Here's why India's IT industry is not ready to roll back from RTO/Hybrid:

• Managers want Command and Control ​that they can feel while being F2F
• Managers feel that being F2F facilitate brainstorming, whiteboarding and watercooler conversations. This argument is negated since most client stakeholders are sitting half-way around the globe​
• Managers are used to Managing by Wandering Around (MBWA)​
• Fewer distractions for younger, more junior team members. The fact is that some techies themselves wanted RTO since they felt lonely working remotely
• The unsaid reason and perhaps real reason- The Commercial Real Estate 'Mafia!' They have political clout since most politicians have a share in such ventures!

An IT veteran here shaking my head over the click-bait headlines making the rounds. Why?

• Most of the articles in the media quote "Unnamed sources."
  • This may not be true since most senior leaders at the company are probably s #itting in their seats worried about their own roles. They aren't going to be inclined to speak to the media
• "15,000 roles globally." Numbers from India are clear as mud. This is because companies have a workaround to report "layoffs" to government labour authorities
  • The HR generally calls employees asking them to voluntary "resign immediately" if they want severance. It is a simple corporate magic - resignations are not considered "layoffs" and hence don't need to be reported to statutory authorities.
• How do we get to know numbers?
  • A week or two after the forced layoffs/resignations some internal folks may be able to lookup slack and other lists to know the before-and-after

Note for those saying "we need unions" or "lawmakers should help," back to point #2 - company will claim no-layoffs. Just large scale resignation... and everyone winks 😉

Regardless of fuzziness around numbers, a service company laying off 15+ employees, especially in LOW-COST countries like India spells trouble!

In my previous job, I spent over 5 years as an EA at a multinational. I joined just about the time a new CIO had taken over and the EA organization was centralizing.

The next CIO came a couple of years after that and decided on 'federated' structure and many of the 'old time' EAs were shown the door.

The 3rd CIO came 2.5 years later and decided to disband the EA organization in favour of "tower led Architects"... and I had to move on.

If you have been an EA in an enterprise long enough, how many CIO-change-transformations have you survived?