I 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.
Japan's NTT to begin remote work as norm for 30k employees
61–70 of 108 posts
Re: Japan's NTT to begin remote work as norm for 30k employees
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’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.
If 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?
Reputation provides utility in other ways. For example, social status and respect from others.
Re: Japan's NTT to begin remote work as norm for 30k employees
#63Unnecessary commuting should always be included in working hours and expensed.
Are 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?
Yes. My employer (US fintech) gives me a daily meal stipend while working remotely, as well as covers my mobile phone, internet, and a portion to cover my home office. This excludes the annual equipment, desk, and chair stipend I receive.
This was all outlined in our remote handbook provided with my offer letter.
Re: Japan's NTT to begin remote work as norm for 30k employees
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shinkansens 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.)
They hardly produce any nuclear anymore. Natural gas is the largest source by far. 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.
I wonder why geothermal isn't big there. I'd naively assume that they could get a significant portion to their electricity from geothermal. Does anyone know what's preventing Japan from doing that?
Re: Japan's NTT to begin remote work as norm for 30k employees
#65Unnecessary commuting should always be included in working hours and expensed.
What about the extra space for a home office?
Re: Japan's NTT to begin remote work as norm for 30k employees
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are 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?
Yes. My employer (US fintech) gives me a daily meal stipend while working remotely, as well as covers my mobile phone, internet, and a portion to cover my home office. This excludes the annual equipment, desk, and chair stipend I receive. This was all outlined in our remote handbook provided with my offer letter.
Congratulations! Honestly.
Re: Japan's NTT to begin remote work as norm for 30k employees
#67Unnecessary commuting should always be included in working hours and expensed.
Are 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?
A fair line would be that you're compensated for things you do that you otherwise wouldn't do. You'd still eat, but many companies do compensate their employees for their meals during working hours.
Re: Japan's NTT to begin remote work as norm for 30k employees
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. My employer (US fintech) gives me a daily meal stipend while working remotely, as well as covers my mobile phone, internet, and a portion to cover my home office. This excludes the annual equipment, desk, and chair stipend I receive. This was all outlined in our remote handbook provided with my offer letter.
Congratulations! Honestly.
I share so others will advocate for this at scale. It’s not some sort of impossible or unreasonable request.
Re: Japan's NTT to begin remote work as norm for 30k employees
#69Quoted post unavailable.
You’re being downvoted because you smugly dismissed peoples opinions without offering your own.
They implied that companies with high-paid employees are ok with working remotely because it increases their talent pool to include places like South America. Why pay $200k for a US software engineer when you can get four in Brazil for the same price?
Re: Japan's NTT to begin remote work as norm for 30k employees
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Clearly 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.
As 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…
I live about an hour outside a major Northeast city in an ex-urban/semi-rural location. (It's not really rural but I'm one of three houses on about 100+ acres of land and can't really see my neighbors at this time of year.)
I find it's a decent compromise. I have space. I can take walks in the woods or easily drive to small mountain hikes. But I'm only about an hour to go in for live theater, a meal, etc. And there's nothing keeping me from going into town for a weekend if I wanted to.