[am1m]

Some tips to stay healthy and break the monotony while working remote:

*Don't take a break from one screen...on another screen! A lot of us take a break from our laptops only to check whatsapp or something else on our phones. This is not a break at all but still keeps your mind in the anxious or 'what's new/what am I missing' mode. When you take a break, do something else- take a walk, do some physical chores around the house, speak to someone, go to the shop and buy groceries.

*Exercise options- Even if you have just 10-15 minutes between calls, you can do some pushups, use a chajja for pull-ups, do some squats, crunches, stretches.

*Join a gym closer to home. Once you get used to not having to commute, your tolerance for bad traffic decreases. I had gotten used to traffic jams everyday from 7:30am to 10pm while commuting to office and thought that was normal (it shouldn't be!) Now my tolerance level for Bangalore traffic has decreased. When I had a choice between a smaller, less fancy gym close to home or a much better gym that would require me to drive/ride, I'm glad I chose the one I could walk to. Better to have a gym you'll actually go to more often than a fancy one you won't.

*Make the most of your weekends. While I used to commute to work, the last thing I wanted to do on weekends was drive or ride anywhere. Now it's the opposite- since we spend 5 days a week at home working, we spend most of each weekend outside the house.

*Avoid snacking- harder to do since you have easy access to the kitchen at home. Our solution is to not keep any fried or sweet snacks at home. The plus side is you can always go to the kitchen and grab a carrot or something healthier to munch on instead.

*Dress and shave as you would if you had to meet colleagues in the office. Not necessarily dressing formally and with formal shoes of course, but change out of home wear before starting work. It's easy to remain in shorts or sleepwear all day while working remote. But changing and taking care of grooming helps maintain the work mindset. On video calls, consider wearing a shirt or t-shirt with a collar.

*Try a week working from somewhere else. Perhaps a relative's place, maybe a vacation spot you are familiar with and has all the infrastructure in place to support work. Perhaps a hotel and a co-working space in a different city. Requires some discipline, but the bonus is that when you get off work in the evening or on weekends, you have something different to do/see. Visit on a day off first and test everything- internet speeds, reliability, quiet place to take meetings, etc. If the company is trusting you to work remote, you need to repay that trust by being available and able to work.

[kochup]

Originally Posted by Samurai

TCS, the bellwether company which triggered massive WFH among the large IT services employers, has now done complete U-turn on the WFH. In fact, it is more than an U-turn, it has gone into a spiral.
.

Quoting this message as it mentions TCS, saw a related report today -
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com...w/94286709.cms

[Vishal.R]

Contrary to popular belief, from my personal experience, Its not "millennials" who are at forefront of resisting WFO but relatively senior people(5 to 20 yrs and more experience).

These folks who have families, kids, some may have parents living with them who need some care. Also for some of them, spouse's profession may not have WFH option and there are few more reasons.

Also above these personal reasons, more importantly, these people are typically responsible for actual delivery of service to clients, and have experienced since last three years that successful delivery with working from home is very much possible. It is bit more difficult for management to convince this group.

For many of millennials, WFO has its own advantages like exploring new place, meeting new people, enjoying feel of working in good corporate infrastructure, extra-curricular activities etc. etc.

[dailydriver]

Wipro fires 300 employees for moonlighting

Rishad Premji, Chairman of IT firm, Wipro, on Wednesday said that the company has fired 300 employees who were found to be working for one of its competitors at the same time as working for Wipro. Premji, a vocal critic of moonlighting, believes that the practice

is in complete violation of integrity in its deepest form... The reality is that there are people today working for Wipro and working directly for one of our competitors and we have actually discovered 300 people in the last few months who are doing exactly that.

While Rishad Premji calls it

cheating- plain and simple

Mohandas Pai looks at the issue of moonlighting differently:

...moonlighting is not cheating... I would look at it from a different perspective. Employment is a contract between an employer who pays me for working for them for 'n' number of hours a day. During that time, I have to abide by their conditions, including client confidentiality, and I'm paid for that. At that time, I can't work for anybody else. Now what I do after that time is my freedom, I can do what I want.

Would Wipro have been equally strict had the employees concerned been moonlighting with companies that were not its competitors? is a question that begs an answer.

Source

[RGK]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

TCS, it seems is struggling to implement WFO!
In this thread I see a lot of pro-WFH posts understandably as 99% are employees and not employers. But finally the guy who decides is the one who pays the bills and that is the customer.

Absolutely sir. Many of the young workers had changed careers without even personally visiting their previous employer .

Moonlighting with competitors is a current issue, and 300 employees at Wipro reportedly lost their jobs as a result.

During the height of the epidemic, some IT behemoths fully committed to the hybrid approach and are currently struggling. The company will keep trying to convince millennials to come to its base location, but it's unclear how much of a success they will have (as the job market is employee driven now).

