[JithinR]

Like many things in life (at least in my limited experience) may be the middle ground is the right way to go.

Work Near Home: reduces my office commute (and any home town trips too if this idea catches up and spreads) while providing IT companies a secured space.

https://english.manoramaonline.com/b...-idea.amp.html

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by JithinR

Work Near Home: reduces my office commute (and any home town trips too if this idea catches up and spreads) while providing IT companies a secured space.

https://english.manoramaonline.com/b...-idea.amp.html

Glad to see Kerala already considering what I thought would be natural progression back in April. This must happen, cities can't keep growing while small towns and villages shrink.

[am1m]

Took advantage of the relaxation in inter-district travel restrictions to come to Mangalore from Bangalore last week. Plan to work from here till the end of the month and head back home after that.

Took 4 days to get a reliable Internet connection done. Unfortunately, neither Airtel broadband nor Jio fiber seemed to want to connect this part of Mangalore (Nandigudda), so had to depend on a local cable operator. But he finally came through and I'm working from today. This is the first time in my career that I'll be working away from a city where my company has an office, for such a long time. Hope this becomes the norm!

Made an interesting observation though, the power situation seems much better here than in my part of Bangalore (Bangalore East side). In Bangalore, as soon as it starts to rain, even moderately, the power goes out and we're on UPS almost always till it stops raining. This is nothing new, I've observed that since childhood. It seems like BESCOM is pro-actively switching off supply as soon as it starts raining. Here in Mangalore though, there have been heavy rains and the power still remains on. It's gone out a couple of times of course, but not for more than say a half-hour at a time. This house doesn't even have a UPS or a generator.

So what magic does MESCOM do to keep the power on during this heavy rain that BESCOM cannot seem to manage during our much more moderate rain?! And can they please teach them that magic.

[am1m]

Is there a portable hot-spot device/service that will work well across India for good Internet connectivity?

Any of you road-warriors have any recommendations? I know that BSNL and Airtel mobile data is pretty decent in all Indian cities and in several smaller towns as well. But the cell-phone used as a hot-spot is ok for basic browsing, checking mail, booking tickets, but nowhere near fast enough to work remotely when you need to upload large files, sync with a git repository, etc.

It's not possible to get a local cable internet installed in each place if you are there only for a week or a month at a time. Neither is buying a hot spot device and buying a local sim card for that each time. So is there a good enough solution for someone who wants to be a truly remote worker? One week in one city, a month somewhere else, then shift to a different state and work. Just curious. I imagine people in sales functions move around the country a lot, someone like that might have a good idea of a reliable service. Thanks in advance!

[sunilch]

Originally Posted by am1m

Is there a portable hot-spot device/service that will work well across India for good Internet connectivity?

Any of you road-warriors have any recommendations? I know that BSNL and Airtel mobile data is pretty decent in all Indian cities and in several smaller towns as well. But the cell-phone used as a hot-spot is ok for basic browsing, checking mail, booking tickets, but nowhere near fast enough to work remotely when you need to upload large files, sync with a git repository, etc.

It's not possible to get a local cable internet installed in each place if you are there only for a week or a month at a time. Neither is buying a hot spot device and buying a local sim card for that each time. So is there a good enough solution for someone who wants to be a truly remote worker? One week in one city, a month somewhere else, then shift to a different state and work. Just curious. I imagine people in sales functions move around the country a lot, someone like that might have a good idea of a reliable service. Thanks in advance!

JioFi has been working flawlessly for me at multiple places. I have not tried it across India but have tried it at multiple cities and my company has given it to employees across India.

So if JIO network is good at your target place, get a JioFi connection.

[prasathlr]

Originally Posted by am1m

So what magic does MESCOM do to keep the power on during this heavy rain that BESCOM cannot seem to manage during our much more moderate rain?! And can they please teach them that magic.

Well, Mangalore has to deal with monsoon rains on a daily basis for atleast 3 months so I guess they are well suited to handle and would have taken precautionary measures. In the past, MESCOM used to shut down the power only if it rained heavily.

And if I am not wrong, MESCOM had begun underground power cabling 2-3 years ago, that might be a factor as well.

