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PG culture in IT hubs is the biggest fraud and a systematic loot of IT employees (especially gullible freshers who join the industry at a starting salary that has been stagnant since a decade).PG means “Paying Guest” i.e. a stranger living in my house like a guest member except paying me monthly rent for remaining as a guest in my house.Now coming to PG culture in these IT hubs, the treatment is far from it. Having experienced it first hand, some of my observations are:One room is shared by 3 other people. That makes 4 people in one 10 by 12 room (4 beds and 4 small cupboards in parallel).You are entitled to a single bed and a small cupboard, nothing more nothing less.If room is not sufficient, your bed and cupboard can be adjusted in an enclosed dry balcony as well.Privacy - WTF is that !! Some of my pen drives were stolen, and lucky me that my personal laptop was saved from theft as I vacated it within 1 month.If the house is a 4 storey building of 3BHK flats in each floor, the total number of people accomodated = 4 per bedroom * 3 bedrooms * 4 floors = 48 people !!Rent in 2013 in Pune IT park area (Hinjewadi) was Rs 5000/- per cot per month. This means, total annual rent from all the paying guests is Rs 5000 * 48 * 12 = Rs 28.8 lpa (probably more than the annual salary of a Senior Project Manager in Infosys at that time).Income Tax paid on the rented PG - Cannot be determined, as rent was collected in cash only and a typical local grocery store type receipt was given (which would raise more scrutiny as valid HRA proof while filing IT returns)While vacating the premises, the landlord or PG owner or whatever nomenclature is deemed fit, haggles for an entire year rent claiming to be part of the agreement when you enter the PG. The strange thing is that, no such legal agreement is signed and such a touted agreement is a word of mouth convention with zero legal validity. But, a naive fresh IT recruit has much to fear of the reputation stigma of getting into a legal mess, despite being on the right side of the law. Hence, the loot. Many forfeit their hard earned legitimate money into these Black Holes while leaving the so-called PG.Food is provided at stipulated time slots only.Now my questions, based on the definition of Paying Guest (highlighting the word Guest):How many of you would provide your Guest with a cot and a small cupboard and nothing else ??Are guests not entitled to some privacy or the feeling of being a guest in somebody's house, especially when they are paying ??How many people are ready to accommodate 48 guests in a family of two or three ?? (Why call this PG after all !! Why not tag it as Melbourne Cricket Ground !!)Relationship between a host and a guest is based on mutual trust. If that relationship is a commercial one, then trust is build on foundations of legality (i.e. proper legal agreement). But, this word of mouth convention as trust and then fleecing a gullible guest while leaving is daylight loot.For years together, these so-called PG owners have abused the system, looted IT juntaa in broad daylight, made a bloody cartel owing to the monopoly of demand supply mechanics and were getting away from the law of the land.Being a one time victim of these scamsters, I would be more than happy to see them and their nefarious cartel decimated to dust if WFH becomes the default norm. It's good that whatever the system was unable to do in years, a genetically modified virus did that in a matter of months. Enough of looting and cheating by a monopoly built around an outdated cost arbitrage business model of the current IT industry in India.PG doesn't mean only timely food and a roof overhead to stay safe. It is much more than that. When these thugs repeatedly abused the essence of the word “Guest”, they deserve this economic aftermath of this pandemic.As such it is consistent with the teachings of Bhagavad Gita 4.7 - Whenever immorality, unethical practice, exploitation rises, God manifests himself on the earth to preserve the good and destroy the evil. This has happened before and this will continue to happen everytime whenever nefarious designs exceed the threshold of civilized society.Perhaps, this pandemic and WFH culture is one of the ways in which God is decimating unscrupulous practices and the people who have made fortunes around this loot.Edit: My response to some cliche arguments like:“PG owners are there to make profit not charity” - Exactly. Neither are IT employees supposed to make charity by overcrowding in and around one SEZ area, and overpaying just because a handful of ignorant folks perceive that we earn in Dollars and spend in Euros. In a democracy, everybody is free to think about their own profit, and you cannot expect one section of society like the IT employees to bear the burden of the entire SEZ economy i.e. do justice to the employer, pay income tax on salary and keep on getting overcharged for almost everything. In the past decade or so, the real estate folks thought only about their own profit with total disregard to their end customers (mostly IT employees) and justified this exploitation under demand vs supply economic theory. Now the situation has changed, and, companies along with many of the IT employees are finding it personally profitable to remotely work from their hometowns. By virtue of the same “Free Market Economy” theory, it is as justified as the overcharging by real estate folks. Moreover nobody has got any moral authority to talk about how the real estate economy in IT hubs will collapse if WFH becomes permanent and people reverse migrate to their hometowns while creating opportunities there.