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Coronavirus Forces World’s Largest Work-from-Home Experiment

621 points by adventured 7y ago

goda90 7y ago
My employer, after some bad winter weather the last couple of years, has been hemming and hawing about a work from home policy. There's definitely a pervasive mindset that people are less productive at home which might have some truth for some roles at our company. At first it was a "use your judgement and talk to your team leader, but if your kids have off school, just take a sick day", then they started being more explicit about acceptable reasons. Then a few months ago they added a three day limit per year. But last month they removed the limit again and on our local social media there has been speculating/joking that it's prep for coronavirus.
- hkai 7y ago
  Same here, we tried allowing work from home once a week but people just treated it as a free day off. We also had to enforce starting hours, otherwise some developers would show up by 11:30 yet they will still leave work sharp on time.
  - echelon 7y ago
    Maybe a four day work week would be healthy and make for more productive workers.
    - hkai 7y ago
      I am familiar with the argument you are making, but I haven't seen that in practice. I noticed that if you give someone an extra day off or extra 3 days off, less work gets done rather than more. Here in Hong Kong we have quite a few 3-day or 4-day working weeks (due to public holidays) and I have never once seen more work being done on those weeks.
      - kqr 7y ago
        I don't think doing it as a one-off counts. I think the argument is that an extended time on 4-day weeks would in the long term allow people to settle into a more well-rested rhythm.
      - piva00 7y ago
        I work sometimes a 4-day week because of Sweden's regulations after I have an on-call week. It happens quite often, every 3-4 weeks depending on our rotation and I can say that having a steady 4-day week makes me and most of my colleagues more productive. So I have seen it in practice, as a counterpoint to your anecdote with another anecdote.
      - celticninja 7y ago
        That's different. When you do a four day week it should be same hours, eg 40 hour week is 5 X 8 hour days or 4 X 10 hour days. Giving people a holiday and then expecting them to make that time up during the rest of the week is ridiculous.
        e12e 7y ago
        No, that's not normally what a four day week means. It generally means less hours, but you also wouldn't normally expect moretotal stuff to get done, but you might expect a similar amount to get done (5 days worth in 4 days, not 6 days worth in 4 days!). Now,if that's generally achievable is up for debate. I think most would agree 8 hours a day, 5 days a week is likely better than 10 hours a say, 7 days a week. But it's not obvious if a 30 hour week is better or worse than a 40 hour week.
      - papito 7y ago
        Microsoft tried it and productivity shot up 40%. Yes, in Japan, but still. After I took a solid break from work for 3 months, doing a full 5-day work week was torture. I am still not used to it, and I don't think I ever will be agin. It all comes down to scarcity. Scarcity of time. Give me five 10-hour days and I will stretch them out by hanging out on Hacker News. Give me less time to accomplish my tasks, and I will be much better at managing a scarce resource. AND I will have a 3-day weekend to check out from work completely. In the past it sounded very "socialist" and lazy to me, but I have come around to believe that, in the language of Mandalorians, THIS IS THE WAY.
  - newswasboring 7y ago
    What about amount of work though? Did the velocity or quality drop?
    - SkyPuncher 7y ago
      This is key. I worked a 32 hour week for some time and was nearly as productive (if not more) than working fulltime. The reality is after about 4 hours of flow, I'm pretty worn out. After 6 hours, I'm pretty much ineffective. A full 8+ hour day is really only useful if I need to spend time in lots of meetings.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - guidance 7y ago
      I wanted to reply to a comment you made on another post, a couple weeks back. Sorry for the thread hijack, but I think you need some advice, and this topic is much more worth commenting on that this latest fake virus scare: > It's not just about traveling. It's just one of the components. This guy was a teacher, musician, maker and now DL expert. And it doesn't seem like he is settled on that yet. He is still exploring what he wants to do. Changes his life to match his interests. I lived some of my life like that. Took some non standard paths. But it is getting increasingly hard for me to do this. Not because there aren't opportunities for me, but because it's getting unjustifiable to "society". > And I know the usual line about "who cares what others think" in the west. Although it's logical in the west its not so in South Asia. Even if you don't care, your parents will and you will care for your parents. So it's inescapable. By Western standards I should be a totally free person, I am not married, don't have any debt, a high earning job which I'm bored by only 50% of the time. But these same things trap me. Single status leads to public derision in social gatherings (also friends get married and it becomes increasingly hard to be the only single guy in the group), my insistence on not taking on any debt means I live in a small rented apartment which it hard to be accepted in the society around me, a high earning job means I can never just quit because then I will have no social support due to it being a bad decision. > As I write this, my (admittedly limited) understanding of how Western society works makes me think these would not be problems but my biggest assets. Let me just say first that your instincts are completely true and correct, and are leading you in the right direction. Trust them. Those peers you reference (the big spenders with credit cards) are going down a path that will end in disaster for them. If only they could be half as wise as you! Are you tempted to become one of the hikikomori? I read a comment by a young Japanese man the other day which was incredibly insightful. He compared the hikikomori to Buddhist monks who disappear from public view for years, for the purpose of self introspection and refinement of themselves. He felt these two phenomenon are intricately linked. I made the same observation also. He thought that (paraphrasing) 999 out of 1000 of these people maybe weren't much use to anyone, but 1 out of 1000 just may be the savior of the nation. I cannot overemphasize how strongly I agree with this sentiment. Ask yourself, why is there such a phenomenon of the hikikomori? Why are Japanese businessmen working and drinking themselves to death? What larger purpose does this server? Why is there so much pain and suicide and other terrible things in your nation? Why do you, personally, feel such an urge to roam? What are you searching for, exactly? All of these things have their explanation. It's important to investigate these things and understand them. Also, what do you think will be the long term effects of things like Fukushima, to name a very large but hardly-acknowledged elephant in the room? Do you know that the radioactive material, with all of that water flowing over it daily, is located directly above a major aquifer that supplies Tokyo with its water? These things need to be studied and fully understood also. You said you don't understand Western civilization, but you are very fortunate because I understand it better than most. Western "civilization" consists of several hundred million children who play-act that they are adults, when in reality they are children who have absolutely no idea what they're doing, or where they're going, or the total disaster that awaits them. Western "civilization" for example extracts resources from the ground and wastes them at an appalling rate. Its hunger for resources is enormous and ever-growing. Western "civilization" is controlled by literal psychopaths, people with no emotion, no heart, no soul; their leader is called Lucifer, "the light bringer" as he sees himself. His system is based on endless war around the world 24/7/365, to support said extreme rate of resource consumption and depletion, with the vast majority of the benefits going to the top echelon while the serfs fight over crumbs. Western "civilization" conquered your nation, subdued it, redesigned your society according to its own vision--explosive growth and endless resource consumption--and for a few decades you "prospered." But then you ran headlong into the inescapable fact that infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible. It's the same wall that the entirety of the West is itself running headlong into, in slow motion; you just ran into it first because you are an island nation with more finite resources than the large continental powers. This is why in the 1980s your economy crashed and never recovered...while your government continues to everything is OK. In 2008 our economy crashed and never recovered....while our government continues to pretends everything is OK. I hope you will come to see these "peers" of yours in a new light. They have expensive cars and mortgages, while you live in a humble home and drive a humble vehicle, ride a bike, or walk? You are the true picture of wisdom and humility, and should continue doing exactly as you are doing. You will be rewarded greatly, whereas their lives will end in ruin. You suffer a small amount in the near term, but they will suffer much more in the long term. The truth is they are not your "peers" at all. You were born for higher things. About your parents, of course their opinion matters, and you are a good son for respecting their opinion. But their knowledge isn't perfect, nor is yours. Here in the USA there are many "baby boomers" (the boom generation after 1945) who just can't understand this mysterious Millenial generation and why they act as they do. They blame the son or daughter, and have no understanding or awareness of larger things. In their mind we are still in the 1960s and they believe everything they see on TV. That's why the real world remains a mystery to them. Many of that generation are extremely spoiled; I saw a van one time with a vanity license plate on the front, which bragged "I'm spending all my children's inheritance!" Can you imagine a Japanese parent behaving in such a way, selfishly, with no thought to their children's future? Actually the person is spending their children's, grandchildren's, great grandchildren's, etc future, as well as the rest of the world's future, for their own personal self gratification. What is Western "civilization"? It's extremely sick and corrupt and should not be emulated under any circumstances. That's why your nation desperately needs people such as yourself, such as the hikikomori also, monks, etc who have the personal courage to 'ignore' the demands of society, to remove oneself from its judgment for a time, to devote one's efforts to thought and reflection and learning and wisdom and understanding--all of these things that the masses lack--so that one may become the true leader and instrument of change that your nation so desperately needs. Your people are counting on you! Don't let them down. I recommend to study the works of Masanobu Fukuoka, to name an example of one wise Japanese man who had the courage to travel a different road, and was well rewarded for it. His book "One Straw Revolution" is excellent and I feel "The Road Back To Nature" is even better. There is much more that could be said here, but this post is too long already. I just wanted to reach out to you because nobody really gave you a good answer in that thread, but you deserve one. I hope this post helps you to continue on the right path and not be tempted by the ways of others. Much love to you and to Japan, my friend, from the land of Dixie!
