8 ms·

Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft are asking staff to work from home

129 points by halamadrid 7y ago

tristanj 7y ago
The article is a bit out of date, it's not only Seattle. Facebook and Google announced tonight that all employees in the Bay Area can work from home. Microsoft/Linkedin announced all employees on the west coast can work from home.
- laumars 7y ago
  Plenty of London tech companies have too
  - swarnie_ 7y ago
    Can confirm, haven't been to the London office in 2 weeks and have no intention to go for the next month or so. The idea of getting a tube at 8:30am isn't a pleasant one.
- sswezey 7y ago
  It's still accurate for Amazon.
  - etj 7y ago
    not really - I am on the east coast and my manager told me to work from home
ElectronShak 7y ago
2.2 Billion Views Later -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GL9JoH4Sws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GL9JoH4Sws
strstr 7y ago
This is a massive accidental experiment on the effectiveness of fully remote teams. Most of these companies are fairly reticent to have even a few workers remote, let alone entire teams/orgs. It'll be interesting to see if teams push for something closer to full remote wherever it worked well (or if some employees will want it, having not realized what it was like). Plausibly teams that it works well for will have greater ammunition to push for it, since they have the past experience with it.
- someguy101010 7y ago
  It may not go as well as would if it weren't so sudden though. I'd say that affects the results when comparing for a company that optimizes for remote.
- freepor 7y ago
  If this works well I will eat my hat. This represents: companies with no remote-work culture (thus systems that are not fully documented, etc.), forcing employees into this suddenly (so they will not have a proper space at home set up for this... some of them will be in the same room as a crying baby), while their spouse may also be working from home due to the virus, while everyone is also thinking about getting a deadly virus every time they leave the house. I really don't expect much "work" to get done at all.
  - BigBubbleButt 7y ago
    > while everyone is also thinking about getting a deadly virus every time they leave the house Am I the only person who isn't worried about the coronavirus? I'm not exaggerating when I say it hasn't effected my life at all, except for the effort it took me to write this comment. I live in San Francisco, if it matters.
    - travisjungroth 7y ago
      It hasn’t effected your life so far. It most likely will.
    - 7y ago
guessmyname 7y ago
My employer dislikes remote work, many will disagree, but I’ll explain why… The company makes video games and as you can probably guess being creative is very important. Working from home reduces the creativity of every employee not just because the existing tools for telecommute are insufficient to create a good work environment but also because it prevents people from socializing with spontaneity. Add to this the fact that many of the game developers and designers need special hardware (different game consoles, VPN routers, high speed Internet, interactive pen displays, additional software licenses, etc) that the company would have to buy for every single person to maintain the quality and development speed they have from working on-site. The founders were forced, due to CORVID-19, to implement an emergency protocol in case we have to move all operations off-site. The IT department was already tasked to setup VPN access for all employees, to buy a bunch of expensive equipment, to spend countless of hours training senior programmers and artists in the arts of online meetings, network troubleshooting, activation of software licenses and who knows what else. I worked for a remote-first company for roughly five years and it was great, but the business was completely different. My team was responsible for the provisioning and management of different cloud services, in fact all our products were Software as a Service (SaaS) so having a reliable Internet connection and a good enough computer was enough to do our job including leadership, management, marketing, engineering, sales, support, etc. I cannot see this happening in a game studio, it just doesn’t work. I may be wrong but I think there is not a single game studio in the industry with a fully remote work policy. If there are, I bet their success cannot compare with studios of the same size working all on-site.
- mft_ 7y ago
  > CORVID-19 Your renaming of the disease made me smile, but I don't think the crows will be happy :)
- koonsolo 7y ago
  Oh my, an informative comment like this getting downvoted without a proper reply. This is what I hate about HN, and I don't know I will stay here for much longer. And for your comment, at least I am grateful for your point of view and insight.
- 7y ago
mlang23 7y ago
What an exaggregation. Nice way to add to the overblown panic. In italy, about 250km south ofrm where I live, they have closed schools and universities, and disallowed public events. Today, I will be visiting a music festival in my hometown. No signs of cancellation. Clearly, some parts of the world react like a 9 year old girl.
- Gigablah 7y ago
  No need to be rude towards the organizers of your music festival.
  - mlang23 7y ago
    Either I didnt parse your sarcasm, or you didn't parse mine. I am happy for the festival not being canceled, and I think italy is way overreacting.
    - yadongwen 7y ago
      Well your action will likely make the virus spreading faster which may cause someone to be killed.