“Nobody forced you to live in a PG” - I have lived both in sharing accommodation with flatmates as well as PG as well as independent accommodation in 1 BHK (office + cooking + household chores all by myself). So, in my personal capacity, I have every right to criticize and expose the greedy lot among PG owners and landlords, especially when other cheaper options exist and they fleece gullible lot of IT juntaa by over-inflating the rents & commissions.“Pay more to get decent services. PG owners are there to do business” - This argument holds in a truly free market economy where there is no cartel/nexus/mafia. Such an argument has got zero realistic value when the underlying business has degraded to a cartel. The people who are saying this, are the same ones who have got selective amnesia about the pre-Jio era telecom market. Even though, a customer was capable of paying more for better internet service, still then cellular companies were operating like a cartel and were fleecing the end customers with high priced 3G data packs at 2G speeds. Jio entered the market like a disruption, provided faster internet, and the same cartel are now crying out about the monopoly of Jio. Drawing parallel with the above analogy, COVID-19 pandemic was a much needed disruption to demolish the unhealthy nexus of real estate developers, brokers, landlords and PG owners who were fleecing the public by creating their monopoly around IT hubs, and were rather offering sub-standard service of early 2000’s while charging inflation corrected prices of 2020.“PG owners have their own cost liabilities to pay for” - As if IT employees have the “Potato-to-Gold” machine !! Everyone who earns his/her living has his/her own assets & liabilities. PG owners and real estate folks are not some special creatures from Mars or Venus who should be treated special.PG owners and landlords have invested heavily initially — That is the most absurd, illogical and perhaps the most disgusting argument in the entire conversation. Heavy initial investment is not a licence to brazenly flout the laws. Following the law of the land is not a matter of choice or someone's personal convenience. It is a damned compulsion. Deal with it. You cannot evade taxes just because you don't like it or have made heavy investments. Other people cheating and evading taxes doesn't make an existing tax evading landlord a saint. It simply makes him a tax offender and perhaps a criminal relying on whataboutery to justify his criminality. The point is, if you don't like the taxation laws, either change the laws via appropriate democratic processes, or simply go to another country that has existing laws to entertain your whims and fancies. Please don't shamelessly justify the brazen illegality and thuggery just because it suits your personal agenda.Presence of some sound economic theories that say WFH is not a sustainable solution - All economic theories exist as long as the society exist and not the other way round. In a society that is suffering with overcrowding, overpopulation, over-exploitation of natural resources, crimes arising due to excessive dependency on a particular area’s resources, exploitative mindset and anti-migrant sentiments, any economic theory, however sound it might look on paper will go down the toilet. Those economic theories which gave solid backing to creation of SEZ’s and selective economic growth of a particular area, were done and dusted during the worst migrant crisis of India during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is as useless as putting all eggs in one basket. All it took to demolish such uneven economic model was a virus.N.B.: Some blessed souls have pointed out that this answer reeks of jealousy towards PG owners and landlords. The fact is, nobody is jealous of a landlord or PG owner making money. By God’s grace, many of us are self sufficient to get two decent square meals a day and spend good time amidst our family and friends. So, there is no point in being jealous towards a handful of folks who made business by forming cartels and fleecing people, and, are now are facing losses due to pandemic. From an IT professional’s perspective, who rakes his/her brain for more than 9 hours in front of a laptop screen, we folks have got better things to do, rather than to get jealous of someone who believes business means an unlimited license to loot people in broad daylight. Like every normal person, we also don’t like to get financially exploited and still behave like a saint, just because some crackpot armchair economists are here to justify all of it under terms