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WampaLord posted:Isn't productivity drastically low, though? Like, even lower than it would be if they worked 40 hour weeks? Most of what I've read says that your average salaryman is just dicking around online most of the time, but they have to be seen at their desks. yeah from his stories it sounds like a whole lot of exhausting formalism with no real impact Arcteryx Anarchist fucked around with this message at 19:54 on May 24, 2016 |
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lancemantis posted:yeah from his stories it sounds like a whole lot of exhausting formalism with no real impact this is an MBA's wet dream
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May 24, 2016 20:23
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lancemantis posted:yeah from his stories it sounds like a whole lot of exhausting formalism with no real impact I suppose that is at least historically appropriate for Japan.
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May 24, 2016 20:27
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WampaLord posted:Isn't productivity drastically low, though? Like, even lower than it would be if they worked 40 hour weeks? Most of what I've read says that your average salaryman is just dicking around online most of the time, but they have to be seen at their desks. Yeah there's a weird obsession with being at the desk over tasks. I have a friend who works at the US subsidiary of a rather big Japanese corporation and their culture is a bit wonky. He came from a company that was more flexible about what 40 meant, like staying late to get something out the door Thursday meant it was okay to leave a bit early Friday if your plate was empty. Since he's in the US the expectation is more 40 hours than 80 at least, but yeah they're all about 'This is the start time, this is the end time, be here 5 days a week in that window. We don't care what you're doing as long as you're here. The company at least seems decently loyal, though they practically disappear folks when they do fire them. The worst workers are almost universally the liaisons in depts from the Japanese/home company. Like to the point that they thought something in the instructions about expected duties was being lost in translation until they had a few that spoke perfect English.
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May 24, 2016 20:28
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Aliquid posted:To be fair, for white-collar jobs I believe Japanese companies have a history of actually being loyal to the employee. My understanding is that it was that way. I could be wrong (I'm neither Japanese nor a hardcore Japanophile) but what happened was that they kind of got exposed to western business after WW2 and, looking at their wrecked country, decided "hey let's rebuild this poo poo and work a billion hours like the Americans!" It worked to a certain degree; they did, in fact, rebuild their economy but part of it was cargo culting a fantasy version of America rather than what America actually did. Politeness is also a factor; you are expected to stay at least as long as the boss does. Which is a problem because if the boss has an XBOX in the break room, hates his wife, and/or is loving the secretary he's going to stay late but not be working. So you have people "working" obscene hours. For a while there was also the understanding that you would take care of the company because the company took care of you and yours. Children went to company schools and were probably going to work in the same company their dad did. You didn't switch companies but there wasn't much drive to; the company treated you OK. The loyalty went both ways. The issue was that, thanks to globalization and the current economic issues that have been increasingly facing the world, companies decided to demand the same loyalty and productivity but haven't been offering the same loyalty in return. The competition for proper education to get the best jobs for your children is also fierce as hell. Overall the Japanese are loving miserable. Apparently this is why they fetishize high school so much; it's the last time most of them remember actually being happy. This led to a massive problem with parasite singles. If you don't get into the right school (incidentally if you are also born with the wrong blood type) you're hosed. All of this resulted in serious systemtic issues.
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May 24, 2016 20:35
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Japan was also an experimentation ground for post-war industrial researchers to implement the strategies that have resulted in like Lean manufacturing and stuff, so it wasn't all pure cargo-cult with no results
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May 24, 2016 20:40
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Without wishing to be hilariously racist I always assumed that part of it was imported from the pre-industrial culture of Japan because the country industrialized kind of quickly and without the anti-corporate bent that say, China and the USSR would have had during their industrialization. Introducing corporations to what had comparatively recently been an essentially feudal society before the Meiji restoration, would understandably produce some... weird notions of company loyalty.
OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 20:48 on May 24, 2016 |
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May 24, 2016 20:43
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OwlFancier posted:Without wishing to be hilariously racist I always assumed that part of it was imported from the pre-industrial culture of Japan because the country industrialized kind of quickly and without the anti-corporate bent that say, China and the USSR would have had during their industrialization. Introducing corporations to what had comparatively recently been an essentially feudal society before the Meiji restoration, would understandably produce some... weird notions of company loyalty. I haven no idea if it was or not but I really wouldn't be surprised if that was part of it. Granted Japanese feudalism was also pretty different than European feudalism in a ton of ways. lancemantis posted:Japan was also an experimentation ground for post-war industrial researchers to implement the strategies that have resulted in like Lean manufacturing and stuff, so it wasn't all pure cargo-cult with no results This is also true; for better or for worse what they did worked and they went from a bombed-out wreck of a country to a major world economic player impressively quickly.
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May 24, 2016 20:55
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OwlFancier posted:Without wishing to be hilariously racist I always assumed that part of it was imported from the pre-industrial culture of Japan because the country industrialized kind of quickly and without the anti-corporate bent that say, China and the USSR would have had during their industrialization. Introducing corporations to what had comparatively recently been an essentially feudal society before the Meiji restoration, would understandably produce some... weird notions of company loyalty. Yeah, there's a bit of that in there. People forget all too easily that most of the US labor laws, and things like the 40 hour work week and the concept of a weekend, were bought in the blood of laborers. Sometimes via direct armed conflict with their employers over inhumane and unfair treatment. It's part of why what so many unicorns do in trying to 'disrupt' a business (ie operate by ignoring the relevant labor laws) is so poisonous, because we're in enough of an economic shambles that it appeals to people with tall debts and no sign of better wages.
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May 24, 2016 23:31
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Urgh, yes, it annoys me when people take the notion of working five days a week eight hours a day as just normal and nobody would dream of expecting more than that.
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May 24, 2016 23:36
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Liquid Communism posted:Yeah, there's a bit of that in there. People forget all too easily that most of the US labor laws, and things like the 40 hour work week and the concept of a weekend, were bought in the blood of laborers. Sometimes via direct armed conflict with their employers over inhumane and unfair treatment. It also turns out to be counter-productive because forcing your employees to work 70 hours a week burns them out, ruins them cognitively, and makes them hate their lives. This is also why the suggestion that employees have every minute tracked and logged is also incredibly toxic; 40 hours of "work" also includes time getting up and getting coffee, going to take a dump, or whatever. In the case of very cognitive, non-routine work like programming sometimes you get "well I spent 40 hours this week figuring out some things to not do" and that's OK. But boy howdy are some people going to get furious about that. Software in particular is extremely prone to "well we were on track to meet the deadline but you remember Bob that quit four months ago? He wrote some labyrinthine garbage that he never bothered to comment. It's hackish, it sucks, and edge cases crash everything now so we had to rewrite all of what he left us. No, we can't get a hold of him to get him to explain how it works."
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May 25, 2016 00:50
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Aliquid posted:I was the principal of an elementary school and would gently caress my teachers up for sleeping at their desk, but that's a little different Even during their planning period? Not cool.
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May 25, 2016 01:24
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lancemantis posted:Japan was also an experimentation ground for post-war industrial researchers to implement the strategies that have resulted in like Lean manufacturing and stuff, so it wasn't all pure cargo-cult with no results I remember hearing about this back in Econ 101, people like Deming getting to test their theories. ToxicSlurpee posted:Software in particular is extremely prone to "well we were on track to meet the deadline but you remember Bob that quit four months ago? He wrote some labyrinthine garbage that he never bothered to comment. It's hackish, it sucks, and edge cases crash everything now so we had to rewrite all of what he left us. No, we can't get a hold of him to get him to explain how it works." Sounds like Bob's in a position to negotiate being rehired with better pay. super sweet best pal fucked around with this message at 02:23 on May 25, 2016 |
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May 25, 2016 02:21
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ToxicSlurpee posted:It's a mix of things; the internet made everybody want their music totally, completely free all of the time. The record industry blames Napster but it's more complicated than that. There's a much simpler answer to the decline of the music industry that nobody seems to remember. Not long after CDs came out, labels stopped selling singles. Why should we sell you a single song that we can only charge a buck or two for when we can sell you an album for $18.99 that costs us the exact same amount of money to manufacture? Who cares if you just want to listen to "Runaway Train", buy this whole album of unbelievably lovely Soul Asylum songs because gently caress you. Besides, we spent a lot of time and effort fixing the price of that CD, we'd have to do it all over again for singles. The problem is that consumers *love* singles. A lot. If you make them unavailable, people will figure out a way to get them. Digital downloads were going to happen no matter what but a huge reason why piracy took over before the industry could adapt was that it was literally impossible to just buy a copy of your favorite lovely Britney Spears track. Piracy offered a better product. This is one of the reasons that iTunes succeeded and continues to succeed when it's actually just as easy to pirate poo poo.
