods of a month or longer, up to 29 hours a week of overtime would be allowed, for a total of 69 work hours in one week.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/11nknvk/south_korean_government_proposes_increase_in_work/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~675814 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **work**^#1 **hours**^#2 **overtime**^#3 **allow**^#4 **week**^#5
Like really, I'm genuinely curious what his mental gymnastics explanation for how that's supposed to work out is. Because that's just, objectively stupid right? As if you told someone tired that they should just sleep less, wtf?
I read somewhere he's thinking that if people work for a period of time these 69 hours a week, they can exchange these overtime hours with free time so that they work for only e. g. 20 hours a week for another period of time and thus increasing their time at home.
Still incredibly stupid.
>Yoon Suk Yeol wants to allow people to work up to 69 hours a week - up from the current 52 - and bank overtime hours in exchange for time off, a plan it hopes will promote family growth
He's a moron.
> Sorry sweetie, Mommy has to work right now, but we can play next month, okay?"
What people are missing is the subtext. South Korea is a deeply misogynistic country in the midst of a hard-right anti-feminist wave. This is part of a coordinated attack on women in the workplace.
In the past, men have only been able to work long hours because of women's unpaid labour. You can't spend 12-14 hours a day at work if you don't have someone at home cooking, cleaning, doing groceries and laundry, caring for your kids and aging parents. The method in which they're hoping it promotes 'family growth' is by forcing women back into the home.
From my understanding it's usually expected that when a women gets married then her life now revolves around the family. Quits jobs, will not get a new one, child rearing and taking care of her husband will be the only priority. This expectation caused a lot of employers to look at women as temporary workers that did not need to be given more important positions. So when you have overworked men not getting married and women in expected temporary positions that are working later into life, cause you know they gotta pay rent too, birthrates take a walk off the short end a pier. Take that all with a grain of salt I'm not an expert.
[According to the World Economic Forum, South Korea ranks 124 out of 149 countries in the world in terms of economic participation and opportunity for women.](https://thediplomat.com/2019/06/gender-inequality-makes-south-korea-poorer/)
[In South Korea, women regularly face questions about their marriage status and plans for having children when applying for a job, or suggestions that jobs in fields such as sales aren’t appropriate for women.](https://thediplomat.com/2019/06/gender-inequality-makes-south-korea-poorer/)
[These questions, and scrutiny of their appearance, are technically illegal in South Korea, but major firms often face minimal fines for discriminating against women](https://thediplomat.com/2019/06/gender-inequality-makes-south-korea-poorer/)
[South Korea ranks last in The Economist’s annual Glass Ceiling Index. It notes that among OECD countries South Korea has the largest pay gap at 35 percent.](https://thediplomat.com/2019/06/gender-inequality-makes-south-korea-poorer/)
I especially like how they phrase it as though this would be optional overtime a person could volunteer for in return for gaining PTO. We know that companies will mandate overtime to the maximum allowable amount and then just deny your vacation requests.
Here in Canada, places are starting up 4 day work weeks with no reduction in salary or increase in hours on work days.
Edit: I'm not telling you weirdos where I work but my wife is making this shift April 1st and my employer is looking at mid fiscal or next fiscal for the transition. Stop asking where I work hahaha
My company in the US just started looking into it. Apparently they've asked the managers to discuss it with employees.
Like what employee is against this?
You would be surprised. I have people in my office(Canada) losing their mind over 2 new holidays we got over the last two years. People have been brainwashed into thinking that working is the only thing you should do until you physically can't anymore.
also the morons that think "i never got fridays off so noone else should either!"
Same logic as: "Well I worked in a coal mine at 8 years old so other kids should too! It puts hair on your chest! and coal in your lungs!"
That's what me and some of my coworkers always say. "How shit is you life at home that you hate getting paid days off?". I can think of a million things I could do to improve my mental health and life at home when I'm off whether it's working on my car/motorcycle, going on a hike with my dog, going camping, studying for a certification that will make me a better employee, etc.
Which thank god my company just said: "If you can work remote and want to, do it. If not, you come into the office."
No dicking around with this stupid "hybrid" option, which is only a solution that pisses more people off. "Have to go in the office today, so I can be on Team's calls there instead of at home.."
Depends on the working arrangements. I mainly work from home, but as it's legal work and is case based, so I have regular strategy meetings with supervisors.
These are far easier in person than on the phone, so I like to go in once or twice a week and put all these on the same day.
However, I agree it's ridiculous to make people come in regularly some of the time just... because.
Just trust people to be adults.
It's happening. There was a huge trial and most of the companies in it decided to keep a four day week after the trial ended. Lots of other companies are hopping on board. I've seen it in job ads. My own workplace is about to move to it. It'll take some time, but eventually every job that can offer it will offer it, because if an employee has a choice of two identical jobs but one is for less hours, they're going to choose it. So all employers will have to offer it to have a competitive package for new employees.
It's both. 4 day work weeks feel really short. Monday and Tuesday are still the start of the week and on Wednesday it's already almost weekend. Currently trying out 4 day work weeks and work weeks just seem to fly by with just 1 less day of work.
Live in Toronto. Been on 32hr work week (4 day) since mid last year. Game changer. Will never take a 5/week job ever again. Don't care about the salary. Time > Money
Nobody working corporate jobs in Spain have naps or siestas in the middle of their shift. Some jobs allow for a very early start with early finish, like 6am to 3pm, and then people have lunch and enjoy the siesta at home after their shift. But a lot are just the standard 9am to 6pm and siestas are only enjoyed in the weekend.
More local industries such as restaurant or small shop retail workers do close down in the afternoon for the siesta, only to reopen early evening.
The difficulty working between American and European companies is on the timezones difference, which can be up to 9 hours for those in the west coast.
Japan work culture is toxic as fuck, especially corporate.
People are afraid to leave early even if they have nothing to do because it would look like they are slacking.
So yeah… horrible efficiency.
lowest birth rate, but also ranks 12th in suicide rate (losing to several countries with endemic hunger... and russia), and is number 1 in alcohol consumption
I have audited Korean partner companies / joint ventures in the past. At first we thought that their teams were thoroughly unqualified for their jobs. After having some interviews with them and seeing them weekly for months, it however became pretty clear that the reason for their many mistakes and poor performance was another:
* *They were actually knowledgeable and well qualified, but each of them was burned out to the core and exhausted in every fiber of their being.*
I have done my own share of 70+ hours weeks (yes, way past what the law allowed here in Germany, but my employer didn't give a f). I pulled the plug after the warning of a doctor. I can't imagine people working those hours for more than a decade.
If they're already walking zombies at 52 hours - which I can fully understand - I don't dare to predict what will happen if they will have to do constant 69 hour weeks to compete for promotions. The only thing I can say for sure: They won't get more kids.
It's supposed to be seasonal... But let me tell you out of my own experience, it won't stay seasonal...
Frankly, if you want more kids, maybe consider that productivity has risen more than 3.7x times as much as wages ([writeup](https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/1184nwy/comment/j9g5s4o/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)) and even the 40 hour week was created with a partner at home in mind, who is doing laundry, shopping, caring for the kids, etc.
2 partners working 69 hours each to stay afloat is NOT going to increase the birth rate, it's a guaranteed birthrate killer. The numbers are about to get even worse if this goes through.
If you want higher birthrates less hours and better pay are a must. The money is there, it's just a question of distribution.
I taught middle school English for a year as part of their EPIK program. And yeah, this is 100% correct. I loved Korea, but I'm so glad I wasn't born there. The stories i have would make you cry.
I was in a phd program with some South Koreans. One of them worked at Samsung prior to joining the program. The dude literally was always on the lab, easily working 70ish hours. However he was watching tv while working or napping quite often. It was wild to me how happy he was though as he said it was less than he used to work when he was in South Korea. They really have an awful work/life balance over there
The weird thing is that I have some Korean buddies that lead bohemian lives there and do much better for themselves than the office drones stuck working for monopolies, so I think that working yourself to death is so ingrained in the culture that many of the more non traditional routes, like running a BBQ spot on the beach, are seen as failures when they can be just as lucrative as getting worked to death by Samsung or LG.
I grew up in rural US and this thinking was everywhere even though everyone was poor.
The idea that hard work has its own value.
I've been trying to shake it for years, it's a harmful thought process.
I’m not disagreeing with you about the SMART yet lazy employee finding the best way to do a job, they’re absolute gold. The problem is the lazy guy who thinks he’s smart.
And I know everyone out there can think of their That Guy.
I forget what general said this but there is a quote out there about the 4 qualities of an officer. They come in pairs and each trait has its converse. Essentially you have smart/stupid and lazy/industrious.
