[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by am1m

... am I just an old guy and being exactly on time really doesn't matter anymore?!

Our shocking lack of common courtesy is pervasive, and has nothing to do with where we work from, or even limited to our professional lives.

Not accepting or rejecting meetings in a reasonable timeframe, accepting more than one invite then selecting which one we want to attend when the list of 15 minute reminders pops up, not joining on time, not scheduling enough time to cover the agenda (assuming everyone else will just extend), not bringing one's requested material/inputs (stated clearly in the invite). We do it all, and more.

And we did it just as bad in person, long before working remotely was even a thing.

[am1m]

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

Our shocking lack of common courtesy is pervasive..

With the being right on time thing, I've seen it not happen so often, was beginning to wonder if I'm just being old-fashioned holding on to it. Like if you asked my grandfather he'd be shocked to see no one wearing a tie at work. And my mom used to give me 'the look' when I went in to office in jeans. Hardly see anyone log in to meetings right on time these days so was wondering if that too was a concept past it's time! And I'm not trying to pass off as some great professional, it's just the conditioning of having attended a school where if you showed up late for anything, you'd end up running rounds of the ground in the sun or performing other such delightful activities!

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by am1m

I've found that I'm usually waiting anywhere between 5-10 minutes for most of my Indian colleagues to join, while my US colleagues are always on time, no matter how senior.

Originally Posted by Akshay6988

I have experienced this same behavior from my desi colleagues, always late to the meetings, not responding to skype/,mails on time.

Originally Posted by mobike008

Desi's are the toughest guys to work with from my personal experience compared to a caucasian/westerner.

Damn, looks like we should avoid hiring Desis. I am going update my company recruitment policy. But wait, I am in India and I can't avoid them.

But seriously, where is this behavior coming from? It comes from the training they received from their initial jobs. That's a baggage very hard to unload. As I mentioned before in this post, most Indian companies practice process oriented culture, where the accountability is disconnected from individuals. Often failures are blamed on process rather than individual. This is like courts fining the company when executives break rules.

I have experienced this shock in my initial years. My first stint was in a small software product company where every programmer reported directly to the CEO, and CEO himself was a hardcore programmer. The CEO only gave brief outline of the application to be developed, and it was up to the individual programmer to figure out the full requirement, design, coding, testing and finally customer support. So the entire accountability was firmly with each programmer for a given application. In case of larger application, accountability was at module level, but again the collaboration between modules had to managed by programmers. You could never say "I don't know" in any meeting, otherwise the CEO would skin you.

When I moved to TCS after that, I discovered a very different world. However, since my skillset was so different than rest I was dumped in Tools Group, where I could continue the same pattern of work. After a while I used to roam the floors, find what kind of problems people were facing, come up with a software solution to solve the problem. This made me pretty popular among the masses, but regional bosses were frustrated because I was not billable to any customer. So they kicked me out to various customer sites (mostly HP), and kept me out for the next 5 years until I left TCS. But I often used to get TCS employees assigned into my team in HP, and they used to have culture shock when I used to pass the accountability/responsibility back to them. I made them design and estimate the work, and then defended it to my bosses. Once the shock wore off, they became more proactive and more efficient as the ownership was with them.

If power and accountability is hoarded at the top, don't expect people to learn accountability and responsibility. This behavior has to be inculcated right from the intern/trainee level, so that each one is capable of working without a supervisor watching them like a hawk.

Desi employees are not inherently bad, they are just not given right expectations in their initial years.

[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by am1m

With the being right on time thing, I've seen it not happen so often, was beginning to wonder if I'm just being old-fashioned holding on to it. Like if you asked my grandfather he'd be shocked to see no one wearing a tie at work. And my mom used to give me 'the look' when I went in to office in jeans. Hardly see anyone log in to meetings right on time these days so was wondering if that too was a concept past it's time! And I'm not trying to pass off as some great professional...

What's acceptable evolves, sure, but one would think bare minimum common courtesy shouldn't become negotiable. Also, one needs to set boundaries for professional etiquette, or just like with anything else, others take liberties if you let them.