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May 25, 2016 02:25
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:This is one of the reasons that iTunes succeeded and continues to succeed when it's actually just as easy to pirate poo poo. Stuff like Steam and iTunes actually kind of prove that the "but but but PIRACY!!!!" argument was actually partially bullshit. Yeah you can pirate literally everything in existence but the issue is that you can't be sure that stuff is clean. Napster, KaZaa, LimeWire, eMule, any torrent software...that poo poo was full of viruses, malware, and awfulness pretty much immediately. Yeah you could invest in antivirus software but...well that isn't perfect and hackers became increasingly clever. iTunes stuff is pretty much guaranteed to be clean. I highly doubt you'll get a virus downloading a game from Steam but you have to worry about xXx_HALO_THREE_xXx_420smokeweederrydaylol_FULL_VERSION.rar being full of garbage. Granted it also turned out that some of the file sharing programs were, in fact, literally full of spyware. But yeah...that was really one of the biggest issues. The record industry just plain got too greedy. Then it turned out that all the tricks they used to use in the past (payola, for example) to control what you heard so you weren't even aware of things they were selling they just kept doing anyway. Payola was probably the worst; then in other cases they just plain loving bought radio stations or had in-house companies that...*ahem*...promoted...their music to the radio. They really, really did destroy themselves.
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May 25, 2016 03:32
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The other thing with Steam is that it actually provides a service, I don't just buy stuff off it for fun, I buy stuff off it because it's 1. Easier than going down to my local town to visit the brick and mortar store with lovely selection and which had lovely selection long before digital distribution became a thing. 2. Cheap because steam sell everything at huge discounts regularly. 3. I can install everything without needing a stupid disc with a CD key that I will invariably lose and then have to find a bunch of patches for. 4. The thing I buy lasts longer because developers want to keep selling it so they release compatibility patches. Buying off steam is better than buying CDs because it just works better, hence why I do it.
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May 25, 2016 03:35
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OwlFancier posted:The other thing with Steam is that it actually provides a service, I don't just buy stuff off it for fun, I buy stuff off it because it's 1. Easier than going down to my local town to visit the brick and mortar store with lovely selection and which had lovely selection long before digital distribution became a thing. 2. Cheap because steam sell everything at huge discounts regularly. 3. I can install everything without needing a stupid disc with a CD key that I will invariably lose and then have to find a bunch of patches for. 4. The thing I buy lasts longer because developers want to keep selling it so they release compatibility patches. Oddly enough the record industry was actively resisting online distribution of anything and trying to destroy it. Steam is kind of an indicator that the games industry was different. It wasn't happy with it but was at least OK with being dragged along into the future as well it was kind of inevitable. Then you have pornography which looks at any new technology before it's even out to the public and asks "how do we put tits on this?" edit: More like porn says "there will be tits on this" and gets right to work.