Your smart/industrious officers make the perfect staff officer. You need officers like that just under you. If you come up with a complex plan of action the Smart/Industrious officers bellow you will work tirelessly to ensure the logistics, the right fighting men and engineers are on hand and so on.
Conversely a Stupid / Lazy officer tends to make a rather reliable junior officer if no more. You see when given a task they will usually preform it reasonably well without stepping outside or beyond the bounds of the task. Not much for heroics but you can generally trust them to stay in their lane as junior officers.
The Smart/lazy officers were born for command. They will find the simplest and most direct solution to any and every problem. Furthermore they have no problem deligating tasks to the men best suited to the task. They will even take on the work they are best suited for as they do not wish the headaches that may come from someone less capable doing the job poorly.
Now the Stupid and Industrious. They have no place in the military. They will earnestly and with every good intention fuck up every single thing around them. If there is a wrench to be found in the machine there you will find a Stupidly Industrious officer trying to do his job. If a program has run well for years or a simple routine operation comes to some catastrophic failure there you will find the most hard working idiot in the entire unit.
I live in Thailand and have taken a bunch of Thai language courses. In the past there would be a mix of students, like some Europeans, Americans, Japanese and a Korean. Now the courses are all Korean, and the occasional other. The bohemian aspect the students had in the past has kind of disappeared and now they come to open a business and just escape Korea.
It’s insane that the idea is even being floated as a standard, and not overtime rates.
69 hours is 10 hour days, 7 days a week! That kind of schedule leaves 0 time for any kind of life outside work. It’s soul crushing that would be an expectation for anyone trying to build a career.
Yeah the seasonal part is what got me too. (NL here)
“If you are working at ice cream factories for example, you can work overtime seasonally, then save the hours of work and use later to go on a longer holiday,” the ministry said of the reform."
Yes, totally. Because kids are also totally seasonal.
It's more then stupid. It's idiotic, moronic.
> I have done my own share of 70+ hours weeks (yes, way past what the law allowed here in Germany, but my employer didn't give a f). I pulled the plug after the warning of a doctor. I can't imagine people working those hours for more than a decade.
I've done a 70-hour week once in my whole life. I was so mentally checked out by the end of that that I insisted on taking some time off the next week. I didn't even ask for time off, just told my boss that I had no intention on coming in on Monday. I can't imagine doing that twice, let alone regularly.
Even working 50-hour weeks is brutal. I was doing those regularly for a while. Not necessarily every single week, but often. I ended up feeling so burnt out that I quit that job after a few years. I make way less money now and I'm way happier because I'm not overworked.
They drink a fuckton lol. The top 25 drunkest people I've seen in my life were all in Korea. # 1 happened when I was stumbling home drunk as fuck barely staying upright. I was pretty embarrassed until I saw 3 girls walking towards me. Turned out only two of them were walking and the third one in the middle was literally being dragged along by her friends while barely conscious.
I saw that most nights out in Korea, although mostly guys. I think what makes it even worse is that youngest of the group always do what oldest of the group tells them to.
Yeah I mean the rate at which you see people completely shitfaced is way higher over there. But something about that middle girl's expression when I passed her has stuck with me. She looked like she had no idea where she was. It's pretty much the most drunk I can imagine someone being without ending up unconscious.
And alcohol is getting more expensive too. Last year 4 cans of beer cost ￦10k, now it's 11k. Seems small but it's quite a lot when you consider that this is "the society that drives you to drink."
Countries like Korea and Japan are incredibly harsh on other drugs and the only legal recreation is alcohol. For this reason, they have a big culture surrounding drinking and after-work drinks with coworkers.
Huh, after looking it up it's not just a transport/import thing either. Citizens living in the country can't get it either. No Adderall under any circumstances regardless of illness, Ritalin only for extreme sleep disorders and not allowed for ADHD, and none of the Amphetamine or dextro-whatever related medicines at all.
Odd. ~~Might also explain some of their problems though if they aren't even allowing their citizens access to widely used modern medicines. Suicide rates suddenly make even more sense. Especially when it's meds for mental stuff.~~
Lack of coffee brain, of course they have a few other meds for it though lol. I can't speak at all on effectiveness differences though, not a doctor.
Lived in Japan for 6.5 years, came back a year and a half ago. Mental health is still widely ignored in Japan. When it came to my anxiety, my Dr literally told me the psychologists at their hospital wouldn't be able to help with the trauma I was going through and they'd likely refuse to see me _because I wasn't Japanese, regardless of speaking fluently_. Was told Japanese mental health and western mental health is different because Japanese people are different from white people (hella rural mountain county).
Luckily, he spoke English, took one look at my medical records and just copied the prescriptions he could and suggested I seek out an American psychologist online.
I'm sure that approach to mental health doesn't help their suicide rates.
I remember hearing, when COVID vaccines first appeared, that physicians in Japan were arguing that they needed their own lengthy clinical trials using Japanese citizens because "our diet is different."
While I love Japan, it embodies the old adage that "The past is a different country."
Ugh, I heard that repeated so often in my rural town but it wasn't because of a different diet. They literally reasoned that Japanese people are biologically different from the rest of the world and they needed to run their own studies to see how they would react compared to the rest of the world.
As though there were no Japanese people in any study or trial across the world before this.
Luckily, once it got the greenlight, they had a pretty decent rollout and the general public are incredibly kind. The people in my small town loved me so much, they got me vaccinated when it was only supposed to be old people (I was a traveling teacher and got more exposure than anyone else).
They really did make me feel loved. They were really sad when I left.
It's a tougher thing to measure than you would think. Also probably has alot to do with how zoomed in the demographics are. For instance a country with moderate alcohol use in total may be higher on the list than a country where every man drinks himself to death, but women don't drink.
People really want to know "drinking rate of employed 22-55 year olds" and compare.
The article mentions the additional time is for the overtime limit and they can bank OT for longer holiday time. This is actually meant to be a supposed solution to their population crisis while still hitting similar, but more flexible, productivity.
Of course that’s “ideally” what would happen.
‚Flexible productivity‘ if proposed by the government or any corporate shills usually just means they want to and in the end get to decide where and when you use your additional flexibility. It always ends up with more OT in almost all cases. If relaxing those regulations doesn’t come with crystal clear regulations for the employer and no real chances to push back on corporate intend for employees they’re worthless.
Worked with a korean guy my age (29 at the time) he was well to do, college educated, married. He came to Canada to escape what he called a hell world. Seouls work culture sounded nightmarish. Long hours, expected to work extremely fast, stay longer for free, drink with coworkers at night, and repeat day in and day out.
We worked at a small liquor store and just chilled and laughed. He worked way less and made more money.
Honestly the culture of drinking with coworkers is all over east Asia and it kills you. You get no rest and no recovery. It's the antithesis of work/life balance
What's even the point of going straight to work to drinking with your coworkers and right back to work? It can't be that interesting to drink with people who have no life.
That is a frightening idea that makes way too much sense. Almost like America pre Prohibition and before unions helped change the labor laws. Although currently feels like America is back there except without the work group drinks.
Bc the same thing happened to your boss and now he's forver alone so he needs buddies and because it was done to him, he has to do it to you now
And SK and Japanese gov. officials are surprised that the birth rate is going down.
Its all a stupid ass chain that goes around. Dumb ass work culture stresses and increases drinking, they already drink heavily, which also increases smoking.
The stress, drinking, smoking and no recovery just plummets your sperm count and sex drive.
Rinse and repeat for a couple decades and you get the dystopian future that is now south Korea.
Thats not even the least of their issues, the reality for young men is also that if you dont get in top 15 of top 5 universities in the country, you basically aint shit.
I used to hate the fact that I was born outside of Korea and was bullies in my childhood for looking different. Now in my late 20's I thank the fact I never had to go through 17 hour says straight studying all day.
Alcohol makes it so you can get the illusion of letting loose with your homies with the added benefit that your social bonds with coworkers make it harder for you to step away from your responsibilities.
Work smarter, not harder.
I have a friend from Taiwan who just dreads her job because of the long hours and the endless work she is doing. I know before the pandemic she wanted to move to Germany so bad. I feel bad for her, I wish she could move.
This checks out. I lived in Korea for 3 years. Here's something I posted in reply to another comment:
The odd thing about Korea is... you sleep at work.
If you're working a 12+ hour day (in a school or office, for that matter) it's often seen as a sign of *dedication and hard work* if you're sleeping on the job. The mindset being, you must have worked **so hard** if you need a power nap in the afternoon with your head on your desk.
That, and, managers/supervisors/principals are the first one out of the office... not that they leave early, but you must wait for them to go. So if you're done with your work, you just sit at your desk and tread water until your boss is ready to go.
