Andhra techie says power cuts cost him WFH job; Social media debates remote work
A software professional’s story about losing his remote job following days of relentless power cuts has taken social media by storm, reigniting a familiar conversation: just how fair is it to expect employees to keep working when the basic infrastructure around them keeps failing?
The post, shared on X by a user going by Akhil, laid out a situation many remote workers in smaller Indian cities and towns would probably recognise all too well. He explained that he’d spent two years working from home for the same company, building what he described as a spotless track record without any real performance issues along the way.
That changed, he said, during a particularly rough stretch when his area was hit by repeated, prolonged electricity outages. The timing couldn’t have been worse — the outages struck right when a crucial production release was due, and with mobile network coverage too patchy to fall back on a phone hotspot, he found himself with no real way to stay connected or get his work done.
Things reportedly went downhill from there. The client flagged the missed release, and not long after, Akhil says his employer decided to let him go. For someone who felt he’d done everything right, the abruptness of it all left him struggling to process what had happened.
Once the post went public, reactions poured in fast. Plenty of users sided with Akhil, arguing that companies need to be more understanding when employees run into infrastructure problems that are genuinely out of their hands. Others weren’t so sure, suggesting that once power issues start dragging on and affecting deliverables, employees probably need to think about heading to a co-working space or office instead of just waiting it out at home.
The thread also pulled in similar stories from other users, including one from someone who’d joined a training programme at Wipro. That person said their repeated complaints about power cuts were brushed off as excuses, with a trainer eventually warning that it would show up in their performance report.
