After the government advised all the IT companies in the city to allow their employees to work from home (WFH), various techies and employees are facing unusual problems at their homes such as no power and poor or no internet connectivity. The WFH has certainly turned into WTF.
Power outages
Bengaluru was quick enough to act and ask all its IT companies to allow their employees to Work From Home. The decision was made because most who have tested positive for COVID-19 in Bengaluru were techies. However, a report on Bangalore Mirror showed how the idea of WFH has been disrupted by common problems such as power outages and slow internet. Many have complained that they are facing problems reaching their deadlines.
“There’s no power in my area from 1 pm. My power back up won’t last through the day. My boss is asking for reports and I’m unable to meet deadlines due to power interruptions. We don’t have to deal with such problems at work. But this is an unusual situation and WFH is proving to be a challenge.”
“It’s not enough if the government wants us to work from home, they should also provide us with the infrastructure for a WFH situation,” said a techie.
According to the sources, BESCOM received between 6,000 to 10,000 complaints about power disruptions. A senior BESCOM official said they were forced to program power cuts for one hour a day due to the increase in power consumption in summer.
“Fans and air-conditioners run throughout the day and night. Power cuts can be due to different factors. Load factor, sudden and unexpected interruption in the transmission or distribution line, scheduled maintenance, etc. We regularly take up repair works. There is a separate service station to immediately attend to people’s complaints,” said an official.
Slow Internet or no network coverage
The Internet also plays a huge part in the WFH idea, the disruption of the network or decreases in speed causes a nightmare to many.
“Since morning, we have had meetings to moderate WFH problems. On day one, we faced several challenges. Firstly, people complained about power outages. The other issue was about unreliable internet connectivity at home. The speeds for home internet are slow due to the load on Virtual Private Network (VPN) gateways.”
“As techies are shifting en masse to WFH, the system has never been tested for this kind of a load. Then there are other issues like communication as it is hard to find team members who are online all the time. Today, engineers have been informed about the usage/availability issues against networks. The VPN capacity issue in Bengaluru and Singapore is due to overloading,” said another techie.
Employees also allege that most home internet connections just can’t bear the load of heavy lifting that is required for some professions.
“In our offices, we have 5 GBPS internet and hence, uploads are faster. But this is not the case with the home internet. Today, some of our colleagues were very clear that they didn’t want to WFH but the coronavirus scare is forcing us to grit our teeth and do our best,” said another techie from a global company.
“I came to my home town, Shivamogga, to work from home. However, the internet speed is very bad. Power outages are long and annoying. I have no other option but to return to Bengaluru.” This problem is compounded because many homes don’t have a power backup.
Family problems
Some techies complain over the working environment as they feel that the home is not a perfect place to work having a family.
“If you have children at home, it’s very difficult for WFH. Moreover, the doorbell rings constantly, the neighbors children come by, food has to be provided at regular intervals, when your manager is on the phone you child decides to have a screaming fit and the pet decides he needs to be taken for a walk… Give me an office any day,” says Archana S, a senior management executive at an international company.
