Do you think asking you to work 8 hours remotly is fair?

Depends on the business, for example in consulting, billable hours rule. The mention of "calls" would be consistent with this.

And in a lot of workplaces, desk time well exceeds 40 hours a week.

In addition, it could be a way of encouraging employees to return to the office.

What is fair depends on what a person is paid the kind; of work they are doing; local custom; industry standards; etc.

Finally, it might be a bullshit requirement based on a bullshit directive from above and responding with a bullshit time sheet is reasonable.

Or in the case of billable hours, assigning your time to billable hours is what matters to the bottom line and your productivity is somewhat incidental and only loosely correlated to the value of your time to your employer. Indeed in billable hour situations, management reworking timesheets is not particularly rare.

Good luck.

I think that the proper equivalent would be 35h/week for full time remote position. Like you said you can't possibly expect an employee in an office to do actual, raw 8h of work between 9 to 5. And when you do your remote work schedule, you can't expect yourself to work 8h without a break and be productive so requiring 40h is like 45h when translated to an on site job. I know there's no transit cost but it should not be an excuse to require more hours from remote workers.

I would say it's not realistic for the majority of people, unless they happen to be robots.

"The eight-hour workday is not based on the optimal number of hours a human can concentrate. In fact, it has almost nothing to do with the kind of work most people do now: Its origins lie in the Industrial Revolution, not the Information Age." [0]

"Would you like to have 4 hours workdays? That's the question really. We know that we're spending less than 40% of our workday actually working, but would you be willing to sacrifice what you do on that extra 60% just to end your day sooner? [1]"

"The 8-hour workday has been the norm for more than a century, but employee surveys suggest that most people are truly productive only for about three hours every day. This has led to calls for the workday to be reduced to five or six hours, with proponents saying it would increase employee wellbeing, and ultimately productivity." [2]

"Mexico—the least productive of the 38 countries listed in 2015 data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)—has the world’s longest average work week at 41.2 hours (including full-time and part-time workers). At the other end of the spectrum, Luxembourg, the most productive country, has an average workweek of just 29 hours." [3]

[0] https://www.inc.com/melanie-curtin/in-an-8-hour-day-the-aver...

[1] https://freedium.cfd/https://medium.com/varietate/the-9-to-5...

[2] https://www.seattletimes.com/explore/careers/clinging-to-an-...

[3] https://time.com/4621185/worker-productivity-countries/

If you have to fill out a timesheet while working at home as a programmer, you should improve your skills as fast as you can and find a better job. Only the worst managers measure programmer contribution in hours spent at a keyboard.

If your employer can spy on you and knows how much time you spend in front of a keyboard and screen, sorry. If not then what's the question?

It should be equivalent expectations as in-office. Base performance on outcomes not hours. The problem is old school management that believe they need to see you to measure your performance, so they will push you to prove you’re working when at home.

I’m sure not all managers or companies are like this but it sounds like you’re experiencing it.

I love how a salaried job requires at least N hours a week by the company, yet if a problem comes up, salaried employees are expected to work extra hours without pay.