[d.w.w.]

Originally Posted by dragonfire

Working from office clearly demarcates work and life.

So true. I remember those good old days when work was over the moment I leave the office gate. I never had a laptop or an office phone and was free to do whatever I want after work. Enjoyed playing with my little one after getting back home; Ahh, I really miss those days

[am1m]

Originally Posted by d.w.w.

So true. I remember those good old days when work was over the moment I leave the office gate.

Outside of the whole remote vs. in-office work debate, suggest you make it a point to prioritize family and health time. Those never come back and the companies that you sacrifice that time for will not remember it anyway (especially IT companies). I'm guilty of extending beyond the hours I'd normally work compared to when I was in the office too. But then I figure that instead of the 2 hours I would have spent on the road (when I wouldn't have been working anyway), why not use that for health and family.

Originally Posted by Bhargav7

There are a lot of other issues like collaboration, innovation, which cannot be replicated as effectively in a remote environment.

I understand that this is a reason given a lot. But again from personal experience, when I've worked with teams scattered between 2 US coasts (literally, Florida and Seattle), and in Bangalore manage to collaborate and do new product/feature development from as far back as the mid-2000s, and then troubleshoot issues for clients scattered across the world literally, I'm wondering if with all the new online collaboration tools this is not significantly easier? In my experience, it has become so.

But, agreed it takes a very different approach to work and management of work. And agree that if companies don't find it feasible to invest that time and effort in developing that, it's certainly a valid business reason to not go that way. All I'm saying is that it is possible, that's all.

[d.w.w.]

Originally Posted by am1m

Outside of the whole remote vs. in-office work debate, suggest you make it a point to prioritize family and health time. Those never come back and the companies that you sacrifice that time for will not remember it anyway (especially IT companies)

Thanks for the advice, but I was actually not referring to spending more hours at work or not having family time, but the point where the work ends.

In 2011, my company(Indian arm of a US telecom giant) was just introducing WFH in India and everyone wanted it. People were excited to sit in their homes and work. Then in one of the meetings, my manager made an interesting point. WFH is a double edged sword. On one side you get to stay home but on the other end you will get called to work whenever there is a need. What I referred here is about the second point.

When you don't carry a laptop home, no-one is going to call you after work. Worst case you may get a phone call for a quick clarification on something, whatever has to be looked at will be done only the next day even it is a production issue. But with WFH enabled this is no longer applicable. You are expected to look into issues as and when they occurs. So even if I logout for the day, I know there is a chance that I might get pulled back for something( I miss that peace of mind) The earlier WFO setup let me break free from work once I reach home.

Having said that I do support WFH. I love the flexibility it gives. I could take a break in the afternoon, pick my kid after school/take my wife for a quick shopping etc and then continue my work. I'm the only guy at offshore and going to office is such a waste of time for me. I'm forced to go to office only because of my managers ego.

[Dodge_Viper]

Originally Posted by d.w.w.

So true. I remember those good old days when work was over the moment I leave the office gate. I never had a laptop or an office phone and was free to do whatever I want after work. Enjoyed playing with my little one after getting back home; Ahh, I really miss those days

Not asking your organisation name, however this is not going to happen in maximum of the service based IT industries. Very very few lucky people have this convenience in very few selected projects.

[am1m]

"Software development is an industry where geographic location hardly seems to matter but when we’re communicating requirements, design and expectations entirely over chat, things are bound to get lost in translation. My point? You can’t oversee a project if you’re thousands of miles away,"

"The crux of the problem is that working with a remote team is a very different proposition than working with people onsite - a fact that is obvious but that people generally fail to act on."

These are just a couple of snippets from old forums that I found online. They're not talking about remote work in the 2020s though, they're from 2007 and 2010, talking abut how flawed the idea is that software development work could be outsourced to India from the US.

And I remember so many such nuggets we'd hear on calls (some of them bordering on open racism), during my first couple of IT jobs in the early 2000s.

Interesting that an industry that built itself on managing to do work from across the world for clients across the world, now says it can't function as well because employees are scattered across the same city or the same country. That too decades later when internet infra and communication options are much, much more advanced.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by Dodge_Viper

Not asking your organisation name, however this is not going to happen in maximum of the service based IT industries. Very very few lucky people have this convenience in very few selected projects.

Yeah.... I too was wondering the same. In the 90s, I worked both in India and USA for equal amount of time. In US, I could leave work at 5:30pm and didn't have to think about work until I was back next day.

But in India, the situation was very different. In a product startup, we worked all the time, often very late. Once I left for home at 5pm, in full glare of the team. Then I mentioned I had come to work at 9am, previous day. Later in HP, you would get dirty looks if you tried to leave work at 10pm, so 12-1am was the right time to leave for home, only to return at 10am.

