[sridharj77]

Originally Posted by srishiva

I have seen this few times in this thread. If we accept productivity is high, then shouldn't that be sustainable ? Provided we are not working for more than 8 or 9 hours for this productivity, if the employee is not able to work at desired productivity, they would lose their jobs.

If the companies knew this earlier, this should not have been pushed by the COVID-19 situation. The spin on making this move as a benefit to employees is what makes this suspicious.

The main issue is that companies don't know how to manage by outcomes and create a good culture. Manage by # of hours spent, timesheets (archaic model), monitor swipe-in/swipe-outs, desktop monitoring, videos of employees periodically are all evidences of the lack of trust in the culture.

Employees can be let go more easily, because you get a talent pool across the country - no need to build offices in multiple cities, no need for people to travel for projects etc.

There are some benefits for employees in india, such as commuting times are reduced, no need to stay in costly cities etc, but on the whole, companies stand to benefit significantly more by this move is my take

[Fury]

What companies need to understand is Work from Home is not for everyone.

I for instance, work in an MNC that was already strongly propogating WFH even before the quarantine periods. While it was boon to many, I am one of those people, who prefer to keep a very distinct and clear line between professional and personal life and hence never preferred to open my office laptop at home. I realised how important this was because ever since the mandatory work from home, I have lost track of workdays and weekends or work hours and non-work hours. There is no clear disrinction of where work ends and personal time starts. Right now i could adjust but once i have a family, i would rather keep my work in office and home for personal life.

Additionally taking into consideration the prospect of unforseen circumstances such as power loss or internet connectivity issues (for which we are now responsible, I would keep work from home as a last resort rather than a replacement to the prevailing office culture.

I know there are many here who would rather have the option of perpetual work from home and I completely understand that you would have reasons for the same. All I am saying is the option of mainatining an office going culture should still be available to those who prefer that.

[rajushank84]

I am not sure I like this. An office environment creates camraderie, peergroup and culture, and that is a huge part of why I look forward to going to work. I am still in touch with ex-coworkers and friends from 10 or 15 years back, and that bonding is not likely to have formed with a mostly remote setup.

Another aspect of this is that I don't think this will necessarily work for all companies, or even most. Working like this requires a certain level of self-sufficiency, discipline and maturity. If someone has all those things on top of skills, they would work for top tier companies. Companies that pay less, get people who are more "green" (fresh, needing mentoring), that is why those people accept the lower pay in the first place. In such a setup, just asking everyone to go remote would probably be counter-productive.

[AirbusCapt]

My thoughts on work from home (WFH):

1) hire fire culture will increase. Not seeing your face is helpful in keeping things impersonal and making it easy to fire at a whim.

2) no demarcation of work and leisure. WFH will ensure you are always a phone call away. Personal time will have no meaning and conflicts in this will lead to point 1 above

3) when your home is office is home, stress levels will rise. With a traditional office setup one could mentally switch off and the commute from work to home was a transition. Now there is no such thing. So work stress will creep into your home's and may lead to mental deterioration.

4) friction between husband, wife, other family members. People will compete for the best corner spot, who cooks lunch, who supervises maids, children, your zoom calls disturb my thinking and what not. Higher mental stress and divorce rates.

5) bosses will expect you to carry on working even on holidays. Hey how does one zoom call in the morning affect your Goa vacation? Bullshit managers will manage remote bullshitting, no getting away from this fact.

6) ancillary services like cab drivers, small eateries outside offices, office cleaning staff, horticulture department will all lose jobs bigtime.

7) commuting for work will cease. Traffic will reduce however car and bike sales will fall. Property rates will see a steep correction and commercial real estate will collapse. Petrol and diesel sales will fall

8) with falling real estate deals and fuel sales, state governments will head towards bankruptcy. They will try to make money by generating absurd taxes like WFH tax.

9) IT payscale will drop. WFH ensures that an employee has reduced overheads, so why pay more. Moreover now I can hire an employee from Timbakatoo and not Bangalore for the same job, and he will take 40% less.

[isandy]

Originally Posted by joslicx

Totally agree. WFH is an unwanted monstrosity. There is no joy in it. Its become 24h job. Added to that all the commotion at home and the unreliable utilities like electricity, its a burden actually. Hardly half the work gets done in same time so have to slog unnecessarily. In office you could walk down to a colleague and unwind or take help if you are stuck. I am really missing my office now.

It depends on companies and individuals to manage. Set specific working hours and be clear with it. Managers may push once or twice, but if individuals and teams stick to timing, they will back off and baseline will be set.

The same can be done with family and additional hours saved in commute can be exclusively spent with family and thus keeping them happy.

[roy_libran]

Originally Posted by isandy

Managers may push once or twice, but if individuals and teams stick to timing, they will back off and baseline will be set.

My employer has already commenced collecting patterns of log on-activity time-log out for all staff to find out repeating patterns for various teams.
Culturally, my organisation has never been a stickler for number of hours worked except for very few teams that need to, and it has always been based on outcomes.
The reason we are doing it now is to find patterns where over-work may be consistently happening in a particular team, in which case the lead/manager will be pulled up. This Detective Control has already been implemented and rolled out for the past 2 weeks.
Even now there is absolutely no intention to challenge any individual for discretionary over-work.

