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Japan's NTT to begin remote work as norm for 30k employees
- samfisher83 4y agoNtt has 320k employees. I wonder what the other 290 will think?
- mkl95 4y agoIn Southern Europe NTT is mostly a bodyshop. Their target demographic is junior engineers willing to do unpaid overtime for abysmal pay. Pretty sure remote work doesn't make a big difference.
- drnonsense42 4y agoIf you’re doing a lot of extra hours, not having to commute and getting some peace makes a huge difference in making it sustainable.
- permalac 4y agoBut if you work for them in Barcelona the salary is still pretty bad.
- DeathArrow 4y agoHow bad is pretty bad?
- oblio 4y agoI don't know about NTT, but salaries for software devs are really low in general. Think €30-40k per year. How FAANG are not leveraging such a poorly paid workforce in countries with a great climate, developed, safe, etc, I will never know.
- ben_w 4y agoI think the sort of person FAANG wants to hire, knows how much they can get from moving and has either already relocated or found remote work.
- DeathArrow 4y agoDo FAANG hire remote developers?
- KerrAvon 4y agoThey do. At least some of the FAANG have important software development offices in Japan.
- DeathArrow 4y agoThe parent was speaking about Spain, not Japan.
- bamboozled 4y agoBecause any good talent leaves Japan immediately for the USA as soon as they can for better pay and a more relaxed life?
- DeathArrow 4y agoParent was talking about Spain, not Japan. And as a foreigner I think it's very hard to get a working visa in the US.
- geodel 4y agoYeah, FAANG can just hire all the engineers at NTT, all these Indian IT outsourcing companies, European tech companies and other I might have missed. I mean for christ sake this is 2022. If every CRUD micro services peddler and every network engineer who solves 5 firewall opening issues in a day couldn't get USD 200K / year for 6 hr work day, free food and drinks, onsite laundry, massage, haircut and medical checkup. What is the point of even living on this polluted earth.
- Arcanum-XIII 4y agoCan confirm, having the dubious joy of working with them.
- grapeskin 4y agoThat’s the reality for big Japanese tech companies. They pay you in reputation, and reputation doesn’t transfer to other big corps since they see frequent job changes (sometimes capped at twice in a lifetime) as a red flag and won’t hire people.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoIf the reputation has no utility for the employee, why would the employee accept payment in the form of reputation? Is the employee oblivious to the lack of utility of reputation?
- 55555 4y agoReputation provides utility in other ways. For example, social status and respect from others.
- quartesixte 4y agoSocial reputation is still big in Japan. Reputation is also highly correlated with company stability in Japan. Such reputation buys you things like A) easier time attracting a future spouse B) respect in certain social circles and transactions, transferrable to your partner and children (yes this is a thing) C) a network of individuals also “smart and hardworking” like you
- bobthepanda 4y agoThere's a couple of things not mentioned here. Due to the more or less deflationary economy, Japanese wages have not increased for the better part of three decades. (Deflating prices mean that even with stagnant wages, you're still able to buy more.) Job hopping is unlikely to actually result in increased wages. (Inflation is now coming to Japan due to the general global inflation from the war in Ukraine, so that will be an interesting scenario to watch.) Japan is a heavily reputation based society. In the way that US uses credit score to determine a lot of things, Japan uses this sort of reputation as a proxy to determine eligibility for many things. As a general example, finding in apartment in Japan requires a guarantor (essentially a cosigner who agrees to act as a fallback option in case you can't pay) and landlords want a Japanese national person or entity to do it most of the time. https://blog.gaijinpot.com/what-is-a-rental-guarantor/ https://blog.gaijinpot.com/what-is-a-rental-guarantor/
- geodel 4y agoIn US too, it is close to a bodyshop. In fact I had friends there who would get full or partial work from home in 2014 or so. Not sure about pay as I didn't check. I was more enamored by WFH as I had to commute 2-3 hrs/day daily for work in those days.
- midasuni 4y ago“ The telecom company has said it is considering allowing all 320,000 employees of the NTT group worldwide to work remotely.”
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- scollet 4y agoFull remote.
- lettergram 4y agoI’m sure that’ll help the already high levels of chronic loneliness in Japan…
- cptaj 4y agoYes, having more free time will definitely help people have a social life
- midasuni 4y agoClearly office work doesn’t help with this. Perhaps the flexibility and the removal of the need for things like capsule hotels will help. Maybe towns outside of the large megacities will see a renaissance ad people under 65 will be living there.
- lettergram 4y agoAs someone who did just that (went remote, moved to a small town with a Bay Area salary). I can say it’s amazing and highly recommend. That said, no one else I know chose it. You lose a lot of the city night life and niche things. Instead you gain space, more rural style hobbies, less diverse food (particularly if you eat out), etc. A lot of people aren’t able to recognize the pros / cons of such a trade. For anyone reading, I recommend living in a suburban / rural location. Get out and take care of a big garden, go to local events and join a few clubs. Definitely a positive experience.
- filoleg 4y agoHow long ago did you make that switch? Asking because with things like that, there is always an amazing honeymoon period, but reality settles in a few years down the road. Not just talking about the urban=>rural switch specifically, but in the opposite direction as well, and when it comes to pretty much any major change of a similar nature in general.