  - vidarh 7y ago
    If people treat it as a free day off, then it sounds like the problem is not allowing working from home but a lack of effective performance management, or problems like that would quickly stop when.
    - michaelt 7y ago
      Imagine I'm a manager with a light-touch approach to performance management, a team that spends 99% of their time in the office, and a team member who is perfectly productive while in the office but unproductive when working from home. Should I switch to high-touch performance management all the time for all employees, just because of the 1% of one person's time spent working from home?
      - Aeolun 7y ago
        Maybe in that case the 1% spent at home shouldn’t bother you? I’m personally not really in the business of wringing 1% more performance out of my team.
      - jon-wood 7y ago
        You should deal with the problem of the single person, in the same way you'd deal with someone who consistently delivers bad code, or someone who turns up to the office and smokes crack in the bathrooms. I'm a strong proponent of allowing people to work from home, but I have also had conversations with people in the past about whether its appropriate for them. Ultimately it needs to come down to the question of whether people are getting the work they need to be doing done, and if not whether that's for reasons outside of their control. If people are delivering what they need to be delivering (whether that's in the way you'd typically expect or not), there isn't a problem. If they aren't delivering, that's the problem to solve, not the nuances of a work from home policy.
        michaelt 7y ago
        > You should deal with the problem of the single person, in the same way you'd deal with someone who consistently delivers bad code, or someone who turns up to the office and smokes crack in the bathrooms. You think if someone is a good employee 99% of the time I should fire them on the spot?
- Forge36 7y ago
  Hi! Pretty sure we have the same employer. I haven't seen those jokes, but I do recall the discussions around it. I wish the discussions were happening at work instead of anonymously.
  - josephpmay 7y ago
    Same here, unless the same exact pattern is happening across a bunch of companies. Deep Space?
    - Forge36 7y ago
      I wouldn't consider my job mass transport but we're in the same city at least
runawaybottle 7y ago
What’s stopping it from being a no brainer at this point? This feels like one of those things where old school taxi companies just couldn’t see how fast stuff like Uber/Lyft was going devour them. Remote work and distributed teams is basically like fate at this point. If our economy is prepared to build a whole car in different parts of the world and then ship it to the US, you better believe your little job tasks that can easily be sent in email is going to have to reckon with that.
- chrisco255 7y ago
  What kind of professional work lines up with the assembly line paradigm?
  - runawaybottle 7y ago
    Web development
    - sidlls 7y ago
      What kind? Wordpress, or large platform with many different features serving traffic at non-trivial scale (not necessarily google scale, but a few tens of or a hundred thousand requests per second)?
      - runawaybottle 7y ago
        Yes, a lot of web related work is easily defined, encapsulated and distributable. But I’ll appease your indignation with the fact that most of us lowly Wordpress developers are not doing the amazing work you’re involved in.
  - symplee 7y ago
    For remote work, pretty much anything that's not done on an actual assembly line.
  - DarthGhandi 7y ago
    Ironically am sitting here waiting for some upstream fixes from a team on the other side of the planet before I can even start my work this week, it was meant to be done a few days ago. Perhaps some things are more assembly line than you might imagine.
aaron695 7y ago
Whole universities are setting up their equipment properly from remote study and forcing lecturers to learn how to use it. Which is also interesting. Working from home is incredibly bad for your mental health of course. Same as studying one assumes.
- kabacha 7y ago
  > Working from home is incredibly bad for your mental health of course. Why _of course_? Do you have any evidence to support that? I'm sure both remote and office methodologies have their negatives on mental health.
  - aaron695 7y ago
    > both remote Not discussing remote. As per article co-hosts are in danger of closing. I see working from home being different from Hikikomori, but I think it has the same issues.
    - pkalinowski 7y ago
      Working from home is good for my mental health. I don't like the office, of course.
  - GoToRO 7y ago
    S/he was ironic. All the people study at home without any problem.
- JauntyHatAngle 7y ago
  Its bad if you don't have an active social life and/or are doing it exclusively from home. The WFH arrangements mostly being discussed are more about working 1-2 days a week from home.
  - aaron695 7y ago
    > A 2015 study from Stanford University in California found that productivity among call-center employees at Chinese travel agency Ctrip went up by 13% when they worked from home due to fewer breaks and more comfortable work environments. This study which they (And everyone repetitively) quotes, was fulltime. But part time and for periods when other things in someones life are stressful, I agree it can make sense. Same for part time study. "The flat wage <> averaging around ¥1,300 per month. The bonus portion depended on the individual’s monthly performance and averaged about ¥1,000 ($160) per month." I'm dubious why this study keeps getting quoted, it's not great to compare too.
jdpigeon 7y ago
This is awesome. Looking forward to the economics research papers on this in a few months
- legionof7 7y ago
  Not sure awesome is the word I'd use in these circumstances.
  - viraptor 7y ago
    The productive part of it is awesome. We got some organisational ideas from trying to stop people dying before. Checklists, triage, and justification by data visualisation just off the top of my head, but I'm sure there was more.
    - AstralStorm 7y ago
      We got waged labour instead of serfdom from Black Death in some places.
      - viraptor 7y ago
        Ooohh... I haven't heard of that one. Lack of workers makes sense for this change.
- kart23 7y ago
  This is absolutely NOT a good thing. Or 'awesome'. You cant teach a class full of elementary schoolers 'from home'. You cannot manufacture electronics 'from home'. This is going to have lasting, major effects on the worlds economy. I'm personally selling all my index fund stock tomorrow morning.
  - brandnewlow 7y ago
    ...or we might find that it's not that big a deal to miss a few weeks of work or school so long as everyone knows why and understands it's for the greater good.
syntaxing 7y ago
As a MechE, I'm always super jealous of my Software Engineer counterparts in terms of work from home. I know a bunch of teams are actually heavily recommended to work from home at least once a week.
- exdsq 7y ago
  Grass is always greener. As a software engineer who works 100% remotely, I’m always jealous of engineering roles that involve hardware.
  - syntaxing 7y ago
    Definitely a lot of upsides in being a MechE. Making physical stuff is really fulfilling and using really expensive equipment is fun. If your hands are itching to make something on the side, I highly recommend 3D printers! They're really fun to play with and the cost barrier is pretty low nowadays (like the Prusa Mini which is ~$400).
    - exdsq 7y ago
      I'll check it out, thanks! :)
  - rosybox 7y ago
    I'm also a SWE who mostly works remote. I get tired of being in my house. Sometimes it feels like I'm trapped. I don't have a car so I don't really get out much or go far or travel much.
    - syntaxing 7y ago
      I think the perfect scenario is a good balance. Working remote three days and in office for two sounds perfect for me. I definitely enjoy some of the moments working in person with my teammates. Also makes it easier to talk about random fun crap.
    - exdsq 7y ago
      I've found a few things have helped me with this issue: - I bought a Fitbit and aim for 10k+ steps a day - I rarely make coffee at home in the mornings, instead going to a local coffee shop to purchase one - I try to go out for lunch every other day (normally just somewhere quick and cheap) - I meet a friend for dinner, go to a meetup, or just go to the pub 1 or 2 nights a week - Play a sport (I play Squash) which gets you out of the house and exercising These have helped me a lot although I do still fall into bad habits. In 2017 I worked from home for 6 months and almost exclusively ate takeaway, played video games in the evening, and rarely went outside during the working week. My mental health really suffered during that time and it took a while to get back out of it!
boyadjian 7y ago
Work-from-home is not a good thing. Meeting people in a company is something important.
obiefernandez 7y ago
My wife is a high-school teacher in Shenzhen and her school has suspended physical attendance thru Feb 17th, possibly to be extended until the start of March. However, they are requiring teachers and students to work full-time from home using online assignments and communications channels. It struck me that this is indeed a huge experiment in remote working, even for professions that don't typically have that option at all whatsoever (i.e. school teachers).
- Obsnold 7y ago
  I've heard from relatives that it is the same thing in Hong Kong. Last time I talked to them they said it has been quite difficult so far. I'm not sure if they have had any training to prepare for this at all or if they are just winging it.
  - thedufer 7y ago
    Hong Kong has gone further - schools are closed until at least the first week of March.
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    Lack of space at home might also be an issue. Hong Kong flats can be pretty small. Many homes aren’t really suited to WFH, especially regular WFH. They might be noisy during the day, lack space, lack decent network connections, etc...you also can’t really WFH from a quiet public space like a library (not that HK really has those).
- dakom 7y ago
  interesting, I'm very curious which tools she's using for all this :)
  - obiefernandez 7y ago
    they're about to start experimenting with Zoom, which should be super interesting especially with primary/middle school students. a lot of the teachers are quite unhappy about it