[Dieselritzer]

On this topic of work from home, while a lot of points have been covered in details, I would like to highlight below pros, cons and then some important points:

Pro for the employee:
1. Saves time and money for travel to work.
2. Gets the flexibility of location. This is all the more significant if you are living in a city with high rentals, like Mumbai, B'lore, etc. You can opt to live in the outskirts of a metro at 1/3rd the rent or you can simply live in your base location.
3. In a small investment of a good chair and table, you can get office like comfort at home.

Cons for an employee:
1. If you are in an organization that has a horrible work culture, you will be expected to work any time, all the time. There won't be any "No calls/No emails" time lines and this can affect your work life balance.
2. The lack of any social connect starts affecting your mind. Man is a social animal and thus has a natural tendency and need to meet people outside your family circle.
3. Relative performance of your peers is difficult to judge and thus anyone getting promoted can raise questions in your mind. Example: If in my place of work I know someone who is extremely lousy at work, and is not getting promoted or well recognized, then I know the reason. I have seen the person work. When everyone works remotely, you simply don't know your relative performance within your peers as you don't see them around.

I personally don't think that working from home permanently will ever be a norm across any industry. Some very specific roles might become location free, but to see an entire company have all of its employees working from home? Ii frankly don't think I will ever see it happening.

All my above comments are for a mid to large size company. I have no clue of a start up culture as I have never worked there.

[INJAXN]

Department of Telecommunications relaxed WFH rules for OSP ( Other service providers) till Dec 31st.
Earlier this relaxation was till April 30th, then was extended till July 31st.
read more here:
https://www.livemint.com/companies/n...349802264.html

This relaxation is basically to allow OSP such as IT, ITES, tele-banking, tele-trading, tele-education etc to use infrastructure provided by various access providers.

[Jaguar]

Originally Posted by am1m

Is there a portable hot-spot device/service that will work well across India for good Internet connectivity?

Originally Posted by sunilch

JioFi has been working flawlessly for me at multiple places.

Another vote for JioFi. I have managed to connect to my remote machine over VPN and didn't notice any significant drop in network latency. Evenings used be consistently slow but as a backup for travel, this is a good bet.

[narayans80]

Originally Posted by am1m

Is there a portable hot-spot device/service that will work well across India for good Internet connectivity?

Get a Jio (primary) and Airtel SIM (backup), this should take care of most of the cases. I have a colleague who works with a Jio SIM from a very small town. Its my city based colleagues who've had trouble with hotspot internet.

[am1m]

Originally Posted by narayans80

Its my city based colleagues who've had trouble with hotspot internet.

That's a (hot)spot-on observation!

Got the Jio sim as primary and Airtel as a backup (exactly as you suggested). Have been shuttling between a smaller city and a small town while working away from Bangalore for the past month. And like you have observed, the hot spots seem to work better in smaller towns than in densely populated parts of cities. Must be a factor of the number of users per tower?

[jpcoolguy]

Our organization (one of the Big 4 Indian IT Services) has sent out a mail today about "Hoteling" pilot in one of our development centers in Chennai. The concept is that instead of a permanent seat allocation it will be a dynamic seat allocation and the employees has to "book a seat" to Work from Office using our mobile app or intranet, before coming to the office.

Good thing is that even the often restricted Offshore Development Centers (ODCs) are part of this model, however only for employees within the same account. This is going to be a pilot for now and this could give a glimpse of how the future of Work from Office may look.

And the employee should have a laptop and the management has already started replacing all the desktops with laptops for the employees. I would say a pretty good initiative if it comes through.

[volkman10]

Robert Bosch Engineering to allow 30-40% employees to WFH permanently.

Earlier 100 percent of employees were working in the office. So this is a big change that is happening, especially in engineering it is not heard of. It will give higher flexibility to associates

Link

[Raghu M]

My two cents. I think there are pros and cons to this.

Pros:

1. WFH gives the ability to move back to hometowns. Stay with family, reduce unnecessary expenses of rent/travel and life style

2. Better health, eating healthy at home gives a better health and mentally keeps people more happy

3. Distribute work with family members. I personally am mopping the house. I feed my kid, give her a bath, brush her teeth. Good connect and
home ministry is not complaining about my lack of attention towards family (read kids)

4. Reduced travel expenses for people living in the same city. No travel means no horrific daily encounters en route to office. My fuel expenses have come down to a trickle in the last 4 months. Helps air quality, reduces air pollution and driving once in a while gives more satisfaction

5. My company is saving huge money on electricity, security, IT support, house keeping, water, tissue papers, cleaning essentials, paying subsidy towards meals and food