I'll take WFH any day compared to that.

[m8002?]

Those fully supporting work from home, can you please explain why almost all companies globally have asked people to start WFO IF productivity was high, infra costs were low, saved on support functions like food, cab, facilities, had low attrition ( really?, attrition was highest with full WFH in 2021/22), had bumper profits etc etc with WFH? I am talking specifically with respect to large desi companies and multi-nationals here. This is even more reason for all smaller cash strapped companies to adopt to full WFH but they are seen to move away now.

Please do not come up with conspiracy theories like

• Real estate lobby is putting pressure

• Politicians across the world want to support the tea/paan/cab guy

• The local facilities guys are forcing the global CEO/board so that he can get his cut from vendors

• Managers want to "control" people and ask the CEO to declare WFO for all locations.

Why is it that all WFH supporters see all the above obvious great benefits and the top management doesn't see those. Or, what is it that they know and we employees dont.
If you can substantiate your reasons with data, nothing like it. It will be a learning experience for all.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by m8002?

This is even more reason for all smaller cash strapped companies to adopt to full WFH but they are seen to move away now.

That's true. Mine is a small company that has been 100% WFH since inception, for nearly 4 years now. But now we are moving to hybrid model. That is because 100% WFH has downsides too.

1) Very hard to build any chemistry/bond over web meetings. It worked so far because most of my team knew each other from before. But building the same bond with newly hired staff was becoming impossible.

2) Mentoring the younger staff. This simply doesn't work over the phone/web. While being the same hall, you can always find time to have many impromptu sessions. Scheduling a mentoring session doesn't really work.

Building chemistry and mentoring is important to us, all my direct reportees have worked with me for over a decade. Your experience may be very different. We are going hybrid. To make this happen, we opened the office just minutes from where all the staff stay.

[sinharishi]

There are a few sectors where teams colloborate and achieve sucess by sitting thousands of kms apart. All the WITCH companies - their service/support model works with 10% onshore presence and 90% offshore (may vary from company to company). Working remotely from an office vs home is what makes a huge difference, but saying only in-person meetings can help employees collaborate and be productive is something I do not agree with. I mean even within India, don't you have a team spread out across the metros?

I have been doing WFH since 9 years now, only because in my line of work we can get the job done remotely (not being present at client-site). In my limited experience in working with MSPs where we have teams operating from India, I do agree that WFH is destined to fail here. Even at home, when covid struck it was more of a gala time for many! It requires a lot of discipline for WFH to be successful. With almost all companies moving to WFH and now coming back to WFO model, it has become difficult for us to get remote jobs, they want you in the nearest office, at least once week.

Also, being a contractor has thought me not to work for more than 40 hrs a week, so yes I am the lucky one who signs off at 5pm and does not worry about work till next day 9am.

[nandrive]

Originally Posted by m8002?

Please do not come up with conspiracy theories like

• Real estate lobby is putting pressure

Here is a link where Real estate lobby putting pressure and calling WFH people selfish, calling CEO's publicly to call employees back to office

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0GYByVTqR8

Originally Posted by m8002?

• Politicians across the world want to support the tea/paan/cab guy

Here is a link where state premier(chief minister) is calling workers back to office, Government admitting real reason -> CBD (Central business district) economy is struggling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6vKmzwpXX0

Lobby group is not happy with people coming to office 3 days a week, to make the city successful all 5 days people should work from office

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdWpT4eHLuQ

Politicians and special interest lobby groups also publicly arguing that WFH is unfair on the people who work for sectors where WFH is not an option. I can not give links to all the data, if someone is interested in understanding more about the lobby please do a Youtube search.

Lobby has successfully pushed Work From Office as some king of ESG goal on the companies and CEO's. The companies and CEO's who fail to get employees back to office are publicly named and shamed. My company is not located in CBD so I do not have any mandate to work from office. My wife's company is in CBD where they mandated WFO 3 days a week from June. Even after the mandate not many people turned up, so the CEO was named and shamed in a recent report, the very next day he sent an email that in office attendance will be linked to performance metrics.

After living and working in 3 continents I do not think Politicians and Lobby groups are very different across countries.

[RMN]

Originally Posted by am1m

Interesting that an industry that built itself on managing to do work from across the world for clients across the world, now says it can't function as well because employees are scattered across the same city or the same country. That too decades later when internet infra and communication options are much, much more advanced.

I think it's not fair to compare 4-5 offshore stakeholders collaborating with 15-100 team members working sitting next to each other as opposed to the entire team being scattered around.