like “Free Market Economy” , “Demand vs Supply” etc. Peace.Update: The real estate lobby in IT hubs needs to accept legalized win-win solutions like this — UP Govt Planning to Introduce New Tenancy Law to Reduce Disputes Between Tenants, Landlords to gain confidence of people, rather than crying over their justified losses, because of their current inability to loot people owing to the pandemic and WFH culture. Until and unless the real estate lobby doesn't vouch for such legalized solutions, which protects the interests of the tenant and landlord, nobody will ever have an iota of empathy for such crooks who are justifying this organized loot on crackpot economic theories of demand vs supply. Such arguments are really laughable as it is like a scamster Harshad Mehta giving theories on economics and market.Edit: Today after 1.6k+ upvotes, 16 re-shares and 189.2k+ views, the answer was collapsed by Quora Moderation. It took 189.2k+ views to ascertain and fraudulently report this answer that it should be in English. (I never realised that Quora supports AI based translation such that some people read this entire answer as Chinese !!) This proves that the ones who have fraudulently reported the answer are not only unscrupulous, but also illiterate enough not to understand English. Hence, the abuse of Quora policies. Anyways, before Burnol (to bear the burnt of uncomfortable truth), these illiterate folks need the nursery school ABCD book first to understand English. Disabling comments because I don't want such fraudulent people to pollute the comments section in Hebrew (as allegedly the Answer Needs to Be In English as per the abuse of Quora policies).

Dr. Raja RamannaRaja Ramanna was an Indian physicist who is best known for his role in India's nuclear program in its early stages. Raja Ramanna was born in beginning of 1925 to Rukmini and Ramanna in Tumkur, in the princely State of Mysore. The parents having recognized his talent for music early in in life were instrumental in introducing him to classical Western music. Beginning his studies at Bishop Cotton Boys' School, Bangalore, he later attended Madras Christian College and resided at St.Thomas's Hall where he continued his interests in arts and literature but soon shifted back to physics. At Madras Christian College, Ramanna obtained B.Sc. in Physics and gained B.A. degree in Classical music in 1947.He obtained his M.Sc. degree from Bombay University, where he also completed M.Mus. in Music theory.Ramanna was awarded and received the Commonwealth Scholarship, and traveled to Great Britain in 1952 to complete his doctorate. Ramanna attended King's College, a constitute college of London University, and enrolled in doctoral programme there. In 1954, Raja Ramanna obtained Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics and also did a L.R.S.M. from King's College London. In United Kingdom, Ramanna was offered to do his research at Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) where he gained expertise in nuclear fuel cycle and reactor designing.Ramanna was one of the secretive personalities surrounding the Indian nuclear programme, a programme started and envisioned by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1947, and being directed by Homi J. Bhabha. After gaining his doctorate in physics, Ramanna returned in 1954 to India, where he joined the senior technical staff of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), where he worked under Homi J. Bhabha in classified nuclear weapons projects. In 1958, Ramanna was made its Chief Directing Officer (CDO), where he was tasked to develop the ingenious nuclear fuel cycle critical for the development of the nuclear device.While Bhabha dedicated to develop this programme, Ramanna was inducted to choose the preferable nuclear test site to carry out the weapon-testing experiments. The exact dates are unknown, but Ramanna chose and began the underground construction of nuclear test site at an Indian Army base, the Pokhran Test Range (PTR). After the disastrous death of Homi Bhaba, Ramanna was immediately elevated to be the directing officer of this programme. Ramanna, serving as the CDO of BARC, began to take initiate to develop the first nuclear weapon. At BARC, the initial designing of nuclear weapon was completed under his guidance and the necessary nuclear weapons' explosive material for this weapon was completed under Ramanna by 1970. As the first nuclear device was completed and developed under his guidance, Ramanna went to Indian Prime Minister's Office, where he had notified Indian premier Indira Gandhi about the successful development of the nuclear device.In 1974, Ramanna and other officials of the BARC verbally notified Indira Gandhi that India was ready to conduct the test of its small miniature nuclear device. Indira Gandhi verbally gave permission to Ramanna to carry out the test, and preparation was taken under Ramanna. Ramanna immediately traveled to Pokhran to pay a visit to the nuclear site that was constructed under his guidance. Preparations were completed under extreme secrecy and the first nuclear device was flown from