[Samurai]

Ten years ago, a company called Treehouse decided to have a no-boss approach. When I saw that, I wondered if this would work in India, and I asked this question in the PMP thread. Two BHPians answered it right away, that it won't work in India.
Three years later, Treehouse admitted it didn't work them either. "We were naive," the CEO said in a recent interview. "It was hopeful."

Why am I bringing this up? Because, it applies to the WFH concept. To quote what I said 3 years during the pandemic lockdown:

Originally Posted by Samurai

I have personally done 50% WFH since 10 years and 100% WFH this year. I have done both individual contribution work (IC) and managed teams as wells as ICs while WFH. It takes a major attitude shift to make WFH work. You have to be highly motivated to stay efficient in WFH, and know how to manage time. If employees need constant prodding to deliver results, a technique regularly used by Indian managers in office environment, WFH will not deliver results.

For WFH to work, the measurement must shift from effort based to result based. You can't put someone on an assignment and wait while they work, work, work... everyone is very busy, very busy. Doing what? Attending meetings from dawn to dusk? Some managers and even peers think meeting is working. No, that's where you decide what to do. Actually doing takes more time than talking about it.

I usually call a WFH person, we decide the scope of work, and then I plainly ask them to give me realistic time estimate of completion, with multiple milestones. Once the time estimate is given, any delay in milestones should be tracked and must have valid causes. If you are dealing with a person doesn't know how long it will take or know how to manage time, such person won't survive in the WFH world we are all forced into. Most juniors and freshers fall into this category and are really going to feel the sharp end of most firings in the coming months. Even managers who don't know how to set realistic expectations and don't know how to inspire/manage WFH staff, will also fail badly, and are bound lose their jobs.

We don't have pandemic anymore. If companies are calling their staff back to work, it means that both managers and their reportees haven't fully managed to make WFH more effective than WFO. Let's not dwell on conspiracy theories here.

What Treehouse experienced with their no-boss experiment, has had a repetition in the WFH experiment.

[DigitalOne]

Originally Posted by am1m

Perhaps this thread could now evolve into one where we share strategies, personal experiences to help people make the transition. Or advice on why it may not be the best solution for a specific individual/business.

Let me go first . I am a mid-level manager in an IT product company. Around 20 employees report to me. We have a mandatory 2 days (3 for some teams) WFO policy now.

I commute comfortably by office shuttle bus. Even though I face the Bangalore ORR traffic, it is not a deal breaker.

Personally, I am more productive working from office than home. The discipline of getting up early and following a routine makes me more focused when I get to my desk at 8.30. There is an x factor (difficult for me to quantify) when I WFO. Plus there are those casual chats (for e.g. cricket, festivals, movies...) that at the end of a WFO day, I feel less stressed out than WFH.

I also advise my employees, especially the younger crowd, to be in office more than the stipulated days. Most of the bachelors do it on their own.

Is team productivity more in office or home? Anecdotally, I would say WFO has more productivity. I don't have concrete data (nor does my organization collect it) but there is something to be said for the discipline, routine, and atmosphere that encourages better work in office. In WFH there are unavoidable distractions (power cuts, family tasks etc), not to an extent to trigger disciplinary action, but to bring down one's productivity by a small factor. This small negative is what I ask my employees especially in their early stage of career to avoid.

It is like asking, if God is omnipresent why do we go to temples to pray? Because the discipline and the atmosphere helps.

[charanreddy]

Let me share my perspective. For context , I have 16 yrs of experience in analytics and data science and in my career have worked directly for the company and never for a contractor / service provider. I have worked as a pure IC ( Individual contributor) for about 7 years and have been in people leadership roles with a big IC component for the rest 9 years.

Before COVID, my management used to insist on WFO. WFH was an exception, and allowed 2 days a month maximum. With COVID, the misconceptions about WFH being a disaster were laid to rest. The teams performed very well and it was a great equalizer between on shore and off shore employees as every one was meeting on teams / zoom.

Since lifting of lockdowns, companies have started to migrate towards a hybrid set up which is working well in my opinion. Being in office is absolutely needed for important conversations with seniors or a brainstorming / brownbag session. I have felt these conversations are less effective via online mediums.

What works for my team : we have aligned on 2 days of week where very one will be in office . The third day is optional and individual members have flexibility depending on their work week.

However , as a company and as a team we don’t tolerate slacking or inefficiency. We give folks some chances to correct and if this repeats for about 6 months or so, we take the hard call to let people go. For any team to succeed , clarity of goals and behaviors is critical. These form an objective basis for rewards ( promotions , bonus) or punitive actions.