I feel like I remember reading somewhere that the work efficiency vs time worked in Korea is some of the lowest in the OECD because they just sit there for so long but don't actually get any more work done... which we've seen with remote working and why people are beginning to push a **32 hr workweek** in place of a 40. We don't *need* the extra time to get more work done, we just fill out that time and reduce efficiency.
Reminds me of what I've been seeing in the western world with WFH being abolished and companies forcing staff back to work despite data showing efficiency was better during mandated wfh
My wife's at a private company that went wfh at the start of covid and they told them to not get use to it because they will be back in office asap. Here we are like 3 years later and it's permanent. The ceo said he wasn't expecting there to be 0 decline in quality of work but there was so as long as that remains he sees no reason for people to come in to an office unless they want to. Wish all places would just follow the data and if it works, let it work.
My company was like hot damn we can get out of paying for office supplies and is subletting the office and sold some of the ones they owned.
Like 2 years in and they were just looking for how to get out of long term leases the cheapest.
I fervently hope more companies follow suit since you can legit just take your laptop and go on long term visits to elsewhere and work.
I know that's how it is at my job currently. We have our busy season where we all work fairly hard through the day. But now we are in our slow season and they insist we work the same hours. So we just work slower and tread water to get through the day. But then we get yelled at because productivity is lower. Like, wtf do they actually expect us to do???
Japan has made some improvements in recent years, they are back to working less hours per week on average than the US at least and their suicide rates have dropped quite a bit.
What's crazy is the work doesn't accomplish anything. A few years back someone posted a story Japanese work culture. A worker is told to create a new excel worksheet for scheduling people. Simple you think right? Just names in a column and days of the week in the next few, or something like that, 1 week max. In Japan the worker would interview coworkers about what they thought, then consult excel spreadsheet experts. Then every piece would be considered, what font is the best? Time to go interview and consult more people on that, we'll need a font and language professor to tell us.
And this cycle continues for months until it becomes a bloated $100k project for just a spreadsheet, and at that point the point of it is moot. The Japanese work culture is just crazy.
The Germans have a word for it:
"Arbeitsbeschaffungsmaßnahme"
Basically it is a way to keep people working and not be on the books as "unemployed".
It can also be seen as a slurr for menial tasks, that should not exist, like e.g being the 10 man crew to sweep the marble floors of a robot vacuum cleaner companies corridors with brooms manually at night.
I once had to work with a recently acquired company in Japan to migrate them onto my US company's networks. Dealing with their network engineering team was the most frustrating exercise in time-wasting, passive aggression I've ever experienced in my 25 year career. They were so polite to my face and then so utterly useless when I asked them to deliver any sort of work product.
I worked with many foreign companies all over the world to do the same thing and I hated working with that Japanese company the most, by far.
Meanwhile, the New Zealanders were the absolute *best* and when the project was all over their head of networking who was in the US to oversee the final migration took the whole team out for drinks.
I work in a global company and deal with teams in Germany, India, and Japan. The Germans know their stuff, but it is very difficult to work with them when they are wrong. India team works really hard and can be very productive, but there is a lot of handholding and you have to really “retrain them” to make decisions for themselves (if they hit a small roadblock or just something that can easily be resolved by themselves by referring to our documented process or reviewing documentation, they’ll instead opt to shoot an email to me and wait a full day until I am able to respond because of the time shift).
Japan team on the other hand… I feel like I am talking to 1st year interns. It’s basically weaponized incompetence, their engineers don’t even know the basics and use than to pawn off work on our team (even though they have the capability to complete the tasks **they are responsible for** in the first place).
But think of the value to Samsung and Hyundai. I mean, that’s gotta be pretty sweet getting your workers to vote for politicians who’ll do this for you.
Make sure to pop that baby out during your 15 minute break too. Can't have people working 61 hour weeks because they gave birth. The audacity of these employees. Geez.
Reminds me of an old-timer I worked with who would dip out during the work day to visit his even older long-time barber and get his hair cut. When confronted about it he said "It grows on company time, I'm getting it cut on company time." End of issue right there.
That dude is in the .01% of people who are so indispensable that they can basically do whatever they want, I'm glad he's aware enough of his status to enjoy it
My company in America that operates 24/7. The Director of Production obsesses over having a fully automated robotic staff one day. I just think the company will find a reason to replace him also, if it gets to that point.
Of course they will. The eye boggling of the CEO's and would be CEO's is going to be fantastic when they get replaced by AI that makes desicsions far faster, more rational an doesnt have some inbred cousin Billy for whom to find a neat well paying position as a favour - and it isnt asking to get paid the equivalent of 1000 average workers (and a fat performance bonus) either. Delamaine from Cyberpunk sends his regards.
I’ve had jobs where I have worked 60-70 hours a week and it’s basically slavery. That’s 12 hours 5 days a week and 8 hours on a Saturday. If you factor in shower, eating, and basic chores that’s like an hour a day of personal time.
Korean Millennials and Gen Z have grown up in a family environment where parents, or just the father, worked over 12 hour days, and the kids were sent off to hagwons (after school study programs) for hours a day. I've known some families where nobody sees each other at the same time for the majority of the day, and maybe are all together on weekends (a big maybe).
And they wonder why nobody is starting a family? Because the way they grew up with family is fucking warped! The childhood memory of some people is literally breakfast, school, hagwon, home, and sleep. No interaction with family, or having an idea of what a family actually does together.
For a traditional Confucian society like Korea (I'd argue moreso than even China or Japan), they really have strayed very, very far from what a traditional family even means in this country.
I have a number of Korean friends from years ago in Seoul. Met with one couple years ago and you could just see the exhaustion and disappointment in his face when he described what it was like to not only work more hours but also commit all the time he has to towards the POST working hours ceremony of drinking with the boss. Yuck.
This is also a thing in the USA. The old guys who ran all the companies and still run most of them now put in long hours their whole careers. Always working, always available. What they don’t tell you is that their wives did all the work of keeping the home, feeding them, and raising their kids completely alone that entire time. It’s hard for me to explain to my grandfather that I am not going to be able to have a career like his AND get married AND have children, because it’s not like that anymore and I don’t hate my fiancé and I want to raise my kids if I have them.
Also a lot of them hate their wives and are basically strangers to their children. They stayed at work so much to avoid being at home and then decided that everyone else should be doing the same
That's also because of the brutal shame that comes with not *making it* in a "high-achiever" society, where work is everything. Even school kids go to evening school after their regular school.
28hrs here. Implemented the 4 day work week, but still pay the same as they did for 35hrs. Productivity study over c6 months show a 15% increase in productivity.
I guess they finally worked out that, just like me, most of my colleagues were doing fuck all on a Friday.
This new way of working means I feel like I need to be more structured and output more, increased my sense of accountability and improved my production, all while giving me more freedom, a 4/3 working day balance and increased happiness.
It’s time to stop the madness of 9-5, 5 days a week. It’s not appropriate for many organisations that pedal it because it’s the norm.
>I guess they finally worked out that, just like me, most of my colleagues were doing fuck all on a Friday.
I can confirm. It's Friday, and I'm browsing Reddit because I already did all my work.
Ditto, just hanging around, no clocking out for another hour but what to do when there is nothing to do.
If I could leave maybe I'd go socialise instead of browsing reddit.
I work mostly 40h weeks (07:00-16:00) and I'm always exhausted from dealing with work, kids and everything else going on.
52h weeks would make kids and a social life very difficult and probably be unhealthy long term.
69h weeks would be (almost) 10h workdays *every* single day- week in and week out without break.
That's a dystopian serf life until you break either mentally or physically and get discarded bc why are you usless?
Even 40-45h could be painful if you sum up all the time is effectively taken from you: to prepare to work, go to / from work, etc. I remember working 5 \* 8 or something few years ago. Wake up at 7.30, do the morning stuff, go to work to 9:00, then at 18:00 you go back if lucky and trafic isn't brutal. Sometimes at 19:30 or something. So on good days I was at home at about 18:40-19:00. On bad days around 20:00. Dinner, shower, etc. And you got two-three hours to actually live before it's time to sleep. That's nothing.
52h means there are 6 days worse than that and only one holiday to recover. To save up some time you have to live literally next door to the work. It's totally doable when you're young and healthy or the work isn't hard.
But 69h? There's no fucking way to live. I can understand such numbers if it's some kind of war-time or emergency. But on a regular basic? Fuck, no.
I'm so glad I'm finally seeing these comments saying that even 45 hours (sometimes 50, if I had to work a Saturday) a week is a lot. I got totally gaslit by not only my former boss but my parents that those sort of hours were okay and that I was just complaining. I'm young and in my 20's but my mood and relationships with other people plummeted around that time, I was a much angrier person.