Furthermore, the number of employees at IT companies has significantly expanded, and there is not enough office space to accommodate all of them on a single day.

[CNMaLin]

Do these companies that call moonlighting "cheating" refrain from billing two clients for the same employee, when they have promised the client that the employee works exclusively on their project?

[iskandariya]

Originally Posted by CNMaLin

Do these companies that call moonlighting "cheating" refrain from billing two clients for the same employee, when they have promised the client that the employee works exclusively on their project?

Well said sirji, at that time they say Resource optimum Utilisation. Moonlighting is new, and hyped another way to get associates back in order to state better control.

Going to Office is Waste of Everything in todays Day and Age. I met one of my best 2 Associates during WFH , they move to next company but are still in touch.

Last 3 years have been Best of my Work Life balance and Family Life Balance

[Samurai]

While some IT Services giants are claiming moonlighting to be cheating, head of Tech Mahindra says it is fine. Even former directors of Infosys are having views on the topic. These companies are applying this logic only to their Indian employees and simply don't have the guts to extend this to their US employees.

How can a same activity be cheating in one country and not in the other, for a given company? How can same activity be cheating in one company and not in the other, in the same country? Just because you added few clauses in the appointment letter, which the employee had no ability to change?

Forget engineers, this habit of moonlighting is common in sales too. This usually happens when they meet a customer whose needs cannot be met by their employer, because of price or feature mismatch. Instead of losing the customer, they push them towards an alternative product from another company and collect the commission. They made the customer happy by meeting their requirement, is that cheating? It is perfectly fine in some countries. In fact, I used to hear about Avaya sales team selling Cisco PBX (arch rival) in Singapore, just to match the requirement and retain the customer. This was all totally official. If the company doesn't like it, then it becomes cheating? This is business, not a personal relationship. When Indian companies use words like two-timing, cheating, trust issue... I wonder what they are thinking? Are employees married to the company, and expected to practice marital fidelity? If the company can have more than one employee, why can the employee have more than one employer?

I agree there are employees whose knowledge you don't want the competitors to have. But such employees form less than 1%-5% by count in any large IT company. Bind them with stricter contracts and pay them for that extra binding. But the rest, they have no knowledge that is so unique that you don't want others to know. TCS and Infosys don't build software radically different than each other. There are no secrets there. There is always NDA to ensure they don't share operational knowledge with other companies. As a technology provider other tech companies, I work with multiple companies who directly compete with each other. After signing NDA, none of them are really concerned that I also work with their direct competitors. That is how it should be.

Not all engineers moonlight because of money. Many of them moonlight because their day job is utterly boring, and far beneath their skills. Plenty of companies have the habit of hiring brilliant engineers and then put them into mundane work. Such folks brighten their evenings/nights by moonlighting on leading edge technology, to keep their skills strong.

[tsk1979]

So are they also going to fire their board of directors for being on boards of multiple companies? I think not

[am1m]

Originally Posted by Vishal.R

Contrary to popular belief, from my personal experience, Its not "millennials" who are at forefront of resisting WFO but relatively senior people(5 to 20 yrs and more experience).

Good point. When a company I used to work at some time ago announced that they were moving the office from a central location to the horrible traffic-bound area of the ORR, the employees who were most upset were the older ones who had established routines and schools for their kids around the office location. Most of the younger employees were quite happy with the new, bigger office within a large IT campus that gave them more entertainment opportunities post-work. As it was most of them were from outside the state and their social lives anyway revolved around their colleagues in the office. Also as it turned out, it gave them more chances to attend in-person interviews at nearby companies! Anyway at that early stage in their personal lives, they could more easily shift residences to live closer to the new office as compared to the older employees.

Originally Posted by Samurai

Instead of losing the customer, they push them towards an alternative product from another company and collect the commission. They made the customer happy by meeting their requirement, is that cheating? It is perfectly fine in some countries. In fact, I used to hear about Avaya sales team selling Cisco PBX (arch rival) in Singapore, just to match the requirement and retain the customer.

Wow, this is eye-opening to me. Never thought this could be an established practice. Certainly does seem to be a double standard then about moonlighting.

Originally Posted by Samurai

This is business, not a personal relationship. When Indian companies use words like two-timing, cheating, trust issue... I wonder what they are thinking? Are employees married to the company, and expected to practice marital fidelity?

I have a theory that the employer/manager replaces the parent in the IT employee's life. But seriously, all our lives we are used to and need someone to tell us what to do with our lives. Parent, teacher, various elders, spouse, finally our adult children. And so we extend this to our 'seniors' at work as well. So it is acceptable for a manager to 'monitor' and dictate instead of manage and employees in turn adopt the same management style when they get promoted. Those who treat it as a professional, transactional relationship (which it is! and which doesn't mean you don't do a good job) are somehow considered not committed enough. It's changing for sure, and in several cases swings the opposite way with completely mercenary employee attitudes, but a lot of those attitudes still linger.

