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Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan

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Re: Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan

#281

Post by JonathanKurumi »

chrisseaton wrote: post #103
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…

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?…

Japanese companies have a baffling knack for internal innovation that kind of transcends the overwhelming management style.

All the overtime and useless meetings produce a lot of decisions by consensus that balance out the random “maverick” ideas a VP might come up with. This creates a bizarre balancing act that sometimes produces decently market-synced products.

Also the just crazy amount of seasonality in Japan makes even the slowest moving company make large pivots at least four times a year. New season? New product, even if it’s weird and nobody wanted it, they figure out how to sell it and get 1500 workers to all shift left at the same time.

Re: Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan

#282

Post by Accacin »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #121
Accacin wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wonder how people come up with these statements, is it just anecdotal? To add my own, my company was shifting to working remotely for the development team gradually, but now our CEO has been impressed with how well we adapted to working from home and has told us that our office will not be open until September at the earliest.

From CEO perspective they shift all accommodation [overhead] costs to employees with no increase in wages. Even with slightly lower productivity then financially surely wfh for dev roles and the like is going to get them a bigger bonus and/or more profit. Sure it might just be cleaning/utility costs/stationary for now, but longer term expansion won't have stepped accommodation costs. And if locations can be done away…

I completely understand this, but I've seen more people complain that their company (in the UK mostly) is not letting them work from home, or did and are now demanding that people go back into the office.

I personally agree with you, we should be paid more now that we're not commuting but I doubt that will happen. Our company are organising a one-off payment to help people set up their home office though, which is a nice gesture.

Re: Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan

#283

Post by pezezin »

newyankee wrote: post #262
pezezin wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So the question is how do these companies still manage to sustain competitive pressures ? I guess the answer is that once you have a moat, internal efficiency is not that big of a factor.

I work for a public research institution, so I can't tell you about private companies. My guess is that, because everybody does the same, the don't feel any pressure to improve.

Re: Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan

#284

Post by dungdang »

yaktubi wrote: post #137
benmw333 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What struck me was the seemingly 1995 era laptops people were working on in the trains.

I like 1995 era laptops more than modern ones. I also like the the plastic casings of desktops back then—they feel solid, same with the mechanical keyboards! Today companies so busy trying to “slim things down.” P.S. why doesn’t apple release a matte display laptop? I would buy it.

because the reason matte is matte, is that it scatters light hitting the screen. from either side of the screen. you didn't notice how blurry your screen was when it was already blurry from the low resolution. now screens have high resolution.

feel free to put a matte transparency on your high density screen to make it a low density screen. everyone else would rather have glare.

Re: Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan

#285

Post by fit2rule »

Barrin92 wrote: post #186
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…

>There is a culture of overwork that begets a culture of inefficiency that boggles the mind. Few people know that Japan has a labor productivity lower than Italy, for example. If you spent so much time at the workplace like the Japanese you end up with a low producivity on paper pretty much by definition, because it's simply output divided by amount of time worked. But I wouldn't overestimate the importance of comput…

Over 40 years as a professional I have worked in tech companies in countries around the world, including Germany and Japan, and now in Austria - where the reduced work week is not only a cultural norm, but rather supported by the bureaucratic classes as their right and obligation. Kafka and Vienna, mmkay...

My anecdotal experience is that I think the most fun, and therefore most productive place to work in the Western world so far, for me anyway - was the good ol' USA.

Sure, the 80 hour work weeks were killer. But, the camaraderie, coordination, and just fun getting-shit-done'ness of the average American company exceeds most others.

But only if there was no daily commute, because a daily commute in America is a sheer kind of hell that nobody should tolerate - in which case, Japan or Austria are definitely the lifestyle/work balance leaders, even though they are far lazier cultures - Germany too, to some extent, but I could generalise about Germany until my holzhacker is burned to a crisp, and it'd still taste great.

Anyway, the reduced work week culture can be observed around the world. I think, the efficacy of the culture matters too, though. Germans admire rigor, Austrians reward laziness - Japanese, duplicity - and America, getting things done no matter what.

Re: Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan

#286

Post by zkid18 »

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…

I wouldn't interpret 飲み会 in that way. Yes people drink there but I wouldn't claim that women abuse is somehow common there. From my experience Japanese are quite polite even if there are drunk.

Disclaimer: Gaijin, working in Japanese company

Re: Fujitsu announces permanent work-from-home plan

#287

Post by cdavid »

zkid18 wrote: post #286
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…

I wouldn't interpret 飲み会 in that way. Yes people drink there but I wouldn't claim that women abuse is somehow common there. From my experience Japanese are quite polite even if there are drunk. Disclaimer: Gaijin, working in Japanese company

I have seen behavior that would be guaranteed to get a sexual harassment suit in the US in pretty much every company I worked at, big and small, public and private.

That starts to date now but I have been at karaoke parties where some guys would be naked w/ a sock on their dick dancing. I also had to several times make sure women would get back safely because some colleagues clearly tried to get them to miss their last train and go to a love hotel.

Japan is a country where still today politicians can say that women after 40 are useless because cannot procreate. For the very few public sexual harassment affairs, the common defense of the perpetrator is to claim the woman was looking for it. It is victim blaming all the way down.

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