Trombay to Pokhran Test Range with Ramanna. Ramanna and his team installed the nuclear device in the nuclear test site and necessary preparations were done before Indira Gandhi's visit to his site. In the morning in May 1974, Ramanna conducted the first test of a small nuclear device under the codename Smiling Buddha.In 1978, Saddam Hussein approached Ramanna for help to build an Iraqi nuclear bomb. The offer came while Ramanna was in Baghdad for a week as Saddam's personal guest. He was given a tour of the capital and Iraq's main nuclear facility at Tuwaitha. At the end of the trip, Saddam invited the scientist to his office and told him: "You have done enough for your country; don't go back. Stay here and take over our nuclear programme. I will pay you whatever you want." Ramanna was shocked and scared by the Iraqi proposal. He reportedly could not sleep that night, worried that he might never see his homeland again. He took the next flight out. See the difference between Ramanna and the disgraced Pakistani scientist AQ Khan, who sold his nation's nuclear secrets to North Korea and Iran!Later in his career, Ramanna advocated for the strict policies to prevent nuclear proliferation. Ramanna also travelled to Pakistan, where he attended the annual International Physics Conference to deliver a lecture on nuclear physics, notably lectures on nuclear force. Ramanna began lobbying for peace process between India and Pakistan, and was a leading force to prevent nuclear escalation in the region. Later in the 1980s and 1990s, Ramanna served as Director of the Defence Research and Development Organisation(DRDO) and as scientific adviser to the Defence Minister of India in 2000. Ramanna also joined the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1984 where he served as the President of the 30th General Conference of the IAEA.In 1990, Ramanna was made Union minister of State for defence in 1990 by V.P. Singh administration. He was a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha from 1997 to 2003. Dr. Ramanna was closely associated with the I.I.T. Bombay, having been Chairman of the Board of Governors for three consecutive terms from 1975 to 1984. In 2000, Ramanna was also the first director of National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore.On 24 September 2004, this great man passed away at the age of 79. Our beloved President at that time, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam paid glowing tributes to this gem of a person. Even in his autobiography, "Wings of Fire", Dr Kalam has spoken about Dr Ramanna with great respect. It is most unfortunate that since he never received the Bharat Ratna. Most Indians regard Dr Homi Jahangir Bhabha to be the Father of Indian Nuclear Programme but it was actually Dr Ramanna who was the Father of Indian Nuclear Programme because he succeeded Dr Bhabha, was responsible for our first nuclear test in 1974 when the Buddha smiled upon India, and lead the nuclear programme for more than 4 decades. Dr Homi Bhabha, Dr Kalam, and Dr Ramanna are the three most important persons associated with the Indian nuclear programme. It is unfortunate that many people in our country don't remember Dr Ramanna as they do the other two. That's why I feel that he is very much underrated.

The IT Manager for our business unit dropped into my office and looked nervous.“Hey Ian, just wanted you to know that we are aware of the issues with reporting and we’re working on it.”I had no idea what he was talking about.“Reporting issues?”“Yeah, our data warehouse is having issues, so your standard reports haven’t been going out for the past three weeks.”“Which reports?”He showed me a long list of nearly 50 reports. Some were measuring things we hadn’t paid attention to in years.“Who typically receives these reports and how often?”He showed me an even longer list of managers, assistants, and front line staff.“Some reports go out daily and others weekly.”“OK, thanks for the heads up.”After he left my office, I made a few phone calls. Starting with my direct reports, I asked if it was creating problems that our standard reports weren’t arriving on time.To a person, they had no idea what I was talking about.I assumed that I was starting too high in the organization and next called folks who reported to these executives.Only a few people noticed that the reports weren’t coming. I pressed them on how vital the reports were.“Not much but I check them just to make sure. A few reports require an update from me, so I have to fill out fields in the system.”“How does it help you to complete those fields?”