- pengaru 4y ago> less diverse food (particularly if you eat out) After spending a few years in a very rural part of CA while rebuilding my cabin, the lack of quality diverse organic produce I'd taken for granted in SF Bay area grocers is one of the biggest complaints I have. I haven't seen a Pomelo in a store for over 4 years now, let alone an organic one.
- nine_zeros 4y agoGood. As an oil importing country, their fuel consumption will keep going lower
- sofixa 4y agoI really doubt many people in Japan commute by car.
- bin_bash 4y agoThey’re one of the biggest importers of natural gas. Something has to run the Shinkansen.
- srvmshr 4y agoShinkansens run on electricity. Oil is mostly in the manufacturing and plastics industry, unlike other countries where domestic consumption is a significant share. (Tokyo power sector is mostly thermal and nuclear.)
- bin_bash 4y agoThey hardly produce any nuclear anymore. Natural gas is the largest source by far. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Japan EDIT: these numbers appear to be old, since 2019 they’ve tuned reactors back on and stopped relying on LNG as much. I can’t find good numbers on recent data but in 2019 they imported more gas than any other country.
- srvmshr 4y agoFossil-fueled thermal power generation accounted for 71.7% of total electricity generated during the year [2021], down from 74.9% the previous year [2020]. Coal and LNG accounted for 26.5% and 31.7%, respectively, and both fossil fuels are on a declining trend. Nuclear power accounted for 5.9%, up from 4.3% the previous year. Source: https://www.isep.or.jp/en/1243/ https://www.isep.or.jp/en/1243/ Reference #4
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- thisiswrongggg 4y ago
- BlargMcLarg 4y agoJust say it if you got something to say, rather than this "hint: it's not what you think it is" shtick. If the argument is "companies will use remote work for their own benefits", no shit, that's what they've done with literally everything under the sun. It's not news companies are trying to socialize the risks and privatize the profits.
- Arcanum-XIII 4y agoWe could also say that you need the bay area salary to pay a colocation if you need to go into the office – that doesn’t remedy the issue. I’m losing 2 hours per day in my car (with the added pollution for it). There’s no decent solution to use public transport. At the office, I have the dubious joy of working on an open office – where I can’t focus. So my job is not great. That’s not to speak about the quality of the office ware (bad laptop, bad chair, bad screen, bad mouse…) I lose family time. I lose quality of life. I’m tired. Now let’s look at my home office. I have a 40″ screen, an aeron chair, a nice laptop (MacBook m1), a good gamer mouse and mouse pad. All that without my time in the traffic jam. I’m refreshed, able to work better and my boss got more out of me due to this. Since I’m a freelance, all this is factored in my daily rate. For one, my employer has the dubious pleasure of having me sit on a stool in his office that he pays for. For the other, he doesn’t observe me often, but get more quality effort out of me. So he lose. Every time. Let’s be honest: I’m lucky I have a home office. I guess lot of people do like to go see their colleagues – and I’m glad for them. Now, can’t we improve the situation so that everyone can choose to work the way they’re happier?
- ghaff 4y ago>Now, can’t we improve the situation so that everyone can choose to work the way they’re happier? One of the issues I hear is that, at many employers who are saying "Work wherever is most effective for you," a lot of offices are ghost towns. So you may see a handful of people, you're often hoteling, and the cafeteria is scaled back. So people who want to don't really have the option of going back to a pre-pandemic office. That said, I'm sure I'm in something of a bubble. The few times I've been driving near rush hour for some appointment, traffic has seemed to be pretty much pre-pandemic levels.
- toomuchtodo 4y agoYou love to see it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kmclean 4y agoUnnecessary commuting should always be included in working hours and expensed.
- djhaskin987 4y agoAre you going to expense your lunch breakfast dinner and rent as well? You need all those as well in order to work. If you work from home are you going to expense your electricity? Where is the line?
- smetj 4y agoNo, just unnecessary commuting.
- SllX 4y agoYou have discovered another road to feudalism. When people cast wishes I’d like them to imagine they are holding a monkey’s paw whilst doing so.
- cbracken 4y agoJapanese companies often include both a commuting allowance and a housing allowance as distinct components of your pay; neither is counted as income for the purposes of taxation. Meals at company cafeterias are typically not free (though some places are), but typically very reasonable -- e.g. 300 JPY for curry-rice etc.
- fomine3 4y agoNit: That's true for taxation, but counted for social insurance/pension fee. Latter is big for lower income workers.
- BlargMcLarg 4y agoThe talk should be opened either way. Companies are far too eager to put high RE prices / high commuting costs / long commutes onto people, but no one is asking "where is the line?" when the roles are reversed. God forbid we play a few things by ear and see what happens.
- CryptoPunk 4y ago
- IceDane 4y agoI work for a subsidiary of NTT and we've been remote first for years, with travel expenses handled as outlined in the article. It's pretty great.
- 310260 4y agoOf course, US telecoms would never consider this despite NTT being one of the stodgiest on the planet.
- fomine3 4y agoAnother reason why big corp encourages telework (while there are some ventures don't encourage) is because their office in Tokyo is very expensive. Anyway it's good thing.