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May 25, 2016 05:29
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ToxicSlurpee posted:It also turns out to be counter-productive because forcing your employees to work 70 hours a week burns them out, ruins them cognitively, and makes them hate their lives. Scratch that and replace it with 'He told us to get hosed because your policies made him hate life while working here' and you're closer to modern IT management. Dr. Fishopolis posted:There's a much simpler answer to the decline of the music industry that nobody seems to remember. Not long after CDs came out, labels stopped selling singles. Why should we sell you a single song that we can only charge a buck or two for when we can sell you an album for $18.99 that costs us the exact same amount of money to manufacture? Who cares if you just want to listen to "Runaway Train", buy this whole album of unbelievably lovely Soul Asylum songs because gently caress you. Besides, we spent a lot of time and effort fixing the price of that CD, we'd have to do it all over again for singles. Piracy wasn't even a -new- problem. They were hosed the minute the recordable cassette tape became common, because it was easy to just tape whatever song you wanted off the radio. The internet just made it easier to trade 'em. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 05:40 on May 25, 2016 |
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May 25, 2016 05:38
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It must also be mentioned that we are in an glut of access to entertainment content unprecedented in history. The entire back-catalog of recorded music is available at your digital whim. It is easier than ever for artists to record and master albums. The same goes for all types of entertainment - increased access to production tools combined with internet distribution has resulted in a glut of audio and video programming (podcasts/YouTube) and the sheer size of the Steam catalog is daunting let alone the rate of new game publication. It is a great time to be a consumer of entertainment, but is it any wonder that the massive supply of entertainment has driven prices to rock-bottom?
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May 25, 2016 05:47
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One reason I don't/didn't pirate games is because they were a lot harder to get working though. Like an MP3 you can just punch into iTunes and it works. A game you usually have some sort of crack involved and if you get it near launch it's usually a buggy mess (because all games at launch are buggy messes) so you have to reapply patches.
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May 25, 2016 05:54
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Forget priacy, I'm talking about picking up yesteryear's AAA games for $0.99 on a summer sale.
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May 25, 2016 06:00
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There are certain types of games and movies that require large amounts of money and staff to make, so big companies have a place in those industries, and can charge a premium price. Anyone can rent time in a recording studio and can get a professional quality recording of their music, and people are willing to perform for peanuts. If it was no longer possible to make a living writing and performing popular music, would the quality of popular music drop?
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May 25, 2016 06:04
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Paolomania posted:Forget priacy, I'm talking about picking up yesteryear's AAA games for $0.99 on a summer sale. It's a double-edged sword; the cost of distributing a game through the internet is far lower than pressing physical copies. You also don't have to give a poo poo about scale. If you decide to print 2,000,000 copies but sell 90,000 then...well what the gently caress do you do with the rest of them? If you sell through Steam that just plain isn't an issue. All you have to do is give Valve a cut of whatever you make and life is good. You also have easy access to pretty much everybody that has an internet connection pretty much immediately. It can be hard to get past all the noise but really with brick and mortar stores you had to convince the store it was worth selling your thing then figure out how many copies they should get aaaaannd....yeah. Steam is just "get game on Steam -> sell game through Steam." Buuuuuuut the consumer has access to all the other billion games on Steam. How do you stand out? Technology is changing everything but like all things there's always some business guy asking "how do we make as much money on this as possible?" Some companies are apparently deciding that because they are new and technological and there are computers involved now that the old rules for whatever they're doing don't exist anymore.
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May 25, 2016 06:05
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Liquid Communism posted:Piracy wasn't even a -new- problem. They were hosed the minute the recordable cassette tape became common, because it was easy to just tape whatever song you wanted off the radio. The music industry had to be dragged kicking and bitching all the way. No pity for them. I'd also add that they were beginning to be little bitches about CDRs and CD burning right around the time MP3s took off. So even without Napster/iTunes/iPod they would have found a way to complain about end users doing what they wanted with the music they paid for.
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May 25, 2016 06:07
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Konstantin posted:If it was no longer possible to make a living writing and performing popular music, would the quality of popular music drop?
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May 25, 2016 06:16
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Solution: tax the owners of content and distribution and use the money to massively subsidize the arts.
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May 25, 2016 06:31
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moller posted:Solution: tax the owners of content and distribution and use the money to massively subsidize the arts. But then they wouldn't create all those jobs in the industry! You know, the ones that trickle down from all the artists' back catalogs being owned by the publishers in perpetuity.