ngcc_hk 7y ago
You may wonder why but some School in a sense no choice. The university worldwide needed an exam result and that is a strange thing now the exam will be done in March. In Hong Kong basically the turmoil meant it would be very bad for the result for the young kids. But not all needed. Take a rest and stay healthy more important.
est 7y ago
Some outcomes of this morning: 1. Alibaba's teamwork app, Dingtalk, crashed around 9AM due to too many concurrent video conference saturate the server and bandwitdh 2. Tencent's for enterprise messaging app, Wechat for Business, crashed. Connection is extremely unstable 3. Baidu's office VPN was busy and employees are asked to stay disconnected to leave bandwith for sysadmins 4. Huawei's WeLink was unavailable for a while 5. Bytedance (company behind TikTok)'s Lark, an online office suite like GApps was the biggest winner, only had some minor issues. 6. Zoom offered a free version to mainland users and it's extremely popular. But it lacks non-video-conf features. e.g. simple daily poll to see if your colleagues were healthy or not.
- threatripper 7y ago
  This "experiment" will set a new baseline on which management can act with the goal to satisfy such use cases and grant the necessary resources to implement them.
  - koheripbal 7y ago
    Well the clock is ticking for non-Chinese companies. When SARS struck in 2003, it took about four months for the total global number of cases to crest. Assuming the same sort of pattern here with the same WFH response, we will see peak VPN/remote usage in April/May. ....so get those requisitions in boys.
    - diroussel 7y ago
      A paper published in the Lancet on Friday said that the peak infection is persecuted to be in April. But if more curbs on movement are out in place then the total infections will be lower, but the peak will be later. But this was based on a current infected population of 75k, much higher than the Chinese official figure of 14k people. Source Dr John Campbell. https://youtu.be/z05ZrMfKUDc https://youtu.be/z05ZrMfKUDc
      - koheripbal 7y ago
hkai 7y ago
I am currently soft-quarantined by my employer in Hong Kong because I recently visited Mainland China, and will be working from home for 14 days, along with many others. It's not going that well: from my subjective point of view, people seem to treat it as an extra vacation. They are often not online and will only complete a few small tasks per day, because there is no threat from the boss who sees that you are browsing facebook instead of working. Even government employees are at home. Many people didn't get their tax bill so they don't need to pay tax for now. Sweet! That experiment makes me think that perhaps work from home is optimal mostly for a small pool of highly motivated and talented individuals, such as the average person on HN who actually does feel more productive working from home. Outside of HN, work ethic could be different.
- runawaybottle 7y ago
  There is one major requirement for remote work, it’s called deadlines. Give people a paycheck, some requirements, and deadlines and I promise you the work will find a way to get done. They can browse Facebook all they want.
  - Razengan 7y ago
    What about work that does not have deadlines, but requires constant attention? Like monitoring security cameras, or the status of a medical patient or a nuclear power plant.. These types of work have the added risk of unauthorized people, such as the employee’s kids or friends, snooping in on sensitive information. That might be helped by the employer providing a dedicated computer for remote work, with screen-recording and facial recognition that locks the system if you’re not (the only person) in view. Perhaps having always-on video and voice surveillance on that computer, and announcing that fact, would force employees to create a dedicated distraction-free work environment in their homes.
    - exdsq 7y ago
      There are ways you can 'force' attention. Things like semi-regular unannounced drills, audits, etc. I agree it's harder, and for things like the status of a medical patient or nuclear power plant the potential damage of someone going to the pub in the afternoon and missing something is far worse than missing a couple items in a sprint, but it is still possible to assess.
hef19898 7y ago
And once everything that doesn't require a physical presence (factory, warehouse jobs and so forth) worked just fine during all of this managers in more traditional companies all over the world are still going to find excuses why work from home is impossible for them. Because most of these guys just want to be able to control their employees.
- runawaybottle 7y ago
  They will until they don’t, right? These are the same people that will outsource entire teams offshore to complete things when it’s cheaper. There’s a lot of talk about worker productivity in this thread, but I promise you in several years when these companies are able to simply hire cheaper labor outside of tech centers, you won’t hear shit about remote work being unproductive lol.
  - bart_spoon 7y ago
    Yeah this has been my problem with the argument against remote work. Everyone at my old company always used to talk about how people needed to be face to face to get things done and collaborate. And yet we continued to hire and grow sister teams over in India that we worked with extensively for years, with no problems.
  - charwalker 7y ago
    If the productivity drop is less than the cost decrease and quality level/delivery dates are still met, definitely. I'd love my employer to pay my internet bill and let me work from home more often. I'd need my employer to cover the bill because I'd need to bypass my IPS's 1tb cap and bump my upload speeds a bit to keep things working well. I do a lot of data transfers and archive management.
- esjeon 7y ago
  > everything that doesn't require a physical presence (factory, warehouse jobs and so forth) I don't know what kind of fairy tale world you're from, but you need actual human on site to fix and mend broken machines AND broken operation processes, and also need managers to manage those men. Also, employees are stakeholders, too, and it's often important to gather various information to gain insights into the operations of the company, so that they can speak up before it's too late. Being able to observe actual processes also helps managers to more precisely understand and analyze operations. (Not that these work as intended in real world, tho.)
trhway 7y ago
while in Silicon Valley we'll be coming into our modern freshly remodeled no expense spared creativity and collaboration inducing open floors with energy efficient weak AC&ventilation and waiting until somebody brings it in ...
namelosw 7y ago
Beijing authorities require companies to extends for a week unless the company is either critical industries or can fully work-from-home. My company started to fully work-from-home from today, for at least 2 weeks. This experiment is massive, industries usually move forward only when it's mandatory. I believe this is a great chance that would make people see a lot of professions could be handled quite well remotely, and face-to-face is not that mandatory. Also, some off-topic info/experiences in case anyone wonders - yesterday I was back from San Francisco to Beijing, here's what I saw: 1. Almost every Chinese I saw during the trip wares a mask. In SFO airport, during the flight, Beijing airport, and on the street. Not many people wear gloves. One guy even wears goggles. I wore an N95 mask and vinyl gloves (couldn't find surgical gloves, and masks are sold out for a lot of pharmacies) for the whole trip (like 15 hours), not the most pleasant experience but acceptable. 2. I filled in two additional forms on the flight which asked if I have been to Hubei (the province which Wuhan located in). One from the custom authority and one from Beijing authority, but the forms are almost identical. 3. When I tried to take a lift, I found Didi (Uber/Lyft counterpart) requires every driver and passenger to wear a mask or everyone has the right to reject and report others if they don't. I guess would I have to take the metro if I didn't buy a mask in the US, but I'm also not sure if the metro staff would let me in if that was the case. Simply put, there are tons of public places that reject people that don't wear masks, it seems to be a very hard time for people who are unfortunately couldn't buy/afford overpriced masks. 4. There are people on the street, but very few. It was the last day of the holiday, in prior years it should be crowded already because people migrate back from every province to Beijing. 5. When I back to my apartment, I found almost every apartment would have security guards stop visitors from entering the apartment, for those who live here requires to show a paper from the apartment to enter freely. Rumor says there are even apartments lockdown themselves that people cannot go out, I'm not sure if it's true. 6. Although Beijing is always easy to buy everything online, food delivery choices only have very few options left for now. Not sure if it would back to normal after the holiday ends. Other than food and medical supplies, things haven't changed much. And also delivery guys cannot enter the apartment, so people have to go outside the apartment to get the delivery. 7. For the rest of the week, I'm going to live on instant noodles and some simple foods. Wish me good luck =)
- mensetmanusman 7y ago
asiachick 7y ago
I expect a huge rise in depression the more people work at home. Some people are fairly isolated and get a needed portion of their interaction quota from work. Without something to fill the defecit they will struggle
- yodsanklai 7y ago
  Yes, working from home has some drawbacks. That, and also some guilt over the fact that your employer is doing you a favour. I work from home and tend to worry that colleagues think I'm slacking. I don't think they do but it put some extra pressure.
- buboard 7y ago
  the more people work at home the more likely it is they will find ways to compensate as a group. stay-at-home moms must have been facing these issues forever.
- auiya 7y ago
  > I expect a huge rise in depression the more people work at home Offset by a huge fall in depression by those who are introverts and don't function well in open floor plan office environments. Workspace happiness isn't universal.
Animats 7y ago
Somebody has to actually make physical stuff. At least food, water, and utilities. More if this goes on.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  People who can prove they have had the virus and recovered will be in demand.
- DoctorOetker 7y ago
  food, utilities can be sterilized with gamma radiation, water with UV radiation. I am thinking of making a battery backpack for UV LED sterilization of air, so that it is durable and reusable, as mask production is not keeping up with demand, and they are roughly single-use items...
wyxuan 7y ago
I know a person on mainland China and they are bored out of their mind. They are a pilot and have nothing to do, especially since the volume of flights has dropped significantly
- paublyrne 7y ago