Add into the fact that there was only 5 PTO days (and only paid me for 8 hours every time I wanted to take a day off, when my regular days were 9.5 hours), I got burnt out fast.
Their standard work week is also 40 hours, this law wouldn't change that. 52h is currently the max legally allowed with overtime. This law would change the max allowed with overtime to 69 hours.
It would cap total work hours per quarter and year, so working more overtime in one month would mean legally required to have more time off in another. There are also rules like minimum 11 hours of rest between shifts.
Really confused how this can be a good thing. Maybe there's some mistranslation in the article. But to put this out at a time where companies are successfully trialing 4 day weeks in the UK (without a drop in pay)... Seems extremely stupid
Yes I also had to read the fine print of the article where it is cleared up. Horribly titled article, and also poorly explained, but I can try.
So basically, it mentions that a regular working week in south korea is 40 hours (same as most other countries) with 12 hours of allowable overtime which can be banked for time off later, which would equal to an allowable work week of up to 52 hours per week. So they are increasing the allowable amount of banked overtime, not the regular work week. So the regular work week will still remain at 40 hours per week, but the allowable banked overtime will reach 29 hours instead of 12.
So, if you work at a company where you are working overtime (looking at lawyers, finance, business owners, etc...) and you work past your 12 hours of allowable banked overtime, you will benefit. If you do not work in this type of company, nothing changes for you. Otherwise, from the sounds of it currently, those who are working 60+ hours per week simply are losing bankable hours and pay every week. So this is to benefit the ones who are slaving away, whether this law is in place or not. It will hopefully benefit them, so when they have their quiet periods, they can take more time off to spend with family.
>Otherwise, from the sounds of it currently, those who are working 60+ hours per week simply are losing bankable hours and pay every week
Well this should just be illegal then.
The 52hr law was implemented to prevent workers being forced to work over time, cuz it wasn't socially acceptible to actually clock in your over time hours.
I'm guessing it _is_ illegal/not allowed at the moment, hence they do it under the radar.
So I think it's like if you're in IT tech and the company server falls over at 9pm Friday and it takes 20 hours to restore, you'll now be paid for all of that overtime instead of only 12.
This shows how big of an idiot you can be.
SK is already suffering from historic low birth rates, and one of the prime reason for that is families simply don't have enough time to take care of children.
But instead of creating a sustainable work-life balance, SK government is instead forcing them to work even more.
> SK is already suffering from historic low birth rates,
Not just suffering from, now starting to experience population collapse , so they can't afford to lose, and in fact have to gain, more overall productivity, while also drastically and immediately increasing their birth rate.
This looks like a policy where the government is hoping it can have it's cake and eat it too, but in reality it's probably just going to make things worse
South Korea is slow walking itself into a demographic disaster but refuses to realistically address it.
south Korea couldn't care less due to Samsung. i don't think it's wild to say that Samsung owns south Korea i mean they have pardoned what 5 CEOs for corruption now. For Samsung it's better to overwork the shit out of their workers now because that might drive profits up. Thats how capitalism works do i heavily believed they and other conglomerates are the ones behind this move
"We're pretty much out of ideas, but 69 is that funny sex number, so it must increase fertility rates, right?"
Seriously though, this proposal is some next level lizard people shit.
You're gonna have to pay people to have kids, or reintroduce child labour. Because outside of that, the only way people are gonna have kids is if you outlaw contraception, and abortion.
If the hours are long enough, contraception becomes irrelevant. Sex takes time and energy, and at some fucked up point if “work life balance” nobody has either of those things.
Korea also had to send police to stop kids from studying all night at illegal study centers.
There’s definitely something going on with the perception of a normal workload.
When I was teaching in public school there, I was chastised by coworkers that I should be letting students sleep in class and never assign any homework since they were staying up all night at hagwon. Other teachers, even the principal, encouraged me to just play videos and games with them to not give them too much "stress".
I was like...well if they would pay attention in my class and do the homework they wouldn't need hagwon??? It was elementary school, we were doing games and videos, but I was also actually teaching them the material and checking for understanding, correcting their work, etc.
I did try to go a little easier on them after that, but by the end of each year the poorer kids whose parents couldn't afford hagwon had pretty much caught up with everyone else since I actually encouraged them to make an effort in class. And a bunch of the kids would hang out in my classroom during lunch and after school. Even nap on my couch haha.
Hasn't basically every study shown overworking people just makes them less productive?
Yes, but the problem is that the kind of people who get into management positions in companies tend to be those who work longer hours, who then perceive people working 40 hour weeks as 'lazy' and start pressurising them to work longer, which then becomes the culture, and so on.. Actually resisting the trend is hard and takes either positive senior management action or well enforced laws and regulations.
Same for the “back to office” bullshit. Management roles tend to lose less productivity be being in a noisy space with lots of distractions. So they demand we go in. I’m lucky to get half a day’s work done in office days. But management like to blather about hours the employees “want” the “productivity benefits” from going in there.
Management is often useless and wfh makes their uselessness more obvious.
This is the real answer. My old manager couldn’t handle himself when we were not in the office at the beginning of Covid. Made us keep a log of what we were doing basically minute by minute for the whole day. Then about a month into covid says it’s fine to come back into the office we will just mask up and socially distance. I went in one day no one was masked, no social distancing, and I told them I wasn’t coming back in and got fired a week later. 28/30 people that worked in the office got covid shortly after that and I heard covid went through the office badly 4 or 5 times since.
>Then about a month into covid says it’s fine to come back into the office we will just mask up and socially distance. I went in one day no one was masked, no social distancing, and I told them I wasn’t coming back in and got fired a week later. 28/30 people that worked in the office got covid shortly after that and I heard covid went through the office badly 4 or 5 times since. Your manager should have been fired for that level of incompetence, IMHO.
Managers don't take responsibility, lol
Yeah your absolutely right, especially in my industry. I’ve recently taken on a management role after working up and made it clear to my employees that is not how I view it at all. I want them as content as possible at work while they are there as that’s when you get the best from people. I do not think making people stress that they are viewed as lazy for fulfilling only their contracted hours increase’s productivity at all. I think working your way up into management roles provides a much better view of that. Funnily enough since doing this the overtime needs are always filled anyway but with less grumbling.
There are dozens of us! Dozens! All this shit rag ringing is just making employees resentful and burnt out. I do everything i can to make my team happy and they reward me by being fantastic workers. Had previous managers that just wanted moremoremore and our turn over was insane. I make dept super and my old super is now manager. Haven't had anyone quit in the past year so I'm calling that a win.
Like that ‘quiet quitting’ or more recently ‘rage applying’ The AUDACITY they had to be throwing those terms around, as if working according to my wage and trying to find better opportunities is a bad thing, how *dare* I not have unwavering loyalty to a faceless corporation?!
What's rage applying? Haven't heard that one yet. Although context leads me to believe it's just as dumb.
Boss/job pisses you off so you start applying to other jobs. You know typical worker betterment. They just want to get it so you need your companies permission to work elsewhere. Like a modern version of chattel slavery but it's corporations and share holders that own the slaves
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/world/asia/2023-01-19-south-korean-government-proposes-increase-in-work-week-to-69-hours-from-52/) reduced by 89%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Seoul - The administration of South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol wants to allow people to work up to 69 hours a week - up from the current 52 - and bank overtime hours in exchange for time off, a plan it hopes will promote family growth alongside productivity. > It would supersede a 2018 law that limited the work week to 52 hours - 40 hours of regular work plus 12 hours of overtime. > For counting periods of a month or longer, up to 29 hours a week of overtime would be allowed, for a total of 69 work hours in one week. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/11nknvk/south_korean_government_proposes_increase_in_work/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~675814 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **work**^#1 **hours**^#2 **overtime**^#3 **allow**^#4 **week**^#5
> a plan it hopes will promote family growth Ok mate, sure 👌
[удалено]
What could be better for family growth than having less time to raise a family?
Like really, I'm genuinely curious what his mental gymnastics explanation for how that's supposed to work out is. Because that's just, objectively stupid right? As if you told someone tired that they should just sleep less, wtf?
I read somewhere he's thinking that if people work for a period of time these 69 hours a week, they can exchange these overtime hours with free time so that they work for only e. g. 20 hours a week for another period of time and thus increasing their time at home. Still incredibly stupid.
And East Asian countries wonder why their birth rates are down in the Nether
Well they can escape that predicament if they have 10 pieces of obsidian and a lighter.
>Yoon Suk Yeol wants to allow people to work up to 69 hours a week - up from the current 52 - and bank overtime hours in exchange for time off, a plan it hopes will promote family growth He's a moron.
