Some companies pay people to sit by a window and do almost nothing

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Today we travel to Japan, where corporate culture has produced one of the most fascinating office terms I’ve encountered:

madogiwazoku.

Roughly: the window-seat tribe.

Their primary assignment can occasionally appear to be the window.

Let’s get to work.

There is a long-standing Japanese workplace phenomenon known as madogiwazoku.

The term describes employees—often older or once-senior workers—who remain employed but have been moved away from meaningful responsibilities. Traditionally they might be given a desk near the window and very little consequential work.

They have not been promoted.

They have not exactly been fired either.

They are simply… there.

A 2022 survey by consulting firm Shikigaku asked 300 Japanese workers ages 20 to 39 at companies with more than 300 employees whether their workplace had an older colleague who essentially “doesn’t work.”

49.2% said yes.

Among respondents who had such a colleague, common descriptions included frequent smoking or snack breaks, staring into space, idle conversation and browsing the internet. Ninety percent said the situation had some negative effect on the workplace, including lower morale, additional workload for others and higher labor costs. Japan Today

The survey is small, several years old and should not be treated as proof that half of all Japanese companies operate this way.

But the phenomenon itself is real enough to have acquired a name, a cultural history and renewed attention as Japan tries to keep people working longer.

Japan’s demographic situation makes the story even more interesting.

People age 65 and older already represented 13.6% of Japan’s labor force in 2024, and employment among older age groups has been rising for years. 内閣府ホームページ

Government policy strongly encourages continued employment. As of 2025, 99.9% of Japanese companies with at least 21 employees had implemented measures to secure employment opportunities through age 65, while 34.8% had measures designed to provide work opportunities through age 70. Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare

Keeping experienced employees around therefore makes economic sense.

Giving them nothing useful to do does not.

That tension is what makes the window-seat tribe interesting beyond Japan.

Every company has some version of this problem.

The veteran employee who knows everything but has been removed from the real workflow.

The former manager whose organization disappeared during restructuring.

The technical expert who gets invited to meetings “for context” but owns nothing.

The person with 30 years of institutional knowledge whose current responsibilities could fit on a Post-it.

Companies often think about employees as positions.

The better unit may be useful capability.

An older worker who can no longer—or no longer wants to—operate at the pace of a previous role may still be extraordinarily valuable at training, reviewing, advising, troubleshooting or transferring knowledge.

But someone has to design that role.

Otherwise the organization retains the person and wastes the experience.

That may be the worst of both worlds.

You pay the salary.

The employee loses purpose.

Younger coworkers inherit the work.

And the knowledge everybody claims is irreplaceable spends the afternoon looking out the window.

Japan’s government aims to lift employment among people ages 65–69 and expand company measures that allow people to work through age 70. The country’s new policy targets a 57% employment rate for ages 65–69 by 2029, up from 53.6% in 2024. Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare

Retirement is becoming less of a cliff.

Job design therefore becomes more important.

In the Shikigaku survey, 59.7% of respondents who had such an older colleague said the situation hurt morale, while 49% said it increased everyone else’s workload. Japan Today

Nothing builds intergenerational harmony like doing someone else’s work while they have the better view.

Japan reported 400 million? No—4.00 million people aged 65–69 and 5.46 million aged 70+ in its labor force in 2024. Employment among people 65+ has risen for more than two decades. 内閣府ホームページ

The issue is not whether older people will work.

It is increasingly what work organizations build for them.

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If someone on your team has knowledge the company cannot easily replace, write down exactly where that knowledge should go.

Training?

Mentoring?

Quality review?

Customer escalation?

Process improvement?

Technical troubleshooting?

Succession planning?

“Be available if we need you” is not a role.

Transfer the expertise before the only person carrying it leaves the building.

An employee with thirty years of experience sitting idle is an obvious cost.

Losing thirty years of undocumented knowledge and then rediscovering it through mistakes is less obvious.

Good workforce planning has to avoid both.

The economic question is not simply:

Should we keep this person?

It is:

What valuable capability are we paying to retain, and where will we use it?

If nobody can answer that, the window may indeed be doing most of the work.

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COMPANY: Bob has 34 years of knowledge nobody else has.

MANAGER: Excellent. What are we having him do?

COMPANY: Nothing important.

MANAGER: Is he training anyone?

COMPANY: No.

MANAGER: Documenting anything?

COMPANY: No.

COMPANY: But we would be devastated if he left.

The first describes what the organization is currently asking them to do.

The second claims something about what they are capable of doing.

Companies confuse those two more often than they admit.

Vote below and tell us whether your organization is actually good at transferring experience before people retire or leave.

Then send this to the person who knows exactly why that machine, customer, spreadsheet or process behaves strangely.

You know the one.

Nobody documented it.

Technically Wednesday. Emotionally staring out the window.

— The Still Monday Desk