It has emerged that Sony Semiconductor Solutions, the semiconductor subsidiary of Sony Group, will switch roughly 8,000 employees to in-office work in principle starting in October. The company judged that face-to-face collaboration between employees across multiple departments is more effective for creating new businesses, and new perks are being prepared for returning employees, including “private one-person rooms” and lunch subsidies. On 5ch, opinions were split: some envied the private rooms and meal subsidies, while others coolly dismissed the reasoning behind the return-to-office push as “vibes-based,” and some suggested it was really about catching people slacking off while working from home.
The trend of Japanese companies swinging back from remote work to office work is intensifying. Starting in October, Sony Group’s semiconductor subsidiary will bring employees back to the office in principle.
The company judged that face-to-face collaboration between employees in multiple departments is more efficient for encouraging the creation of new businesses.
Sony Semiconductor Solutions, Sony Group’s semiconductor business company, will switch roughly 8,000 employees to in-office work in principle.
Source: nikkei.com / Original article here
Google and Microsoft were also shifting back to office work once COVID died down, weren't they.
Guess no matter what country you're in, people slack off when working from home.
I wish I could go back to being a regular employee already.
Are there still Japanese people out there saying the embarrassing word "telework" lol
What kind of job do you even have?
It's normally "remo-wa" (Japanese shorthand for remote work), "RW," or "WFH," right? Nobody seriously says "telework."
You wouldn't say "I'm teleworking today."
You'd say "I'm working from home today." or "I'm remote today."
You probably just googled that, but nobody actually calls it that.
Shirtless in meetings, nice!
I've been saying this for a while.
Having conversations over email is way too inefficient.
If everyone just gets together, it's done in a flash.
Is it really worth exhausting yourself on packed trains every day just for that? Plus all the wasted effort booking meeting rooms.
Meetings over email lol
Speaking of which, this was over ten years ago now, but our branch meetings used to be held in a Yahoo Games mahjong room because setting up our own server was too much of a hassle.
Rather than bothering to book a meeting room to talk, it's more convenient to just chat over Teams. You get an accurate written record that way.
Those auto-transcripts from recorded conversations, though — those are no good, totally useless.
>The company judged that face-to-face collaboration between employees across multiple departments is more effective for encouraging the creation of new businesses.
Are you a liberal-arts type or something?
Every company that ends telework justifies it with the same vibes-based reasoning 🤣
Japanese companies that are all about vertical silos suddenly talking about "cross-departmental employees" is hilarious lol
Big Tech in America is ending it too, isn't it?
Sony does manufacturing too, but design work is all done on a screen anyway, isn't it?
Every 5ch user here makes over 10 million yen, so doesn't that make everyone here a winner too?
Source: posts in the salary threads.
If you count all of Sony Group, the employee count is probably over 100,000.
That 8,000 figure is just for the semiconductor division, you know.
If you join Sony's semiconductor division, 80% of the time you'll end up working in Kumamoto Prefecture.
Kumamoto has a lot of beautiful women, so that's something to be jealous of.
If it means not getting hauled around on packed Tokyo trains, going into the office isn't so bad.
Take that up with your staffing agency. (Or just get hired directly by Sony's semiconductor subsidiary.)
Background and Key Points of This Topic
“In-office in principle” is easy to misread — it doesn’t ban remote work outright but mainly means restoring in-office work as the default, not scrapping remote work altogether. It was also pointed out in the thread that the 8,000 employees in question refer only to the semiconductor subsidiary Sony Semiconductor Solutions, not Sony Group as a whole (which has over 100,000 employees on a non-consolidated basis alone). Major Japanese and overseas IT and electronics companies, including Google and Microsoft, have reportedly been swinging back from remote work since 2023, and this move is positioned as part of that broader trend. Opinions in the thread split over whether to view the company’s stated reasoning — that face-to-face collaboration improves efficiency — as merely “vibes-based,” or to support the move on practical grounds like preventing slacking off and easing commute burdens.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from a 5ch (Breaking News+) thread: “[Work Style] Sony Semiconductor’s 8,000 Employees Return to “In-Office in Principle” — New “Private One-Person Rooms” and “Lunch Subsidy” Introduced.”