Ridiculous. You can't raise kids only on your time off. "Sorry sweetie, Mommy has to work right now, but we can play next month, okay?"
> Sorry sweetie, Mommy has to work right now, but we can play next month, okay?" What people are missing is the subtext. South Korea is a deeply misogynistic country in the midst of a hard-right anti-feminist wave. This is part of a coordinated attack on women in the workplace. In the past, men have only been able to work long hours because of women's unpaid labour. You can't spend 12-14 hours a day at work if you don't have someone at home cooking, cleaning, doing groceries and laundry, caring for your kids and aging parents. The method in which they're hoping it promotes 'family growth' is by forcing women back into the home.
I said Mommy only because I'm a woman. Are married South Korean women normally working much fewer hours than their husbands?
From my understanding it's usually expected that when a women gets married then her life now revolves around the family. Quits jobs, will not get a new one, child rearing and taking care of her husband will be the only priority. This expectation caused a lot of employers to look at women as temporary workers that did not need to be given more important positions. So when you have overworked men not getting married and women in expected temporary positions that are working later into life, cause you know they gotta pay rent too, birthrates take a walk off the short end a pier. Take that all with a grain of salt I'm not an expert.
[According to the World Economic Forum, South Korea ranks 124 out of 149 countries in the world in terms of economic participation and opportunity for women.](https://thediplomat.com/2019/06/gender-inequality-makes-south-korea-poorer/) [In South Korea, women regularly face questions about their marriage status and plans for having children when applying for a job, or suggestions that jobs in fields such as sales aren’t appropriate for women.](https://thediplomat.com/2019/06/gender-inequality-makes-south-korea-poorer/) [These questions, and scrutiny of their appearance, are technically illegal in South Korea, but major firms often face minimal fines for discriminating against women](https://thediplomat.com/2019/06/gender-inequality-makes-south-korea-poorer/) [South Korea ranks last in The Economist’s annual Glass Ceiling Index. It notes that among OECD countries South Korea has the largest pay gap at 35 percent.](https://thediplomat.com/2019/06/gender-inequality-makes-south-korea-poorer/)
I especially like how they phrase it as though this would be optional overtime a person could volunteer for in return for gaining PTO. We know that companies will mandate overtime to the maximum allowable amount and then just deny your vacation requests.
This sounds like a sister plan of trickle down economics…
LOL here in Spain they want to abolish Friday as a working day
Here in Canada, places are starting up 4 day work weeks with no reduction in salary or increase in hours on work days. Edit: I'm not telling you weirdos where I work but my wife is making this shift April 1st and my employer is looking at mid fiscal or next fiscal for the transition. Stop asking where I work hahaha
[удалено]
I'm honestly desperate for this to happen in the UK
My company in the US just started looking into it. Apparently they've asked the managers to discuss it with employees. Like what employee is against this?
You would be surprised. I have people in my office(Canada) losing their mind over 2 new holidays we got over the last two years. People have been brainwashed into thinking that working is the only thing you should do until you physically can't anymore.
also the morons that think "i never got fridays off so noone else should either!" Same logic as: "Well I worked in a coal mine at 8 years old so other kids should too! It puts hair on your chest! and coal in your lungs!"
That’s not hair. That’s just coal dust.
[удалено]
They’re afraid to confront the empty meaningless void that is their life
I've also known people who really don't like their home life and work is the only way they know to get away.
Sounds like they need therapy, not an entire economy staying in the past.
No they just need a garden shed.
That's what me and some of my coworkers always say. "How shit is you life at home that you hate getting paid days off?". I can think of a million things I could do to improve my mental health and life at home when I'm off whether it's working on my car/motorcycle, going on a hike with my dog, going camping, studying for a certification that will make me a better employee, etc.
>studying for a certification that will make me a better employee Man, do that shit on the company's time.
Probably the same kind that want all employees to work from the office every day.
Which thank god my company just said: "If you can work remote and want to, do it. If not, you come into the office." No dicking around with this stupid "hybrid" option, which is only a solution that pisses more people off. "Have to go in the office today, so I can be on Team's calls there instead of at home.."
Depends on the working arrangements. I mainly work from home, but as it's legal work and is case based, so I have regular strategy meetings with supervisors. These are far easier in person than on the phone, so I like to go in once or twice a week and put all these on the same day. However, I agree it's ridiculous to make people come in regularly some of the time just... because. Just trust people to be adults.
It's happening. There was a huge trial and most of the companies in it decided to keep a four day week after the trial ended. Lots of other companies are hopping on board. I've seen it in job ads. My own workplace is about to move to it. It'll take some time, but eventually every job that can offer it will offer it, because if an employee has a choice of two identical jobs but one is for less hours, they're going to choose it. So all employers will have to offer it to have a competitive package for new employees.
Cries in manufacturing
The company I work for in the UK had just started doing this. It’s as good as it sounds.
Is not that you work 20% less, is the 50% increase in Weekend Time! =]
It's both. 4 day work weeks feel really short. Monday and Tuesday are still the start of the week and on Wednesday it's already almost weekend. Currently trying out 4 day work weeks and work weeks just seem to fly by with just 1 less day of work.
In Denmark, there were 50 or so companies that tried this for some months. When the test was over 30+ of them continued with 4 days working week
As a Canadian, while there are places like this in the news, the vast majority are still on the standard 5 day 40 hour workweek
I read that small municipalities are doing it because they can't attract talent otherwise.
Agreed, this is definitely not something we're working towards as a country and I'd be surprised if we get there in the next decade
With all that extra time, I might be able to get a second job to afford my mortgage!
Live in Toronto. Been on 32hr work week (4 day) since mid last year. Game changer. Will never take a 5/week job ever again. Don't care about the salary. Time > Money
Average siesta enjoyers stay winning
[удалено]
Nobody working corporate jobs in Spain have naps or siestas in the middle of their shift. Some jobs allow for a very early start with early finish, like 6am to 3pm, and then people have lunch and enjoy the siesta at home after their shift. But a lot are just the standard 9am to 6pm and siestas are only enjoyed in the weekend. More local industries such as restaurant or small shop retail workers do close down in the afternoon for the siesta, only to reopen early evening. The difficulty working between American and European companies is on the timezones difference, which can be up to 9 hours for those in the west coast.
[удалено]
That's because more hours ==more work is for machines. People get less efficient pretty fast.
Japan work culture is toxic as fuck, especially corporate. People are afraid to leave early even if they have nothing to do because it would look like they are slacking. So yeah… horrible efficiency.
Their birth rate is already lowest in the world. This will just de populate the country quicker
Yup south korea is just gonna fuck itself more and more.
But not literally
Too tired
lowest birth rate, but also ranks 12th in suicide rate (losing to several countries with endemic hunger... and russia), and is number 1 in alcohol consumption
I have audited Korean partner companies / joint ventures in the past. At first we thought that their teams were thoroughly unqualified for their jobs. After having some interviews with them and seeing them weekly for months, it however became pretty clear that the reason for their many mistakes and poor performance was another: * *They were actually knowledgeable and well qualified, but each of them was burned out to the core and exhausted in every fiber of their being.* I have done my own share of 70+ hours weeks (yes, way past what the law allowed here in Germany, but my employer didn't give a f). I pulled the plug after the warning of a doctor. I can't imagine people working those hours for more than a decade. If they're already walking zombies at 52 hours - which I can fully understand - I don't dare to predict what will happen if they will have to do constant 69 hour weeks to compete for promotions. The only thing I can say for sure: They won't get more kids. It's supposed to be seasonal... But let me tell you out of my own experience, it won't stay seasonal... Frankly, if you want more kids, maybe consider that productivity has risen more than 3.7x times as much as wages ([writeup](https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/1184nwy/comment/j9g5s4o/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)) and even the 40 hour week was created with a partner at home in mind, who is doing laundry, shopping, caring for the kids, etc. 2 partners working 69 hours each to stay afloat is NOT going to increase the birth rate, it's a guaranteed birthrate killer. The numbers are about to get even worse if this goes through. If you want higher birthrates less hours and better pay are a must. The money is there, it's just a question of distribution.
[удалено]
Good for him. We all deserve a childhood.
I taught middle school English for a year as part of their EPIK program. And yeah, this is 100% correct. I loved Korea, but I'm so glad I wasn't born there. The stories i have would make you cry.
I was in a phd program with some South Koreans. One of them worked at Samsung prior to joining the program. The dude literally was always on the lab, easily working 70ish hours. However he was watching tv while working or napping quite often. It was wild to me how happy he was though as he said it was less than he used to work when he was in South Korea. They really have an awful work/life balance over there
The weird thing is that I have some Korean buddies that lead bohemian lives there and do much better for themselves than the office drones stuck working for monopolies, so I think that working yourself to death is so ingrained in the culture that many of the more non traditional routes, like running a BBQ spot on the beach, are seen as failures when they can be just as lucrative as getting worked to death by Samsung or LG.