To an extent the customer is the most important entity as he literally pays the bills. But the customer works on outcomes and does not play a role in the inner workings of the company. This duty falls on the company leadership which translates customer expectations to office policies. It’s fair to say that employees don’t exist solely for brining the company profits , but the company doesn’t exist to solely benefit employees too. There needs to be a balance and right levers in place to acccomplish equilibrium. Performance linked pay is a great way to do this as well as giving company stock units to senior employees , so they are invested in company growth.

[Revvatron]

Originally Posted by DigitalOne

Personally, I am more productive working from office than home. The discipline of getting up early and following a routine makes me more focused when I get to my desk at 8.30. There is an x factor (difficult for me to quantify) when I WFO. Plus there are those casual chats (for e.g. cricket, festivals, movies...) that at the end of a WFO day, I feel less stressed out than WFH.

I also advise my employees, especially the younger crowd, to be in office more than the stipulated days. Most of the bachelors do it on their own.

I totally agree to this. As a bachelor I go to office all 5days even though it is 2 days not-mandatory WFO for our company. Also I live 2 kms from office so it helps. When am at office I move a lot, for eg: washrooms are far way than we have at our homes. Also the discussions like movies,cricket takes things off my mind. If I was living far ways on traffic congested route maybe not 5 days but would have attented 3 days atleast.
In short there are pros and cons for each and depends on individual which one to go for. For me Hybrid is the best of both worlds, you can go to office as well as WFH when you are at hometown or something like that.

[GeeTee TSI]

A point of view in leaning towards WFH is how harrowing one's commute is and how much tolerance one has towards it. In the simple mind of an employee that's a deciding factor which also embeds productivity in it. Nobody knows that as well as the employee.

After having tasted flexibility/WFH (just like experiencing the first 4G back then) it is difficult to revert to a compromise of a rigid mandate

People are diverse (some contrarian) and it is tough to prescribe what everyone must do. In an ideal world, I (alone) should decide when and how often I need to commute to office and this aspect of care towards employees will be my simple barometer of a favourable working environment

[chinkara]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

I don't wish to be rude to any one who is an employee somewhere. In any situation of bargaining or negotiating it helps to be very conscious of one's balance of negotiating power. Till unemployment in India remains what it is the employer (in any sector) wields the lathi. Ranting on social media won't change that. I am trying to share the employers perspective so that it is of some use to members here given that most of this thread, which I started, has degenerated into an angry echo chamber.

Here I beg to differ sir. This depends on where you are in your career and your skill / motivation levels. There are project managers I work with who can run with just the project brief and a 1-hour briefing. I cannot get a replacement from the market just like that (and anyway you have to interview 10 to get 1 person worth recruiting). And knowing they are result oriented, I would not hesitate to let them work as much as they wish from wherever they want.

However, there is this whole issue of mentoring freshers where it is essential that seniors / productive employees spend at least 3-4 days every month in office in order to facilitate the lunch table / coffee machine conversations. But this can be done in different ways. A colleague operates out of his hometown Nagpur with the understanding that he'll spend a week in Mumbai office every month (at his cost).

Work wise if you have the right people I see very little merit in "face to face" interaction every day. And if the coffee machine conversations are so important for the given work, then the team lead / project manager is incompetent or the training is inadequate. There are projects which I review every day and those which I review once a month based on the amount of handholding needed based on employee capabilities. If a manager is unable to make that call, then there is an issue in his/her capabilities.

[RiderZone]

An argument that's mentioned repeatedly against Work from Home is reduced productivity. But it never seems to be explained what this mythical "productivity" thing is?

If a task can done remotely, it, by default, has to be a non-physical task. A steel foundry forklift driver or an underwater pipe welder can't exactly work from home. Non-physical tasks can be about sales, coordination, management, translation, coding, online infrastructure, video editing, accounting etc., basically anything which requires a laptop, a brain, and some fingers connecting the two. Since I only know about IT, that's what I'll focus on now.

The productivity of an underwater pipe welder can be measured rather easily, I imagine. It could be the meters of pipe welded per hour or something similar. The productivity of a programmer cannot be measured with the same ease however, as much as companies keep believing it can be.

I work as a project manager, and work with a few different programmers from all over the world. Initially we tried the method of assigning hours to a Jira task, you do your backlog refinement session, estimate the hours something would take, and then inevitably the requirement changes and your estimate becomes meaningless. Frustrated with this crude system, we moved onto Story Points, which measures the difficulty of a task for a specific programmer. But we kept forgetting that this is IT, which by its very nature is a field that changes every second. New technologies come along, the customer wants something entirely different now, and the Story Points end up being just a random number that tells you nothing.

