Welcome to the Best of Kotaku, where I round up all of this week's best content.
This week's best image is what I imagine baby Gordon Freeman looks like. Look at him. All adorable and rosy-cheeked. Go on. Look at him. knitetgantt's adorable creation was found with the help of Blue Dog's Eyes.
Moving on to our Best Of content this week, we kick things off as usual with a comment from the community.
The Best Comment From The Community
Our favorite comment of this week comes to you from bakagaijin, who commiserates with harsh working conditions:
As someone who works in Japan, I'm not surprised by these complaints. Granted it's a different industry, but I can completely understand.
I'm in this unique position where I work both in the public and private sector simultaneously. My company is private. And honestly I don't have too many complaints outside of some weird, arbitrary and contradicting rules. Nothing too serious. I suppose every company has issues regardless of country.
But the public sector? What a mess. Bureaucracy masters. How anything gets done at any level is beyond me. But I won't get too into that. The comment about work loads and physical labor strikes a cord with me.
Now I'm lucky enough to not have to work the hours as my co-workers, nor do I have the same workload. But they are worked to the bone. They arrive at 5am, and don't leave until 9, 10pm at night. And they do this 7 days a week, usually. 6 if they are lucky. They are utterly exhausted, forced—and I do mean forced—to stay and work these ridiculous hours even if there is no need. And I won't even get into the needless activities, meetings and paperwork that needs to be done on a daily basis.
It's the old Japanese way of doing things that still permeates, and is what I think is holding back these companies, cities, etc. Change doesn't come easy here. People hate the way things are done; I hear complaints all the time. But nobody knows how to stop the terrible cycle.
There are many companies who are changing. Have changed. Internationalization has forced this change, in a way. But there is still a lot of old-schooler's that are doing things like they did 40 years ago, and it is literally killing them.
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