This week, one of Japan's largest internet companies became the center of a very familiar argument.
On July 13, GMO Internet Group announced it was ending remote work entirely. Not reducing it. Ending it. And the piece of evidence its chairman cited in the press conference is what set Japanese tech circles on fire: keystroke counts. According to Masatoshi Kumagai, the group's founder and CEO, per-hour typing volume measurably dropped when employees worked from home, and while some individuals were more productive remotely, remote work was "a net negative overall."
I've been watching the reaction from here in Tokyo, and it splits into two camps you can probably guess: "finally, a company with the courage to say it" versus "they're measuring keyboard noise and calling it productivity." Both camps are arguing about the wrong thing, and I want to walk through why.
What GMO actually did
Some context, because the international coverage tends to flatten this into "Japanese company bans remote work."
