Why would you be surprised by their "lack of work ethics"? They got fucked hard, so it's understandable that they aren't going to care much for "the man" anymore: they were told their contract was to work like mad in their studies, get to a good university and end up landing a good job in a multinational where they'd work their whole life slowly climbing up the hierarchy and pretty much guaranteed they'd be there for life.

Instead, at the end of their studies they found an utterly slaughtered job market and a crappy economy in which Japan has been stuck for 20 years (especially those who got out during the Lost Decade of the 90s).

They don't have "good work ethics" because they've managed not to be stockholm syndrome victims, and because reality showed them strong work ethics didn't matter, and promises were there to be broken.

Boo hoo, so the economic sucks and you were lied to your whole life about how your employment situation was going to work. So? This does not excuse laziness and a crappy work ethic.

Perhaps their chronic unemployment stems from the fact that they meander through life rather than actively fighting for what they want. Japan isn't some third-world backwater, there are opportunities abound for people who are willing to work and fight for it - just like it still is in the US. The ones that sit and pout all day (like Scott, from the NYT article) are the ones who will never get out.

Opportunities exist everywhere, and a poor economy is certainly no excuse for apathy. However, discounting the challenges the economy posed to the rising generation of Japanese is pretty unfair IMO. The 90's really really sucked.

What I mean is, Japan is still an industrial power, and far from a decrepit backwater - while opportunities were not what they once were, they are still there for those who seek it.

If anything, a shitty economy and hard times should create people who fight harder and take less bullshit, not the other way around as the poster had indicated.

You are encouraging people to live in denial of reality. If the economy is bad, then a wise investor will take into account the fact that the economy is bad. And, when it comes to our careers, we are all investors. In the face of a bad economy, many investors will go to cash. Cash is a rational option in the face of a bad economy. When we are speaking of individuals, the equivalent of "going to cash" is to focus less on one's career and more on the other parts of one's life.

You're looking at people who grew without arms and are asking how comes they can't tie their shoelace.

And it seems other people understood it.

I suppose we may be talking about a different age group, but I'm in a theatre circle at a Japanese university, and out of the 7 people who joined this year, 3 aim to start a business (one in Economy, one in Business, me in Engineering). Most people who ask me about it seem to have a reaction of "it sounds so awesome, but I could never do this". I think the way of thinking is slowly changing.

I agree with the rest of your post. I've been especially disappointed by the lack of innovation at research labs in what is supposed to be a top university.

5 bucks says you never had to spend more than few months looking for a job after graduation.

I know for me, I tend to get tangled up telling the boss that we are going in the wrong direction, rather than working hard on the doomed project. I find working hard in the wrong direction to be very frustrating... and when I'm not hired to set direction, I imagine the boss finds it very frustrating that I'm arguing about direction rather than implementing.

Even when I am working on the thing the boss wants me to work on, I'm not the best employee. I'll never be a 'company man' - an Entrepreneur is never going to believe that the company is a family, or that the company will take care of him.

Perhaps most important of all, even if the Entrepreneur is doing his best to do right by his employer, his dayjob isn't going to be, as pg says, 'the top idea in his mind' - even if I wanted to, I don't think I could make other people's problems the thing I think about in the shower.

So yeah... personally, I think Entrepreneurs usually make pretty shitty employees.

is it never justified for someone to fight hard, see they're not getting anywhere, and then drop their effort level down to match the situation they're in, permanently or temporarily?

FWIW I've seen that happen in France: the social safety net tends to be pretty strong, but the transition from that safety net to its absence is anything but smooth. I'd go as far as to say it's pretty abrupt.

A decade or so ago, my parents started employing a domestic worker to take care of laundry, sweeping, that kind of stuff. First one was a professional, second one was somebody who'd been "on the dole" for a long time and trying to get out of it (single mother, in her 40s, two children). Went swimmingly early on, but a pair of quarters in she realized she had gone above some kind of cut-off, and as a result she didn't qualify for some govt assistance as well as e.g. government-sponsored holidays for her children. That added up to at least twice what she actually earned.

She decided to tough it up and keep trying to climb out, but I'd have understand dropping out: when you start making efforts and all of a sudden your standard of living drops sharply, it's not exactly worth it.

Some states in the US recognize the transition from public assistance as an issue. My wife used to work for an organization that was consulted by several states. With cutbacks in federal funding and a population resistant to tax increases, states do little more than study the problem.

Oh so would I, definitely, just saying that the transition back into "productive member of society" often isn't setup/incentivized correctly, and can lead to people not being able to make the transition. And that it would often be a better idea to fix that rather than decide people who stay on aid are lazy fuckers.

Regardless, in any first world country there are plenty of people who are willing to sit on their butts and not try to do better for themselves unless they're pushed through life with social programs and social "contracts" as were mentioned. I don't like it either, but, sadly, I'm not convinced we can get everyone to be eager, enthusiastic, ethical go-getters either.

If it won't make any difference, then… why?

To add, young Japanese people also don't have the option of being an entrepreneur, because that notion is still widely shunned by society. So they toil in misery for many many years without escape.

I don't think any society would mind having companies that brought them wealth and employment.

You should see the blank stare I get, when they ask me about how to be successful in life (I'm a bit older and have my own company) and I tell them to start a business.

Maybe they can adopt what the Chinese have started doing by paying a foreign person to appear to be the CEO for publicity purposes, even though the company would actually be owned and run by Japanese people. If the Japanese were made to believe that the company is a foreign one, would they be less opposed to its existence in their country?

Once "tradition" has changed in Japan not to frown on entrepreneurs, they can stop pretending to be foreign-owned.

One could say it's a meta tradition; ok.

You'd find very, very different professional norms if you either hung around my salaryman buddies or hung around young ladies of my acquaintance who are on the "pink-collar" track.

For someone in their 20s who can't or doesn't want to depend on their parents for a place to live, then the prospect of making 2500yen/hr as a temp, instead of a paltry 200,000/month (and being overworked) as a salaried employee, is appealing.