Arti and Harshal

Arti and Harshal are a ThoughtCouple. They’ve worked with Thoughtworks for the last five and three years respectively - Arti as a lead consultant, and Harshal as a lead computer scientist. 

The couple hails from Nanded - a small town in Maharashtra. As you may imagine, that’s where the extended family stays. They started working remotely two weeks before it became mandatory. A young kid to take care of and no house help or day care, the pandemic made an otherwise familiar situation challenging. To deal with this, they decided to attend to their child and work in alternating shifts. So Harshal would work in the first half while Arti looked after their six-year-old; and roles reversed in the next half of the day. Sometimes attending the child’s curiosities and excitement was challenging,  but eventually they worked things out.

Apart from sharing their home office, Arti and Harshal also share their learning. Being technologists, they share similar interests and a lot of conversations on new technology, and its implication at work.

Now that they are settled at their end, Arti makes it a point to check on her fellow ThoughtWorkers how they are coping up with the lockdown. As someone who values the flexibility Thoughtworks offers, she shares a special bond with the collective. To ensure work-life balance, Harshal advises his colleagues to pick up hobbies that provide a foil to the intensity of remote work. He suggests to go for a good broadband connection as working remotely with a flaky one can be very stressful.

While Arti and Harshal are happy to see traffic-free roads and wish this eco-friendly way of working continues even when the pandemic ends, they want to find means of staying connected to the mothership that’s Thoughtworks. For example, how can teams access the office space on an alternating basis? How do we reduce urban pollution as a consequence? More importantly, how do we stay inclusive of various personal situations and workstyles? That, to the ThoughtCouple and us, is amongst the keys to unlocking the future of work.