What we have been experimenting with over the past year is to ditch this whole measurement system. We realized that we were wasting far too long attempting to measure productivity, and that lost us hours of being productive. We have gone back to the old Kanban style system, where we define tasks, sort them by priority, and things get done when they get done.

Are we more productive now or less productive? Who the hell knows. I think we are, because we have reduced the number of hours we wasted every week on refinement calls and retrospective calls and sprint planning calls. We only have two 15 minute calls a week most weeks, standups on Monday and Thursday. We discuss any new tasks on Slack first if possible, but if refinement is required we'll have a separate call and focus on specific tasks. The major difference we've noticed with this is that the programmers can focus a lot better on their tasks, they aren't constantly being distracted by me pulling them into a useless meeting. Is that better productivity? I think it is, but I don't think any MNC board member would agree with me, because this increase in productivity I see cannot be plotted on a graph whose line is constantly going up. The increase in productivity I see seems logical and obvious, but it can't be measured, and so the management can't pat themselves on the back for making it happen, so it doesn't exist for them.

A lot of people are angry at that Narayana Murthy guy for suggesting that youngsters should work 70 hours a week, but that statement is very telling about what people like him think "productivity" is. For people who insist on work from office, productivity appears to be about the number of hours spent on your desk or in the meeting room. It seems to be about how many hours of work you can shove into a timesheet. The quality of the work, job satisfaction, mental and physical well being, the standard of the end product, all of that is irrelevant to their equation. If you work from home, your manager can't see you physically sitting at your chair and staring into a screen, how is he going to measure your productivity and send it up the chain so people in fancy suits can look at some meaningless numbers and generate shareholder value?

The argument can be made that I work at a small organization, and it's much easier to be productive here without obsessing with the measurement of productivity. If you are the CEO of a company with 26,000 employees, it is somewhat understandable that you would want an easy way to figure out if your staff is working efficiently or not. But here comes the problem, and why I keep saying the Indian work culture is bad. The derivation of the equation for being productivity in Indian IT companies looks something like this.

Work = Not fun
Suffering = Not fun

Therefore, Work = Suffering

And hence proved, more suffering = More better productivity

There's this very strange corruption of the concept productivity in the Indian work culture. Being a "hard worker" has no connection to the work that you're actually doing, it's about the imitation of working hard. The customer pays for a new website development for example, and what he expects is a functional, good looking website. But behind the scenes for the developer coding the website, the website is completely irrelevant. It has to pass some basic user acceptance tests for sure, but the primary aim of the developer is to prove to his manager that he's being productive, by attending random meetings, coming in early and leaving late, working weekends, attending cringe corpo social events, and spiraling slowly into a nervous breakdown.

The reason Narayana Murthy gives for his 70 hour work week demand is also very weird, he seems to imply that Germany and Japan were destroyed after WW2, and so their workers worked extra hours to rebuild their economies, and hence Indian youngsters should do the same. Was a nuclear bomb dropped on Bangalore that I somehow missed? Was Mumbai firebombed and raised to the ground while nobody noticed? His explanation for young people destroying their lives makes absolutely no sense, but I think that's only because he couldn't say his real thoughts out loud.

He couldn't say that the suffering of poor young souls directly benefits him financially, and so he has to make senile statements tangentially evoking patriotism. He couldn't say that forcing kids to work 14 hours a day makes him more billionaire, and so he has to compare the Indian economy to that of a war torn nation.

Should we as a society accept Narayana Murthy's definition of productivity? I would argue against it. Productivity of a human working with his mind cannot be easily plotted on a graph, and if you should attempt to do so, that graph should also contain additional axis for work-life balance, job satisfaction, and other values as intangible as productivity.

Look, my only problem is with forced return to office for jobs that can easily be done from anywhere, just because of higher "productivity", an ill defined entity that means whatever you want it to mean. If a job can be done remotely, the option should exist, and that option shouldn't be entirely dependent on the whims of an out of touch management. There are people who enjoy working from office, and there are moments that I feel I should be in a meeting room with my colleagues rather than Google Meet, but that's also not a reason enough to take the choice away.

Take TCS for example, I have a friend there who was hired a year ago with repeated promises that permanent work from home will be provided, and now he's being forced to return to office. But the sadly funny thing is that when he went to the office after many months of working from home, he ended up spending entire days looking for a desk to work from, because this whole return to office nonsense is royally botched, and these companies simply don't have the infrastructure to make it happen, even though it's their damn plan. Was he productive for the days he spent looking for a desk, and then couldn't work properly anyways because taking calls is a bit of a pain when you're sharing a desk with 3 dudes sitting a few centimeters from you? I'm sure TCS thinks so, and I'm sure they all high-fived in the board room when presented with the report of 80% of employees working from office, up from 60% last quarter. But I would argue that's all pointless.