[INJAXN]

Originally Posted by Fury

I realised how important this was because ever since the mandatory work from home, I have lost track of workdays and weekends or work hours and non-work hours. There is no clear disrinction of where work ends and personal time starts. Right now i could adjust but once i have a family, i would rather keep my work in office and home for personal life.

Lot of people have this concern. I think this is because we are thinking that WFH is temporary and that's why we ( Employee and Employers) both have not setup any rules. Once you know that it is going to last forever, you will setup some rules like fix start time and end time with occasional exception. have proper tea/coffee and lunch breaks.
slowly things will iron out. if it still does not for any one, she/he can always go to office.

Originally Posted by AirbusCapt

My thoughts on work from home (WFH):

8) with falling real estate deals and fuel sales, state governments will head towards bankruptcy. They will try to make money by generating absurd taxes like WFH tax.

9) IT payscale will drop. WFH ensures that an employee has reduced overheads, so why pay more. Moreover now I can hire an employee from Timbakatoo and not Bangalore for the same job, and h.

I've covered few points in post above, have couple of points to add to it.

Don't you thing it will be a boom for you also, sitting at home you can work or any organisation without worrying about shifting your family and house.
its about perspective.

Real estate will fall in few IT cities , but it will rise in cities from where these employees were coming earlier.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by fhdowntheline

"Are we trying to measure a jet airliner's design and development with our piston-engine experience ?"

Well said... I didn't comment on this thread for a long time despite being ex-TCSer, because TCS headcount was 3300 when I joined and 11000 when I left. I have no idea how make any comments on a 450000 size transition.

I am seeing very interesting insights from many posters, many I didn't foresee at all.

Still, I believe this will bring on a huge paradigm shift into IT work environment. Don't expect WFH to necessarily mean working from your bedroom. It could be working from your neighborhood (WFN). Certified plug-n-play or co-working buildings may appear in every neighborhood in very small towns. You may be a resident of Sringeri (KA), and your neighborhood co-working building is certified to be a secure cubicle provider that meets TCS standards. Then you could be working from Sringeri as a TCS employee. Just by inserting your TCS provided secure digital ID (USB), the secure cubicle will provision your personal work environment from the cloud in minutes.

That will eliminate the need to turn your home into secure office, and remove all the distractions of home. And it will spread employment to all corners of the nation or world, avoiding urban sprawl.

[srishiva]

Originally Posted by sridharj77

If the companies knew this earlier, this should not have been pushed by the COVID-19 situation. The spin on making this move as a benefit to employees is what makes this suspicious.

The main issue is that companies don't know how to manage by outcomes and create a good culture. Manage by # of hours spent, timesheets (archaic model), monitor swipe-in/swipe-outs, desktop monitoring, videos of employees periodically are all evidences of the lack of trust in the culture.

Employees can be let go more easily, because you get a talent pool across the country - no need to build offices in multiple cities, no need for people to travel for projects etc.

There are some benefits for employees in india, such as commuting times are reduced, no need to stay in costly cities etc, but on the whole, companies stand to benefit significantly more by this move is my take

Not all companies have swipe in culture. Also, WFH doesnt have to mean you work from another city/place. I dont think TCS or anyone has clarified that point. You may need to go to office when required for some meetings etc.

For MNC/product companies, your job as you move up is outcome based. I think we need to distinguish companies, type of jobs and also management culture. If some companies bring in these things, it would be a good start. Korean/Japanese/Chinese management do have rigid timings while others might be flexible. Also, with investment already in place for office etc, many companies might as well forget this phase and not look into it at all.

[vsrivatsa]

Its too early to come to conlusions. So far, only TCS has made any public announcement regarding this and they seem to have worded it as saying at any point of time only 25% of the Workforce would Work From Home.

This could be that they will limit the campuses and seating spaces and what is available would be used on a rotation basis by teams that require it.

While the 75% Work From Home goal seems very aggresive (in India at least), possibly a more modest 35 to 40% Work from home might become increasingly popular with the IT Sector overall.

Also as someone has called out "Work From Home" does not imply "Work From Anywhere" and companies will want the employees to visit the offices when required.

Here is an interesting interview of Matt Mullenweg (Founder of Wordpress) by Sam Harris:
"The New Future of Work" - URL

[AZT]

Originally Posted by libranof1987

7) Infrastructure at home: very, very few people lack the necessary infrastructure at home: high speed internet, quiet working space, to work efficiently. TCS has bulk of their workforce at the entry level: the guys earning 3-5 lakhs, with most youngsters sharing an apartment. Imagine how complicated everything will get.

Originally Posted by sagarpadaki

I know many of my colleagues who stay in a small apartment with husband and wife working from the same room. I hear a lot of disturbing cross talk during calls which is unavoidable when working from such close quarters. Not many can afford a decently spacious 2 BHK apartment with all amenities for both husband and wife to work independently.