For example, any meetings I'm hosting, I reschedule if a required attendee hasn't responded at least an hour before scheduled start time, to another available slot on their calendar. More than once it's ended in 'BUT I was going to attend, this is important and can't be rescheduled!' moaning, dealt with 'Sorry, you didn't respond so I had no idea. Please accept the revised invite to avoid further delays'. Never had to do it twice with most people, some learnt only after it caused a hot water dunk on an important deliverable

[am1m]

Originally Posted by Samurai

If power and accountability is hoarded at the top, don't expect people to learn accountability and responsibility. This behavior has to be inculcated right from the intern/trainee level, so that each one is capable of working without a supervisor watching them like a hawk.

Desi employees are not inherently bad, they are just not given right expectations in their initial years.

Absolutely. (Btw, never mean for the discussion to veer into our vs. other culture's punctuality, just to clarify.)

But it's not just about what we experience in our initial years, I've recently moved to a much smaller org and I'm shocked by how conditioned I got at my previous org (and that wasn't even a mega corp, just about 700 employees) to having "the process" take precedence over anything, even innovation. Am having to re-learn a few things and learn how to take decisions quick and implement them fast instead of waiting forever and dozens of meetings/approvals. So it's not just freshers who get accustomed to passing decision making and accountability up the ladder I realize I too got used to that.

How does this tie in to this WFH topic- I guess it's those employees and managers who are used to a chain-of-command/supervisory culture who are finding it difficult to adjust to this new mode of full-time remote work where someone is not looking over your shoulder all the time. (And of course those who do have infrastructure gaps/difficulties, not denying those exist and are valid.)

[NetfreakBombay]

Originally Posted by am1m

Hardly see anyone log in to meetings right on time these days..

I feel this is like “When the Tide Goes Out, You Find Out Who is Swimming Naked” .

Right now, market is so hot that this can be tolerated to certain extent. This is almost like early 90s and 2000 boom in hiring.

Just like those boom cycles, once this cycle is over; such behavior will impact in terms of who gets the boot or gets promoted. This is specially true for those working from home. Since no one sees you; such behavior will form perceptions.

[s.jain1990]

Originally Posted by mobike008

Jokes aside, this debates of WFH vs. Office is getting interesting and in my opinion pandemic has completely changed the equation. Hybrid model (2 Days-Office, 3 Days-Home) will be the way to go forward for 7/10 roles.

In my organization, we see another option as well. Under this option, you just need to visit the office 5 to 15 days in a Quarter. This is a blessing for outstation folks like me. We can work from our hometown and visit the office once in the quarter, stay at hotel and meet the policy.

It saves us a significant amount of money and it also allows us to stay with the parents. Off-lately, I have noticed my anxiety levels growing because I am concerned about the safety of my parents. Being at home calms me down and even my parents feel better.

A lot of my team members like this option and it is one of the reason why some of us are working for this organization.

[charanreddy]

I manage a team spread across India and Europe. All the ills of WFH s as are only attributable to culture and responsibility. I have not met my colleagues in person for over 2 yrs now except over zoom calls and I don’t think the productivity has gone down. However some of the Sr. Management in Business and marketing want to get back to office setup as deliverables and accountability are hard to pinpoint in a few functions. For Software, consulting , Analytics functions, being is office is not Mandatory at all. Once a month meet and greet is more than enough ..

Setting the ground rules of etiquette is super critical though. For example, Rarely am I late to meetings by more than 2 mins. If I am , I apologise to let people know I don’t take them for granted. My team does the same as well. I absolutely despise a holier than thou or a superiority complex from managers or myself . This is one of the sureshot ways to screw teams as well as lose trust.

[m8002?]

Originally Posted by s.jain1990

In my organization, we see another option as well. Under this option, you just need to visit the office 5 to 15 days in a Quarter. This is a blessing for outstation folks like me. We can work from our hometown and visit the office once in the quarter, stay at hotel and meet the policy.

It saves us a significant amount of money and it also allows us to stay with the parents. Off-lately, I have noticed my anxiety levels growing because I am concerned about the safety of my parents. Being at home calms me down and even my parents feel better.

A lot of my team members like this option and it is one of the reason why some of us are working for this organization.

