[govigov]

Most tech companies that innovate will be off the WFH wagon earlier than expected. It is reported that the innovation that inperson gathering brings has a bigger advantage than WFH.

https://www.cfodive.com/news/google-...remote/585522/

[14000rpm]

I am in IT sales. although I'm based in Finland, I barely have any Finnish customers to work with and I used to travel all over Europe for 3-4 days every week for the last 10 yrs.
I returned home from one such business trip on 25th March 2020 and I've not set out thereafter. I started questioning if I will ever be successful in meeting my target's since, In sales, customer face-time is one of the most important aspects to close opportunities. Also, I was of the belief that customer's would pause on any purchases due to the uncertainty.

Here I am 1 year later more busy than before. granted there are more unnecessary Teams meetings but then, I have been receiving RFP's regularly. In fact I've addressed more RFP's in this period of time and won a few too. Heck I even ended up meeting my target too.

Will I travel again? Absolutely. The anxiety element is higher when I deal with customers and opportunities remotely and I'm more than happy to be out there. It may not be in the quantum as before though. Approvals for travel will become harder too going forward since the IT companies are now used to the increased bottom line due to lack of travel and therefore sales cost.

When can it start? My Boss had a good answer and I agree with him - the day sales folk start to lose deals and the company acknowledges that the loss is due to not being in front of customer, Sales folk will get back to living out of suitcases.

When will I start? Travel within Nordics and most part of Europe is open. However, I expect my vaccination to happen only in June-ish hence my travel could only be post Aug.

in Summary - WFH is not a permanent solution for me.

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by poloman

If you are a decision maker, request not to jump the gun and make WFH permanent. For every job like in the IT sector, 4-5 people are employed indirectly, be the drivers, canteen staff, house keeping staff and so on. All these people will be driven to penury. This will affect the GDP growth and come back to bite you in multiple ways.

Thankyou @poloman for bringing this point up. The whole Work-From-Home movement has focused on middle and upper classes and those in the service industry and has overlooked the others. And this loss of lower end jobs for those who need it most is a stark & sad reality that needs attention.

Originally Posted by ike

Isn't this more about the culture in an organization rather than the supervisor or his/her nationality?

Thank you @Ike. Yes it is partly a function of the organization's culture, partly a function of national culture and partly a function of the individuals involved. I will not pretend to be 'woke' and hesitate from stating that in general we Indians need improvement in respecting the other person's boundaries. We see it in queues, on the road while driving, men urinating in public, behaviour amongst neighbours etc.

Originally Posted by vikram_d

Where's the NOTA option? I run a manufacturing industry, so none of these are even options for someone like me.
Or at least include an option called "Don't have choice but to work from office" :-)

Agree the choices are too few and a reflection that most members on our forum are from the IT or service industries and tend to forget the other half - manufacturing, mining, power generation, municipal services, healthcare, engineering services, transportation, construction, media, agriculture, fisheries, tourism, etc.

[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

...IT or service industries and tend to forget the other half - manufacturing, mining, power generation, municipal services, healthcare, engineering services, transportation, construction, media, agriculture, fisheries, tourism, etc.

IT isn't a standalone industry, it's everywhere, in every facet of our lives now, all the industries you named in your post.

What you see in the swanky structures lining large metros' IT corridors are a significant chunk, but not all of a technology company's staff. There are several (and often critical) IT roles that cannot yet be done without physical on-site presence. I say yet because who knows what advances robotics and automation will make in the next years and decades.

Remote/telesurgery was once a pipedream too, it's now reality and getting more complex with each advance in associated technologies.

This is larger than individual industries, the core idea of how work is done is evolving rapidly. It will, as you (and I elsewhere) have pointed out, bring challenges about productively engaging a large population sustained by manual labor, but that's a separate broader discussion.

[adi.mariner]

My profession is such that I cannot work from home. And I have to stay at my work place for extended periods of time with the current travel restrictions. Only way to compensate that is by taking a longer leave. There is really no option for me and so didn't vote. Requesting the Mods to add another option in the Poll - unable to work from home due to nature of job or thereabouts.

[AZT]

JP Morgan CEO recently said he expects US employees to return to their offices by July, I expect a similar trend across many other companies too. For professional services firms, a hybrid model is expected. As much as I'd like to work out of some picturesque town in the north, I'll probably have to head to office at least 2 days a week.

