29 ms·

Most employees of NYT won’t be required back in physical offices until 2021

474 points by danso 6y ago

umwbk9gagy 6y ago
I've always assumed most writers for these papers don't actually come into the office anyway. What's different? They're extending that to full time staff as well?
- cbron 6y ago
  Yes. I worked for a major newspaper and would guess that all the people in editorial make up less than 50% of the staff. You have business, accounting, tech, delivery, support, sales, security etc...
OldFatCactus 6y ago
A friend that works there told me that they have been polling their employees for strong feelings around going permanently remote
- levesque 6y ago
  I have strong feelings against permanently remote. I feel like this hasn't been fully thought out. Face to face interaction is much more high bandwidth than remote video calls (in other words, it conveys more information). Not to mention that this transfers the costs of office space to the employee, maybe this is why all employers are quick to jump on this bandwagon. Curious to see where this new trend will fall in 2021.
  - flak48 6y ago
    Many companies have been reimbursing home internet and electricity bills since March. Mine even paid for an chair, desk, monitor and lamp of my choosing for my home office. I hope this becomes the norm if remote becomes mainstream
    - jrockway 6y ago
      This is probably not the norm. I have a friend that works in a call center, and they've been working remotely during the pandemic. Her company won't pay for anything; she uses her personal laptop, personal consumer-grade Internet connection, etc. The consumer ISP doesn't provide their stated upload and download ever, and the ISP charged her $100 to come out and investigate the issue without fixing it. (You run a speedtest to their speedtest node, and it doesn't live up to what is advertised. How can the ISP turn around and charge the customer for telling them that!?) The company won't pay for the debugging. When the Internet dies, she's told "welp, you're done for today" and doesn't get paid. (She also works 4 days x 10 hours, so one bad day costs more than the average 5 x 8 employee.) It is kind of a nightmare making every employee responsible for being the IT director for free. I imagine that most companies are not going to see good results here. (It's good when it's good, but what do you do when it gets bad? Nobody has a plan.) All in all, consumer ISPs seem to be doing pretty good with the pandemic, but I worry that it's mostly a string of good luck rather than solid infrastructure investments.
      - heelix 6y ago
        Commercial internet does not cost a lot of money. I do a cable modem and while my speeds are a bit slower than the residential option (for the same money) I don't have bandwidth caps or 'talk to the hand' when an issue happens. Night and day between the two experiences. Worth looking into.
        jrockway 6y ago
        I agree. The problem is cost (higher, not being paid for by the company), and rewarding the ISP for their poor service by paying them more. My philosophy is that you just have to accept that we messed up by letting one company monopolize the space, and pay them more for their better service... but not many people agree with me.
      - Spooky23 6y ago
        > You run a speedtest to their speedtest node, and it doesn't live up to what is advertised. How can the ISP turn around and charge the customer for telling them that!? Easy, the CPE equipment is garbage or placed in a shitty location. I'm a nerd, but my ancient wifi setup started to struggle with the entire family working and schooling all day. I upgraded to a Ubiquiti solution with multiple antennas and life is good.
  - wahlrus 6y ago
    I don't think you're wrong. There will certainly be some sort of correction of the bullish remote-work spirit. But the 2020 lockdowns will fundamentally increase the amount of remote work permanently to at least some degree. Like how before Bernie Sanders ran for president, no one in mainstream US politics was even talking about socialized healthcare. Or how before Andrew Yang, no one outside of silicon valley had ever heard of UBI. This is hyperbole, but you see what I mean.
  - machinehermit 6y ago
    I think it depends on how much you like being social too. Not interacting with people, not having a place to go, just being in the house all day is absolutely terrible for my long term well being. If my place goes full remote I would have to consider renting an office.
    - kyawzazaw 6y ago
      > Not interacting with people, not having a place to go, just being in the house all day is absolutely terrible for my long term well being. Could this just be due to a pandemic? I think in normal WFH, what you described wouldn't be much of a problem.
      - munificent 6y ago
        There's a thing I see all the time online where people massively underestimate human variance. While people have many things in common, they are all over the place when it comes to many important emotional and mental characteristics. There is no one-size-fits all for anything behavioral, not even close. If they say it's bad for their long term well-being, they very likely know exactly what they're talking about even if your own experience is very different from that.
        aggie 6y ago
        I initially read the comment the same way, but I believe they were saying that when the pandemic is over you won't be isolated, not that isolation wouldn't be bad for wellbeing.
      - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
        I'm like the parent commenter in feeling office work helps me: For me, I don't do social very well, but I still need to interact with people, I get on well with people (AFAICT) but seldom does anyone ever really want to spend leisure time with me. Work forces me to have social interactions that help my "sanity" (by which I mean: a vague hand-wavey notion of mental health). I'm "happy" day-to-day with hiding away at home; but I tend to spiral downwards as I don't get much social interaction outside of work. Banter is good medicine. For me this is a midlife thing. YMMV, and the parent is probably quite different, but that's my recent experience.
  - BurningFrog 6y ago
    For some of people, probably more than you'd expect, work is pretty much the only social contact.
    - TigeriusKirk 6y ago
      I see this comment in every one of these discussions, but finding new venues for social contact is a fairly simple adjustment to make once you accept that it's necessary.
      - BurningFrog 6y ago
        Depends on your social skills. Don't assume everyone is as gifted as you are. And even so, if half your waking time goes away as an opportunity to socialize, that's a big opportunity cost.
      - bespontovy 6y ago
        "A fairly simple adjustment"? I've been in therapy for exactly this for a year. For me, this shit has been tough. Not saying your experience isn't valid, but would you please stop generalising?
  - shougg 6y ago
    I’m happy to have the cost transferred (some parts are debateable, I need internet, a desk, and a monitor for home anyways) if it means no more commuting and no more open offices. My focus has significantly increased in the past few months.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    A fair number of people probably feel like you do. But I strongly suspect that, at least with many companies, a certain percentage of people never come back into the office except sporadically. So even for those who do return full-time, the atmosphere and work style will be changed for an indefinite period of time. I know a number of people in the process of permanently moving out of cities--in several cases to rural locations many hours away. For people with houses, the office space cost is likely less than the commuting cost. But it is indeed an issue for many in tiny city apartments.
  - the_gipsy 6y ago
    > Face to face interaction is much more high bandwidth I'll take quality over bandwidth any day.
- purple_ferret 6y ago
  The New York Times Building is nice but it's a terrible (although generally convenient) location
  - xhkkffbf 6y ago
    If you take a bus to Port Authority, it couldn't be more convenient. And I would guess that the Times Square subway stop may be the one spot where the most lines converge.
    - shougg 6y ago
      Right, it’s convenient, but Port Authority competes closely with Penn Station and Times Square for “most loathed place in New York”. Compare with Google office in Chelsea or FB office in the East Village (ish). Those are pretty nice places to walk around.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    New Yorkers love to hate Time Square but it's really not so terrible, just crowded. It's in close proximity to everything, and it looks pretty at night. And as you said, it's really easy to get to.
    - caymanjim 6y ago
      It's literally across the street from Port Authority, which is an open-air shooting gallery and homeless camp. It's not a nice area.
      - ghaff 6y ago
        Yes, the Port Authority: aka the world's worst bus station. But you go a few blocks and you're in Hell's Kitchen which I find a pretty interesting neighborhood with nice ethnic restaurants. Or walk south 10 blocks or so into Chelsea. When I'm in NYC I often stay at about 42nd and 10th out of choice even if I'm not at a Javits event. It's near things but is out of the craziness of Times Square itself.
- spyspy 6y ago
  The Times has actually been very progressive about WFH policies. Partially because they've been consolidating the number of floors they occupy at 620 8th Ave, so there's legitimately less room for everyone. But every team was designed to be remote friendly and there was very little expectation to be in the office. Some people lived in NYC and still refused to bother to come in for months at a time. Source: worked at NYT through 2019.
code4tee 6y ago
This seems to be the norm for many companies. Everyone is throwing in the towel on 2020 so far as the office goes with the goal to take a fresh look for 2021 at the end of this year. Many will likely never go back to the setup they had before. If you’re in the market for commercial office space you can probably get some killer deals moving forward.
- praiseDang 6y ago
  I remember getting downvotes for mentioning the lockdowns are going to either last 2 years or it will be a waste of effort. The benefit of science is that I was correct, the negative of the internet is that popularity rules.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
Loughla 6y ago
Meanwhile, my employer has said zero remote work once the state transitions into the next phase. They want to be "fair" to everyone, including those who have positions that cannot be performed remotely. So, you have a co-morbidity? Nope. You have no childcare suddenly? Nope. It's startling how stuck in the 1980's some people are. Just absolutely astonishing.