“Not sure. I assume someone is doing something with the information.”It’s Just The Way We’ve Always Done ItI call this phenomenon “task creep,” which is prevalent in large companies and your personal life alike.A problem arises in business, and a process is put in place. That process is useful for a short time.The problem slowly goes away, but the tasks added to fix the initial problem remain in place.It could be something as simple as opening, reviewing and commenting on a simple report. This task might take someone 30 seconds and in itself, is not a big deal.Leverage that task by 200 people doing the same thing every week and you start to have a bigger problem. Multiply that task by 100 other mundane tasks, and you’re wasting 1–2 hours a week on items that drive no productivity benefits.I wasn’t shocked that so many reports were going out regularly. I was surprised that three weeks went by and no one seemed to notice.Create A “Stop Doing List”I walked down to our IT Manager and told him to quit working on the problem. We would stop sending those reports until someone screamed to me that we needed to reinstate them.I asked him to make a list of any other reporting or automated interruptions that our systems were sending out.Our CRM software was notification-crazy. Everything seemed to be an emergency, so all of our front line employees had hundreds of notifications all the time.They just got used to ignoring these notifications.If everything is an emergency, nothing is an emergency. Why were people being notified about everything?The software was set up like that from the beginning. Like most software rollouts, we created a small user group that helped test the software and design an implementation process.They enthusiastically overdesigned the system to use every new “bell and whistle.” If one person in a group of 10 users felt like a notification would be helpful, it was approved.It cost nothing to the business to initially turn on an alert. Then hundreds started getting that alert who didn’t need it.We started killing alerts and notifications left and right. My only rule was that to reinstate a report or alert; we needed a large group of users to complain. If not, it went away for good.Companies don’t do this type of thing often enough and it starts with owners and executives. Unless senior leaders create a safe zone where employees can suggest killing off sacred cows, people will continue doing what they’re told and collecting a paycheck.23 Minutes and 15 SecondsGloria Mark is a professor at the University of California, Irvine. Her team experimented to learn the real cost of an interruption by studying knowledge workers at IT and finance companies over a week.They found that people switch activities every three minutes and five seconds and roughly half of the distractions are self-inflicted.Additionally, they found that it took an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to return to the original task each time they were distracted. Very few people hit a period of flow work during a typical working day.You are working on a project, and a Facebook alert diverts your attention. You cruise around your feed and while your phone is unlocked, jump into Instagram and then LinkedIn.While you’re in the social media neighborhood, you read a Quora article from Ian Mathews, another colossal waste of time.You put your phone down and look back at your computer to see that you have seven unread emails in Outlook. You reply, forward, delete and move those messages.Twenty-three minutes and 15 seconds later, you dive back into your project for another three minutes and five seconds of uninterrupted work.Don’t Trust Your WillpowerIf I want to stop eating peanut butter, I don’t trust my ability to pass on the jar of Jif. I like peanut butter too much.I quit buying it and putting it in my house. Out of sight, out of mind.If I need to get into a flow state for anything, I do the same with potential distractions.Switch to “Work Offline” in Microsoft Outlook, or whatever email software you use. I get distracted as quickly as anyone by a new email, so I typically open emails in batches, on my time and when I decide they are important.Delete social media off of your phone during working hours, or forever. 90% of my interaction with social media is on a web browser. I don’t need a LinkedIn update every time someone posts or likes an article. Once you get into your smartphone, you might as well write off 30–45 minutes if you have Instagram, Facebook, Quora, Medium, Twitter and LinkedIn waiting for you with red numbered notifications.Turn off Notifications on every app. There is just nothing important enough on social media that you need to know right away. The same goes for email, text, and Whatsapp.Make a Stop Doing list. Take a hard look at your time and figure out what is stopping you from completing an assignment every 3 minutes and 5 seconds. If it is a regular interruption, find a way to eliminate it. If it is a task at work that feels redundant, talk to your boss about it. You will be surprised by how much crap people waste time on, assuming their boss wants it. Managers are often happy to eliminate redundant work that is keeping you from being productive.I started writing this article while I was in the middle of reviewing graphic design candidates, which is painstakingly boring work. While doing some research on Gloria Mark for this article, I fell into a wormhole on NFL free agency, wasting more time.Two hours later, I am about to submit this article and get back to reviewing candidates, unless I can figure out another creative way of procrastinating . . . hey, is that peanut butter?Mmmh, peanut butter.