Bit dated reference, but those who have read Akio Morita's 'Made in Japan' might remember his anecdote about running in to an American employee of Sony who had left the company and was working for a competitor. Morita was shocked that the employee didn't seem embarrassed to see his old boss again and was proud to talk about his new job even though Morita held the view that it was a betrayal to leave Sony. (I too have worked for a manager who held that view- as recently as 2008!) But he was smart enough to realize that it was a cultural difference and times were changing.

[V.Narayan]

Moonlighting...

Technology and changing social attitudes clashing with old norms and old laws. One generation {of employers, Board members, big shareholders} clashing with a younger generation who grew up in a very different India. With time these will get sorted out.

With the exception of one or two like Samurai most are employees on this thread. So allow me to toss in the views of an employer at the risk of upsetting a few readers.

As an employer I would not permit moonlighting in my two industries of aviation {ex-} and healthcare {current} except to the extent it is stitched into the contract {of pilots & consulting doctors typically}. In code writing the nature of the beast gives rise to the possibility of moon lighting which frankly beyond a point the employer cannot control. So it begs the question if you should impose a rule you cannot effectively implement. Also in IT, world over many employees do not see themselves as employees in the traditional sense we are familiar with in the brick & mortar world. They see themselves as stand alone contributors who can float anywhere with their globally transferable skills.

With Indian IT companies, on the one hand, given the nature of the customer contracts the employers want to have a large number of bright young energetic folks sitting on the bench and/or sub-optimally employed and getting frustrated. On the other hand some of the employees yearn for the stability & income assurance of an employment with the flexibility of contract working. Both sides want their cake and eat it too. In my eyes neither is innocent or the victim here.

There is also the higher pressure of income expectation today as compared to just 25 years ago which pushes these younger people to seek avenues of extra income. With the IT/Tech companies I'm associated with we are reconciled that the world is moving towards a mix of employees + consulting engineers {high skill} + gig workers. Client data, knowledge confidentiality - oops gotta look after that too. In East Europe we find high end part time engineers with great domain knowledge willing to work on project by project contract from their homes. In India that category has not yet evolved beyond maybe a small degree. The average person still wants a steady job I guess.

In 5 to 7 years things will settle down. Till then we'll enjoy the confusion. Though I am more traditionally minded and can fully understand where R.Premji is coming from it is an incoming tide of high end gig economy workers that he cannot stop.

To clarify a point raised above - A Board member, especially one who is a non-executive in a public company is not an employee either in practise or law or spirit. He/she is a Board member a separate category recognized by laws of most countries including India. By definition and law he/she is part time. His/her role and responsibilities and I dare say significant liabilities towards the management, towards the public shareholder, towards the regulator are in a completely different realm.

[ValarMorghulis]

Originally Posted by Samurai

...
How can a same activity be cheating in one country and not in the other, for a given company? How can same activity be cheating in one company and not in the other, in the same country? Just because you added few clauses in the appointment letter, which the employee had no ability to change?
...

Labour laws is one reason.
While IT companies in India give 5-7 unplanned (sick) days to employees in India, in Europe (especially Germany & Switzerland) there is no limit on sick days. European employees actually get unlimited unplanned leaves. I remember a colleague who took a month's sick leave 'cos he fractured his leg while skiing.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

So it begs the question if you should impose a rule you cannot effectively implement.

Doesn't the military have an unwritten rule that one should not give orders that won't be obeyed?

Originally Posted by ValarMorghulis

Labour laws is one reason.
While IT companies in India give 5-7 unplanned (sick) days to employees in India, in Europe (especially Germany & Switzerland) there is no limit on sick days. European employees actually get unlimited unplanned leaves. I remember a colleague who took a month's sick leave 'cos he fractured his leg while skiing.

Sorry, I don't understand. How can just few days of sick leave justify opposing multiple employers entirely. These days many companies combine CL and SL into just personal leaves.

[avira_tk]

I am really interested in the competitors who are not named in any of the news reports.
"..violation of integrity in its deepest form" good grief, the PR guys must have been overtime on this. These guys bleat about inflexibility of labour laws, then turn around and talk about loyalty, dedication and cooperation like you are married to the firm. Trust fund babies - proof that prosperity is the best protector of principle.

[am1m]

Originally Posted by dailydriver

Rishad Premji, Chairman of IT firm, Wipro, on Wednesday said that the company has fired 300 employees who were found to be working for one of its competitors at the same time as working for Wipro.

Personally, I too am of the mindset that working for two companies at the same time when you are a full-time employee at one is not the right thing to do. But the question is how did Wipro find out that these employees were moonlighting? Would be interesting to know.