- coliveira 6y ago
  The reality of post-coved is that such employers will start losing people as never before. Most businesses are now transitioning to remote work as default.
- r00fus 6y ago
  Does it make sense to name & shame these bad actors?
  - Loughla 6y ago
    The issue is, I know I would be fired, and cannot afford to lose this job. There is no one hiring in the area, and we're geographically locked due to factors around my child that I don't care to get into here. So, the answer is yes, but there is no way to do that without losing my health insurance, and probably home. So that's neat.
    - zaphod12 6y ago
      No idea what you do, but a lot of companies are newly open to full-time remote employees, fwiw. Sounds like you work for jerks.
    - praiseDang 6y ago
      If you don't mind, what is your comorbidity? Are you old or obese? Or some other health condition?
    - amcoastal 6y ago
      You're not geographically locked from working remotely. Lots of places are hiring remote workers. I'd start applying immediately.
niklasd 6y ago
I've heard now from a couple of people that they've enjoyed remote work and some have already sucessfully negotiated that in future they will work part time from home. So it really seems that some of the change will be permanent.
- j0hnml 6y ago
  Same here. I don’t think the majority of folks will start working remotely permanently, but I could very well see more and more people splitting time between WFH and working from the office. If some people on a team start to do it, others on that same team will start to ask if there’s still a reason for them to still be coming into the office every day. And I think this is especially true for densely-populated areas as people realize how much time and stress are saved not having to commute into the office _every single day_.
  - danielbln 6y ago
    Before covid, being able to work from home once in a while was something of a perk. After a few months of fully remote it is now a hard requirement for me, a significant chunk of my work time has to be able to be home office, or I'm walking away.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    As someone who works at a company that is normally pretty split between offices and remote/WFH, I've seen this first hand. I don't actually mind going into the office now and then (and it's only about a 30 minute commute). But (increasingly pre-Covid), I'd go in and not run into anyone I worked with or even knew. Eventually I just gave up my desk when I had to move anyway. And pretty much stopped going in at all unless I had a specific meeting.
- conanbatt 6y ago
  I've worked remotely most my life but as a new parent...I really want an office.
  - untog 6y ago
elicash 6y ago
Here's a photo of the newsroom so you can get a sense of the degree to which they work in proximity: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/12/18/opinion/sunday/18pubed/18pubed-superJumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/12/18/opinion/sunday/18...
- jmalicki 6y ago
  So unlike a modern tech company, they sit farther apart and at least have barriers between their desks?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - gruez 6y ago
    agree on the bigger desks bit, but what difference does a 12" tall barrier make?
    - Rebelgecko 6y ago
      In addition to the privacy aspect, it probably helps reduce the travel distance of any particles that one exhales
      - ardy42 6y ago
        > In addition to the privacy aspect, it probably helps reduce the travel distance of any particles that one exhales Maybe a little bit, but I'd think you'd want barriers that are at least head-height if you wanted to to that.
    - dannyw 6y ago
      COVID? Not a lot. But normal office work? Just a little bit of privacy. Enough so that casually glancing at what someone else is doing is discouraged. But also, not enough so that communication is too discouraged.
    - 6y ago
jb775 6y ago
Not a good time to own commercial office real estate. Office rental rates will likely race to the bottom as more and more businesses decide to stay remote.
purple_ferret 6y ago
I wonder how good their remote security is. I imagine every single government regularly tries to hack them.
- xhkkffbf 6y ago
  Yeah, but now the governments have to manage multiple platforms. Some are writing on Android tablets, others are using Windoze. There's probably some joker still running a TRS-80 Model 100, the former favorite of the sportswriters everywhere.
- ryanSrich 6y ago
  Can you elaborate on what you mean by remote security? - Cloud security? - Controlling physical safeguards remotely? - Something different?
  - purple_ferret 6y ago
    physical security of remote devices
superfamicom 6y ago
Companies who were the butt-in-seat type most likely didn't have a sudden realization that WFH and telecommuting was productive, most likely they want you back in the office but they just don't want to do the required work to transform the office into a safe environment.