      - mlang23 7y ago
        People die on a daily basis, especially elderly ones. Sorry, but I am not buying this hype.
        montenegrohugo 7y ago
        Now that is just an amazingly callous comment.
        mlang23 7y ago
        Thanks for your comment. I learnt a new word!
daniel_iversen 7y ago
Dropbox is too[1] and what I like about this is that their main motive (I think, based on the kind of person I’ve seen Drew being) isn’t just not their employees getting sick, or it spreading inside Dropbox, but also to make their tiny contribution to it spreading less in the world in general. And in the article it mentions it’s only in Seattle that these other companies are instituting work from home, and it seems like it’s only because some of their employees are already infected! If everyone in the world that could would just work from home for a while and limit physical contact, then the trajectory of the spread would be much different and maybe we could nip it in the bud. [1] https://twitter.com/drewhouston/status/1235747829307437056?s=21 https://twitter.com/drewhouston/status/1235747829307437056?s...
- rurounijones 7y ago
  I work in a Japanese office of one of these companies and we have been able to work from home since January due to COVID-19 based on our own risk assessment, with advisories being sent via internal email. So this article is wrong/misleading at least in that respect, probably because if is focused on the US.
- jb3689 7y ago
  I think for most companies the idea is they don't want entire teams getting sick (or worse) at the same time. It's nice to think there's a larger motive at play here, but I strongly believe self-interest is the primary factor. I also wouldn't be surprised if a lot of this is just SV monoculture at play (you'd hate to be the company that didn't do it and paid the price even if it was just bad press)
- hrez 7y ago
  Coronavirus: Facebook tells most Bay Area employees to work from home https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Coronavirus-Facebook-tells-most-Bay-Area-15110818.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Coronavirus-Fac...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
gnrlst 7y ago
As an Italian Milan-based employee of one these corporations, I have been working from home for the last 2 weeks with personal plans to work from home at least until the end of March. I really appreciate the flexibility and feel extremely privileged to be able to do this. Unfortunately not everyone can or has the company infrastructure (e.g. laptops) to be able to work from home. I hope this shock snaps low-tech Italian SMEs into being more remote-friendly, and slowly indirectly improve the flexibility and work-life balance of employees. And of course, most hands-on jobs can't be done remotely, but most office jobs can.
mcv 7y ago
> "at least 70 confirmed cases and 10 deaths." This low number of confirmed cases combined with the high number of deaths, suggests there are hundreds of undiscovered cases still out there. Most countries seem to have a death rate closer to 2%, but in the US it appears to be a lot higher, which suggests many cases are not represented in these numbers. That, or it's become a lot more deadly. Neither is good.
- feistypharit 7y ago
  The us is totally unprepared for this. Similar to our all out other public infrastructure, we've been neglecting it for years.
  - ailideex 7y ago
    Which country was totally prepared for this?
    - zzzcpan 7y ago
      Probably none of the countries that push "don't use masks" propaganda.
      - ailideex 7y ago
        Well that rules out Norway then... thanks Trump!
    - mcv 7y ago
      Depends on what you mean by "totally". People cannot be "totally" controlled, but there's a lot of difference between how good of a handle various countries have on this.
- Traster 7y ago
  You'll consistently see higher death rates and lower diagnosis rates in the US when compared to countries where healthcare isn't a massive financial burden.
znpy 7y ago
This is a massive accidental experiment on the effectiveness of remote work in general. A lot of entities (here in .it, besides companies: public administration workers and education workers) are turning to remote working, either willingly or unwillingly. I really hope we'll all do a good retrospective after this emergency is solved and can finally challenge our own assumptions.
WalterGR 7y ago
Microsoft is going further for employees who literally can't work from home. Title: Microsoft will pay hourly workers regularly even if they spend less time on the clock because of coronavirus https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/05/microsoft-will-pay-hourly-workers-regularly-as-it-faces-coronavirus.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/05/microsoft-will-pay-hourly-wo... "The policy applies to people who work for other companies but provide services like bus rides or food service to Microsoft."
- draw_down 7y ago
  My company is also doing this. I think it’s what they should do, and it’s not worth reportage nor accolades.
goombastic 7y ago
I've worked remote very often and ive always felt that the current open plan offices are way too much of a distraction to get work done. This is the right change and remote working needs this change to happen despite the whining by the usual suspects of people sitting in office until late for no other reason than pleasing their bosses. Hopefully, the focus will no move to tangible results being delivered than what dress you wear and how much time you spend at office.