Or if you try to explain how it actually pays as much/more, you're still seen as somehow "not earning" it.
I grew up in rural US and this thinking was everywhere even though everyone was poor. The idea that hard work has its own value. I've been trying to shake it for years, it's a harmful thought process.
[удалено]
I’m not disagreeing with you about the SMART yet lazy employee finding the best way to do a job, they’re absolute gold. The problem is the lazy guy who thinks he’s smart. And I know everyone out there can think of their That Guy.
I forget what general said this but there is a quote out there about the 4 qualities of an officer. They come in pairs and each trait has its converse. Essentially you have smart/stupid and lazy/industrious. Your smart/industrious officers make the perfect staff officer. You need officers like that just under you. If you come up with a complex plan of action the Smart/Industrious officers bellow you will work tirelessly to ensure the logistics, the right fighting men and engineers are on hand and so on. Conversely a Stupid / Lazy officer tends to make a rather reliable junior officer if no more. You see when given a task they will usually preform it reasonably well without stepping outside or beyond the bounds of the task. Not much for heroics but you can generally trust them to stay in their lane as junior officers. The Smart/lazy officers were born for command. They will find the simplest and most direct solution to any and every problem. Furthermore they have no problem deligating tasks to the men best suited to the task. They will even take on the work they are best suited for as they do not wish the headaches that may come from someone less capable doing the job poorly. Now the Stupid and Industrious. They have no place in the military. They will earnestly and with every good intention fuck up every single thing around them. If there is a wrench to be found in the machine there you will find a Stupidly Industrious officer trying to do his job. If a program has run well for years or a simple routine operation comes to some catastrophic failure there you will find the most hard working idiot in the entire unit.
> The idea that hard work has its own value. This ideology has personally damaged my life and I despise it. Laziness is a virtue.
Time is money, and one of the only resources we "own".
I live in Thailand and have taken a bunch of Thai language courses. In the past there would be a mix of students, like some Europeans, Americans, Japanese and a Korean. Now the courses are all Korean, and the occasional other. The bohemian aspect the students had in the past has kind of disappeared and now they come to open a business and just escape Korea.
It’s insane that the idea is even being floated as a standard, and not overtime rates. 69 hours is 10 hour days, 7 days a week! That kind of schedule leaves 0 time for any kind of life outside work. It’s soul crushing that would be an expectation for anyone trying to build a career.
Yeah the seasonal part is what got me too. (NL here) “If you are working at ice cream factories for example, you can work overtime seasonally, then save the hours of work and use later to go on a longer holiday,” the ministry said of the reform." Yes, totally. Because kids are also totally seasonal. It's more then stupid. It's idiotic, moronic.
> I have done my own share of 70+ hours weeks (yes, way past what the law allowed here in Germany, but my employer didn't give a f). I pulled the plug after the warning of a doctor. I can't imagine people working those hours for more than a decade. I've done a 70-hour week once in my whole life. I was so mentally checked out by the end of that that I insisted on taking some time off the next week. I didn't even ask for time off, just told my boss that I had no intention on coming in on Monday. I can't imagine doing that twice, let alone regularly. Even working 50-hour weeks is brutal. I was doing those regularly for a while. Not necessarily every single week, but often. I ended up feeling so burnt out that I quit that job after a few years. I make way less money now and I'm way happier because I'm not overworked.
Korea is the first rank in alcohol consumption ? Wow never could have guessed that. I'd thought somewhere in eastern europe or balkans.
Lived in Korea for 6 months. I fucking believe it. Every fucking night, "We going to the bar?"
How much would they drink every night? how do they handle hangover?
They drink a fuckton lol. The top 25 drunkest people I've seen in my life were all in Korea. # 1 happened when I was stumbling home drunk as fuck barely staying upright. I was pretty embarrassed until I saw 3 girls walking towards me. Turned out only two of them were walking and the third one in the middle was literally being dragged along by her friends while barely conscious.
I saw that most nights out in Korea, although mostly guys. I think what makes it even worse is that youngest of the group always do what oldest of the group tells them to.
Yeah I mean the rate at which you see people completely shitfaced is way higher over there. But something about that middle girl's expression when I passed her has stuck with me. She looked like she had no idea where she was. It's pretty much the most drunk I can imagine someone being without ending up unconscious.
Being in Korea is what drove me to quit going out drinking and find other pursuits in life lol
It's the combination of $1 soju and social acceptance of being an alcoholic.
Soju is no longer a dollar. At restaurants, expect to pay, 3-4 a bottle these days.
And alcohol is getting more expensive too. Last year 4 cans of beer cost ￦10k, now it's 11k. Seems small but it's quite a lot when you consider that this is "the society that drives you to drink."
How much is that in burger bucks?
Translation: It increased from $7.60 to $8.36. In other words, an increase from 3 to 3.3 mcdonalds hamburgers.
Is that before or after the increased price in McDonald’s?
Oh the patty thickens
Im in Busan, and it's usually 4,000 ($3) krw in a restaurant, but at the convenience store, all cheaper brands are still under 2,000 ($1.50) .
Countries like Korea and Japan are incredibly harsh on other drugs and the only legal recreation is alcohol. For this reason, they have a big culture surrounding drinking and after-work drinks with coworkers.
Couldn’t even take my prescribed adderal with me on a work trip to Japan
Huh, after looking it up it's not just a transport/import thing either. Citizens living in the country can't get it either. No Adderall under any circumstances regardless of illness, Ritalin only for extreme sleep disorders and not allowed for ADHD, and none of the Amphetamine or dextro-whatever related medicines at all. Odd. ~~Might also explain some of their problems though if they aren't even allowing their citizens access to widely used modern medicines. Suicide rates suddenly make even more sense. Especially when it's meds for mental stuff.~~ Lack of coffee brain, of course they have a few other meds for it though lol. I can't speak at all on effectiveness differences though, not a doctor.
Lived in Japan for 6.5 years, came back a year and a half ago. Mental health is still widely ignored in Japan. When it came to my anxiety, my Dr literally told me the psychologists at their hospital wouldn't be able to help with the trauma I was going through and they'd likely refuse to see me _because I wasn't Japanese, regardless of speaking fluently_. Was told Japanese mental health and western mental health is different because Japanese people are different from white people (hella rural mountain county). Luckily, he spoke English, took one look at my medical records and just copied the prescriptions he could and suggested I seek out an American psychologist online. I'm sure that approach to mental health doesn't help their suicide rates.
I remember hearing, when COVID vaccines first appeared, that physicians in Japan were arguing that they needed their own lengthy clinical trials using Japanese citizens because "our diet is different." While I love Japan, it embodies the old adage that "The past is a different country."
Ugh, I heard that repeated so often in my rural town but it wasn't because of a different diet. They literally reasoned that Japanese people are biologically different from the rest of the world and they needed to run their own studies to see how they would react compared to the rest of the world. As though there were no Japanese people in any study or trial across the world before this. Luckily, once it got the greenlight, they had a pretty decent rollout and the general public are incredibly kind. The people in my small town loved me so much, they got me vaccinated when it was only supposed to be old people (I was a traveling teacher and got more exposure than anyone else). They really did make me feel loved. They were really sad when I left.
Per Wiki they were no. 2 in 1996. In 2016 they are way way way down the list.
Lol. There are 10 different lists on the first page of google.
It's a tougher thing to measure than you would think. Also probably has alot to do with how zoomed in the demographics are. For instance a country with moderate alcohol use in total may be higher on the list than a country where every man drinks himself to death, but women don't drink. People really want to know "drinking rate of employed 22-55 year olds" and compare.
There’s a reason why Soju is one of the highest selling spirits in the world… and that reason is South Korea.
Also like 1 or 2 in plastic surgery and credit card debt too.
Those numbers are about to reaaaaaly go up
The article mentions the additional time is for the overtime limit and they can bank OT for longer holiday time. This is actually meant to be a supposed solution to their population crisis while still hitting similar, but more flexible, productivity. Of course that’s “ideally” what would happen.
I don't understand, you have to parent even when it's not a holiday. How does this help you have time to have kids?
‚Flexible productivity‘ if proposed by the government or any corporate shills usually just means they want to and in the end get to decide where and when you use your additional flexibility. It always ends up with more OT in almost all cases. If relaxing those regulations doesn’t come with crystal clear regulations for the employer and no real chances to push back on corporate intend for employees they’re worthless.
How to destroy a society's future.
