High time we redefine the way we work in IT sector in Bengaluru

Its been 2 years since I traveled (within the City) to any office for performing my duties. I have been working from home all the while except on few (less than 10) occasions where a physical presence was required (at the office). Nowadays when I go out to some near by place for personal or professional work, I am surprised to see by how many times the traffic has increased in the last 2 years and started worrying what will be the situation in the coming years. Will we really be able to survive in Bengaluru given that the government is not taking any measures to contain the traffic (through better public transportation etc.) and not really serious about not just traffic but basic infrastructure like good roads, their cleanliness and upkeep of the roads. I really feel very sorry and at times depressed when I see the amount of traffic on the roads and the challenges faced by the police personnel to control the traffic and steer it to avoid traffic jams for longer duration's. It's not just about the police personnel (to me they are the hardest hit as no one listens to them and they stand in the sun bearing all the heat and the pollution emitted by the vehicles) but also the commuters (office goers, school children etc) who need to wait for long hours to reach office and back home. Added to that the dusty roads make life hell for 2 wheelers.

Everyday traffic creates problems personally and environment wise - physical and mental stress, decrease in work performance, health related, personal life, pollution and so on. Is there a solution to this ? 

Is moving out of the city the solution as some IT big wigs have threatened the government in recent times ? Is there no other solution than this? What is the guarantee that the other city will not become another Bengaluru after a few years ?
Certain initiatives have been tried to reduce traffic and pollution - car pooling, using public transportation, cycling to office where possible etc. But these are not successful as the numbers are very small and I don't think the numbers will increase in the future. Creating better infrastructure - flyovers, wide roads - is also not the only option as this can only bring in minor improvement but not a drastic change (I am not saying that we should not better the infrastructure but that alone is not going to solve the traffic problem)

What if we reduce the number of employees coming to office and let them work from home ? What if the companies provide them with unified communication (UC) tools to interact with other employees via audio, video, virtual white boards etc. The majority of the office goers in Bengaluru are from the IT sector. Unlike in any other sector, say mechanical, civil etc where you need to be physically present as you need to work on machines to perform your duties, IT sector does not need physical presence always as long as you have a laptop or desktop at home and a good broadband connection. You don't need big servers with lots of computing and storage as you never work on them directly (even in office) but connect to them through some dumb terminal over a LAN or WAN link.

Let's see if this can really be a solution. For that, let's see the typical duties performed by an IT Engineer (be it an entry level Engineer, mid-level or senior level). Based on my experience in the industry or at least based on some of the activities that I did when I worked for companies like Wipro, Sasken, Syndesis, Subex & NetCracker - 
1. Resolving tickets (Bug fixing)

2. Change Requests - Adding new features to an existing product

3. Write Analysis & Design documents and review them with peers

4. Conceptualize new products/features

5. Support team members 

6. Project Planning

7. Customer Interaction

8. Pre-sales (respond to RFP's, give demos etc)
There are probably more tasks (and I have done a lot more :) ) but on a high level the above would be what a majority of the Engineers would be performing, unless the company you work for is a startup that requires frequent team gatherings for brainstorming on product ideas, market strategy or the like.
Of all the above, how many activities require a physical presence @ office ? How many of us access documents and code that is stored in our desktops or laptops located in our cubicle? How many of us spend majority of the time in meeting rooms brainstorming issues and new ideas? To me, its either NONE or very few.

Most of the companies that I worked for did not have data centers locally. For one of the recent companies that I worked for, all the data centers are in Europe and the decision makers (be it from IT, Project Management, Sales, etc) are in Europe. There are Business Analysts, Programmers, Validation Engineers locally and all the clients are outside of India. Employees interact with other employees and customers across the globe and deliver their duties. It's a true virtual work place - virtual in terms of teams working for a customer or project or product (as no single team is completely in a single physical location). Resource pools from across the globe were identified and formed a team to work on a project, customer account or product. The only reason to go to office is to see friends :).