129 points by halamadrid 7y ago

The article is a bit out of date, it's not only Seattle. Facebook and Google announced tonight that all employees in the Bay Area can work from home. Microsoft/Linkedin announced all employees on the west coast can work from home.

laumars 7y ago
Plenty of London tech companies have too
- swarnie_ 7y ago
  Can confirm, haven't been to the London office in 2 weeks and have no intention to go for the next month or so. The idea of getting a tube at 8:30am isn't a pleasant one.
sswezey 7y ago
It's still accurate for Amazon.
- etj 7y ago
  not really - I am on the east coast and my manager told me to work from home

ElectronShak 7y ago

2.2 Billion Views Later -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GL9JoH4Sws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GL9JoH4Sws

strstr 7y ago

This is a massive accidental experiment on the effectiveness of fully remote teams. Most of these companies are fairly reticent to have even a few workers remote, let alone entire teams/orgs. It'll be interesting to see if teams push for something closer to full remote wherever it worked well (or if some employees will want it, having not realized what it was like). Plausibly teams that it works well for will have greater ammunition to push for it, since they have the past experience with it.

someguy101010 7y ago
It may not go as well as would if it weren't so sudden though. I'd say that affects the results when comparing for a company that optimizes for remote.
freepor 7y ago
If this works well I will eat my hat. This represents: companies with no remote-work culture (thus systems that are not fully documented, etc.), forcing employees into this suddenly (so they will not have a proper space at home set up for this... some of them will be in the same room as a crying baby), while their spouse may also be working from home due to the virus, while everyone is also thinking about getting a deadly virus every time they leave the house. I really don't expect much "work" to get done at all.
- BigBubbleButt 7y ago
  > while everyone is also thinking about getting a deadly virus every time they leave the house Am I the only person who isn't worried about the coronavirus? I'm not exaggerating when I say it hasn't effected my life at all, except for the effort it took me to write this comment. I live in San Francisco, if it matters.
  - travisjungroth 7y ago
    It hasn’t effected your life so far. It most likely will.
  - 7y ago

guessmyname 7y ago

My employer dislikes remote work, many will disagree, but I’ll explain why… The company makes video games and as you can probably guess being creative is very important. Working from home reduces the creativity of every employee not just because the existing tools for telecommute are insufficient to create a good work environment but also because it prevents people from socializing with spontaneity. Add to this the fact that many of the game developers and designers need special hardware (different game consoles, VPN routers, high speed Internet, interactive pen displays, additional software licenses, etc) that the company would have to buy for every single person to maintain the quality and development speed they have from working on-site. The founders were forced, due to CORVID-19, to implement an emergency protocol in case we have to move all operations off-site. The IT department was already tasked to setup VPN access for all employees, to buy a bunch of expensive equipment, to spend countless of hours training senior programmers and artists in the arts of online meetings, network troubleshooting, activation of software licenses and who knows what else. I worked for a remote-first company for roughly five years and it was great, but the business was completely different. My team was responsible for the provisioning and management of different cloud services, in fact all our products were Software as a Service (SaaS) so having a reliable Internet connection and a good enough computer was enough to do our job including leadership, management, marketing, engineering, sales, support, etc. I cannot see this happening in a game studio, it just doesn’t work. I may be wrong but I think there is not a single game studio in the industry with a fully remote work policy. If there are, I bet their success cannot compare with studios of the same size working all on-site.

mft_ 7y ago
> CORVID-19 Your renaming of the disease made me smile, but I don't think the crows will be happy :)
koonsolo 7y ago
Oh my, an informative comment like this getting downvoted without a proper reply. This is what I hate about HN, and I don't know I will stay here for much longer. And for your comment, at least I am grateful for your point of view and insight.
7y ago

mlang23 7y ago

What an exaggregation. Nice way to add to the overblown panic. In italy, about 250km south ofrm where I live, they have closed schools and universities, and disallowed public events. Today, I will be visiting a music festival in my hometown. No signs of cancellation. Clearly, some parts of the world react like a 9 year old girl.

