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Patio11 AMA about Japan, Technology, Business and Startups

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Re: Patio11 AMA about Japan, Technology, Business and Startups

#11

Post by xevb3k »

xevb3k wrote: post #6
patio11 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm satisfied with the agreement, which was the result of two relatively sophisticated parties negotiating spiritedly towards a mutually acceptable outcome. Without talking about that negotiation, note generally that if a prospective employer says "BTW we want all of your attention on the day job so our policy is $FOO" that you have many, many options for your next sentence, of which "OK then, if that is your policy.…

Yes, it’s understandable, particularly if side projects are not important to you at the moment. But it still reflects poorly on the company (from my standpoint). As an aside (while it’s the de facto standard) my understanding was that it’s illegal in Japan to restrict your work outside of company time. If anyone has a good reference for this, it would be welcome.

Really confused as to why this would be downvoted. Can anyone enlighten me?

Re: Patio11 AMA about Japan, Technology, Business and Startups

#12

Post by xevb3k »

aidenn0 wrote: post #9
xevb3k wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it’s understandable, particularly if side projects are not important to you at the moment. But it still reflects poorly on the company (from my standpoint). As an aside (while it’s the de facto standard) my understanding was that it’s illegal in Japan to restrict your work outside of company time. If anyone has a good reference for this, it would be welcome.

It's more or less illegal in California for employers to restrict off-hours work as well, but it's not illegal for them to claim copyright for off-hours work that is related to their business.

Interesting, yes that’s fair. I even think non-competes while being paid (not post termination) are fair. But being totally restricted (or largely restricted) from non-competing work doesn’t seem so fair.

Re: Patio11 AMA about Japan, Technology, Business and Startups

#13

Post by dang »

aplorbust wrote: post #4

Also from same author, on the emergence of AWS EC2 and S3: https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=194921&cid=15971343 "... not going to set the world on fire." But see (also on front page currently): https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-com-announces-fourth-q... It seems like AWS is doing quite well.

Come on, if someone were to cherry-pick wrongness from your history, mine, or anyone else's, it would be doozies all around. Therefore this crosses into incivility, which isn't allowed here. Not to mention it defeats good conversation, which is the point of these threads.

Re: Patio11 AMA about Japan, Technology, Business and Startups

#14

Post by dschuler »

aidenn0 wrote: post #9
xevb3k wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it’s understandable, particularly if side projects are not important to you at the moment. But it still reflects poorly on the company (from my standpoint). As an aside (while it’s the de facto standard) my understanding was that it’s illegal in Japan to restrict your work outside of company time. If anyone has a good reference for this, it would be welcome.

It's more or less illegal in California for employers to restrict off-hours work as well, but it's not illegal for them to claim copyright for off-hours work that is related to their business.

To quote Joel Spolsky (being more succinct than I would be):

"Anything you do on your own time, with your own equipment, that is not related to your employer’s line of work is yours, even if the contract you signed says otherwise."

(For California only)

So as usual, it's a bit more complex, but the key is whether it's related to your employer's line of work. Of course the employer may try to claim _anything_ to belong to them, but they may not prevail in court. That outcome is less than ideal for the employee - best not talk about side projects at work or do anything related to them at work.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr...

Re: Patio11 AMA about Japan, Technology, Business and Startups

#15

Post by TomMarius »

xevb3k wrote: post #11
xevb3k wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it’s understandable, particularly if side projects are not important to you at the moment. But it still reflects poorly on the company (from my standpoint). As an aside (while it’s the de facto standard) my understanding was that it’s illegal in Japan to restrict your work outside of company time. If anyone has a good reference for this, it would be welcome.

Really confused as to why this would be downvoted. Can anyone enlighten me?

People (probably the newcomers) don't know the purpose of downvotes here. I'm being downvoted into oblivion for political opinions there.

Re: Patio11 AMA about Japan, Technology, Business and Startups

#16

Post by new299 »

"Far better to do it at a startup (or at AppAmaGooBookSoft) than at a traditionally-managed Japanese company"

From what I've seen at least Google and Amazon don't have much engineering effort beyond localization in Japan. I'm curious to know if any of these guys are hiring for Software Engineering or SRE type roles (in Japan).

Re: Patio11 AMA about Japan, Technology, Business and Startups

#17

Post by hkmurakami »

new299 wrote: post #16

"Far better to do it at a startup (or at AppAmaGooBookSoft) than at a traditionally-managed Japanese company" From what I've seen at least Google and Amazon don't have much engineering effort beyond localization in Japan. I'm curious to know if any of these guys are hiring for Software Engineering or SRE type roles (in Japan).

Can confirm that this is decidedly not the case for either GOOG or AMZN.

Many engineers on Google Chrome team are in Tokyo (Japan has quite a few experts in low level programming, and culturally excel at optimizing for speed).

Amazon Japan has engineers working on original products and features on their ecommerce storefront.

Re: Patio11 AMA about Japan, Technology, Business and Startups

#18

Post by patio11 »

new299 wrote: post #16

"Far better to do it at a startup (or at AppAmaGooBookSoft) than at a traditionally-managed Japanese company" From what I've seen at least Google and Amazon don't have much engineering effort beyond localization in Japan. I'm curious to know if any of these guys are hiring for Software Engineering or SRE type roles (in Japan).

Yes, AppAmaGooBookSoft are hiring for software engineering and SREs in Tokyo. No, your perception that they do not have much engineering effort is not materially reflective of reality.

Google's open job reqs: https://careers.google.com/jobs#t=sq&q=j&li=20&l=false&jlo=e...

That's the public version. If you want the non-public version, take any one of several thousand people in Tokyo out for a beer.

Re: Patio11 AMA about Japan, Technology, Business and Startups

#19

Post by klibertp »

TomMarius wrote: post #15
xevb3k wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really confused as to why this would be downvoted. Can anyone enlighten me?

People (probably the newcomers) don't know the purpose of downvotes here. I'm being downvoted into oblivion for political opinions there.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed - there's always some percent of users who didn't read the FAQ, but I feel like it got much worse in recent months. I wonder, did karma threshold needed for downvoting get smaller or something? It's really sad to see interesting opinions get paler and paler due to downvotes of people who apparently disagree, but are too lazy to state what they disagree with exactly in a comment. Relatedly, posts that reiterate some common memes/ideas/misconceptions in a couple of sentences get promoted to a much higher degree than they used to. It's not to the point where HN would be unusable, far from it, but it certainly doesn't improve the experience.

Re: Patio11 AMA about Japan, Technology, Business and Startups

#20

Post by jsoc815 »

klibertp wrote: post #19
TomMarius wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People (probably the newcomers) don't know the purpose of downvotes here. I'm being downvoted into oblivion for political opinions there.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed - there's always some percent of users who didn't read the FAQ, but I feel like it got much worse in recent months. I wonder, did karma threshold needed for downvoting get smaller or something? It's really sad to see interesting opinions get paler and paler due to downvotes of people who apparently disagree, but are too lazy to state what they disagree with exactly in a comme…

'Amen.'
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