  Boredom is underrated.
  - killjoywashere 7y ago
    Seriously, there's going to be some insane creativity in the Chinese economy in the next 1-4 quarters, but we won't see evidence of it for at least a year.
- Drakar1903 7y ago
  Well, that's one job that's tough to do remote, isn't it?
  - ulucs 7y ago
    Hey, drone technology has gotten a lot better
    - xkcd-sucks 7y ago
      I like my drivers and pilots to have skin in the game, as it were
  - auiya 7y ago
    Your office is in a small cockpit miles above earth. Doesn't get much more remote than that.
suedpfalz 7y ago
I am quarantined in a german military base after flying out of Wuhan with a german air force evacuation flight. We have wifi on the base, the backbone is struggling though - 120 bored people I guess...
- kiney 7y ago
  according to media reports at least two of the 120 people were infected. Were they diagnosed before or after the flight? were they isolated?
  - suedpfalz 7y ago
    we were only checked for symptoms before the flight. Nobody with symptoms was allowed to board (I think everybody boarded though). After arrival everybody went to a medical check and they took a saliva sample that was sent to a lab. So those confirmed cases went to the quarantine quarters first and only got taken out and brought to the hospital the morning after.
    - edna314 7y ago
      Did you notice when the flight was rerouted to Helsinki? How is living in quarantine? Which people do you meet during the day? Is it clear when you are able to leave (is it the standard 14-Day policy after you landed in Germany)?
      - suedpfalz 7y ago
        Actually they already new just before the departure from Wuhan that we were going to Helsinki. Living in quarantine is ok so far. I am in a room with my wife and we are urged to keep contact with other people as small as possible. But in principle you can talk to others. It is assumed that we can leave after 14 days, but in case there is a new positive case within the group they might to decide to reset the timer.
BossingAround 7y ago
A shameless self-plug on my thoughts on working from home - https://medium.com/@bossingaround/working-from-home-is-great-and-i-hate-it-e2660acac260 https://medium.com/@bossingaround/working-from-home-is-great...
jsharf 7y ago
This is a horrible "experiment". Duuuude I was just asked to stay at home for 2 weeks because I might have coronavirus (I was in Shanghai "recently"). Sure as heck I'm not going to be productive. (I'm a software engineer in mountain view, and my company has asked me to WFH for 2 weeks) Following reasons: - Emotionally it's a tiny bit scary. hard to focus. - I didn't have ANY time to setup -- a lot of my gear is still at work. - My team didn't have time to prepare -- we still have daily standups which are hard to join from VC.
- ybalkind 7y ago
  In a way that makes the experiment more interesting. You're kind of forced to try make things work under very sub-optimal conditions rather than some artifical text-book version of what we think work-from-home should ideally look like. I reckon that after a few days of poor productivity, you and your colleagues will find ways to be productive despite of these circumstances, and in fact the difficult circumstances might even yield new and better processes and habits.
  - captainbland 7y ago
    I guess the only thing is it risks giving the panopticon micromanagement brigade an unfair point when some of these arrangements do go awry.
  - michaelt 7y ago
    Depends how big the changes are. If you need to replace a whiteboard for task tracking with Jira, move your standups to a meeting room, and sort out the meeting room microphones that mean you can't always hear everyone well, the person might be back at work before you've finished all the reforms :)
    - clarry 7y ago
      > move your standups to a meeting room Please don't do that. People should participate using their own PC (or phone, in a pinch). Meeting rooms make it worse for everyone.
Obsnold 7y ago
I'm planning on moving back to HK this May so I hope this has all blown over by then. I just heard my boss managed to get back to HK a day before they stopped people leaving the village he was in. Now he has to work from home for 2 weeks before he's allowed back to the office.
darepublic 7y ago
Does the threat of coronavirus really justify all this media coverage and fear?
- mensetmanusman 7y ago
  Not by itself, but because China is never transparent with numbers, and because they quarantined millions of people, they have sparked a panic. If the death rate is really 2%, and if it is a contagious as it seems...
- 3pt14159 7y ago
  Don't think about it as _the_ coronavirus. Think of it as _a new virus_ and things start to make more sense. Over the next 100 years _a new virus_ is likely going to develop that spreads quickly and is lethal. When a new one comes up it's hard to tell initial how it spreads, how fast it spreads, and how lethal it is. For now, I think it's unlikely that the coronavirus will kill all that many people. For now, I think more people should just get the flu shot and not worry about coronavirus. But I'll update my opinion if the spread and death toll seem to worsen. As an aside, stopping pandemics is on of the main things that Bill Gates is passionate about. https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/Shattuck-Lecture https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/Shattuck-Lecture
  - infinite8s 7y ago
    High lethality and high virulence are opposed to each other. Most of the people who have died from coronavirus have been older people with weaker immune systems.
- lovehashbrowns 7y ago
  For coronavirus, it doesn't necessarily have to be the death rate as of this moment that should cause worry. Coronavirus can cause ARDS, described here: https://youtu.be/okg7uq_HrhQ https://youtu.be/okg7uq_HrhQ Treating ARDS in a handful of cases isn't so bad. It's treating ARDS in hundreds of thousands of people that's very very bad. Hospitals can quickly become full and hospitals also rely on supply chains for materials, which would also become overwhelmed. I'm not saying panic is the right thing to do, because it isn't, but what I am saying is that the quarantines aren't excessive and there's a reason why governments are paying attention.
chriselles 7y ago
I wonder if ZOOM and peers may be an investment hedge against a wider outbreak?
- buboard 7y ago
  flu seasons are the worst, everywhere. we should either move a do-nothing holiday to overlap with flu season, or make it 'worldwide work from home weeks'
  - chriselles 7y ago
    What I’d like to see is the removal of terrorism alerts And replace them with a flu & pandemic risk scoring matrix. As the risk score increases, recommended behaviours are emphasised. Not too indifferent from news including pollen and UV risk as well as traffic congestion. Just add public health alerts and get rid of terror alerts. Keep the alerts and recommended behaviours clear, repetitive, simple, and timely.
pts_ 7y ago
Team building, wining and dining are resource intensive activities as it is, and we would do well to adopt WFH more to save the environment too. Replace Coronavirus threat with the threat of environmental destruction and you get similar solutions.
notacoward 7y ago
Maybe those who WFH during this situation will develop some empathy for full-time remote workers ... because for damn sure most of them have none. There are some issues that are obvious and easily addressed, like leaving stakeholders out of a meeting entirely ("couldn't find a room on short notice"). There are others that are hard to notice unless you're subject to them all the time. * A VPN that's OK for short-term use, but unreliable enough to cause multiple flow disruptions every single day. * Extremely slow (and often more contentious) document/code reviews because people aren't as comfortable with written communication as ftf. * Losing every commit race because of the above, and having to spend more time than anyone else handling tricky merges. * Being in effective listen-only mode in meetings because of constant interruption and side chatter (or not even able to hear if half the participants are loudly eating lunch the entire time). * IDEs that lose their ability to navigate code because the connection to the cross-referencing engine can't survive high latency. (BTW this is related to having a giant monorepo, which is itself a bit of a remote-hostile choice.) There are many more. Working from home has its advantages, but doing so in an office-first environment can be frustrating too. Maybe those who experience some of that frustration for a few days will at least stop criticizing others for things that aren't their fault.
- koheripbal 7y ago
  I think it's going to have the opposite effect. Because everyone isn't unaccustomed to working from home - they are going to be tremendously inefficient, and will later assume that all those WFH employees are also therefor chronically inefficient.
ryanmercer 7y ago
Meanwhile in the United States I continue to have to share a desk with someone from another shift, all of us do, and as I was typing this I heard 2 different people sneeze, one immediately in front of me that turned in my direction and sneezed towards the floor without covering. Which he's done several times a day for a week. Fun fun fun. Stocked up on several containers of wipes and several things of hand sanitizer this weekend. Normally not my thing but the office has already had a stomach bug and a flu blaze through the bulk of 180~ people this year, I'll spend some money for peace of mind while this Coronavirus is doing its thing.
mrfusion 7y ago
I guess companies will update their sick leave policies too. Could be interesting.
c0restraint 7y ago
Experiments are only as good as their preparation and setting, and so this would struggle to be a good experiment.
SimonB_ 7y ago
Coronavirus is far more infectious than sars. Numbers infected are likely 100k or more. This will become a pandemic. I can’t see how they can contain this. What we don’t know yet, is the mortality rate. Yes, we know the Chinese are hiding the deaths.
flarg 7y ago
It would be interesting to find out what motivates people when they are the in the office? There was a fad for presence and virtual office type systems in the past and I have heard that some media companies have a permanent group video conference. For me it's just being around people who are busy at their desks that motivates me.
kylestlb 7y ago
I wonder how many people are using coronavirus as a convenient excuse to stay home to nurse their superbowl hangover. :D
yalogin 7y ago
How are exports from china impacted by this? For example most products on Amazon are coming from China. How is it not impacted?
- MiracleUser 7y ago
  Wuhan is a commercial center, not an industrial one. It also is not a major port.
pokr 7y ago
Eh, my father is a vice-manager of a company's information department. Damn he's been struggling with getting hundreds of people to work remotely for more than 2 weeks. I'm not familiar with those stuff but sounds like he's trying to build a solution with MS RDP and/or Citrix's tech. He's been on his phone for hours and hours these days... Ruined our Chinese New Year if you'd ask me.

