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Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan

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Re: Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can actually get a house for free in some areas, mostly central Japan. Many cities are becoming deserted and houses are left alone, governments offer incentives to take them over. Might come with a catch such as committing to maintenance of farming.

My wife did a little light reading on this subject and found it's more complicated than that. It turns out that finding the owner of these properties is an enormous challenge because due to the high level of taxes and fees associated with these buildings, the owners are reluctant to claim them (to avoid paying the taxes/fees). I would like to see someone living in Japan confirm this, though.

I haven't seen any houses being offered for free in my area, but have seen number that were listed at less than $15K USD and wouldn't consider any of them livable without at least some major renovation - and in most cases you'd probably want to just demolish the house completely and build something new. Of course different people might have differing definitions of what is "livable", so your mileage may vary.

Focusing on the abandoned houses is a bit of a red herring, though. There is definitely affordable non-free housing to be found in Japan... less than $100K USD for a move-in ready house in a small city seems very doable to me.

Re: Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan

#252
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 is not entirely accurate, travelling for 3 hours is not very common, most people travel less than an hour and they do it on a train where they can read or play or listen to something, it is not that bad comparing to the US where most people drive to work and waste a lot of their time. After work dinners/drinks are not every day, maybe once a week or two in average and are actually a lot of fun for most people.

Regarding women, the Japanese women do the same work women do in the west only in Japan they give it the true name, "office lady" which is equivalent to secretary rather than some fancy "document controller" or "diversity officer". The ones who actually do non secretarial jobs are titled and respected exactly like their male peers, at least at the places where I worked.

Many Japanese women choose to raise their kids rather than spend their life in an office, they contribute more to the economy by doing this than many office ladies and I wish more people in the west will realise that women are not that beneficial to the economy as we like to think they are. They don't create new businesses, they don't innovate and they are good only for very specific jobs, the rest are are net loss comparing to an housewife from a pure economic view. That's why also buying an apartment in Tokyo is cheaper than most other major cities, because the prices are adjusted to one person working in an household, not to two.

The Japanese mix old wisdom with new tech, that's why almost anybody who get a chance to live there is amazed by their lifestyle and the way everything is working. It is true conservatism as it should be, slow progress while taking into account the wisdom of past generations, especially when it comes to social changes. That's how you end up with a society where you can forget your purse in the street and find it the next day in the same place or the police box, rather than 70% out of wedlock pregnancy rate and lives that matter, or not.

Re: Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan

#253
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…

They also care very much about their job title, and the job titles of the people they are dealing with. A few years ago my company (American) worked with a Japanese company and before we went into the meetings we had to establish new job titles for the people on our team that would be representing our company in the meeting. We couldn't go in there with just a bunch of senior engineers when they were sending their VP…

It would be funny if that wouldn't be so widely spread in other countries too. I have a fancy title that sounds nice on various levels. People's attitude changes completely: they listen to me,some even try not to say something wrong and etc. Oh, and I'm popular amongst sales people,who want to sell me all sorts of solutions because they assume I sit on a big budget. It's a circus.

Re: Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan

#254
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…

>abuse toward women common

source please, there's no need to add baseless trivia to underline your point

Re: Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this square with for example the Japanese car market, which I thought led the world in labour practices and efficiency? They've invented many labour practices that are considered the best we have today. And their cars are so cheap - how are they doing this if they aren't being efficient? For example are Toyota's engineering and factories running on wasted meeting time, fax machines, and hand-written letters?…

>And their cars are so cheap Have you cross shopped vehicles lately? Your statement is arguably true about Nissan and Nissan only. Japanese light vehicles typically carry an initial price premium that self perpetuates for a whole host of reasons beyond the scope of this discussion.

Can you cite a self perpetuating instance of the price premium ownership? I'm shopping and I've been considering Japanese vehicles as well.

Re: Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan

#256
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH, isn't it pretty customary for any large office (let's say 1k+) to have a cafeteria, with presumably most employees eating there? Some of these will not want to cook lunch in the middle of work, and at least order takeout instead.

> with presumably most employees eating there I think this is a pretty big/new tech specific thing, and there are still exemptions. Of the large non-tech companies in NYC, I know a few banks have cafeterias, but the food is both not free and not good

The cafes being free and good is probably a big tech thing, but cafeterias (paid, and... well, cafeteria-grade) certainly aren't uncommon in Germany. If your company doesn't have one, chances are they have a deal with another company in the same building/complex that does.

Re: Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan

#257
post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very ironic fact from the past (and an interesting explanation WHY kitchen areas are REALLY well lit in many (older) Japanese homes. After the war, Japanese USED TO work from home, since there was no other way, and that common area was usually the only one away from bedrooms etc. Then, after the infrastructure starting to recover, buildings coming up, offices etc. Culturally, ALL employees were required to return to…

If commuting is effortless, it is relaxing. I can't walk while reading a book, but you sure can fly on a bullet train while reading. Back when I was commuting, I actually would get a little miffed if my bus commute ended up being faster that day as it would prevent me from getting a chapter done and hitting a good stopping point in the book I was reading.

You can walk while listening to audiobook or TTS though.

Re: Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan

#258
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…

I got it explained quite simply by: digital signatures is by law not valid in court.

Which would explain the paper use. Don’t know if it’s still true though.

Usually things that seem inefficient boils down to law in the end.

Re: Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan

#259
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow - look at this picture: https://content.biz.panasonic.com/jp-ja/fai/15800/raw This is not from a wayback machine copy of dynamism.com - this is a new, Windows 10 laptop in 2020 (!)

HDMI, VGA, 3 USBs, ethernet, and apparently 20 hours battery life! What's not to like?

And it has an optical drive?!?

Re: Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan

#260
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Reminds me of when my past employer sent me to Japan to debug a firmware issue for a potential customer. Every day for a week I had to spend two hours talking to their engineers talking about my debug decision tree for debug work for the rest of the day. And that was with an English/Japanese translator to help communicate. Most people adapt their debug strategy as they collect more data but they wanted it all planned…

I have been working as an IT guy in Japan for almost two years now, and that's pretty much my experience. Everything has to be explained in ridiculous amount of detail and hanko-stamped by 20 bosses before you can start doing anything.

Which is quite ridiculous when your work strategy needs to change as you collect more data, as you said.

I'm learning to just do my job without telling them anything, and later writing all the required documents.

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