6. Overall, a better work life balance. You can be a little flexible at work and even try finishing something up at the weekends (not everyone's option though)

Cons:

1. Existence of some sectors is close to being completely ruined. Begins with security staff (they are mostly from areas where there is no direct employment). It hits them really hard as they have to travel back to their hometowns with literally no options of a livelihood. Next comes, house keeping staff. No employees at office means no visits to the loo, no upkeep of computers/infrastructure on a daily basis. These are again the humble semi to unskilled labor who will suffer heavily. Next comes the other indirect dependents like auto rickshaws (Hyd has a few thousand share autos), cabs that ply employees to office, food joints outside the SEZs, inside food vendors, PGs, hostels, regular shops that cater to general kirana and other needs and finally the big player - real estate. With no employees willing to stay in big cities, the rental and real estate space has gone quite

2. It's a pain to connect virtually for office needs. I lead a team of more than 200 employees and to get an urgent update, it takes me at least 20 to 30 mins whereas in office it used to be done in a minute. I could directly pat on the employee and get a status (an email was not needed mostly)

3. Training - training new entrants is a nightmare. It's the connectivity, lack of personal touch and various factors that deter an otherwise smooth and seamless training while at office

4. No up-skill - yes, when you are with a bunch of people, you understand the latest technology better, have discussions, come up with ideas. This is literally gone with WFH

5. Social life - with WFH, there is hardly any interaction which takes away all the fun while we socialize. Less socializing means being less active. After all we are all social animals

[am1m]

It's been nearly 5 months that I've been working away from the office and nearly 2 months working away from my home in Bangalore. It was just supposed to be a short break away to a smaller town after the first (1.0, 2.0, 2.5?) lockdown lifted and inter-district travel was allowed, but because of additional local lockdowns, the week-long lockdown in Bangalore, and the BBMP blocking the road leading to my house in Bangalore because of a single positive case in the area, it's ended up being for this long.

Few observations so far (please note, these are just my observations and certainly are a factor of the kind of work I do and my organization's culture, so naturally that may not apply to a lot of different roles or orgs):

* For the kind of work I do, it's certainly possible to for me to work from anywhere with a reasonably fast Internet connection. Personally, I hope this does become the 'new normal', and anyway realistically, I don't see any IT company in Bangalore asking the entire staff to come in to work at the office anytime this year.

* Quality of life has improved dramatically. Not having to wake up early with the stress of having to beat Bangalore traffic, and not having to make that commute back home again post-work is having an amazing effect on my physical and mental well-being. And that's not just because I'm in a smaller town- I worked for a year from a different city a decade ago and so was able to rent a house close to the office and I experienced the same sense of well-being. Just not having to commute by vehicle in our cities makes a huge positive difference. IMHO, since we've shut offices because of the Covid health emergency now, why don't we also start considering the negative long-term health effects of prolonged vehicular commutes in cities like Bangalore?

* Wired Internet providers can certainly be an issue outside of cities. Even in tier-2 cities, your options are limited when it comes to a wired connection. If Airtel or Reliance wired connections are not available, you are dependent on the local providers. That can be a mixed bag. Initially we went with one guy, but that was a nightmare because he was the only representative for that service in the area and so he did things at his own pace and rarely attended to any issues without multiple reminders. Then we switched, and the next chap was the complete opposite, very responsive and efficient. Unlike an Airtel or Reliance where you can escalate the issue, in a small town, you are dependent on the quality of the individual.

* Wireless internet is surprisingly fast in smaller towns. Using a dongle, I've seen decent speeds near a couple of beaches and really fast speeds on top of a ghat (where till as recently as 5 years ago, only a patchy BSNL phone signal used to be available!)

* Working from a small town, you'll need a UPS for sure. (Thanks to the great BESCOM, that applies to Bangalore too actually!)

* Like I've mentioned elsewhere on this thread, the biggest shifts when it comes to working in IT outside a physical office are mental and cultural, not really infra-related anymore. You need to shut down at home as well, stop checking mail, just as you would when getting ready to leave the office. Interruptions are inevitable and they happen to anyone. Even in the US, I often see colleagues go offline because of weather conditions and personal emergencies. But the difference is there they accept it, here a lot of us (managers mainly!) still think it's some sort of sin to not be available 'all' the time. That will change, it's just a matter of a mature work culture, some orgs are just better at it than others.