8 ms·
Microsoft recommends WA and CA employees work from home
Just got notice from Microsoft HR that we're to work from home when possible due to COVID-19, through 3/25.
Edit: official announcement https://news.microsoft.com/2020/03/04/kurt-delbenes-march-4-guidance-to-king-county-employees/
- srean 7y agoThe solution according to Hindu Mahasabha is quite clear https://theprint.in/health/hindu-mahasabha-plans-gaumutra-party-with-cow-dung-cakes-to-fight-coronavirus-in-india/375026/ https://theprint.in/health/hindu-mahasabha-plans-gaumutra-pa... These are not a group of random crank. These guys have a sympathetic and serious listener in the Indian government. As an Indian all I can say is, "heaven help us", oh wait, they have that covered already.
- wyclif 7y agoSomebody should fix the link so it's pointing to the MSFT press release.
- fractal618 7y agoThrowaway username suggests that MS also directed employees not to publicize this.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- judah 7y agoMS employee here. There's been no direction not to publicize this, in fact, this guidance is published on our public blogs[0]. [0]: https://news.microsoft.com/2020/03/04/kurt-delbenes-march-4-guidance-to-king-county-employees/ https://news.microsoft.com/2020/03/04/kurt-delbenes-march-4-...
- loeg 7y agoThey likely just don't want to identify their regular account as a Microsoft employee.
- blaser-waffle 7y agoUnless you're posting in an official capacity, absolutely don't link your posts to your job. Not worth the risk.
- abosley 7y agoCorrection: March 25. Microsoftie.
- ahghtgfhg 7y agoThanks, fixed.
- anonsivalley652 7y agoDoes MSFT still use smartcards everywhere?
- mohamedmansour 7y agoI might bring my work computer home then!
- thrownawaynw 7y agoI'm working for a tech firm in one of these two related areas. The idea of bringing the work computer home sounded good until IT added a number of high-bandwidth sites to the IT-mandated DNS blacklist software to keep traffic down for remote workers. I could see things like Hulu and Pandora being less mission critical than other sites but then they blocked YouTube and, probably because google mixes domains a lot, gMail got caught in the net. People were not happy about that.
- zdragnar 7y agoNo split tunnel vpn?
- radicaldreamer 7y agoCan't you use a split tunnel to do this without a blacklist?
- thrownawaynw 7y agoNot a VPN. DNS blacklist at the O/S level. Mostly as an antiviral/antiphishing defense. Virtualbox gets around it just fine. =)
- swsieber 7y agoYes. OpenVPN makes it simple enough that I could figure out how to modify the default configuration I was handed.
- pts_ 7y agoGmail on phone corp mail on vpn.
- mypalmike 7y agoI don't understand the problem. Use your personal computer for personal stuff, and your work computer for work stuff. What am I missing?
- 01100011 7y agoI don't work at MS, just a valley tech company. We finally got the email encouraging us to work with our managers and WFH when possible. I don't think many people are actually doing it, from what I can tell from my home office. I don't know why more large tech shops aren't doing this.
- anonsivalley652 7y agoPeople can't see who's contagious in the early stages, so they're gambling with their lives by not taking proactive precautions before it's a widespread problem. COVID-19/SARS-cov-2 is something to take seriously for several reasons: - To reiterate an important point: "Healthy" infected people go around unwittingly spreading it for several days to a week, so you have no idea who's really sick. And you have no idea how many people in public actually have it at any one time. It's another reason this pathogen is so successful. - It's a terrible flu for most. - It can quickly turn life-threatening. A number of bodies were discovered in Wuhan of people trying to walk or drive themselves to the hospital, but they died before reaching it. - FIXED: If hospitalization is needed, the average CFR is 16% (Russian roulette odds) and 49% for critical condition. - There is no treatment. It's going to be a full pandemic in 7-21 days (depending on the area), and last from 19-35 days. For example, someone already died from it within 40 mi / 64 km of where my mom lives in a rural/suburban area. You have to assume the number of infected is 10-30x the number of identified cases because the CDC has strict PUI criteria that are turning away patients. (Oh, and it costs $2000±1000 if you take the test and test negative.)
- alasdair_ 7y ago> If hospitalization is needed, the average fatality rate (critical CFR) is 49% This is only true for people who are listed in “critical” condition. The fatality rate for most hospitalized people is much lower.
- Barrin92 7y ago>To reiterate an important point: "Healthy" infected people go around unwittingly spreading it for several days to a week, so you have no idea who's really sick. According to the newest WHO report (also posted on the frontpage of HN) this doesn't appear to be the case. There are apparently few asymptomatic cases and the disease mainly is spread by people who are symptomatic. >You have to assume the number of infected is 10-30x the number This sounds like pure speculation and is probably not a reasonable thing to assume.