621 points by adventured 7y ago

My employer, after some bad winter weather the last couple of years, has been hemming and hawing about a work from home policy. There's definitely a pervasive mindset that people are less productive at home which might have some truth for some roles at our company. At first it was a "use your judgement and talk to your team leader, but if your kids have off school, just take a sick day", then they started being more explicit about acceptable reasons. Then a few months ago they added a three day limit per year. But last month they removed the limit again and on our local social media there has been speculating/joking that it's prep for coronavirus.

hkai 7y ago
Same here, we tried allowing work from home once a week but people just treated it as a free day off. We also had to enforce starting hours, otherwise some developers would show up by 11:30 yet they will still leave work sharp on time.
- echelon 7y ago
  Maybe a four day work week would be healthy and make for more productive workers.
  - hkai 7y ago
    I am familiar with the argument you are making, but I haven't seen that in practice. I noticed that if you give someone an extra day off or extra 3 days off, less work gets done rather than more. Here in Hong Kong we have quite a few 3-day or 4-day working weeks (due to public holidays) and I have never once seen more work being done on those weeks.
    - kqr 7y ago
      I don't think doing it as a one-off counts. I think the argument is that an extended time on 4-day weeks would in the long term allow people to settle into a more well-rested rhythm.
    - piva00 7y ago
      I work sometimes a 4-day week because of Sweden's regulations after I have an on-call week. It happens quite often, every 3-4 weeks depending on our rotation and I can say that having a steady 4-day week makes me and most of my colleagues more productive. So I have seen it in practice, as a counterpoint to your anecdote with another anecdote.
    - celticninja 7y ago
      That's different. When you do a four day week it should be same hours, eg 40 hour week is 5 X 8 hour days or 4 X 10 hour days. Giving people a holiday and then expecting them to make that time up during the rest of the week is ridiculous.
      - e12e 7y ago
        No, that's not normally what a four day week means. It generally means less hours, but you also wouldn't normally expect moretotal stuff to get done, but you might expect a similar amount to get done (5 days worth in 4 days, not 6 days worth in 4 days!). Now,if that's generally achievable is up for debate. I think most would agree 8 hours a day, 5 days a week is likely better than 10 hours a say, 7 days a week. But it's not obvious if a 30 hour week is better or worse than a 40 hour week.
    - papito 7y ago
      Microsoft tried it and productivity shot up 40%. Yes, in Japan, but still. After I took a solid break from work for 3 months, doing a full 5-day work week was torture. I am still not used to it, and I don't think I ever will be agin. It all comes down to scarcity. Scarcity of time. Give me five 10-hour days and I will stretch them out by hanging out on Hacker News. Give me less time to accomplish my tasks, and I will be much better at managing a scarce resource. AND I will have a 3-day weekend to check out from work completely. In the past it sounded very "socialist" and lazy to me, but I have come around to believe that, in the language of Mandalorians, THIS IS THE WAY.
- newswasboring 7y ago
  What about amount of work though? Did the velocity or quality drop?
  - SkyPuncher 7y ago
    This is key. I worked a 32 hour week for some time and was nearly as productive (if not more) than working fulltime. The reality is after about 4 hours of flow, I'm pretty worn out. After 6 hours, I'm pretty much ineffective. A full 8+ hour day is really only useful if I need to spend time in lots of meetings.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - guidance 7y ago
    I wanted to reply to a comment you made on another post, a couple weeks back. Sorry for the thread hijack, but I think you need some advice, and this topic is much more worth commenting on that this latest fake virus scare: > It's not just about traveling. It's just one of the components. This guy was a teacher, musician, maker and now DL expert. And it doesn't seem like he is settled on that yet. He is still exploring what he wants to do. Changes his life to match his interests. I lived some of my life like that. Took some non standard paths. But it is getting increasingly hard for me to do this. Not because there aren't opportunities for me, but because it's getting unjustifiable to "society". > And I know the usual line about "who cares what others think" in the west. Although it's logical in the west its not so in South Asia. Even if you don't care, your parents will and you will care for your parents. So it's inescapable. By Western standards I should be a totally free person, I am not married, don't have any debt, a high earning job which I'm bored by only 50% of the time. But these same things trap me. Single status leads to public derision in social gatherings (also friends get married and it becomes increasingly hard to be the only single guy in the group), my insistence on not taking on any debt means I live in a small rented apartment which it hard to be accepted in the society around me, a high earning job means I can never just quit because then I will have no social support due to it being a bad decision. > As I write this, my (admittedly limited) understanding of how Western society works makes me think these would not be problems but my biggest assets. Let me just say first that your instincts are completely true and correct, and are leading you in the right direction. Trust them. Those peers you reference (the big spenders with credit cards) are going down a path that will end in disaster for them. If only they could be half as wise as you! Are you tempted to become one of the hikikomori? I read a comment by a young Japanese man the other day which was incredibly insightful. He compared the hikikomori to Buddhist monks who disappear from public view for years, for the purpose of self introspection and refinement of themselves. He felt these two phenomenon are intricately linked. I made the same observation also. He thought that (paraphrasing) 999 out of 1000 of these people maybe weren't much use to anyone, but 1 out of 1000 just may be the savior of the nation. I cannot overemphasize how strongly I agree with this sentiment. Ask yourself, why is there such a phenomenon of the hikikomori? Why are Japanese businessmen working and drinking themselves to death? What larger purpose does this server? Why is there so much pain and suicide and other terrible things in your nation? Why do you, personally, feel such an urge to roam? What are you searching for, exactly? All of these things have their explanation. It's important to investigate these things and understand them. Also, what do you think will be the long term effects of things like Fukushima, to name a very large but hardly-acknowledged elephant in the room? Do you know that the radioactive material, with all of that water flowing over it daily, is located directly above a major aquifer that supplies Tokyo with its water? These things need to be studied and fully understood also. You said you don't understand Western civilization, but you are very fortunate because I understand it better than most. Western "civilization" consists of several hundred million children who play-act that they are adults, when in reality they are children who have absolutely no idea what they're doing, or where they're going, or the total disaster that awaits them. Western "civilization" for example extracts resources from the ground and wastes them at an appalling rate. Its hunger for resources is enormous and ever-growing. Western "civilization" is controlled by literal psychopaths, people with no emotion, no heart, no soul; their leader is called Lucifer, "the light bringer" as he sees himself. His system is based on endless war around the world 24/7/365, to support said extreme rate of resource consumption and depletion, with the vast majority of the benefits going to the top echelon while the serfs fight over crumbs. Western "civilization" conquered your nation, subdued it, redesigned your society according to its own vision--explosive growth and endless resource consumption--and for a few decades you "prospered." But then you ran headlong into the inescapable fact that infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible. It's the same wall that the entirety of the West is itself running headlong into, in slow motion; you just ran into it first because you are an island nation with more finite resources than the large continental powers. This is why in the 1980s your economy crashed and never recovered...while your government continues to everything is OK. In 2008 our economy crashed and never recovered....while our government continues to pretends everything is OK. I hope you will come to see these "peers" of yours in a new light. They have expensive cars and mortgages, while you live in a humble home and drive a humble vehicle, ride a bike, or walk? You are the true picture of wisdom and humility, and should continue doing exactly as you are doing. You will be rewarded greatly, whereas their lives will end in ruin. You suffer a small amount in the near term, but they will suffer much more in the long term. The truth is they are not your "peers" at all. You were born for higher things. About your parents, of course their opinion matters, and you are a good son for respecting their opinion. But their knowledge isn't perfect, nor is yours. Here in the USA there are many "baby boomers" (the boom generation after 1945) who just can't understand this mysterious Millenial generation and why they act as they do. They blame the son or daughter, and have no understanding or awareness of larger things. In their mind we are still in the 1960s and they believe everything they see on TV. That's why the real world remains a mystery to them. Many of that generation are extremely spoiled; I saw a van one time with a vanity license plate on the front, which bragged "I'm spending all my children's inheritance!" Can you imagine a Japanese parent behaving in such a way, selfishly, with no thought to their children's future? Actually the person is spending their children's, grandchildren's, great grandchildren's, etc future, as well as the rest of the world's future, for their own personal self gratification. What is Western "civilization"? It's extremely sick and corrupt and should not be emulated under any circumstances. That's why your nation desperately needs people such as yourself, such as the hikikomori also, monks, etc who have the personal courage to 'ignore' the demands of society, to remove oneself from its judgment for a time, to devote one's efforts to thought and reflection and learning and wisdom and understanding--all of these things that the masses lack--so that one may become the true leader and instrument of change that your nation so desperately needs. Your people are counting on you! Don't let them down. I recommend to study the works of Masanobu Fukuoka, to name an example of one wise Japanese man who had the courage to travel a different road, and was well rewarded for it. His book "One Straw Revolution" is excellent and I feel "The Road Back To Nature" is even better. There is much more that could be said here, but this post is too long already. I just wanted to reach out to you because nobody really gave you a good answer in that thread, but you deserve one. I hope this post helps you to continue on the right path and not be tempted by the ways of others. Much love to you and to Japan, my friend, from the land of Dixie!
- vidarh 7y ago
  If people treat it as a free day off, then it sounds like the problem is not allowing working from home but a lack of effective performance management, or problems like that would quickly stop when.
  - michaelt 7y ago
    Imagine I'm a manager with a light-touch approach to performance management, a team that spends 99% of their time in the office, and a team member who is perfectly productive while in the office but unproductive when working from home. Should I switch to high-touch performance management all the time for all employees, just because of the 1% of one person's time spent working from home?
    - Aeolun 7y ago
      Maybe in that case the 1% spent at home shouldn’t bother you? I’m personally not really in the business of wringing 1% more performance out of my team.
    - jon-wood 7y ago
      You should deal with the problem of the single person, in the same way you'd deal with someone who consistently delivers bad code, or someone who turns up to the office and smokes crack in the bathrooms. I'm a strong proponent of allowing people to work from home, but I have also had conversations with people in the past about whether its appropriate for them. Ultimately it needs to come down to the question of whether people are getting the work they need to be doing done, and if not whether that's for reasons outside of their control. If people are delivering what they need to be delivering (whether that's in the way you'd typically expect or not), there isn't a problem. If they aren't delivering, that's the problem to solve, not the nuances of a work from home policy.
      - michaelt 7y ago
        > You should deal with the problem of the single person, in the same way you'd deal with someone who consistently delivers bad code, or someone who turns up to the office and smokes crack in the bathrooms. You think if someone is a good employee 99% of the time I should fire them on the spot?
Forge36 7y ago
Hi! Pretty sure we have the same employer. I haven't seen those jokes, but I do recall the discussions around it. I wish the discussions were happening at work instead of anonymously.
- josephpmay 7y ago
  Same here, unless the same exact pattern is happening across a bunch of companies. Deep Space?
  - Forge36 7y ago
    I wouldn't consider my job mass transport but we're in the same city at least

