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Hey fishes, please help me out on which company to join.
YOE - 2.5
Stack - Java, Springboot, API development
Offers - TCS (14 lpa), T-systems (14 lpa)
I’m looking for good wlb, good office culture but also steady growth and learning in terms of technical stack. Please provide suggestions.
T-Systems International Tata Consultancy
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I got H1B Visa and 83000 USD dollar petition amount as annual package.I am confused as this amount will be enough to survive there with wife and 7 year old daughter.My wife is working here and together we are earning 50LPA annual.We are settled here by owning house too.Confusion is my wife will not be able to work there on H4 Visa so the kind of life we are living here will not be possible there.Thoughts?Suggestions?Pros and Cons?
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Because junior staff is not getting the training and mentorship they need working from home so we need mid-level staff to come to the office and teach them how to do their work, how to use excel without a mouse, how to run a meeting, etc.
I think a big part of the push for RTO comes down to under‑utilised inner‑city infrastructure and business ecosystems. Before COVID, some people worked from home, but most were in the office and the system functioned as intended. When COVID forced widespread WFH, millions of employees discovered they could be just as effective from home — with major benefits:
less commuting = more time for work/life balance
lower daily expenses (transport, lunches, parking)
generally better wellbeing and flexibility
Meanwhile, the businesses that relied on commuter volume — cafés, transport, retail, commercial real estate — took a huge hit.
Hybrid work is absolutely viable and bridges the gap, but the genie is out of the bottle. Desk‑based workers now know what genuine work/life balance looks like, and many won’t willingly give that up.
Smart companies will recognise that as AI takes over more complex tasks, the number of traditional office workers will continue to shrink. Forcing RTO won’t reverse that trend. Instead, companies should invest in transparent, consent‑based systems that help track and support remote contribution, rather than dragging people back into offices for the sake of optics.
For people who genuinely learn best through face‑to‑face mentoring — where video calls aren’t enough — hybrid still works, but it needs to be intentional and well‑designed.
So while some executives talk about “culture” and “connection,” I think the real drivers are a mix of commercial real estate pressure and the shock to the pre‑COVID commuter‑based economy. RTO isn’t a conspiracy — it’s an attempt to restore a system that no longer fits how modern knowledge work actually functions.
I do it for employee development. Period. No other reason. I couldn’t give two hoots about real estate.
If anything, I would save a boatload of money in leasing office space if everyone could work remotely, but they can’t and still develop.
The economist did a breakdown of this in San Francisco. Basically companies promise to bring business to city centers and receive tax breaks and expeditious permitting. When covid happened and people realized we didn’t need offices cities were left with zombified buildings and dead centers. They pressured the companies to bring workers back. Since it’s easy to turn the proletariat on one another they just have to get people to say “you’re lazy” for not wanting to “office collaboration” and voila, their economy recovers and we’re stuck with commutes and the time and money waste is shifted to us.
This is what I was thinking too! I explained my reasoning in my comment to my post about small businesses losing a lot of revenue thus affect property values and local economy. I wonder if companies had taxes raise on them or so to force so many to make this shift.
Chief
Because companies don’t want to pay rent on empty spaces and can’t break their leases
Chief
All the credits that states provide (CA EZ Credit, IL EDGE Credit, etc.) are all based on having employees in the city or the state that is giving the credit, spending money on the local economy. If everyone works remotely from anywhere, how does that help downtown restaurants and shops and theaters? Credits are given for keeping people in the area and if we are 100% remote, no one is in the area
Many reasons, but the main one is money, either directly or indirectly.
But seriously, what difference does it make what the real reasons are. It’s their company, they have every right to make RTO a company policy. It’s not like if you call them out then they will be legally required to back down. The only thing you can legally control is resign.
Can you go into more detail? I also think it’s related to money.
It’s related to money.
In person staff, working together, are more productive.
If that wasn’t true then the remote companies would beat the others out, and there would be a huge increase of remote jobs
It’s funny to see people sitting next to each other in the office talking over teams. I’m really curious on the tax implications. Like are companies sending in badge reports to the city and the city decides on tax changes?
My reason is I think it’s related to commercial real estate prices is because around 2023-2024 I noticed a lot of restaurants I ate at were very slow or empty at times, a time before a lot of RTO policies were mandated or made headlines.
I later spoke to a restaurant owner and they told me their revenue for all of 2024 was the lowest year since 2017, maybe even more since that’s where they stopped looking. They said revenue usually goes up every year because of inflation, never has it dropped this much before.
This got me wondering if all the commercial real estate values were going down because many of the businesses in these plaza were reporting major declines. I bet many of these properties were on loans and investments by major corporations which don’t want to see their assets decline a lot in value. You can’t sell a portfolio of tenants at a profit when the portfolio’s revenue drops likes 20-50%. I don’t have the numbers to prove it, but I saw many restaurants being slow so it leads me to think this.
This is a major part of the drive for RTO. I wonder if we will start to see companies cutting back on the size of their office space leases, ending leases when they come up for renewal, etc. I haven’t seen stories about that yet. But it would still leave the real estate companies and banks with all the empty space. Major implications to the broader economy.
I don't know about the big firms (10,000+ employees) but for a mid-size technology consultancy, RTO is about low-barrier, organic connection between employees. That organic connection leads to senior/junior interaction in hallways and before/after meetings that does not happen on Teams/Zoom, peer/self comparison (I'm the greatest when I am remote and have no one to compare to vs I may need to up my game to stay even with/ahead of the peers I see every day), informal mentoring/learning, and arguably the most important in tech: no effort social interaction even for those who participate on the periphery. All of the above has been lost or become significantly more difficult with remote workers.
We are office optional in the US, meaning we maintain offices in areas with a nexus of employees, but these are lightly if at all used.
We are RTO in other countries, and have seen the benefits above.
All of this is hard to put quantifiable metrics around, so your company and individual experience may vary (retention and emp satisfaction are two that are often pointed to). But there is little shadow conspiracy around this at my company's size, just a leadership desire to re-connect people for the benefits to them and to the company.
My firm receives no tax benefits from maintaining offices. It would be great if we did.
Wow, thank you for your input!! This was insightful coming from a C-Suite response. Thanks for clarifying the situation about tax benefits for the company.
My follow up questions would be were there specific research that you guys looked at before making RTO mandates? What were the before and after effects of the mandate?
Commercial real estate has major investment from insurance and pension funds. If the value of CRO isn’t increasing, neither are the investments buoying it up as it’s traded from owner to owner with ever increasing prices.
If they are leasing space, absolutely they want to make use of it. Also, it is much harder to slack off if you are in the office for everyone to see. Also harder to work two jobs as some people have done while remote. Much like anything else in life, the crappy people ruin it for everyone else by doing their crappy things.
That’s crazy how people were able to do multiple jobs. I’m wondering how they complete the workload for each one.
It has nothing to do with real estate.
I need my juniors in the office because they know basically nothing about their job, and are never going to figure it out at home sitting at their kitchen table.
I need my seniors in the office to teach my juniors.
Occam’s Razor.
I used to care about the environment until I saw the massive amount of companies asking people to drive into the office every day.
they didn’t say drive, they only said you have to be in the office, I walk to work, many people take public transit, some bike — it’s a choice