[EV NXT]

One of the few times that the all knowing Kevin Leary has graciously accepted his mistake.

The only things that some of the staff miss seem to be the free food. In some companies it wasn’t “food” but exquisite buffets, choice of cuisines, a la Carte and most of it available almost around the clock.

Quite a change when one has to decide what to cook, get out and buy the veggies and stuff, put in time and effort and eventually land up with something that may not be the best in taste.

Win some, lose some. So while exquisite cuisines have gone, there is more time to spend at home and the resultant “inertia” has set in - the need to be de rigeur in the mornings, leave at a set time, face traffic snarls and the stress of driving through that.

Bangalore’s move to get companies to restrict WFH and get employees to come back to the office. has certain other drivers at play as empty IT offices aren’t healthy for the real estate business.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by poloman

In the back ground, every company in Bangalore I know of has asked employees to mandatorily move back to their home city where offer was given. Even for short term exception they have to take manager permission. Staff meetings are conducted at offices. This is a concerted move with most companies secretly signing up.

That basically points to the incompetency of managers to adapt to the new paradigm.

Let me point to something I wrote last year:

Originally Posted by Samurai

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.

Unfortunately, most employees in the WFH bubble have not understood this. As an employer, I don't see much of a choice here. Covid-19 has decimated demand in almost every sector, and now we compete for business from a much smaller pie. We cannot lose customers due to inefficiency forced by WFH. Employers need employees who can work effectively from home. Those who blame WFH for their lack of productivity have limited careers. Covid-19 is here to stay for next couple years (or more) until an effective vaccine is found and majority of the world is vaccinated.

Plenty of workers and managers learned to get better efficiency working from home and therefore want to continue WFH.

However, the managers who could not adopt, who had no success in measuring the results, who could not inspire their team to work effectively from home, are now forcing the HR to get people into the office.

Those who made WFH successful are being asked to come back to office, because of those who couldn't make it work. Success is being punished and incompetency is being rewarded.

[EV NXT]

Originally Posted by Samurai

However, the managers who could not adopt, who had no success in measuring the results, who could not inspire their team to work effectively from home, are now forcing the HR to get people into the office.

The insecurity of incompetent managers is on the one side.

On the other, the real estate lobby is also at play here with the government asking companies to resume work from office. The lobby stand to lose substantially if the WFH becomes permanent. They would be left with dead investments in the form of empty buildings.

Ecoworld, once notorious for traffic jams - there’s a thread about the traffic jams in Ecoworld - https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/stree...rld-great.html (11 Reasons why RMZ Ecoworld is great) is now a dream to drive through - you might pass only one or two cars on the way in!

[whitewing]

Originally Posted by poloman

... every company in Bangalore I know of has asked employees to mandatorily move back to their home city where offer was given...

Originally Posted by Samurai

That basically points to the incompetency of managers to adapt to the new paradigm.

Having the employee in the home city is, AFIK, driven by some regulations/Govt push. What I heard is that the concessions that the firms get from the Govt. were based on the assumption that the economic benefits due to the economic activity of the employees would offset the benefits (i.e. School fees, shopping, real estate transactions etc.).
So, I assume that firms that get some form of benefit/tax breaks, even if they do not stop WFH, they most likely will insist on the employee having a local address to meet the Govt expectations.

IT shops stopping WHF entirely is another story. If there are some that try to enforce it, for sure they will lose out on talent big time.

[am1m]

Seeing a lot of companies going back on their word to adopt more WFH-oriented models. What seems to be happening is, or rather the buzzword now is 'hybrid', which I'm sure will eventually boil-down back to 'at manager's discretion' - which was the case before Covid anyway!

Anyway, for those who are still inclined to make the shift for a better quality of life, I'm also seeing several smaller companies that have genuinely adopted remote work and are using that as a way to attract talent. So look for smaller organizations that aren't based in a SEZ, so have no tax-breaks and (ahem!) real-estate lobby 'influenced benefits' to forcing their employees back to glass cages and 2-hour traffic jams. One large company I know has shut their large office permanently and are maintaining a much smaller one for those employees that want to return to work in the office. Another company I'm familiar with continued hiring right through the pandemic and now don't have enough seats to accommodate their present headcount. So they are just choosing to not expand their physical presence but offering remote work to those who are opting for it.

[ashokrajagopal]

I have been parroting this in many threads thru last year, Covid is actually a question on the basic business model and viability of Indian IT sector.

It is not the politicians, its not the real estate lobby (they are involved, as a second order effect), but the root of the issue is the tax breaks. The 3 youngest big cities in India, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Noida are all built around this.