runawaybottle 7y ago

What’s stopping it from being a no brainer at this point? This feels like one of those things where old school taxi companies just couldn’t see how fast stuff like Uber/Lyft was going devour them. Remote work and distributed teams is basically like fate at this point. If our economy is prepared to build a whole car in different parts of the world and then ship it to the US, you better believe your little job tasks that can easily be sent in email is going to have to reckon with that.

chrisco255 7y ago
What kind of professional work lines up with the assembly line paradigm?
- runawaybottle 7y ago
  Web development
  - sidlls 7y ago
    What kind? Wordpress, or large platform with many different features serving traffic at non-trivial scale (not necessarily google scale, but a few tens of or a hundred thousand requests per second)?
    - runawaybottle 7y ago
      Yes, a lot of web related work is easily defined, encapsulated and distributable. But I’ll appease your indignation with the fact that most of us lowly Wordpress developers are not doing the amazing work you’re involved in.
- symplee 7y ago
  For remote work, pretty much anything that's not done on an actual assembly line.
- DarthGhandi 7y ago
  Ironically am sitting here waiting for some upstream fixes from a team on the other side of the planet before I can even start my work this week, it was meant to be done a few days ago. Perhaps some things are more assembly line than you might imagine.

aaron695 7y ago

Whole universities are setting up their equipment properly from remote study and forcing lecturers to learn how to use it. Which is also interesting. Working from home is incredibly bad for your mental health of course. Same as studying one assumes.

kabacha 7y ago
> Working from home is incredibly bad for your mental health of course. Why _of course_? Do you have any evidence to support that? I'm sure both remote and office methodologies have their negatives on mental health.
- aaron695 7y ago
  > both remote Not discussing remote. As per article co-hosts are in danger of closing. I see working from home being different from Hikikomori, but I think it has the same issues.
  - pkalinowski 7y ago
    Working from home is good for my mental health. I don't like the office, of course.
- GoToRO 7y ago
  S/he was ironic. All the people study at home without any problem.
JauntyHatAngle 7y ago
Its bad if you don't have an active social life and/or are doing it exclusively from home. The WFH arrangements mostly being discussed are more about working 1-2 days a week from home.
- aaron695 7y ago
  > A 2015 study from Stanford University in California found that productivity among call-center employees at Chinese travel agency Ctrip went up by 13% when they worked from home due to fewer breaks and more comfortable work environments. This study which they (And everyone repetitively) quotes, was fulltime. But part time and for periods when other things in someones life are stressful, I agree it can make sense. Same for part time study. "The flat wage <> averaging around ¥1,300 per month. The bonus portion depended on the individual’s monthly performance and averaged about ¥1,000 ($160) per month." I'm dubious why this study keeps getting quoted, it's not great to compare too.

jdpigeon 7y ago

This is awesome. Looking forward to the economics research papers on this in a few months

legionof7 7y ago
Not sure awesome is the word I'd use in these circumstances.
- viraptor 7y ago
  The productive part of it is awesome. We got some organisational ideas from trying to stop people dying before. Checklists, triage, and justification by data visualisation just off the top of my head, but I'm sure there was more.
  - AstralStorm 7y ago
    We got waged labour instead of serfdom from Black Death in some places.
    - viraptor 7y ago
      Ooohh... I haven't heard of that one. Lack of workers makes sense for this change.
kart23 7y ago
This is absolutely NOT a good thing. Or 'awesome'. You cant teach a class full of elementary schoolers 'from home'. You cannot manufacture electronics 'from home'. This is going to have lasting, major effects on the worlds economy. I'm personally selling all my index fund stock tomorrow morning.
- brandnewlow 7y ago
  ...or we might find that it's not that big a deal to miss a few weeks of work or school so long as everyone knows why and understands it's for the greater good.

syntaxing 7y ago

As a MechE, I'm always super jealous of my Software Engineer counterparts in terms of work from home. I know a bunch of teams are actually heavily recommended to work from home at least once a week.

exdsq 7y ago
Grass is always greener. As a software engineer who works 100% remotely, I’m always jealous of engineering roles that involve hardware.
- syntaxing 7y ago
  Definitely a lot of upsides in being a MechE. Making physical stuff is really fulfilling and using really expensive equipment is fun. If your hands are itching to make something on the side, I highly recommend 3D printers! They're really fun to play with and the cost barrier is pretty low nowadays (like the Prusa Mini which is ~$400).
  - exdsq 7y ago
    I'll check it out, thanks! :)
- rosybox 7y ago
  I'm also a SWE who mostly works remote. I get tired of being in my house. Sometimes it feels like I'm trapped. I don't have a car so I don't really get out much or go far or travel much.
  - syntaxing 7y ago
    I think the perfect scenario is a good balance. Working remote three days and in office for two sounds perfect for me. I definitely enjoy some of the moments working in person with my teammates. Also makes it easier to talk about random fun crap.
  - exdsq 7y ago
    I've found a few things have helped me with this issue: - I bought a Fitbit and aim for 10k+ steps a day - I rarely make coffee at home in the mornings, instead going to a local coffee shop to purchase one - I try to go out for lunch every other day (normally just somewhere quick and cheap) - I meet a friend for dinner, go to a meetup, or just go to the pub 1 or 2 nights a week - Play a sport (I play Squash) which gets you out of the house and exercising These have helped me a lot although I do still fall into bad habits. In 2017 I worked from home for 6 months and almost exclusively ate takeaway, played video games in the evening, and rarely went outside during the working week. My mental health really suffered during that time and it took a while to get back out of it!

boyadjian 7y ago

Work-from-home is not a good thing. Meeting people in a company is something important.

obiefernandez 7y ago

My wife is a high-school teacher in Shenzhen and her school has suspended physical attendance thru Feb 17th, possibly to be extended until the start of March. However, they are requiring teachers and students to work full-time from home using online assignments and communications channels. It struck me that this is indeed a huge experiment in remote working, even for professions that don't typically have that option at all whatsoever (i.e. school teachers).

