Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan • Hacker News Board

Re: Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan

#151

Post by asdff » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 4:35 PM UTC

lnsru wrote: post #132

zeeZ wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naturally. You can't do business in Japan without a fax machine.

Seriously!? I thought, Germany was unique with this fax machine thing.

A surprising amount of American personal business is still dependent on a fax machine. Especially in dealings with government, if you can't physically hand it in, it may need to be faxed. Always a terrifying feeling when you send a document containing all your personal identifying information to the fax nether, hopefully you dialed correctly.

Re: Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan

#152

Post by celim307 » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 4:36 PM UTC

cdavid wrote: post #97

I am quite bearish about the impact of WFH, especially for software engineers, but if there is one country where I think the coronavirus can have a huge positive effect for the economy, it is Japan. Japanese companies are generally extremely inefficient. Outside of a few powerhouses, partially thanks to a protected and large domestic market, Japanese labor practices are antiquated. There is a culture of overwork that…

This bleeds into their North American operations too. Nowhere else in my career have I seen a more wretched hive of incestual politicking, inefficiency, lack of respect for lower workers, and obsession with beaucracy at Panasonic’s American operations

Re: Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan

#153

Post by nostrademons » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 4:38 PM UTC

hibikir wrote: post #114

cactus2093 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean FWIW I’m American and your explanation sounds very foreign to me. I’m a millennial though, so owning a house at all is quite obstacle. Scrounging up a down payment when even a 2 bedroom apartment is $1-$1.5 million is not the easiest task. Renting an extra 2 bedrooms to have lying around in case we suddenly need 2 offices would also cost an extra couple thousand dollars a month. My wife and I are both working…

The US has very localized housing problems. Many tech giants are realizing that they have to either diversify their locations or enter into a housing spiral, as there just aren't enough houses for how many people they'd like to hire. Once you step out of a small number of markets, the price problem goes away. I live in a well sized metro in the midwest, and I've worked, from here, for companies you've heard about. 4…

It's more that the price problem follows the workers.

A decade ago, Seattle was cheap. You could get 4/5 BR homes in Kirkland for $400K. I just checked, and those homes are going for $1.2M now. Similarly, one of my former Google coworkers moved out to the Boulder office. When I'd checked on Boulder in the late 00s, you could get nice homes for $250-300K. He paid about $850K.

Wherever you have highly paid tech workers, you will have highly paid tech workers bidding up houses. You just have to get ahead of them, and buy where the FAANG offices are just being constructed rather than wait until you work there. True remote work (where you could dial in from anywhere, not just a city near an office) would fix this, but that's not really what's being offered these days, and when it is the salaries are more inline with what people make in the Midwest than what they make in Silicon Valley.

Re: Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan

#154

Post by wontonzealot » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 4:38 PM UTC

xtracto wrote: post #125

runawaybottle wrote: post #38

I’d love to see companies convert ‘Unlimited vacation time at your discretion’ over to ‘Unlimited remote at your discretion’.

"Unlimited vacation" is a deception. Real perks are to have 15 or 20 days of vacations, increasing with seniority at the company, and forced vacations (i.e., the company forces you to take the vacations every year). It is also good for the company health (ensure that no 1 person missing has a large impact).

"Unlimited vacation" is a deception.

I see this being repeated over and over but I can't help but think that it's become a way to discourage giving employees time off from a company's perspective. I've successfully taken 30+ days off in an unlimited vacation environment (not consecutively) and not been reprimanded in any way because I was able to operate responsibly. Before I left for any length of vacation, I made sure that projects were delivered and successfully launched weeks before hand and I created documentation and trained others on continuing work processes (the lack of my presences should not have ANY impact).

"Unlimited vacation" should be a work perk that is attractive. Often times I find that it's the managers who don't believe employees should be given time off or the company decides to just implement unlimited vacation without any process in place to revoke the privilege or guidelines as to what a responsible policy looks like. It's easy to say something doesn't work when there was never any intention or effort to make it work.

Just my 2 cents.