The principles etc about WFH/physical presence etc are all okay in their own right, but when the basic business model is threatened, there is no other way for the companies but to get back to the older model.

Regarding the smaller/niche players who do not have a stake in tax-SEZ-MNC angle --- they also survive on the ecosystem of engineers created by the large players. So down the line everybody is going to be impacted.

This is nothing particular to India even. Ireland has a lot of S/W and Pharma IP and we know the tax rate is the reason.

[DigitalOne]

"Software/IT industry" is not a monolith with the same business model for all companies. In the end, I think we will see below pattern emerge:

Startups with a real need for physical collaboration at least few days a week, and so employees will be asked to stay at their base location and come to office along with their smallish teams.

Mature MNC Product companies (Microsoft, SAP, Oracle et al) - Hybrid with emphasis on WFH; Effort will be on reducing WFO, as much as possible.

IT Service cos (TCS, Infosys et al) - Hybrid with emphasis on WFO; Full WFH will be exceptions. Teams in these cos are much more fluid (bulk recruitment and high attrition), and managing fully WFH teams is genuinely difficult. In the early days of the pandemic companies were struggling to give the IT support also to their employees. Not sure of the situation now.

[m8002?]

Totally agree with Ashok above.

Bangalore ( or for that matter Silicon Valley ) will not be what is is if people had not come together from across the country (or the world ) at these cities in the last 2-3 decades. The entire economy and the ecosystem is built around that.

[poloman]

Originally Posted by Samurai

That basically points to the incompetency of managers to adapt to the new paradigm.

I am writing this from my office. To be clear I am 44 and mostly an introvert person who does not enjoy social interactions. So naturally people like me should be happy with WFH. Let me state some facts from my own team.

I work for a semi conductor major and the issues with WFH are many fold. Many young people have gone out of town.
All I can see in office is people above 40 and contract staff. We have lab heavy work, despite this these young guys are working through contract staff in lab. They still have poor broadband and connect through mobile hotspot even after 1.5 years of WFH. Is there any parity in this whole arrangement?

Again in domains like innovation and customer support, it is very difficult to define output and matrices. For example review of a design document, one can contribute 100 points or nil. There is no obligation or matrix. I have seen many are detached and simply switching off with no tangible contributions.
Many simply vanish from meetings saying odd things. You can again put the blame on managers for this. But in a cross functional arrangement, working across multiple geographies managers will be hard pressed to keep a tab on the activities of each and every employee.

So all these talks of increase in productivity with WFH, one should take with a bag of salt.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by poloman

All I can see in office is people above 40 and contract staff. We have lab heavy work, despite this these young guys are working through contract staff in lab. They still have poor broadband and connect through mobile hotspot even after 1.5 years of WFH. Is there any parity in this whole arrangement?

If someone wants to WFH, they must stay in a place with at least 99% uptime Internet. That should be non-negotiable. If they cite connectivity as a problem, then they should work from office.

Originally Posted by poloman

Again in domains like innovation and customer support, it is very difficult to define output and matrices.

I am not familiar with semiconductor space at all, so I can't comment. But it is never a problem in most software domains.

Originally Posted by poloman

For example review of a design document, one can contribute 100 points or nil. There is no obligation or matrix. I have seen many are detached and simply switching off with no tangible contributions.

I have seen this happen at office too. Not sure how WFH contributes to this.

[ninjatalli]

Originally Posted by Samurai

If someone wants to WFH, they must stay in a place with at least 99% uptime Internet. That should be non-negotiable. If they cite connectivity as a problem, then they should work from office.

Originally Posted by poloman

They still have poor broadband and connect through mobile hotspot even after 1.5 years of WFH. Is there any parity in this whole arrangement?

Unfortunately, this is a problem that becomes one of the organization to solve (to be completely honest to the employees). Atleast my firm took it upon them during the first wave. The biggest issue was this only - connectivity. Multiple options were offered

- a monthly reimbursement for internet charges offered (on bills as proof)
- additional mobile connections offered if broadband services by default were not good in the employee's areas
- additional portable broadband devices (same reason as above)

The problem was resolved for a majority of employees, especially for the younger/lower level staff. Of course, one couldn't ensure resolution for all. For example one of my team-mate misses a lot of meetings (or is consistently late) and commitments citing 'connectivity' issues, even though he's changed his place of work (and city) twice during the pandemic but still the 'issues' persist.