Unfortunately my arguments are not very valuable in the context of the Indian MNC. When everyone on the road is going the wrong way, and the police are forcing people to drive the wrong way, and the government challans you if you don't drive the wrong way, driving the right way is not exactly an option. But it is important to remember that we are choosing to do this, and the choice is forced from the top down, by parasites like Narayana Murthy.

[am1m]

Originally Posted by RiderZone

Initially we tried the method of assigning hours to a Jira task...we moved onto Story Points, which measures the difficulty of a task......We realized that we were wasting far too long attempting to measure productivity, and that lost us hours of being productive. We have gone back to the old Kanban style system, where we define tasks, sort them by priority, and things get done when they get done.

Oh man, we went through this whole cycle too. But during the days of in-office work. Finally, we arrived at the same conclusion - fix the overall deadline, define, prioritize and don't sweat the minutiae of trying to define time for each sub-task down to the hours. Once we transitioned to remote, this proved to work well too. Again, much smaller company, so it was easy to push this through. I'm sure it wouldn't have been possible in some of the larger companies I've worked with.

Funny thing is, I'm seeing that meetings are shorter over calls/remote work. When we used to call meetings in the office, since everyone took the time to get there, book a meeting room, etc, things just dragged on, long after the useful discussions/decisions were done. I mean, everyone is there, we got the room with difficulty- better make full use of the meeting time! On calls these days, once the meeting has served its purpose, everyone is happy and quick to end the call and get back to work.

[gvivek75]

Originally Posted by am1m

Guys, we need to listen to sensible facts that people on both sides are putting down.

Couldn't agree more. After all what is a debate in which you don't have differing opinions.

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

The tone on this thread by some that they wish to be employees {assured income, social security cover, paid more for time rather than measurable output} but still be 100% or substantially WFH is less likely to happen at least in India.

-
-

In any situation of bargaining or negotiating it helps to be very conscious of one's balance of negotiating power. Till unemployment in India remains what it is the employer (in any sector) wields the lathi. Ranting on social media won't change that.

And this is where most arguments in this thread are missing out on the most important context. We are talking about the Indian IT industry and not one in Europe or US. It's a dog-eat-dog world out here and given the opportunity, there are hundreds of people willing to do your job. An industry that's built largely on cost arbitrage and not necessarily on cutting edge innovation means that companies will continue to treat employees as generic and replaceable assets. It is not fair to individuals, but then that's the downside of this industry, and it is what it is.

As for the arguments about priority to individual wellness and relaxed pace of life in Western Europe as an example, this isn't something promoted by companies themselves. It is ensured by governments and contractually enforced. Imagine getting a 6 weeks long paid summer break anywhere else in the world. Companies don't necessarily like this down-time, but they don't have a choice.

Similarly 'x' number of days in a month working remotely, or taking unplanned day off due to baby-sitting duties/ dog's vet appointment etc. has been available to European employees long before Covid. Imagine finding employers in India or many other parts of the world who would willingly dole out such benefits.

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Further there is a misconception that WFH-WFO is an existential matter - it isn't.

A very straightforward point, and drives a bit of perspective to this conversation.

Across several posts in the last few pages, there are enough examples quoted of remote working long before COVID. Those roles were anyway possible to conduct remotely, and nothing changes even today.

On the other hand, I have come across people who moved to their hometown over 1,000 kms away from their work location during COVID, and expect full WFH to continue. Organizations are under no obligation to support this expectation, and as an individual if that's your choice, then gig working is the way to go. Quite a few have already decided to move in this direction. It has worked for some, and hasn't worked for others. You be the judge of what your priorities and risk taking abilities are. Just don't expect remote working as a right.

[Jaguar]

Originally Posted by gvivek75

Similarly 'x' number of days in a month working remotely, or taking unplanned day off due to baby-sitting duties/ dog's vet appointment etc. has been available to European employees long before Covid. Imagine finding employers in India or many other parts of the world who would willingly dole out such benefits.

Other than the WFH part, a lot of the other benefits like unplanned leaves, etc generally are manager discretion and were available even before covid in the Indian IT sector. However, I see that our Indian mindset/work culture is that people still shy away from disclosing the real reason behind their absence and make fake excuses even to the friendliest of managers. When the OOO messages from our colleagues abroad state the reasons like, going to son's football game or helping a friend with his car issue, the Indian OOO is almost always the ubiquitous "I/family is sick".

