How do you feel about the TCS's WFO call and asking people to show medical reports if they cant come to office (As per the news, I dont know anyone working in TCS) How do you feel in general about going back to office full time? I also feel this moonlighting news has been highlighted more to bring people back to work. Otherwise, WFH was a miracle and a beautiful transition and by bringing people back, we are just losing out the innovations and a great trend
Fully agree with your comment. WFH is a blessing and what TCS is doing is going to spoil the culture to be honest. I know a few people who work for TCS and they were not very happy with this news.
Yup not many people are happy with this. I still cant figure out how mandating coming to office helps the company if they are getting the exact same results with WFH and practically them not spending on real estate? The only argument all companies have is about "bulding culture" which is a very old timer debate. Maybe they can do monthly few times or atleast 5 times in a span of 50 working days , or team working together should happen atleast once a month or something like that considering how creative and innovate , resilient the IT industry has proven itself to be. !
We have the option to telework for maximum 3 months at a stretch, and flexibility otherwise. Work from home/tele work is a revolution, especially for those who have hard time in managing work and family responsibilities. However, it is appreciated by the women in Indian sub continent as much as it is appreciated by others. Last year, I have done a research on teleworking and female workforce in subcontinent and interviewed many women from diverse sectors. Majority of them felt overwhelmed, and complained of overworking both at home and office front, resulting in lesser time for self. They missed grooming for work, and having the co-working culture where they were able to interact with others, and share. Some noted the covid madness, and how that has affected getting domestic helps. This has forced many women to work full time at home, as well as professionally. A woman complained of starting her day at 6am with the laptop in bed, and continue working till 11pm. She cooked, cleaned and took care of her child in between, but always worried about mails, and pending tasks while doing chores at home. She had the same concern while attending Teams/Zoom meeting, which caused her concentration. Eg: Counting the whistles of the pressure cooker while someone is doing a PowerPoint presentation. Regardless of the location of your work, the tasks and responsibilities remain unchanged. But families in the subcontinent take things for granted, and expect women in WFH contract to work at home as well. This will be double the pressure. Besides, women complained of several health issues such as anxiety, posture pain (as they often work from bed) and poor life style. Eating while working, or munching snacks all the time or lack of exercise etc... Tele working is good for a shorter period. If it goes for a longer time, it will kill the essence of working in an office. The team work, friendship with co-workers, those chit-chats, and off time parties/events will all be missing. Work is not just task and salary. It is beyond that.
Its ironical that in the pre-covid era, we, especially women, were "bestowed" WFH/flexible/remote working opportunity. The idea was to encourage more talent into workforce, that is targetted for women who stay home and take more household responsibilities. We complained that we couldnt work out or have time for hobbies because we are tired after we get back home. And we are at a complete opposite spectrum of the issue now. There is a good chance that these two are a different set of people altogether but we are at an impasse here. In my office, the attendance for the online trainings increased drastically while keeping the productivity high!. I see people bringing in their kids on the video calls. Earlier, we couldnt attend the trainings just because we had to either travel to a different location and that eats up atleast half a day. All said and done, for a professional, remote working is a revolution. It is a great innovation in technology, work culture. I just dont want the opportunitity to go waste by "forcing " people into work. That is exactly what asking for a medical certificate is that TCS is doing as per the news. There are always flexibilities allowed for chais and chit chats. Or let people go to office, but lets not force them. Or let people who live close by collect at a "workspace". But not going to office is saving 3-4 hours a day for us, for our interests. Let it not go to waste. Work is precisely work and salary. The rest of them are embellishments which we can arrange for ourselves.
I mentioned moonlighting to my friend recently. she was telling, big companies directors work as board for multiple companies. Employees spend hours trading stocks while working, how is that different from a person taking another work to help his family and also productive for current work. also this team work, network is all just stupid hype. Only friends that call me are the one i made in college , changed many companies in last years. max 1 or 2 are still in touch. Rest no one will call the next day i am out.
yea both your points are true. But I think when we join full time, we do sign some NDA or something like that which says we will have only one full time job. Board of directors come into picture only for major decision making and is not a full time job. CEO/CIO/COO etc , on the other hand is a full time job. My guess is that during moonlighting, somehow the background verification might have slacked. Specially if it is the Infy, TCS guys , they spend a lot of time and effort in background verifications. They come home, talk to neighbors, check our last few addresses, resignation letters etc. Thats totally a flaw in their system and should focus on fixing that instead of making rules for the 99% of people who are sincere. Again, all such flaws are opportunities in the industry to make innovations. Same with me about no one calling once we are out. Infact, even if we call, they dont pick up. If they call also, I dont pick up because Im afraid they are calling me about some bug in my work while I was there. ha ha. But there needs to be something else to build up work culture. They can put up the meetup kind of things in office intranet so people can register to those events - for eg.