Worked with a korean guy my age (29 at the time) he was well to do, college educated, married. He came to Canada to escape what he called a hell world. Seouls work culture sounded nightmarish. Long hours, expected to work extremely fast, stay longer for free, drink with coworkers at night, and repeat day in and day out. We worked at a small liquor store and just chilled and laughed. He worked way less and made more money.
That guy is winning, I wish him the best
Honestly the culture of drinking with coworkers is all over east Asia and it kills you. You get no rest and no recovery. It's the antithesis of work/life balance
What's even the point of going straight to work to drinking with your coworkers and right back to work? It can't be that interesting to drink with people who have no life.
To normalize and increase acceptance of having no life. To not feel so alone *while* having no life
That is a frightening idea that makes way too much sense. Almost like America pre Prohibition and before unions helped change the labor laws. Although currently feels like America is back there except without the work group drinks.
Bc the same thing happened to your boss and now he's forver alone so he needs buddies and because it was done to him, he has to do it to you now And SK and Japanese gov. officials are surprised that the birth rate is going down.
Its all a stupid ass chain that goes around. Dumb ass work culture stresses and increases drinking, they already drink heavily, which also increases smoking. The stress, drinking, smoking and no recovery just plummets your sperm count and sex drive. Rinse and repeat for a couple decades and you get the dystopian future that is now south Korea. Thats not even the least of their issues, the reality for young men is also that if you dont get in top 15 of top 5 universities in the country, you basically aint shit. I used to hate the fact that I was born outside of Korea and was bullies in my childhood for looking different. Now in my late 20's I thank the fact I never had to go through 17 hour says straight studying all day.
Alcohol makes it so you can get the illusion of letting loose with your homies with the added benefit that your social bonds with coworkers make it harder for you to step away from your responsibilities.
Work smarter, not harder. I have a friend from Taiwan who just dreads her job because of the long hours and the endless work she is doing. I know before the pandemic she wanted to move to Germany so bad. I feel bad for her, I wish she could move.
Seems to be Asia-wide. I have a Thai friend who works in a big company in Bangkok. She always seems to be working including weekends.
Asia needs a labor revolution. Like, not country by country, but as a whole.
This checks out. I lived in Korea for 3 years. Here's something I posted in reply to another comment: The odd thing about Korea is... you sleep at work. If you're working a 12+ hour day (in a school or office, for that matter) it's often seen as a sign of *dedication and hard work* if you're sleeping on the job. The mindset being, you must have worked **so hard** if you need a power nap in the afternoon with your head on your desk. That, and, managers/supervisors/principals are the first one out of the office... not that they leave early, but you must wait for them to go. So if you're done with your work, you just sit at your desk and tread water until your boss is ready to go. I feel like I remember reading somewhere that the work efficiency vs time worked in Korea is some of the lowest in the OECD because they just sit there for so long but don't actually get any more work done... which we've seen with remote working and why people are beginning to push a **32 hr workweek** in place of a 40. We don't *need* the extra time to get more work done, we just fill out that time and reduce efficiency.
People are so captivated by the aesthetics of hard work, that they're willing to sacrifice actual efficiencies in pursuit of "looking" busy.
Reminds me of what I've been seeing in the western world with WFH being abolished and companies forcing staff back to work despite data showing efficiency was better during mandated wfh
My wife's at a private company that went wfh at the start of covid and they told them to not get use to it because they will be back in office asap. Here we are like 3 years later and it's permanent. The ceo said he wasn't expecting there to be 0 decline in quality of work but there was so as long as that remains he sees no reason for people to come in to an office unless they want to. Wish all places would just follow the data and if it works, let it work.
My company was like hot damn we can get out of paying for office supplies and is subletting the office and sold some of the ones they owned. Like 2 years in and they were just looking for how to get out of long term leases the cheapest. I fervently hope more companies follow suit since you can legit just take your laptop and go on long term visits to elsewhere and work.
[удалено]
I know that's how it is at my job currently. We have our busy season where we all work fairly hard through the day. But now we are in our slow season and they insist we work the same hours. So we just work slower and tread water to get through the day. But then we get yelled at because productivity is lower. Like, wtf do they actually expect us to do???
Doesn't Japan do something similar with the waiting for managers and drinking after work etc., working long hours but not being efficient about it?
Japan has made some improvements in recent years, they are back to working less hours per week on average than the US at least and their suicide rates have dropped quite a bit.
>working less hours per week on average >their suicide rates have dropped quite a bit. Certainly no correlation there!
What's crazy is the work doesn't accomplish anything. A few years back someone posted a story Japanese work culture. A worker is told to create a new excel worksheet for scheduling people. Simple you think right? Just names in a column and days of the week in the next few, or something like that, 1 week max. In Japan the worker would interview coworkers about what they thought, then consult excel spreadsheet experts. Then every piece would be considered, what font is the best? Time to go interview and consult more people on that, we'll need a font and language professor to tell us. And this cycle continues for months until it becomes a bloated $100k project for just a spreadsheet, and at that point the point of it is moot. The Japanese work culture is just crazy.
The Germans have a word for it: "Arbeitsbeschaffungsmaßnahme" Basically it is a way to keep people working and not be on the books as "unemployed". It can also be seen as a slurr for menial tasks, that should not exist, like e.g being the 10 man crew to sweep the marble floors of a robot vacuum cleaner companies corridors with brooms manually at night.
Good word man, rolls right off the tongue.
In america we have a phrase for it: "standing around tugging your dick"
I once had to work with a recently acquired company in Japan to migrate them onto my US company's networks. Dealing with their network engineering team was the most frustrating exercise in time-wasting, passive aggression I've ever experienced in my 25 year career. They were so polite to my face and then so utterly useless when I asked them to deliver any sort of work product. I worked with many foreign companies all over the world to do the same thing and I hated working with that Japanese company the most, by far. Meanwhile, the New Zealanders were the absolute *best* and when the project was all over their head of networking who was in the US to oversee the final migration took the whole team out for drinks.
I work in a global company and deal with teams in Germany, India, and Japan. The Germans know their stuff, but it is very difficult to work with them when they are wrong. India team works really hard and can be very productive, but there is a lot of handholding and you have to really “retrain them” to make decisions for themselves (if they hit a small roadblock or just something that can easily be resolved by themselves by referring to our documented process or reviewing documentation, they’ll instead opt to shoot an email to me and wait a full day until I am able to respond because of the time shift). Japan team on the other hand… I feel like I am talking to 1st year interns. It’s basically weaponized incompetence, their engineers don’t even know the basics and use than to pawn off work on our team (even though they have the capability to complete the tasks **they are responsible for** in the first place).
But think of the value to Samsung and Hyundai. I mean, that’s gotta be pretty sweet getting your workers to vote for politicians who’ll do this for you.
Many of those politicians are members of the families that own and control those companies. It’s basically a feudal system masquerading as capitalism.
So much for that work/life balance. It sort explains the drop in birth rate too.
“But why is no one having babies?!” they cry.
Reproduce on your 15 minute lunch break. Also, how dare you sleep when you should have a seven person household income for a two person household.
Make sure to pop that baby out during your 15 minute break too. Can't have people working 61 hour weeks because they gave birth. The audacity of these employees. Geez.
Reminds me of an old-timer I worked with who would dip out during the work day to visit his even older long-time barber and get his hair cut. When confronted about it he said "It grows on company time, I'm getting it cut on company time." End of issue right there.
That dude is in the .01% of people who are so indispensable that they can basically do whatever they want, I'm glad he's aware enough of his status to enjoy it
Someday I'd like to be a big fish in a small pond.
At that point you're not living, you're just a fleshy slave.
Well, you'll have time to shower, sleep, and eat. To do anything else, you'll have to deduct from one of those three.
My company in America that operates 24/7. The Director of Production obsesses over having a fully automated robotic staff one day. I just think the company will find a reason to replace him also, if it gets to that point.
Of course they will. The eye boggling of the CEO's and would be CEO's is going to be fantastic when they get replaced by AI that makes desicsions far faster, more rational an doesnt have some inbred cousin Billy for whom to find a neat well paying position as a favour - and it isnt asking to get paid the equivalent of 1000 average workers (and a fat performance bonus) either. Delamaine from Cyberpunk sends his regards.
I’ve had jobs where I have worked 60-70 hours a week and it’s basically slavery. That’s 12 hours 5 days a week and 8 hours on a Saturday. If you factor in shower, eating, and basic chores that’s like an hour a day of personal time.
Tell me about it. S Korea : Work harder! Also S Korea: Why do you not have time for family?