[Briarean]

This topic seems to be a perfect dispute between idealists and realists. All these discussions highlight the contrast between the mostly imperfect and challenging nature of real-life situations and the idealized, aspirational situations we might hope for.

Almost every argument has been presented here with every situation imaginable. However, it’s important to recognize that both real-life situations and idealized scenarios have their pros and cons. The actual experience of working from home or the office can vary significantly based on individual circumstances, job requirements, and personal preferences. So, there are no rights or wrongs, but just different viewpoints.

Work from Home evolved from a special privilege given to some senior management people to a facility provided to every employee whose job responsibilities can be fulfilled even without him being needed in the office. i.e., The job got Outsourced from your office to your home.

My opinion: As of now, Work from Home is just an additional facility/option/choice provided to employees which is similar to the free coffee from vending machines. Claiming this choice as our privilege is not wise. (You may be right, but it's not your right).

While WFH is likely to continue playing a major role in the future of work, it might not be the only model. Different industries and organizations will make decisions based on their specific needs and circumstances. The flexibility to work remotely will likely remain an important option for many, but the future of work will likely be a blend of remote and on-site work arrangements.

Where do I stand? Depends upon what options I have, what I can negotiate, and what they demand!!!

Now, let's see this from both the Employee and Employer perspective. These perspectives can be skewed as per the country, culture, and Government laws & regulations.



Peace!!!

[JediKnight]

Originally Posted by RiderZone

He couldn't say that the suffering of poor young souls directly benefits him financially, and so he has to make senile statements tangentially evoking patriotism. He couldn't say that forcing kids to work 14 hours a day makes him more billionaire, and so he has to compare the Indian economy to that of a war torn nation.

Well said, work 14 hours a day for the measly 3.5 L Infosys pays to a fresher. For what? Destroy your health and finish off the best days of your life slaving to make Mr. Narayan Murthy and family richer. These guys are very clever and know how to cover the truth and fool the gullible people of the country by invoking patriotism and presenting themselves as selfless benefactors of the country.

In my younger days I did not think much of Karl Marx. But now after working nearly two decades in the IT industry I think he has some very valid points. People who are interested may want to read up on Rentier Capitalism on how labor is exploited in modern times.

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by VaibhaoT

Found this interesting piece of news.
Narayana Murthy Suggests 70-Hour Work Week To Youngsters, Sparks Debate

In context of current thread, just wondering if hours of commute time will be included in "70 hours" or not?

With no disrespect to those who admire NRN I think the man is talking through his hat. What may theoretically sound attractive to the capitalist {squeeze the juice out of a factor of production, in this case labour} is not necessarily healthy for society as a whole or for sustainable effort for the employer and as we all know it isn't healthy for the employee and his/her family. Ultimately the family is the building block of society. Laws, norms, practices that corrode the family ultimately corrode the society.

There could be a few occasions in a year where employees/teams have to pull a 12-hour work day not counting commute times. Similarly, if you are an entrepreneur building your business you will often pull 12 to 13 hour work days a few times a month to get your business up there. As an {ex-} entrepreneur I can objectively say that I can recall only two occasions in 40 years where my team and I worked a 60-hour week continuously for four to six weeks to pull off our two biggest business achievements. For NRN to talk of a 70-hour week as a norm is nutty and I dare say immature. As we grow older some of us start to glorify the past. There is a reason we have a retirement age.

You need to be well organized to get things done in a 40 or 48 hour work week. For 95% of business situations and challenges that is adequate. I will confess some of the very large IT companies in India and in USA are not well organized when compared to a manufacturing company. Our IT industry enjoys the purchasing power parity between the US$ and INR and hence profits come easy and that by human nature makes the management lazy and the corporate bureaucracy fat. In an efficiently run manufacturing company margins are thin, cash is tight and you are forced to work lean and thoughtfully.

[Kurrant]

I remembered reading a couple of years ago about NRN advising Infosys employees against working late and instead appealed to them to devote time to family. So he comes across a bit contradictory in his latest statements.
https://www.citehr.com/amp.php?t=34364

[IndieGooner]

Originally Posted by Kurrant

I remembered reading a couple of years ago about NRN advising Infosys employees against working late and instead appealed to them to devote time to family. So he comes across a bit contradictory in his latest statements.
https://www.citehr.com/amp.php?t=34364

The email mentioned in this link is a fake and was apparently denied by NRN himself.