Also for client side consulting I expect normal weekly travel to resume eventually. A lot of it will depend on what's adopted in the HQ country and that will trickle down to subsidiaries in India.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkel...h=1c6b65e24cdc

[Jeroen]

Whenever I am not travelling I usually work from home. So no change for me as such. As a company we are adjusting worldwide and we are in the process of updating our policies. It will allow more WFH for more people. But it will depend on job and location. We have a number of roles for which it is very difficult to WFH.

And many of our local companies around the world used to have some form WFH already. So we are expanding on it and undoubtedly, more people will be working from home. But few permanently.

For most jobs it is likely to be a combination of some days in the office and some days at home. Ratio to be determined by job/location

Jeroen

[R2_d2]

I work in a technical center (oil and gas), our company is of the firm belief that working from office enhances collaboration and productivity. So will be going back to working from office if and when things get back to low risk

[blackwasp]

Ideally, those who can work from home, should.

That will make life much better for those of us who can't work from home all the time. My dad has been WFH since a long time now, but still goes out to his office once in a while or to their offices in different cities. I think that is the balanced approach.

That said, a lot my friends (in IT especially), complain of longer working hours and those in support are the most affected. There is no time limit for for work. In an office, you can work 9-6 pm and then go home. But when you work from home, there are chances of work continuing past 6 pm.

Further, not all homes are conducive for working. At the bare minimum, one needs to be free from distractions to get work done. Furthermore, those with kids at home will have it even more difficult.

[sunilch]

Basic Assumption here:

1) We are referring to us as employees who will have an option to WFH. For those who won't have such an option either because of their employers' decision or due to the nature of their work, this is a no brainer.

I would like to be back at office 100% of the Work time. Mainly because

1) My field (classified under a very very broad term IT) is actually dependent on collaboration. Face-to-face human interaction is a must to bring out the best out of the team. Software Engineering is a team effort. One single person cannot build something like FaceBook or Stock Exchange or any large mission critical system.

2) This Covid19 induced WFH is actually a Honeymoon period where-in a lot of business activity and expectations are different and employers have lesser demands/expectations and are very accommodative currently.

3) I personally would want to meet people and work in a professional set-up from 9-6 and also working from home is not ideal for me as a person due to too many distractions and other factors which are not present in an office.

4) Personally I have experienced spending more time in tracking and communicating with people as everyone is working remotely in his/her comfort zone. At times it took me 4 weeks to chase down a task which typically would get done in 1 week with everyone in office. Of-course, this was a non critical function (Errors by Payroll and HR teams) and hence everyone responds as per their comfort.

5) When I am working from office, a lot of responsibility and tasks get delegated to the employer. Take connectivity and power connection for example. I have to get a back-up internet connection and manage my own power back-up too. All these may sound trivial but a lot of trivial factors are managed by the employer and hence we can focus of our core work in an office. Everyone doing these trivial task on their own is actually a waste of time and money. Take a printer for example. In last 15+ years of my work, I have never purchased a printer because I always had access to it at my office. And I take prints for my work regularly. Not imagine 10% people like me. Out of 5000 workforce that my company has, 500 may end up buying their own printer in this case? Or having to visit a Cyber cafe when the need a print? Not to mention that sometimes you can't print some important documents on a personal network. Total waste of time and effort.

You can say that non-productive people will eventually improve or get left behind, and so on. But in reality the reason we have offices is so that we can work together and accountability is easier to measure/track.

Take USA, HK or Japan for example. They have had superb connectivity and infrastructure for over a decade now. Why did they never switch to a full WFH mode given that they could have saved multiple Billion $$ on account of lesser Real Estate and other Infra cost for offices in NYC, Bay Area, Tokyo, HK etc? Having people in office has benefits and at time is part of the requirement (Compliance, Risk, etc).

I as a lead/manager will not force everyone to come to office everyday and will rather give everyone a (limited) choice but personally I want to go back to office ASAP. Even with the current travel time of 4 hours a day, I want to sit at my desk and work from there with other team members.