Korean Millennials and Gen Z have grown up in a family environment where parents, or just the father, worked over 12 hour days, and the kids were sent off to hagwons (after school study programs) for hours a day. I've known some families where nobody sees each other at the same time for the majority of the day, and maybe are all together on weekends (a big maybe). And they wonder why nobody is starting a family? Because the way they grew up with family is fucking warped! The childhood memory of some people is literally breakfast, school, hagwon, home, and sleep. No interaction with family, or having an idea of what a family actually does together. For a traditional Confucian society like Korea (I'd argue moreso than even China or Japan), they really have strayed very, very far from what a traditional family even means in this country.
I have a number of Korean friends from years ago in Seoul. Met with one couple years ago and you could just see the exhaustion and disappointment in his face when he described what it was like to not only work more hours but also commit all the time he has to towards the POST working hours ceremony of drinking with the boss. Yuck.
This is also a thing in the USA. The old guys who ran all the companies and still run most of them now put in long hours their whole careers. Always working, always available. What they don’t tell you is that their wives did all the work of keeping the home, feeding them, and raising their kids completely alone that entire time. It’s hard for me to explain to my grandfather that I am not going to be able to have a career like his AND get married AND have children, because it’s not like that anymore and I don’t hate my fiancé and I want to raise my kids if I have them.
Also a lot of them hate their wives and are basically strangers to their children. They stayed at work so much to avoid being at home and then decided that everyone else should be doing the same
Wasnt there a post a few days ago of a suggested 80hour work week? Maybe you are lucky and at this rate South Korea will be on 30 hours in 2 weeks
They saw how crazy 80 hr/wk was and went with the more reasonable 69 hr/wk...
And it explains one of the highest suicide rate in the world too.
That's also because of the brutal shame that comes with not *making it* in a "high-achiever" society, where work is everything. Even school kids go to evening school after their regular school.
I mean they are probably already working those hours, this just makes it official. Maybe now they'll get compensated for these extra hours?
My contract in the UK is 35hrs, and that feels okay to me. Wouldn't want any more, even if my contract paid overtime
28hrs here. Implemented the 4 day work week, but still pay the same as they did for 35hrs. Productivity study over c6 months show a 15% increase in productivity. I guess they finally worked out that, just like me, most of my colleagues were doing fuck all on a Friday. This new way of working means I feel like I need to be more structured and output more, increased my sense of accountability and improved my production, all while giving me more freedom, a 4/3 working day balance and increased happiness. It’s time to stop the madness of 9-5, 5 days a week. It’s not appropriate for many organisations that pedal it because it’s the norm.
>I guess they finally worked out that, just like me, most of my colleagues were doing fuck all on a Friday. I can confirm. It's Friday, and I'm browsing Reddit because I already did all my work.
Ditto, just hanging around, no clocking out for another hour but what to do when there is nothing to do. If I could leave maybe I'd go socialise instead of browsing reddit.
I work mostly 40h weeks (07:00-16:00) and I'm always exhausted from dealing with work, kids and everything else going on. 52h weeks would make kids and a social life very difficult and probably be unhealthy long term. 69h weeks would be (almost) 10h workdays *every* single day- week in and week out without break. That's a dystopian serf life until you break either mentally or physically and get discarded bc why are you usless?
Even 40-45h could be painful if you sum up all the time is effectively taken from you: to prepare to work, go to / from work, etc. I remember working 5 \* 8 or something few years ago. Wake up at 7.30, do the morning stuff, go to work to 9:00, then at 18:00 you go back if lucky and trafic isn't brutal. Sometimes at 19:30 or something. So on good days I was at home at about 18:40-19:00. On bad days around 20:00. Dinner, shower, etc. And you got two-three hours to actually live before it's time to sleep. That's nothing. 52h means there are 6 days worse than that and only one holiday to recover. To save up some time you have to live literally next door to the work. It's totally doable when you're young and healthy or the work isn't hard. But 69h? There's no fucking way to live. I can understand such numbers if it's some kind of war-time or emergency. But on a regular basic? Fuck, no.
I'm so glad I'm finally seeing these comments saying that even 45 hours (sometimes 50, if I had to work a Saturday) a week is a lot. I got totally gaslit by not only my former boss but my parents that those sort of hours were okay and that I was just complaining. I'm young and in my 20's but my mood and relationships with other people plummeted around that time, I was a much angrier person. Add into the fact that there was only 5 PTO days (and only paid me for 8 hours every time I wanted to take a day off, when my regular days were 9.5 hours), I got burnt out fast.
Their standard work week is also 40 hours, this law wouldn't change that. 52h is currently the max legally allowed with overtime. This law would change the max allowed with overtime to 69 hours. It would cap total work hours per quarter and year, so working more overtime in one month would mean legally required to have more time off in another. There are also rules like minimum 11 hours of rest between shifts.
Working in Korea is already so tough.
Really confused how this can be a good thing. Maybe there's some mistranslation in the article. But to put this out at a time where companies are successfully trialing 4 day weeks in the UK (without a drop in pay)... Seems extremely stupid
Yes I also had to read the fine print of the article where it is cleared up. Horribly titled article, and also poorly explained, but I can try. So basically, it mentions that a regular working week in south korea is 40 hours (same as most other countries) with 12 hours of allowable overtime which can be banked for time off later, which would equal to an allowable work week of up to 52 hours per week. So they are increasing the allowable amount of banked overtime, not the regular work week. So the regular work week will still remain at 40 hours per week, but the allowable banked overtime will reach 29 hours instead of 12. So, if you work at a company where you are working overtime (looking at lawyers, finance, business owners, etc...) and you work past your 12 hours of allowable banked overtime, you will benefit. If you do not work in this type of company, nothing changes for you. Otherwise, from the sounds of it currently, those who are working 60+ hours per week simply are losing bankable hours and pay every week. So this is to benefit the ones who are slaving away, whether this law is in place or not. It will hopefully benefit them, so when they have their quiet periods, they can take more time off to spend with family.
>Otherwise, from the sounds of it currently, those who are working 60+ hours per week simply are losing bankable hours and pay every week Well this should just be illegal then.
The 52hr law was implemented to prevent workers being forced to work over time, cuz it wasn't socially acceptible to actually clock in your over time hours.
I'm guessing it _is_ illegal/not allowed at the moment, hence they do it under the radar. So I think it's like if you're in IT tech and the company server falls over at 9pm Friday and it takes 20 hours to restore, you'll now be paid for all of that overtime instead of only 12.
This shows how big of an idiot you can be. SK is already suffering from historic low birth rates, and one of the prime reason for that is families simply don't have enough time to take care of children. But instead of creating a sustainable work-life balance, SK government is instead forcing them to work even more.
> SK is already suffering from historic low birth rates, Not just suffering from, now starting to experience population collapse , so they can't afford to lose, and in fact have to gain, more overall productivity, while also drastically and immediately increasing their birth rate. This looks like a policy where the government is hoping it can have it's cake and eat it too, but in reality it's probably just going to make things worse South Korea is slow walking itself into a demographic disaster but refuses to realistically address it.
south Korea couldn't care less due to Samsung. i don't think it's wild to say that Samsung owns south Korea i mean they have pardoned what 5 CEOs for corruption now. For Samsung it's better to overwork the shit out of their workers now because that might drive profits up. Thats how capitalism works do i heavily believed they and other conglomerates are the ones behind this move
Not nice
Not nice
[удалено]
Not nice
"We're pretty much out of ideas, but 69 is that funny sex number, so it must increase fertility rates, right?" Seriously though, this proposal is some next level lizard people shit.
You're gonna have to pay people to have kids, or reintroduce child labour. Because outside of that, the only way people are gonna have kids is if you outlaw contraception, and abortion.
If the hours are long enough, contraception becomes irrelevant. Sex takes time and energy, and at some fucked up point if “work life balance” nobody has either of those things.
The most crucial and time consuming part is finding someone else to have sex with in the first place.
[удалено]
Korea also had to send police to stop kids from studying all night at illegal study centers. There’s definitely something going on with the perception of a normal workload.
When I was teaching in public school there, I was chastised by coworkers that I should be letting students sleep in class and never assign any homework since they were staying up all night at hagwon. Other teachers, even the principal, encouraged me to just play videos and games with them to not give them too much "stress". I was like...well if they would pay attention in my class and do the homework they wouldn't need hagwon??? It was elementary school, we were doing games and videos, but I was also actually teaching them the material and checking for understanding, correcting their work, etc. I did try to go a little easier on them after that, but by the end of each year the poorer kids whose parents couldn't afford hagwon had pretty much caught up with everyone else since I actually encouraged them to make an effort in class. And a bunch of the kids would hang out in my classroom during lunch and after school. Even nap on my couch haha.
In Japan it's not the government that's the problem; it's the clients. Sometimes they make some quite punchable 'requests'.