Originally Posted by poloman

I have seen many are detached and simply switching off with no tangible contributions.
Many simply vanish from meetings saying odd things. You can again put the blame on managers for this. But in a cross functional arrangement, working across multiple geographies managers will be hard pressed to keep a tab on the activities of each and every employee.

Very true. Don't think there's a clear solution to it. One one hand you can blame the employees but on the other hand there are more distractions at home that don't really occur in an office setup so it's a grey area.

[aargee]

Originally Posted by poloman

So all these talks of increase in productivity with WFH, one should take with a bag of salt.

We're in software development & service; AFAIK, our team in PH is more than super overloaded (read 16 hours every working day) for over 3-4 months & we're now trying to offload them by increasing our work load from 10-12 hours everyday

If there's a go-live, assured 24+ hours; worst case being not able to move out of home waiting for that distress call, which may not even happen. One of our colleague from US works one weekend every month; Weekdays? Yes; comp off? What does that mean?. I'm very positive most folks in our company are working 12+ hours everyday.

Ever seen people from US working in night shifts? One of our customer is doing it!! No they're not in medical or in essential services.

I think it all comes from how the top management how they drive the show. Point is, not everyone is Working FOR Home & neither is everyone Working From Home

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by poloman

I am writing this from my office. To be clear I am 44 and mostly an introvert person who does not enjoy social interactions. So naturally people like me should be happy with WFH. Let me state some facts from my own team....
So all these talks of increase in productivity with WFH, one should take with a bag of salt.

Thank you @poloman for saying it like it is. In this debate I represent the hated employer, the entrepreneur and that most evil of all the opaque senior management. WFH to some extent has come to stay at least in the IT industry and to a limited extent the service consultancy industry. From the employers side we realize that a hybrid model would work for both sides given the employee inclinations & savings on commute time & energy. WFH was creeping in very slowly and the pandemic accelerated a trend already happening.

In our surveys across 20,000 employees we found WFH does not work for all - young employees staying 3 to a room, women employees dealing with multiple responsibilities & troublesome in-laws, band width issues, security issues, employees working for two employers simultaneously, employees spending most of their time surfing for jobs while pretending to work, indiscipline on calls etc. I could go on and on. While employers in the IT industry have done more than their share to be unfair to employees, the employees, more than just some of them, are not paragons of virtue either.

Several posts on this thread indicate that those employers who do not fall in line with a full or almost full WFH configuration will rue the day they decided on a hybrid or full WFO model. I don't see that happening. The final arbiter of all this is the man who pays the bills i.e. the customer. His needs and priorities especially on data security etc will decide how much of WFH vs WFO finally happens in any team or company big or small.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by ninjatalli

Don't think there's a clear solution to it. One one hand you can blame the employees but on the other hand there are more distractions at home that don't really occur in an office setup so it's a grey area.

Actually, it is not a grey area. If an employee is not able to work effectively from home, then he/her doesn't get to work from home. There will be plenty of reasons for that, connectivity, interference from family, no working space, etc. It doesn't matter why, if the employee is less effective working from home, then WFH is not for him/her.

My problem is with managers who want employees back at work because they don't know how to manage WFH employees who are capable of working from home. If a manager has 10 team members, and if some of them want to work from home and are capable for doing it well, shouldn't the choice be given to them? For IT folks, customers are mostly remote. The SEZ tax break thing is different. I am talking about companies that don't have that situation.

My team is 100% WFH and they are spread all over the state, getting them all into one single building has never happened. Each one picks their working hours (some early, some late) and even holidays. As a result I am able get excellent coverage for supporting customers, even with a small number of staff. When you give employees lots of flexibility, they are able to return the favour. Fortunately, all of my team are very effective working from home. If they weren't, I couldn't make it happen.

[EV NXT]

Originally Posted by ashokrajagopal

the root of the issue is the tax breaks.

There are no tax breaks for setting up or working out of IT parks (notified SEZ areas) as of now. The tax holiday that was available to IT companies situated in notified SEZ’s has seen its sunset years over.

The only concession available now is in the refund of customs duty on import of equipment available as a drawback scheme from Customs provided one is located in a notified SEZ. The only precondition placed by the customs is that the equipment imported on reduced duty cannot be sold without prior permission of the customs and if sold, the duty concession availed has to be remitted back.

Additionally, prior permission has to be taken from the SEZ authorities / Customs to take out assets on which duty concession has been availed out of the IT park. This would be needed for laptops and is usually given.

Both these preconditions (sale / taking out of the park) will not interfere with a WFH scenario. So I do not think tax breaks would be a reason to discontinue WFH. It would be, as indicated above, management / political pressure as of now.