This is not unique to that organization. When I worked in Wipro, I was working for a client in Petaluma U.S.A. Part of the team which works on a Change request is onsite and the rest in Bengaluru. The software repository is in US. I used to have a dumb terminal connected to the LAN and it turn connected to the repository over a high speed WAN link. All the work done is remote. I can list many more examples based on my personal experience and discussion with friends. 
Most of the data centers are located remotely and in today's world they are mostly in the cloud. This essentially means that all the work (documents, code, project plans etc) is accessed remotely through some kind of VPN connection at the office. Why can't the same be done from home?
We have a lot of UC tools, the one I known practically is Lync which has tools like Video, Audio, white board etc that enables employees to see each other, talk to each other and discuss using white board, all with a single click. (Please note that I am not selling Lync here, I know only about this tool as one of my customer heavily uses it, probably there are lot more with similar or more advanced features which make work easier). May be there is an opportunity for inventing new kind of UC tools in order to make this happen, say a touch pad with a pen and when someone is explaining the same is visible to the remote party and the remote party can make changes to the same diagram and is reflected at the source. Employers can provide such tools for employees to use @ home.
The advantages of working from home - 

a. Increase in productivity

b. Have a better work life balance by spending time with family and children

c. Decrease pollution

d. Decrease in stress levels and hence leading to better health

e. Drastic reduction in real estate costs as we need less cubicles
and probably many more

I am sure there will be a lot of apprehensions in the minds of people managers like - 

1. Is the employee really productive at home?

2. Is he doing the right job?

3. Does he need any support and he is not able to express that ?

4. Connectivity issues resulting in low productivity - Connectivity issues can be real or unreal
But I don't think these (apprehensions) are for real. If an employee is not responsible and cannot take care of himself/herself and cannot express when in need then we probably don't need them any longer. And if the job of the people manager is to be someone who is monitoring people to check if they are working or not, if their excuses are real or not, how much time he/she is spending on coffee and chatting then I don't think the job is worth it.

I think every one (managers, Engineers, company heads) should seriously think about this solution. I am sure it is doable. Even if we reduce the number of people going to office by 20%, I think that is a big achievement. We should not wait for such a model to come from the west or should be proven somewhere before we adopt it. We should find solutions for problems that are specific to us.

Our's is not like China where the govt. understands the problems of traffic & pollution and takes very stringent steps to contain it (by restricting movement of vehicles, by installing pollution monitoring devices and inform public when is the right time to come out of home, etc). Our governments can't take any such stringent initiatives because we are a democracy and we don't like change nor allow change. For an example, the Delhi govt's Odd Even initiative is something that should have been tried heartfully by the people of Delhi to see if it creates a positive impact to their lives, instead there have been massive debates in new channels about its success, timing, what if I go on an even day and return back on an odd day etc etc. I think instead of trying to find a perfect solution on day 1, why can't we try to experiment and see what can be bettered over time. What we really need to be thinking is about the future of our children - do we want to give them a city that is polluted, a city where they can't go out and enjoy the nature, respiratory problems because of polluted air etc etc.

If we want to come up with excuses like - I don't find the right environment @ home because of children, I am a bachelor and there is someone or the other in my room and hence I can't concentrate on work etc etc, then its our choice. We need to be aware of the consequences, we need to be aware of our future and the future of our children, we need to be aware of what the governments can do (to me they can't do anything), we need to be responsible for our society and our environment. No one is going to do all this for us, for sure not the government. Just because we are paying taxes we can't expect (and wait for ever) for the govt. to do something that makes us feel good. Most of the earnings of the govt. will go for the salaries and the corruption of our officials and we will always be the scapegoats by paying taxes and expecting that something will happen in return. The media will not focus on the real issues and always debate about things like JNU, HCU, Intolerance etc. 

Last but not the least, the only reason why we need to go to office is to socialize with colleagues, chat about politics over coffee and lunch and to see some new and fresh faces instead of seeing the same boring faces at home :).