Re: Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan

#155

Post by buboard » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 4:38 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #41

onetimemanytime wrote: post #2

Covid might actually result in permanent changes. Sucks for a lot of commercial real estate companies. WeWork is probably 100% done

> WeWork is probably 100% done WeWork specifically was failing anyway, but it strikes me that in a world where permanent workplaces are deemphasized and workers are inherently more mobile, the market for a broker of temporary spaces is probably larger, not smaller.

people dont want to pay 2 rents for no reason though, unless the rents are very cheap, so they won't be able to price these things high anymore. probably

Re: Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan

#156

Post by GordonS » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 4:40 PM UTC

jbay808 wrote: post #141

GordonS wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I presume the OP's comment was in the context of the typical HN crowd, which I would imagine has a higher than average income.

I would guess the ones earning that much are probably in metro areas like the bay area and Seattle.

I imagine those in the Bay area are making a lot more than 50k/year, or at least there are always SV devs chiming in saying they are making 300-600k/year (the OP said 100k for a couple).

I make the equivalent of 100k USD in a tier 2 city in Scotland (a single income that is, not a couple combined). It's not outlandish for senior roles across much of the UK (with "normal" companies, not FAANG).

Re: Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan

#157

Post by SenHeng » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 4:40 PM UTC

Another side often missing in these dicussions is that Japan's tax laws are relatively sane and are the same through all states. You will not be taxed differently just because you're living in a different state or are living between states.

There are some issues regarding where your residence tax should be paid to but those are minor compared to what I've read on here about crossing state lines in the US.

Re: Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan

#158

Post by VRay » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

GordonS wrote: post #156

jbay808 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess the ones earning that much are probably in metro areas like the bay area and Seattle.

I imagine those in the Bay area are making a lot more than 50k/year, or at least there are always SV devs chiming in saying they are making 300-600k/year (the OP said 100k for a couple). I make the equivalent of 100k USD in a tier 2 city in Scotland (a single income that is, not a couple combined). It's not outlandish for senior roles across much of the UK (with "normal" companies, not FAANG).

Yeah, dude, there's a site "Levels FYI" that gives real data. If anyone's having trouble wrapping their brains around it, just keep in mind that every business needs to send a sizable chunk of its revenue through Silicon Valley to stay competitive (via advertising, office equipment/software, apps, etc)

100k is attainable even in the middle of nowhere in the USA, but you'd probably be better off working remotely for someone for 120k+

Re: Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan

#159

Post by ghaff » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 4:44 PM UTC

buboard wrote: post #144

thesumofall wrote: post #129

Not commenting on this specific case here, but I believe we currently see the pendulum swinging from one extreme (WFH only at a very exclusive subset of companies) to the other extreme ("WFH first" policies) I'm convinced the true winners will be those companies that find a smart mix of both worlds. This includes recognizing that both concepts have their strengths (e.g., people are a lot more disciplined about meetin…

There is no middle ground -- WFH is self-reinforcing trend, because offices are much less useful when they are half-empty and all processes have go online. As soon as some coworkers move, others follow. If people start working 2-3 days at home ... they start to think about moving somewhere better. I wonder what is the endgame of this rearrangement? Perhaps nomadism will become common? But in that case, cities will lo…

I tend to agree in that coming in only one or two days a week gives you some greater flexibility in where you live, but only some. For a lot of people whose companies are in expensive urban areas, WFH a few days per week means they need more housing than they might otherwise need but they can't move somewhere that's cheaper/preferable.

And while teams can coordinate time in the office, the more people are mostly remote the less value there is in others coming in.

>Obvious choice #1 is near extended family. What else motivates people to move?

They like the environment more? I work with someone who just ditched their downtown city apartment and bought a place on the coast of Maine.

Re: Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan

#160

Post by GordonS » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 4:44 PM UTC

taken_username wrote: post #101

GordonS wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I presume the OP's comment was in the context of the typical HN crowd, which I would imagine has a higher than average income.

Assumptions, not data. Even if you assume the reader of HN is in tech firm, you can assume the "household" income average

It seems a reasonable enough assumption to me, that tech workers make more than average - so much so that I didn't feel the need to trawl for a peer reviewed data source.