Does the entire team meet in office for this 2 weeks? Or each individual chooses their own dates?

[s.jain1990]

Originally Posted by m8002?

Does the entire team meet in office for this 2 weeks? Or each individual chooses their own dates?

You choose your own dates. You can go to office for few days every month or you can cover those 5 days at once. You can also choose to go to office from 25 March to 5 April covering up the whole of 2 quarters at once.

This model will start once the office opens. For now, the it is mandatory work from home. The system was set to be implemented from January but it was now been pushed by two quarters because of the new covid strain.

[padmrajravi]

Originally Posted by s.jain1990

In my organization, we see another option as well. Under this option, you just need to visit the office 5 to 15 days in a Quarter. This is a blessing for outstation folks like me. We can work from our hometown and visit the office once in the quarter, stay at hotel and meet the policy.

Off-lately, I have noticed my anxiety levels growing because I am concerned about the safety of my parents. Being at home calms me down and even my parents feel better.

Vow, That's a great policy. Mind telling us the name of the organization? I have now removed all companies that do not allow extended work from home from my consideration set. The reason is exactly the same one you mentioned. Your organization seems like one I should add to my radar

[m8002?]

Originally Posted by s.jain1990

You choose your own dates. You can go to office for few days every month or you can cover those 5 days at once. You can also choose to go to office from 25 March to 5 April covering up the whole of 2 quarters at once.

This model will start once the office opens. For now, the it is mandatory work from home. The system was set to be implemented from January but it was now been pushed by two quarters because of the new covid strain.

So what are they achieving by forcing people to come to office for these few days? Especially, when the rest of team is not in office.

[s.jain1990]

Originally Posted by m8002?

So what are they achieving by forcing people to come to office for these few days? Especially, when the rest of team is not in office.

Just the regular interactions and socializing. Also, there is always an exception process. Since I stay in Delhi and my office is in Pune, my manager suggested that I can seek exception.

On the other side, Me and my friends plan to visit together. It is same for most of the teams

Originally Posted by padmrajravi

Vow, That's a great policy. Mind telling us the name of the organization?

I have inboxed you the name. It is an IT division of an international bank (BNY).

[am1m]

Originally Posted by m8002?

So what are they achieving by forcing people to come to office for these few days? Especially, when the rest of team is not in office.

Originally Posted by s.jain1990

On the other side, Me and my friends plan to visit together. It is same for most of the teams

Perhaps it's one of those rare organizations that believes if you design policies correctly, most employees will choose to make their interactions more effective.

Instead of HR/Management deciding how and when people should interact. (Remembering with horror all those 'mandatory fun' events like company-wide offsites and 'antakshari/ethnic dress/pizza Fridays' that I've been forced into at different orgs in the past! All of which only made me think of leaving! )

I've got no mandate to go into the office either, but I'm working with my team members too to plan dates that will be convenient to all or at least some of us to visit the office and get to meet. It's much more pleasant and more likely to be effective when it's voluntary (or even somewhat voluntary like in the case of this 5-day policy). At least the org in the quoted post is willing to experiment with different ways of working, so kudos to them!

[SR-71]

I am surprised at amount of negative perception against working from home. Perhaps like most new concepts, it takes time to get used to. I have been working remotely for the better part of my life since 2010 across organizations and I have always been a top contributor at my workplace. For people who believe remote working will not successful, let me tell you, we have been able to successfully conjure up a new enterprise product, sort out designs over zoom and productize it. It’s close to being released at this point and this is no mean feat. I cannot speak for all business streams, but I can speak for computer science, mind you I am not saying IT. It really does not matter where you work from - home/office/bathroom/mars, it’s all the same. All you need is a good infrastructure setup and passion to create something fun. Anyone who thinks WFH is not productive in my line of work, is simply projecting their inability, insecurity and paranoia on everyone.

Having said this, I strongly believe, like most topics, it’s pointless to generalize this discussion. WFH will work great for some business streams and not for others. And where possible, I believe the employees should be trusted and given a choice to either work remotely or choose to come to office or use a hybrid approach. If the company really has work to do and that can be done remotely without hassle, employees won’t have time to bluff with 2 jobs and take undue advantage of the system.