- starpilot 7y agoAlso in Seattle (well, Bellevue), my company has told us to WFH through the end of the month. Went out to lunch downtown and the usual place I go to was empty, normally it's packed.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mc3 7y agoThis will be an interesting challenge to suddenly be thrust as a team into WFH.
- alasdair_ 7y agoAll FAANG+M companies in Seattle have had similar advice today - it was recommended by the King County health department a few hours ago.
- cbsks 7y agoYep: “Workplaces should enact measures that allow people who can work from home to do so.” https://www.kingcounty.gov/depts/health/news/2020/March/4-covid-recommendations.aspx https://www.kingcounty.gov/depts/health/news/2020/March/4-co...
- stygiansonic 7y agoWhere does it say CA employees? Does Bay Area in the context of Puget Sound mean SF Bay Area?
- samcheng 7y agoYes; when you say "Bay Area" in Washington and Oregon, you generally mean SF Bay Area. Maybe an exception for those living in Coos Bay?
- c-bayprogrammer 7y agoYes, those of us in Coos Bay and the nearby region refer to this tiny little area as the "Bay Area". Growing up, I didn't realize SF was the "real" Bay Area. ;)
- evil-olive 7y agoYes. No one in Seattle would call here the "Bay Area". We do have Elliot Bay [0] but not an "Elliot Bay Area" - Seattle and its environs are referred to as the Puget Sound [1] region. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodies_of_water_of_Seattle#/media/File:Seattle_waterways_-_1990s.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodies_of_water_of_Seattle#/me... 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puget_Sound#/media/File:Map_pugetsound.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puget_Sound#/media/File:Map_pu...
- stygiansonic 7y agoThanks for the explanations everyone. I was confused because the title at [0] says "Kurt DelBene’s March 4 guidance to King County employees", but Bay Area is only mentioned in one of the headings. Thanks for the clarifications. 0. https://news.microsoft.com/2020/03/04/kurt-delbenes-march-4-guidance-to-king-county-employees/ https://news.microsoft.com/2020/03/04/kurt-delbenes-march-4-...
- warmfuzzykitten 7y agoHard to see how any part of the SF Bay Area could be in King County.
- pkraft 7y agoI first thought WFH stood for Wash Fking Hands.
- jimthrow 7y agoI don’t know why this is being downvoted so much. It’s a legitimate abbreviation considering that washing hands is the most well known deterrent for the virus
- earthtourist 7y agoIt seems like the only way out of this without a huge infection rate is a government mandated stay-at-home period. It probably requires implementing martial law. Tech workers going WFH seems like it will be totally ineffectual by itself. 1. Most other workers can't afford to take time off, aren't permitted to, or can't do their jobs remotely. 2. Schools aren't implementing study-at-home yet. 3. There isn't mass testing in place yet. For #1 it seems like we need some kind of massive billion gov disaster insurance bailout to compensate people. And someone still needs to do essential services, so a skeleton crew needs to be paid overtime and tested regularly by health officials. For #2 this could be done tomorrow if it was ordered by health departments. The main downside would be people being forced to stay home from work, but at least this problem can be mitigated by families/friends. For #3 to be implemented at the scale of millions of people, would probably require deploying the US military going up and down streets requesting samples. Anything short of a stay-at-home period seems like it's guaranteed to get us the majority infection rate that will kill millions, mostly our parents and grandparents but a large number of young people too. The damage to the economy of this could be huge. It seems better to overreact now, pay a huge bill ($1+ trillion, if need be), and prevent a massive loss of loss and/or economic depression.
- blaser-waffle 7y agoThe US FedGov + state and local authorities have the ability to issue quarantines using local police or other forces. No different than the police enforcing a curfew or other regulations. These have been used several times; my grandmother told me stories about being quarantined in Philadelphia during the 1930s. https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/aboutlawsregulationsquarantineisolation.html https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/aboutlawsregulationsquarantin... There are links at the bottom to specific legislation.
- gwright 7y ago> large number of young people too Most of the info I've seen on this suggest that the young aren't particularly susceptible to the virus. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/specific-groups/children-faq.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/specific-groups/ch...
- starpilot 7y agoWhy contain it? Let it spill over into the schools and churches, let the bodies pile up in the streets. In the end, they'll beg us to save them.
- femto113 7y agoOverhead in SLU today “at least I can finally find an empty conference room”. For non Seattle folk SLU is South Lake Union, home to many Amazon buildings as well as Google and Facebook