These points are spot on and highly under rated. I was watching a webinar on the Impact of Covid on Real Estate and one point mentioned was, being at home all day people are realizing the importance of personal space.

Originally Posted by Reinhard

They feel that a lot of them will simply go absconding when they find a better opportunity & will never return the laptop. Desktop stays within office. Thats all.

I laughed out loud reading this. Unbelievable

[Reinhard]

Originally Posted by sagarpadaki

One needs to invest for a proper home office setup - an isolated environment, power backup,a good desk,a good Bluetooth speakerphone with mic ,comfortable chair and atleast 2 different high speed ISP.

Those who can get it done - should really do it! All of it is not too costly in the long run. Remember - most people will save 3 to 4 hours of travel every day. I'd spend some money today, to have a 27 hour day. Anyday!

Originally Posted by sagarpadaki

I know many of my colleagues who stay in a small apartment with husband and wife working from the same room. I hear a lot of disturbing cross talk during calls which is unavoidable when working from such close quarters. Not many can afford a decently spacious 2 BHK apartment with all amenities for both husband and wife to work independently.

Well as far as the noise on call goes - it doesn't need a 2BHK apartment. All it takes is a good quality passive noise canceling headset with 2 mics. Less than INR 1000 generally - the company itself can procure in large volume and hand it over along with the laptop as standard kit. Many companies already do this. As long as the couple doesn't mind each other being around - it will be manageable.

Originally Posted by sagarpadaki

Food is another problem. One has to spend an hour or so for preparing lunch.At work, we could go down to canteen and grab a small bite anytime or have proper breakfast/lunch/evening snack.

This we all are facing indeed. But remember - we are talking about a scenario of WFH after lockdown lifts. The house helps, maids / cooks - will be coming back then - whenever we feel comfortable i.e. If we are okay to go to office some day, we'll be okay to have our regular house help back too then. That will take care of a lot of errands to free up time for us to work & have family time with the kids!

[hondafanboy]

I do not like this work from home thing at all. Once in a while it ok but not like months or forever. We are not wired for this. Workplaces are for work and homes to live.

[am1m]

Wow, learning a lot from this thread. Must admit, this covid-19 pandemic and lock down has made me appreciate my job a lot more. Not just because I'm still lucky to have a job and am able to work during this, but in the context of this thread, because my company has always had a culture that trusted employees. This I realize when I see so many opinions on this thread about employees not being able to be trusted to work efficiently from home. I guess there are different companies and different cultures. I think none of those issues are insurmountable, but I now realize it will certainly not be easy and will take time.

Also, thinking about it a bit more, I think the basic premise could be modified a bit. Assuming you had an easy or stress-free commute, would you still want to work from home or the office? (Again, there is no correct, or single answer.) But personally, I realize that the awful Bangalore commute is the biggest reason I prefer working from home and am hoping it becomes a norm. If I had an easy 10 minute commute to work, or even a metro commute to work I would certainly prefer to go in to the office. There are many, many good things about going in to work physically, but for me, none of them justify that crazy commute (20 minutes just to get out of the campus on a good day, a total commute time of up to two hours when it rains, sometimes jams at 10pm(!), crazy thuggish cabbies all around you...things like that.)

[ashokrajagopal]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Still, I believe this will bring on a huge paradigm shift into IT work environment. Don't expect WFH to necessarily mean working from your bedroom. It could be working from your neighborhood (WFN). Certified plug-n-play or co-working buildings may appear in every neighborhood in very small towns. You may be a resident of Sringeri (KA), and your neighborhood co-working building is certified to be a secure cubicle provider that meets TCS standards. Then you could be working from Sringeri as a TCS employee. Just by inserting your TCS provided secure digital ID (USB), the secure cubicle will provision your personal work environment from the cloud in minutes.

This WFN concept is a unique perspective and may be much more reasonable than WFH that gets advocated here.

I am actually surprised not many people are going into the economic angle of this.

Quick analogy: To simplify and generalize, think its A2B restaurant that's doing the WFH. Yes, their cooks all cook at home and bring the food at the end of the day for the dinner round.
The cooks are cooking with the red, domestic cylinder, which costs a different rate than the blue commercial cylinders that A2B is supposed to use.
How is the gas supplier supposed to take care of the difference in revenue?

Many many things in usual work environments are charged/taxed/tariffed at different rates than outside. It may be more or less. Think about the case of electricity. In March and April, the distribution companies would have faced that scenario where the commercially rated consumers did not consume much, whereas the domestic consumers consumed much more almost in the same percentage. This is an actual problem.
Even if say TCS reimburses the electricity charges, it means they pay a domestic rate, whereas a neighborhood Mobile repair shop guy has to pay commercial rate.

Its one thing for the startups to run like a cottage industry -- totally different game for domestic giants to do that. Much more different for MNCs to do this.

If you are thinking all of this can be solved by quick decisions, I am not refuting that judging by recent history, but one should understand that this borders on revenues and expenditures vastly getting affected for states around the world and it needs lengthy policy discussions to be fair and legitimate.