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May 25, 2016 06:53
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ToxicSlurpee posted:programming sometimes you get "well I spent 40 hours this week figuring out some things to not do" and that's OK. But boy howdy are some people going to get furious about that. It's great when you do something for several hours, then realize it doesn't work and actually there is some simple way of doing it. Then after 8 hours of work you commit 4 lines of code.
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May 25, 2016 07:52
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Stuff like Steam and iTunes actually kind of prove that the "but but but PIRACY!!!!" argument was actually partially bullshit. Yeah you can pirate literally everything in existence but the issue is that you can't be sure that stuff is clean. Napster, KaZaa, LimeWire, eMule, any torrent software...that poo poo was full of viruses, malware, and awfulness pretty much immediately. Yeah you could invest in antivirus software but...well that isn't perfect and hackers became increasingly clever. I want to also say that Netflix is more convenient than piracy when a movie or tv series is available on it. The movie starts immediately after pressing play, it has subtitles (and in the correct language without having to fiddle with settings) and the quality is good enough. Also it's better than discs because there are no unskippable trailers, menu animations and FBI piracy warnings. In image quality blu-rays still beat Netflix hands down, but holy poo poo do those trailers annoy me still, just get to the loving movie!
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May 25, 2016 08:00
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Wheany posted:It's great when you do something for several hours, then realize it doesn't work and actually there is some simple way of doing it. Then after 8 hours of work you commit 4 lines of code. Then your employer shouts at you for being an unproductive drain on the company, and tells you how much code the previous guy who got paid by the line of code could write in a day (none of which worked).
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May 25, 2016 14:05
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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blowfish posted:Then your employer shouts at you for being an unproductive drain on the company, and tells you how much code the previous guy who got paid by the line of code could write in a day (none of which worked). The way to really get screwed is to clean up that jerk's code and wind up with negative lines of code for that period.
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May 25, 2016 15:33
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Unfortunate to not work in an environment that regards negative lines committed over time to be a great indicator of a really good programmer.
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May 25, 2016 16:44
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Who the hell uses LOC as a metric for anything but "this project is a behemoth with high regression risks"
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May 25, 2016 17:02
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Ahahaha jesus https://twitter.com/baekdal/status/735279280469512192 At least they're up front about it.
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May 25, 2016 17:16
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lancemantis posted:Who the hell uses LOC as a metric for anything but "this project is a behemoth with high regression risks" People that have no idea what programmers actually do. "How many lines of code did you write today?" None. I was running tests all day. That's a very, very important thing. One of my favorite "the boss is clueless" stories was about a boss that was complaining that he'd see programmers just staring at the screen and clicking or pushing the same button occasionally and that wasn't productive! He demanded to see more typing because that meant more programming was happening. The software engineers working there were like "uh...you do realize that we're debugging and that's like half our job when we do that?" He was like "I don't care more typing." So whenever he was around they'd just start hammering furiously on their keyboards.
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May 25, 2016 17:25
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Ask boss to shout more when he reads his emails, that means more bossing is happening. Every second not shouting instructions to the air is a second not spent Managing The Workforce. If you can't find anyone to instruct, walk into a random room and start micromanaging people at their desk.
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May 25, 2016 17:33
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ToxicSlurpee posted:People that have no idea what programmers actually do. Was this boss a very old man who thought he was a foreman at a code factory? Does he think all labor is purely physical and did he make engineers clean and straighten out their cubicles as code compiled?
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May 25, 2016 17:53
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ToxicSlurpee posted:People that have no idea what programmers actually do. So kind of like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he4dQTuqtZc
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May 25, 2016 21:22
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Where do video/mobile game studios tend to fall in the taxonomy of tech companies? Similarities: - employ lots of tech bro manchildren - "cool" offices/perks - often VC backed, with valuations precariously based on one IP (sometimes not even launched yet) Differences: - have figured out monetization (IAPs), and occasionally make boatloads of money - do not blatantly/sanctimoniously flout laws/regulations as part of their business model
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May 25, 2016 21:38
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From working with some former mobile game devs, I can tell you that the mobile game company hires a bunch of people to make the game, the people make the game, and then the company fires all but the absolute minimum required to keep the game running.
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