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Japan's NTT to begin remote work as norm for 30k employees

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Re: Japan's NTT to begin remote work as norm for 30k employees

#91

Post by closeparen »

rat9988 wrote: post #82
bobthepanda wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a couple of things not mentioned here. Due to the more or less deflationary economy, Japanese wages have not increased for the better part of three decades. (Deflating prices mean that even with stagnant wages, you're still able to buy more.) Job hopping is unlikely to actually result in increased wages. (Inflation is now coming to Japan due to the general global inflation from the war in Ukraine, so that wil…

You need a guarantor in france too so I wouldn't say it's unique to japan.

This essay is a perennial HN favorite. And it does seem uniquely Japanese:

> When I started my own company, I was living in an apartment that I had first rented as an employee of a megacorp. The entirety of the credit investigation was me presenting my business card to them. Possessing it implies both sterling moral character, stable finances, and a responsible party to intercede with should there ever be an issue with me as a tenant. (Japanese landlords and lenders will, as a matter of policy, escalate any disagreement with you to your boss, as the social opprobrium you’ll suffer will get you to quickly cave.)

https://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan...

Re: Japan's NTT to begin remote work as norm for 30k employees

#92

Post by quantumwannabe »

pengaru wrote: post #44
lettergram wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> less diverse food (particularly if you eat out) After spending a few years in a very rural part of CA while rebuilding my cabin, the lack of quality diverse organic produce I'd taken for granted in SF Bay area grocers is one of the biggest complaints I have. I haven't seen a Pomelo in a store for over 4 years now, let alone an organic one.

You can buy exotic produce online these days, so you can mitigate that if you know what you want.

Re: Japan's NTT to begin remote work as norm for 30k employees

#93

Post by Legogris »

closeparen wrote: post #91
rat9988 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need a guarantor in france too so I wouldn't say it's unique to japan.

This essay is a perennial HN favorite. And it does seem uniquely Japanese: > When I started my own company, I was living in an apartment that I had first rented as an employee of a megacorp. The entirety of the credit investigation was me presenting my business card to them. Possessing it implies both sterling moral character, stable finances, and a responsible party to intercede with should there ever be an issue wi…

Speaking from experience renting in Tokyo both before that article was written and more recently, as well as in Paris, while they're indeed very different things have also been changing a lot in Japan, partly due to new regulation.

Back ~10y ago, the norm was very much that you needed a personal guarantor, and sometimes you could or had to additionally use an assigned guarantor company which may or may not have additional requirements.

These days, the norm is more that you need to provide a local 緊急連絡先 (emergency contact), and sign up with a guarantor company that acts as insurer and usually have a blanket check. One similarity with France is the general requirement of having a verifiable income of minimum 3x of the rent.

Many other points that the author brings up look very different today compared to in 2014.

Re: Japan's NTT to begin remote work as norm for 30k employees

#94

Post by DeathArrow »

ben_w wrote: post #80
oblio wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about NTT, but salaries for software devs are really low in general. Think €30-40k per year. How FAANG are not leveraging such a poorly paid workforce in countries with a great climate, developed, safe, etc, I will never know.

I think the sort of person FAANG wants to hire, knows how much they can get from moving and has either already relocated or found remote work.

Do FAANG hire remote developers?

Re: Japan's NTT to begin remote work as norm for 30k employees

#95

Post by DeathArrow »

oblio wrote: post #77
DeathArrow wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How bad is pretty bad?

I don't know about NTT, but salaries for software devs are really low in general. Think €30-40k per year. How FAANG are not leveraging such a poorly paid workforce in countries with a great climate, developed, safe, etc, I will never know.

That's low.

In Romania FAANGs aren't paying better salaries than market average, so the only incentive to work for a FAANG is to have it on your CV, stay 2 years and find better employment.

FAANGs get it really cheap here as they pay 10x lower wages than in the US.

Re: Japan's NTT to begin remote work as norm for 30k employees

#96

Post by DeathArrow »

bamboozled wrote: post #86
oblio wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about NTT, but salaries for software devs are really low in general. Think €30-40k per year. How FAANG are not leveraging such a poorly paid workforce in countries with a great climate, developed, safe, etc, I will never know.

Because any good talent leaves Japan immediately for the USA as soon as they can for better pay and a more relaxed life?

Parent was talking about Spain, not Japan.

And as a foreigner I think it's very hard to get a working visa in the US.

Re: Japan's NTT to begin remote work as norm for 30k employees

#97

Post by DeathArrow »

KerrAvon wrote: post #85
oblio wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about NTT, but salaries for software devs are really low in general. Think €30-40k per year. How FAANG are not leveraging such a poorly paid workforce in countries with a great climate, developed, safe, etc, I will never know.

They do. At least some of the FAANG have important software development offices in Japan.

The parent was speaking about Spain, not Japan.

Re: Japan's NTT to begin remote work as norm for 30k employees

#98

Post by DeathArrow »

geodel wrote: post #88
oblio wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about NTT, but salaries for software devs are really low in general. Think €30-40k per year. How FAANG are not leveraging such a poorly paid workforce in countries with a great climate, developed, safe, etc, I will never know.

Yeah, FAANG can just hire all the engineers at NTT, all these Indian IT outsourcing companies, European tech companies and other I might have missed. I mean for christ sake this is 2022. If every CRUD micro services peddler and every network engineer who solves 5 firewall opening issues in a day couldn't get USD 200K / year for 6 hr work day, free food and drinks, onsite laundry, massage, haircut and medical checkup.…

Why do you think software developers in the rest of the world are worse than their US peers?

Re: Japan's NTT to begin remote work as norm for 30k employees

#99

Post by rnk »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #81
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of makes me wonder why there hasn't been a brain drain from Japan like there has been from elsewhere in Asia and Europe to the various tech hubs. Is the culture just too difficult to leave behind? Yes, it is a G7 country with first world living standards but expatriates from other first world countries are not rare in the tech hubs.

Pretty closed culture, relatively bad at speaking English, and they are still very rich - closest "better" country to live is US.

Except for language, Canada is similar. The US manages a positive brain drain just on more money and opportunities. Canada is great, in a couple of years I might be looking for a job there.

Re: Japan's NTT to begin remote work as norm for 30k employees

#100

Post by ehnto »

oblio wrote: post #79
ehnto wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you mean suburban sprawl? Or maybe you just mean the urban area is less disjointed? Urban sprawl is exactly how I would characterize Japan, but maybe I just have the terminology wrong. It's actually one of the reasons I suspect such dense cities work so well, as the mixed zoning creates self serving blocks of commerce and residential. Like you've pointed out, it could actually make remote work a very vibrant li…

> Maybe you mean suburban sprawl? Or maybe you just mean the urban area is less disjointed? Urban sprawl is exactly how I would characterize Japan, but maybe I just have the terminology wrong. No, he's right. Sprawl is inherently a negative term. Japan has large cities because you know, they can't put people in Manchuria (they've tried) or on the Moon, so they have to put them somewhere. So the most efficient way to…

Interesting, I think it's fair to suggest that sprawl has some negative connotations but I don't think it's quite so severe. I would definitely call some of the streets of Kyoto sprawling, as in, they have wandered in strange directions like a creeping vine. I also wouldn't suggest that Japanese cities have expanded carefully, they have taken as much space as they feasibly can in their expansion, and replaced it all with concrete. Perhaps the cities themselves were carefully considered from an urban planning point of view.

But I think in actuality, taking zoning and planning control away from the people who use the zones is what causes most of America's strange layout. People absolutely want medium to high density mixed use communities, and affordable housing, but you're not allowed to build that in America.

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