Obsnold 7y ago
I've heard from relatives that it is the same thing in Hong Kong. Last time I talked to them they said it has been quite difficult so far. I'm not sure if they have had any training to prepare for this at all or if they are just winging it.
- thedufer 7y ago
  Hong Kong has gone further - schools are closed until at least the first week of March.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  Lack of space at home might also be an issue. Hong Kong flats can be pretty small. Many homes aren’t really suited to WFH, especially regular WFH. They might be noisy during the day, lack space, lack decent network connections, etc...you also can’t really WFH from a quiet public space like a library (not that HK really has those).
dakom 7y ago
interesting, I'm very curious which tools she's using for all this :)
- obiefernandez 7y ago
  they're about to start experimenting with Zoom, which should be super interesting especially with primary/middle school students. a lot of the teachers are quite unhappy about it

ngcc_hk 7y ago

You may wonder why but some School in a sense no choice. The university worldwide needed an exam result and that is a strange thing now the exam will be done in March. In Hong Kong basically the turmoil meant it would be very bad for the result for the young kids. But not all needed. Take a rest and stay healthy more important.

est 7y ago

Some outcomes of this morning: 1. Alibaba's teamwork app, Dingtalk, crashed around 9AM due to too many concurrent video conference saturate the server and bandwitdh 2. Tencent's for enterprise messaging app, Wechat for Business, crashed. Connection is extremely unstable 3. Baidu's office VPN was busy and employees are asked to stay disconnected to leave bandwith for sysadmins 4. Huawei's WeLink was unavailable for a while 5. Bytedance (company behind TikTok)'s Lark, an online office suite like GApps was the biggest winner, only had some minor issues. 6. Zoom offered a free version to mainland users and it's extremely popular. But it lacks non-video-conf features. e.g. simple daily poll to see if your colleagues were healthy or not.

threatripper 7y ago
This "experiment" will set a new baseline on which management can act with the goal to satisfy such use cases and grant the necessary resources to implement them.
- koheripbal 7y ago
  Well the clock is ticking for non-Chinese companies. When SARS struck in 2003, it took about four months for the total global number of cases to crest. Assuming the same sort of pattern here with the same WFH response, we will see peak VPN/remote usage in April/May. ....so get those requisitions in boys.
  - diroussel 7y ago
    A paper published in the Lancet on Friday said that the peak infection is persecuted to be in April. But if more curbs on movement are out in place then the total infections will be lower, but the peak will be later. But this was based on a current infected population of 75k, much higher than the Chinese official figure of 14k people. Source Dr John Campbell. https://youtu.be/z05ZrMfKUDc https://youtu.be/z05ZrMfKUDc
    - koheripbal 7y ago

hkai 7y ago

I am currently soft-quarantined by my employer in Hong Kong because I recently visited Mainland China, and will be working from home for 14 days, along with many others. It's not going that well: from my subjective point of view, people seem to treat it as an extra vacation. They are often not online and will only complete a few small tasks per day, because there is no threat from the boss who sees that you are browsing facebook instead of working. Even government employees are at home. Many people didn't get their tax bill so they don't need to pay tax for now. Sweet! That experiment makes me think that perhaps work from home is optimal mostly for a small pool of highly motivated and talented individuals, such as the average person on HN who actually does feel more productive working from home. Outside of HN, work ethic could be different.

runawaybottle 7y ago
There is one major requirement for remote work, it’s called deadlines. Give people a paycheck, some requirements, and deadlines and I promise you the work will find a way to get done. They can browse Facebook all they want.
- Razengan 7y ago
  What about work that does not have deadlines, but requires constant attention? Like monitoring security cameras, or the status of a medical patient or a nuclear power plant.. These types of work have the added risk of unauthorized people, such as the employee’s kids or friends, snooping in on sensitive information. That might be helped by the employer providing a dedicated computer for remote work, with screen-recording and facial recognition that locks the system if you’re not (the only person) in view. Perhaps having always-on video and voice surveillance on that computer, and announcing that fact, would force employees to create a dedicated distraction-free work environment in their homes.
  - exdsq 7y ago
    There are ways you can 'force' attention. Things like semi-regular unannounced drills, audits, etc. I agree it's harder, and for things like the status of a medical patient or nuclear power plant the potential damage of someone going to the pub in the afternoon and missing something is far worse than missing a couple items in a sprint, but it is still possible to assess.

hef19898 7y ago

And once everything that doesn't require a physical presence (factory, warehouse jobs and so forth) worked just fine during all of this managers in more traditional companies all over the world are still going to find excuses why work from home is impossible for them. Because most of these guys just want to be able to control their employees.

runawaybottle 7y ago
They will until they don’t, right? These are the same people that will outsource entire teams offshore to complete things when it’s cheaper. There’s a lot of talk about worker productivity in this thread, but I promise you in several years when these companies are able to simply hire cheaper labor outside of tech centers, you won’t hear shit about remote work being unproductive lol.
- bart_spoon 7y ago
  Yeah this has been my problem with the argument against remote work. Everyone at my old company always used to talk about how people needed to be face to face to get things done and collaborate. And yet we continued to hire and grow sister teams over in India that we worked with extensively for years, with no problems.
- charwalker 7y ago
  If the productivity drop is less than the cost decrease and quality level/delivery dates are still met, definitely. I'd love my employer to pay my internet bill and let me work from home more often. I'd need my employer to cover the bill because I'd need to bypass my IPS's 1tb cap and bump my upload speeds a bit to keep things working well. I do a lot of data transfers and archive management.
esjeon 7y ago
> everything that doesn't require a physical presence (factory, warehouse jobs and so forth) I don't know what kind of fairy tale world you're from, but you need actual human on site to fix and mend broken machines AND broken operation processes, and also need managers to manage those men. Also, employees are stakeholders, too, and it's often important to gather various information to gain insights into the operations of the company, so that they can speak up before it's too late. Being able to observe actual processes also helps managers to more precisely understand and analyze operations. (Not that these work as intended in real world, tho.)

trhway 7y ago

while in Silicon Valley we'll be coming into our modern freshly remodeled no expense spared creativity and collaboration inducing open floors with energy efficient weak AC&ventilation and waiting until somebody brings it in ...

namelosw 7y ago

Beijing authorities require companies to extends for a week unless the company is either critical industries or can fully work-from-home. My company started to fully work-from-home from today, for at least 2 weeks. This experiment is massive, industries usually move forward only when it's mandatory. I believe this is a great chance that would make people see a lot of professions could be handled quite well remotely, and face-to-face is not that mandatory. Also, some off-topic info/experiences in case anyone wonders - yesterday I was back from San Francisco to Beijing, here's what I saw: 1. Almost every Chinese I saw during the trip wares a mask. In SFO airport, during the flight, Beijing airport, and on the street. Not many people wear gloves. One guy even wears goggles. I wore an N95 mask and vinyl gloves (couldn't find surgical gloves, and masks are sold out for a lot of pharmacies) for the whole trip (like 15 hours), not the most pleasant experience but acceptable. 2. I filled in two additional forms on the flight which asked if I have been to Hubei (the province which Wuhan located in). One from the custom authority and one from Beijing authority, but the forms are almost identical. 3. When I tried to take a lift, I found Didi (Uber/Lyft counterpart) requires every driver and passenger to wear a mask or everyone has the right to reject and report others if they don't. I guess would I have to take the metro if I didn't buy a mask in the US, but I'm also not sure if the metro staff would let me in if that was the case. Simply put, there are tons of public places that reject people that don't wear masks, it seems to be a very hard time for people who are unfortunately couldn't buy/afford overpriced masks. 4. There are people on the street, but very few. It was the last day of the holiday, in prior years it should be crowded already because people migrate back from every province to Beijing. 5. When I back to my apartment, I found almost every apartment would have security guards stop visitors from entering the apartment, for those who live here requires to show a paper from the apartment to enter freely. Rumor says there are even apartments lockdown themselves that people cannot go out, I'm not sure if it's true. 6. Although Beijing is always easy to buy everything online, food delivery choices only have very few options left for now. Not sure if it would back to normal after the holiday ends. Other than food and medical supplies, things haven't changed much. And also delivery guys cannot enter the apartment, so people have to go outside the apartment to get the delivery. 7. For the rest of the week, I'm going to live on instant noodles and some simple foods. Wish me good luck =)

mensetmanusman 7y ago

asiachick 7y ago

I expect a huge rise in depression the more people work at home. Some people are fairly isolated and get a needed portion of their interaction quota from work. Without something to fill the defecit they will struggle

yodsanklai 7y ago
Yes, working from home has some drawbacks. That, and also some guilt over the fact that your employer is doing you a favour. I work from home and tend to worry that colleagues think I'm slacking. I don't think they do but it put some extra pressure.
buboard 7y ago
the more people work at home the more likely it is they will find ways to compensate as a group. stay-at-home moms must have been facing these issues forever.
auiya 7y ago
> I expect a huge rise in depression the more people work at home Offset by a huge fall in depression by those who are introverts and don't function well in open floor plan office environments. Workspace happiness isn't universal.