[avira_tk]

Originally Posted by m8002?

Those fully supporting work from home, can you please explain why almost all companies globally have asked people to start WFO IF productivity was high, infra costs were low, saved on support functions like food, cab, facilities, had low attrition ( really?, attrition was highest with full WFH in 2021/22), had bumper profits etc etc with WFH? I am talking specifically with respect to large desi companies and multi-nationals here. This is even more reason for all smaller cash strapped companies to adopt to full WFH but they are seen to move away now.

Please do not come up with conspiracy theories like

• Real estate lobby is putting pressure

• Politicians across the world want to support the tea/paan/cab guy

• The local facilities guys are forcing the global CEO/board so that he can get his cut from vendors

• Managers want to "control" people and ask the CEO to declare WFO for all locations.

Why is it that all WFH supporters see all the above obvious great benefits and the top management doesn't see those. Or, what is it that they know and we employees dont.
If you can substantiate your reasons with data, nothing like it. It will be a learning experience for all.

The real estate lobby are the guys who made it big and put their money into an asset, expecting passive income and inflation adjusted rents, this rent seeking behavior is common across the globe. The commercial real estate sector, most of which is owned by political operators is the one that creates influence for the businesses, the buildings are expensive to operate and payoffs to local administration is handled by the owner, usually the local ruling party representative.

The tea/paan/cab crowd is better organised than the employees of any sector, block votes decide the outcome of an election anywhere.

The facilities guys and their cut is an old story, and given the recent recruitment scandal, no level is immune from dipping into the cookie jar.

Managers usually do this, the truly useless ones think you are working only at your desk. You are also expected to be available whenever there is an emergency, but magically, wfh is OK in such a situation.

There were record profits during the wfh, a lot of managers learned quickly to measure output without watching people sit at their desks. The top management is under pressure from the political class and the rich cronies who finance them, the average person has no say in the decision. I don't know why office goers have a responsibility to ensure that they waste their time and money for substandard services(transport, catering, anything else we use, is rubbish) . The ESG scam that's mentioned on this thread tells you that the environment or health is simply not a concern for the parasitic political class that makes these decisions.

I don't know why the IT folks who are scapegoats for all urban quality of life issues are suddenly asked to contribute to the well being of those who provide literally nothing worthwhile to us. What is their fair share of what we work for?

[dileepcm]

Originally Posted by am1m

Interesting that an industry that built itself on managing to do work from across the world for clients across the world, now says it can't function as well because employees are scattered across the same city or the same country. That too decades later when internet infra and communication options are much, much more advanced.

I guess what you are missing is the fact there are different types of activities involved in the process when it comes to IT or building software or implementing software systems. For example, if you were to design a warehouse managements system, You would need to understand the requirements first. Trust me, it is million times easier to be physically inside a warehouse to understand the locations / belts / automations / high bays etc, rather than looking at photos / videos online. How do I know? That is part of my job and I know how difficult it was to get these details right during Covid times.
My point is, that the there are certain aspects of IT that works efficiently in remote working model across Geos which usually also provides cost benefits. It is the cost benefit sometimes makes or promotes remote working for organizations. But not all areas of IT are meant for remote operating, its that simple.

[Vishal.R]

Originally Posted by dileepcm

Trust me, it is million times easier to be physically inside a warehouse to understand the locations / belts / automations / high bays etc, rather than looking at photos / videos online.

Yes fully agree about this, but this is more about onshore v/s offshore and less about WFO v/s WFH. Generally a small team including a business analyst and sr. technical person visits onshore, but once system is built, supporting from a remote office of offshore vendor v/s working from home won't make much difference.

[krankstter]

Originally Posted by RMN

I think it's not fair to compare 4-5 offshore stakeholders collaborating with 15-100 team members working sitting next to each other as opposed to the entire team being scattered around.

Onset of covid freed up a lot of corporate bottlenecks. For one, since WFH has officially become a legit thing instead of a gimmick, most projects started taking in associates which are scattered across different branches all over India. This would have not been the case if people were infact reporting to offices regularly. Projects/clients could pick one particular corporate branch across India and then have a 15-100 team working from that branch alone. Because of this, calling them back to their respective branches would still result in scattering, not as much as WFH but small clusters everywhere.

Now that governments realized that it's election time, they're probably putting pressure on these corporates to force a certain percentage of employees to report from office, tea/paan/cab wala votes. This removes any flexibility that these corporates have to choose which projects/team members report back to office.

I'm being severely hit by this since the team which I work in is currently scattered across Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Kochi and couple of people in branches from other states as well.