Gigablah 7y ago
No need to be rude towards the organizers of your music festival.
- mlang23 7y ago
  Either I didnt parse your sarcasm, or you didn't parse mine. I am happy for the festival not being canceled, and I think italy is way overreacting.
  - yadongwen 7y ago
    Well your action will likely make the virus spreading faster which may cause someone to be killed.
    - mlang23 7y ago
      People die on a daily basis, especially elderly ones. Sorry, but I am not buying this hype.
      - montenegrohugo 7y ago
        Now that is just an amazingly callous comment.
        mlang23 7y ago
        Thanks for your comment. I learnt a new word!

daniel_iversen 7y ago

Dropbox is too[1] and what I like about this is that their main motive (I think, based on the kind of person I’ve seen Drew being) isn’t just not their employees getting sick, or it spreading inside Dropbox, but also to make their tiny contribution to it spreading less in the world in general. And in the article it mentions it’s only in Seattle that these other companies are instituting work from home, and it seems like it’s only because some of their employees are already infected! If everyone in the world that could would just work from home for a while and limit physical contact, then the trajectory of the spread would be much different and maybe we could nip it in the bud. [1] https://twitter.com/drewhouston/status/1235747829307437056?s=21 https://twitter.com/drewhouston/status/1235747829307437056?s...

rurounijones 7y ago
I work in a Japanese office of one of these companies and we have been able to work from home since January due to COVID-19 based on our own risk assessment, with advisories being sent via internal email. So this article is wrong/misleading at least in that respect, probably because if is focused on the US.
jb3689 7y ago
I think for most companies the idea is they don't want entire teams getting sick (or worse) at the same time. It's nice to think there's a larger motive at play here, but I strongly believe self-interest is the primary factor. I also wouldn't be surprised if a lot of this is just SV monoculture at play (you'd hate to be the company that didn't do it and paid the price even if it was just bad press)
hrez 7y ago
Coronavirus: Facebook tells most Bay Area employees to work from home https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Coronavirus-Facebook-tells-most-Bay-Area-15110818.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Coronavirus-Fac...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

gnrlst 7y ago

As an Italian Milan-based employee of one these corporations, I have been working from home for the last 2 weeks with personal plans to work from home at least until the end of March. I really appreciate the flexibility and feel extremely privileged to be able to do this. Unfortunately not everyone can or has the company infrastructure (e.g. laptops) to be able to work from home. I hope this shock snaps low-tech Italian SMEs into being more remote-friendly, and slowly indirectly improve the flexibility and work-life balance of employees. And of course, most hands-on jobs can't be done remotely, but most office jobs can.

mcv 7y ago

> "at least 70 confirmed cases and 10 deaths." This low number of confirmed cases combined with the high number of deaths, suggests there are hundreds of undiscovered cases still out there. Most countries seem to have a death rate closer to 2%, but in the US it appears to be a lot higher, which suggests many cases are not represented in these numbers. That, or it's become a lot more deadly. Neither is good.

feistypharit 7y ago
The us is totally unprepared for this. Similar to our all out other public infrastructure, we've been neglecting it for years.
- ailideex 7y ago
  Which country was totally prepared for this?
  - zzzcpan 7y ago
    Probably none of the countries that push "don't use masks" propaganda.
    - ailideex 7y ago
      Well that rules out Norway then... thanks Trump!
  - mcv 7y ago
    Depends on what you mean by "totally". People cannot be "totally" controlled, but there's a lot of difference between how good of a handle various countries have on this.
Traster 7y ago
You'll consistently see higher death rates and lower diagnosis rates in the US when compared to countries where healthcare isn't a massive financial burden.

znpy 7y ago

This is a massive accidental experiment on the effectiveness of remote work in general. A lot of entities (here in .it, besides companies: public administration workers and education workers) are turning to remote working, either willingly or unwillingly. I really hope we'll all do a good retrospective after this emergency is solved and can finally challenge our own assumptions.

WalterGR 7y ago

Microsoft is going further for employees who literally can't work from home. Title: Microsoft will pay hourly workers regularly even if they spend less time on the clock because of coronavirus https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/05/microsoft-will-pay-hourly-workers-regularly-as-it-faces-coronavirus.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/05/microsoft-will-pay-hourly-wo... "The policy applies to people who work for other companies but provide services like bus rides or food service to Microsoft."

draw_down 7y ago
My company is also doing this. I think it’s what they should do, and it’s not worth reportage nor accolades.

goombastic 7y ago

I've worked remote very often and ive always felt that the current open plan offices are way too much of a distraction to get work done. This is the right change and remote working needs this change to happen despite the whining by the usual suspects of people sitting in office until late for no other reason than pleasing their bosses. Hopefully, the focus will no move to tangible results being delivered than what dress you wear and how much time you spend at office.