Animats 7y ago

Somebody has to actually make physical stuff. At least food, water, and utilities. More if this goes on.

tonyedgecombe 7y ago
People who can prove they have had the virus and recovered will be in demand.
DoctorOetker 7y ago
food, utilities can be sterilized with gamma radiation, water with UV radiation. I am thinking of making a battery backpack for UV LED sterilization of air, so that it is durable and reusable, as mask production is not keeping up with demand, and they are roughly single-use items...

wyxuan 7y ago

I know a person on mainland China and they are bored out of their mind. They are a pilot and have nothing to do, especially since the volume of flights has dropped significantly

paublyrne 7y ago
Boredom is underrated.
- killjoywashere 7y ago
  Seriously, there's going to be some insane creativity in the Chinese economy in the next 1-4 quarters, but we won't see evidence of it for at least a year.
Drakar1903 7y ago
Well, that's one job that's tough to do remote, isn't it?
- ulucs 7y ago
  Hey, drone technology has gotten a lot better
  - xkcd-sucks 7y ago
    I like my drivers and pilots to have skin in the game, as it were
- auiya 7y ago
  Your office is in a small cockpit miles above earth. Doesn't get much more remote than that.

suedpfalz 7y ago

I am quarantined in a german military base after flying out of Wuhan with a german air force evacuation flight. We have wifi on the base, the backbone is struggling though - 120 bored people I guess...

kiney 7y ago
according to media reports at least two of the 120 people were infected. Were they diagnosed before or after the flight? were they isolated?
- suedpfalz 7y ago
  we were only checked for symptoms before the flight. Nobody with symptoms was allowed to board (I think everybody boarded though). After arrival everybody went to a medical check and they took a saliva sample that was sent to a lab. So those confirmed cases went to the quarantine quarters first and only got taken out and brought to the hospital the morning after.
  - edna314 7y ago
    Did you notice when the flight was rerouted to Helsinki? How is living in quarantine? Which people do you meet during the day? Is it clear when you are able to leave (is it the standard 14-Day policy after you landed in Germany)?
    - suedpfalz 7y ago
      Actually they already new just before the departure from Wuhan that we were going to Helsinki. Living in quarantine is ok so far. I am in a room with my wife and we are urged to keep contact with other people as small as possible. But in principle you can talk to others. It is assumed that we can leave after 14 days, but in case there is a new positive case within the group they might to decide to reset the timer.

BossingAround 7y ago

A shameless self-plug on my thoughts on working from home - https://medium.com/@bossingaround/working-from-home-is-great-and-i-hate-it-e2660acac260 https://medium.com/@bossingaround/working-from-home-is-great...

jsharf 7y ago

This is a horrible "experiment". Duuuude I was just asked to stay at home for 2 weeks because I might have coronavirus (I was in Shanghai "recently"). Sure as heck I'm not going to be productive. (I'm a software engineer in mountain view, and my company has asked me to WFH for 2 weeks) Following reasons: - Emotionally it's a tiny bit scary. hard to focus. - I didn't have ANY time to setup -- a lot of my gear is still at work. - My team didn't have time to prepare -- we still have daily standups which are hard to join from VC.

ybalkind 7y ago
In a way that makes the experiment more interesting. You're kind of forced to try make things work under very sub-optimal conditions rather than some artifical text-book version of what we think work-from-home should ideally look like. I reckon that after a few days of poor productivity, you and your colleagues will find ways to be productive despite of these circumstances, and in fact the difficult circumstances might even yield new and better processes and habits.
- captainbland 7y ago
  I guess the only thing is it risks giving the panopticon micromanagement brigade an unfair point when some of these arrangements do go awry.
- michaelt 7y ago
  Depends how big the changes are. If you need to replace a whiteboard for task tracking with Jira, move your standups to a meeting room, and sort out the meeting room microphones that mean you can't always hear everyone well, the person might be back at work before you've finished all the reforms :)
  - clarry 7y ago
    > move your standups to a meeting room Please don't do that. People should participate using their own PC (or phone, in a pinch). Meeting rooms make it worse for everyone.

Obsnold 7y ago

I'm planning on moving back to HK this May so I hope this has all blown over by then. I just heard my boss managed to get back to HK a day before they stopped people leaving the village he was in. Now he has to work from home for 2 weeks before he's allowed back to the office.

darepublic 7y ago

Does the threat of coronavirus really justify all this media coverage and fear?

mensetmanusman 7y ago
Not by itself, but because China is never transparent with numbers, and because they quarantined millions of people, they have sparked a panic. If the death rate is really 2%, and if it is a contagious as it seems...
3pt14159 7y ago
Don't think about it as _the_ coronavirus. Think of it as _a new virus_ and things start to make more sense. Over the next 100 years _a new virus_ is likely going to develop that spreads quickly and is lethal. When a new one comes up it's hard to tell initial how it spreads, how fast it spreads, and how lethal it is. For now, I think it's unlikely that the coronavirus will kill all that many people. For now, I think more people should just get the flu shot and not worry about coronavirus. But I'll update my opinion if the spread and death toll seem to worsen. As an aside, stopping pandemics is on of the main things that Bill Gates is passionate about. https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/Shattuck-Lecture https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/Shattuck-Lecture
- infinite8s 7y ago
  High lethality and high virulence are opposed to each other. Most of the people who have died from coronavirus have been older people with weaker immune systems.
lovehashbrowns 7y ago
For coronavirus, it doesn't necessarily have to be the death rate as of this moment that should cause worry. Coronavirus can cause ARDS, described here: https://youtu.be/okg7uq_HrhQ https://youtu.be/okg7uq_HrhQ Treating ARDS in a handful of cases isn't so bad. It's treating ARDS in hundreds of thousands of people that's very very bad. Hospitals can quickly become full and hospitals also rely on supply chains for materials, which would also become overwhelmed. I'm not saying panic is the right thing to do, because it isn't, but what I am saying is that the quarantines aren't excessive and there's a reason why governments are paying attention.

chriselles 7y ago

I wonder if ZOOM and peers may be an investment hedge against a wider outbreak?

buboard 7y ago
flu seasons are the worst, everywhere. we should either move a do-nothing holiday to overlap with flu season, or make it 'worldwide work from home weeks'
- chriselles 7y ago
  What I’d like to see is the removal of terrorism alerts And replace them with a flu & pandemic risk scoring matrix. As the risk score increases, recommended behaviours are emphasised. Not too indifferent from news including pollen and UV risk as well as traffic congestion. Just add public health alerts and get rid of terror alerts. Keep the alerts and recommended behaviours clear, repetitive, simple, and timely.

pts_ 7y ago

Team building, wining and dining are resource intensive activities as it is, and we would do well to adopt WFH more to save the environment too. Replace Coronavirus threat with the threat of environmental destruction and you get similar solutions.

notacoward 7y ago

Maybe those who WFH during this situation will develop some empathy for full-time remote workers ... because for damn sure most of them have none. There are some issues that are obvious and easily addressed, like leaving stakeholders out of a meeting entirely ("couldn't find a room on short notice"). There are others that are hard to notice unless you're subject to them all the time. * A VPN that's OK for short-term use, but unreliable enough to cause multiple flow disruptions every single day. * Extremely slow (and often more contentious) document/code reviews because people aren't as comfortable with written communication as ftf. * Losing every commit race because of the above, and having to spend more time than anyone else handling tricky merges. * Being in effective listen-only mode in meetings because of constant interruption and side chatter (or not even able to hear if half the participants are loudly eating lunch the entire time). * IDEs that lose their ability to navigate code because the connection to the cross-referencing engine can't survive high latency. (BTW this is related to having a giant monorepo, which is itself a bit of a remote-hostile choice.) There are many more. Working from home has its advantages, but doing so in an office-first environment can be frustrating too. Maybe those who experience some of that frustration for a few days will at least stop criticizing others for things that aren't their fault.

koheripbal 7y ago
I think it's going to have the opposite effect. Because everyone isn't unaccustomed to working from home - they are going to be tremendously inefficient, and will later assume that all those WFH employees are also therefor chronically inefficient.

ryanmercer 7y ago

Meanwhile in the United States I continue to have to share a desk with someone from another shift, all of us do, and as I was typing this I heard 2 different people sneeze, one immediately in front of me that turned in my direction and sneezed towards the floor without covering. Which he's done several times a day for a week. Fun fun fun. Stocked up on several containers of wipes and several things of hand sanitizer this weekend. Normally not my thing but the office has already had a stomach bug and a flu blaze through the bulk of 180~ people this year, I'll spend some money for peace of mind while this Coronavirus is doing its thing.

mrfusion 7y ago

I guess companies will update their sick leave policies too. Could be interesting.

c0restraint 7y ago

Experiments are only as good as their preparation and setting, and so this would struggle to be a good experiment.

SimonB_ 7y ago

Coronavirus is far more infectious than sars. Numbers infected are likely 100k or more. This will become a pandemic. I can’t see how they can contain this. What we don’t know yet, is the mortality rate. Yes, we know the Chinese are hiding the deaths.

flarg 7y ago

It would be interesting to find out what motivates people when they are the in the office? There was a fad for presence and virtual office type systems in the past and I have heard that some media companies have a permanent group video conference. For me it's just being around people who are busy at their desks that motivates me.

kylestlb 7y ago

I wonder how many people are using coronavirus as a convenient excuse to stay home to nurse their superbowl hangover. :D

yalogin 7y ago

How are exports from china impacted by this? For example most products on Amazon are coming from China. How is it not impacted?

MiracleUser 7y ago
Wuhan is a commercial center, not an industrial one. It also is not a major port.

pokr 7y ago

Eh, my father is a vice-manager of a company's information department. Damn he's been struggling with getting hundreds of people to work remotely for more than 2 weeks. I'm not familiar with those stuff but sounds like he's trying to build a solution with MS RDP and/or Citrix's tech. He's been on his phone for hours and hours these days... Ruined our Chinese New Year if you'd ask me.