In our day to day work life for software professional in the United States or India, off shore and on site are the most often heard words. This is a guest post written by Sreenivas Kumar Pandruvada, explaining the differences between work and lifestyle for off sore and on site workers.

 Off Shore:

1. One has to give importance or must follow company policies and process next.
2. Offshore is like home where you have freedom and flexibility of work hours, but long hours and tasks need be completed by EOD (end of the day).
3. 50% of the projects might be outsourced from Europe and other nations not just USA so you may be adjusted to work in different time zones.
4. Any guy working in offshore can work onsite easily without much difficulty (in terms of technical aspects but not travel or logistics).
5. We may use same email id(company email id) for multiple purposes (There is no exception to any one while working but we may focus much on company rules).
6. Travel may not be an issue as company vehicle may take care of it.
7. We may work Monday through Saturdays and even if needed on Sundays also.
8. Due to the nature of company business, Sometimes we may be expected to work minimum 14 hours a day
9. We may or may not know what is comp off or over time here.
10. You may have lots of leaves and can avail provided less or no work.
11. Sometimes your vacation may be interrupted with work, because of the deadlines.

On Site:

1. One has to give importance to client process but not company policies
2. If the Client Company is from offshore (India) and as an H1B consultant you may land up in conflict between offshore company policies and US client policies. Hence one must be well equipped to handle both (off shore company policies and US client policies).

Solution is: Try to have a conference call and bring all of them on to it and make sure both parties either agree to disagree or disagree to agree and follow up on     emails.

3. Thumb rule of WORK in USA is 8 hours a day and 40 hrs a week 160hrs a month
4. If supervisor ask you to stay late and work with out client permission or hours paid off, as per local labor laws you can immediately complain about it to respective authorities
5. At least once in a week, one can opt for work from home, but people call this as “work for home”  :). This is not a BOOK RULE but it depends upon nature of work.
6. If weather is bad and nature of job is not production or non critical then also can opt to work from home.
7. 100% of the projects to be at onsites, hence you can work only 8 hours and no one pressurize if work is not completed by COB(closing of business hours).
8. If you have already worked offshore, it should relatively be the same to work onsite. (in terms of technical aspects).
9. We may work Monday to Friday. Saturday and Sunday is a holiday and probably 11 unpaid holidays in every year US calendar.
10. Based upon nature of job and manager’s approval one can accumulate lots of comp offs and avail it.
11. Vacation means Vacation here at on sites and no one will disturb you.
12. Over Time: This is where many H1Bs have issues in USA and very few Indian consulting Incs release over time money to consultants and cannot help it.
    Over Time means: It need not be approved by end client and it must be paid by Prime vendor irrespective of Client paid to him or not.
13. Travel: As per business rules, Layer 1 to employer is a client. So apart from his office address, where ever you go, it must come under the travel expenses.

 The second part of the article details on how different the reality is and Mr. Sreenivas shared his own experiences. The second part will be posted later this week. I would sincerely thank Mr. Sreenivas Kumar Pandruvada for the efforts he put in to write this guest post. He is a also writing a book on H1B Journey to the USA.