[Dry Ice]

Originally Posted by poloman

If you are a decision maker, request not to jump the gun and make WFH permanent. For every job like in the IT sector, 4-5 people are employed indirectly, be the drivers, canteen staff, house keeping staff and so on. All these people will be driven to penury. This will affect the GDP growth and come back to bite you in multiple ways.

I feel it's not such a simple good vs bad choice. There is more to it. If we are taking of consequences, the pandemic has made it very clear that sustained WFH can help nature recover. If we don't change our ways, thats also gonna come back to bite everyone.

- Tons of CO2 that is dumped into our atmosphere because everyone is spending at least 2 hours in traffic. Multiply this by the round trips cabs make ferrying staff across the city.

- Power consumption. It would be interesting to see the power consumption in office and residential districts for the past year or so. Overall consumption should get distributed more evenly as people move out to their natives, and possibly even reduce. Somebody sitting in the northeast would probably not need an AC 8 months a year.

- Diesel gensets which provide backup power. These often run a few hours everyday.

- Garbage and plastic wastage. The amount of trash our offices generate is mind boggling. Majority of it is plastic waste/disposable cups/cutlery/tissues etc.

- Overstretched sanitation and garbage collection/treatment facilities due to concentrated population in small pockets around the country.

Why should the govt not impose a tax for doing commercial work at home for cheaper power and infra rates? So are you willing to pay a WFH tax?

I wouldn't be surprised if they do. Common man is already paying through his nose. Maybe some more.

All this productivity increase and all applicable only to select jobs. I am working in semiconductor industry and we have lost atleast 50% productivity and learning opportunities in labs due to lockdown.

True, WFH isn't for every industry, so probably the supporting jobs will start gravitating more towards such industries than be focussed on IT.

[SoumenD]

Personally would prefer permanent WFH but depends solely on employer. My previous and current employer always had hybrid working model so that’s what I have to follow. Currently it’s been permanent wfh since March 2020 but once things get back to normal it will be hybrid for me.

Originally Posted by hondafanboy

A lot of new real estate development now adding a dedicate workspace like 2.5 or 3.5 bhk etc. which will be useful in the future. If anyone is considering buying RE, do not go for 2bhk. Wait if you have to , but go for 3 bhk.

+1 to this. Infact unless you intend to stay bachelor all your life, 3bhk should be the default choice(delay the purchase if needed but go for 3bhk) if you intend to buy only 1 home for life. I did the mistake of buying a 2bhk flat way too early in mid 20s when I had zero understanding of how life turns out when you grow(had spent life in quarters and hostels till then). 10 years down the line now I realise how important is that extra room be it for guests/parents/WFH setup.

[bblost]

I have voted for work from office because I like my cubicle and my feeling of being away from family.

Work from home is not that bad after I made some changes.

1. I work 7 days a week instead of 5. The number of hours in total over the week remains the same.

2. I am a coder. So most of the time I spend thinking of the solutions rather than actually typing them in. So I use all the time while washing dishes and cooking to "think".

3. If I am with my kids, I try and take them out cycling so all of us can get some fresh air and sunlight.

4. Divided my work hours into work periods. An hour after waking up, 2-3 hours after lunch and some 3-4 hours after 9 PM.

[BoneCollector]

With my job profile, I can't always work from home. Infact in many cases, I can deal with my patients via a video call. But when it comes to trauma or in some general cases, it is not possible without seeing and managing the patient. My second shot was over on 5th March and had been attending clinic since last May. But one of the clinics has been shut down due to lockdown. Another one is still functional but there are no patients. As far as commute is concerned, I drive myself. I'm exposed to atleast 10 new people on a daily basis plus so many people jostling on the road ( I have to walk about half a kilometer after parking my car), spitting everywhere. Just keeping my fingers crossed.

[ObsessedByFIAT]

For me, the work that I am accomplish in a day sitting at my cubicle does not compare with what I am able to deliver from home. I feel my productivity is down by atleast 50%. Needless to say, I am not liking it.

Being at home at times is good and has its share of advantages, however I like to keep my personal and professional lives separate.

Additional, there are just too many distractions at home, plus the love for driving (even if it means getting stuck in traffic jams on every other junction) together are compelling me to get back to office post this entire fiasco.

Meeting friends, colleagues,having a lighter moment, a little time off from the family is also what I need to keep myself sane.