TACIXAT 6y ago
I really hate how this is being dragged out in month sized increments. My partner and I went to Austin for a month and a half and now are back in the Bay Area to hear the next decision on her office reopening. 2021 is 6 months away. That's not enough to move somewhere else that would make the pain of moving worth it.
- ryanSrich 6y ago
  I say this with all seriousness, and I understand some people don't have this luxury, but if you do, please quit. These companies will continue to punish their employees if they are allowed to do so. The only way to create change is through leverage. This goes for anyone facing this decision. If you have the ability to quit, you should absolutely do it. Take a year off, find another company that doesn't support archaic business practices, start your own business. You owe it to the people that don't have that option. The people that are forced into commuting. The people that are forced into depression because they have to continue to pay their massive rents in absurdly expensive cities. The people that have incredibly poor mental health because they're pulled into gross office politics that pit employees against each other. We must force these companies to change their bad behavior.
  - adjkant 6y ago
    The things you describe are far from the charged language you're using, and also much of your description may not apply at all to the post you responded to. How does someone quitting their job because their work is playing a global pandemic step by step help any of the things you listed? This approach is a very logical decision and honestly complaining this loudly about that step is incredibly privileged in a time where many are facing layoffs and pay cuts. Oh no! Your company has kept paying you, you're working remote for a job you were hired for in person, but you can't get a guarantee of when you'll be back in the office because of a pandemic? The horror! That's not to take a "be happy with what you get and lick the boot" approach at all, but many companies have quite nice policies in regards to how COVID-19 is being handled. Your issue appears to be with non-remote work in general, but you also make it seem like high COL cities are the only option. If someone is not able to be mentally stable working in the bay or Seattle or NYC etc, there are plenty of small cities with tech jobs that will pay good money with low COL and a short commute they can go work at. They absolutely should quit, for themselves. That was true before any pandemic. > The people that have incredibly poor mental health because they're pulled into gross office politics that pit employees against each other. Again, where was any of this mentioned? It sounds like you are projecting the issues of some companies. These companies should absolutely change their behavior, but again, this was true before the pandemic. I'm not sure how someone quitting will tech them a lesson either as those places probably already have high turnover and they won't have much issue hiring n the current market. You say you create it through leverage, but I see no such leverage being developed in quitting even if all of this was true.
fierarul 6y ago
Everybody talks about online mobs and trolls but what happens when the entire workforce is online? How vicious can one (mob) be against another co-worker when you can't phisically see him to calibrate what's really going on and the reaction to what you do?
- dannyw 6y ago
  Well hopefully you don't have vicious mobs at your workplace.
  - tsm 6y ago
    My generally-pretty-friendly workplace has recently had quite a bit of viciousness about: a) bbatsov's response to calls for Rubocop to be renamed b) The use of "master" as the canonical branch's name in our main git repo c) Linking to xkcd #75 (which uses the c-word) (the link was provided in response to a thread about mixed levels of profanity)
    - onetimeonly____ 6y ago
      When bikeshedding meets virtue signaling you know you're in for a good ride
      - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
        I have to admit I have a weakness for reading but not participating in these shit-hit-the-fan github threads. So many people arguing over something so trivial.
    - Consultant32452 6y ago
      It sounds like your workplace has jumped the shark. I hope you're able to find another soon.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    I don't right now, but I certainly have people who dislike each other for some reason or another, and I'm worried about what that looks like when they all start going 3, 6, 9 months without seeing each other.
momokoko 6y ago
Get ready for a wave of outsourcing of everything from tech to bpo like the US labor market has never seen in the coming 6 months. Once employers go through the initial pain of setting up remote work, the more than 50%(and sometimes as much as 80%) cost savings will be irresistible. If you are not in government, healthcare, or other industry that does not have legal requirements to maintain a US presence and you work in an office, I would be saving every penny and working on a career change ASAP.
- protonimitate 6y ago
  Ah yes, the outsourcing FUD train is ramping up. Remote work has been a possibility for employers for a few decades now. Nothing has drastically changed since the new wave of WFH to change that, other than its more widely discussed. > 50%(and sometimes as much as 80%) is there a source for this? I'm not convinced that the only reason "everything gets outsourced" hasn't happened yet is because employers are lazy.
  - Consultant32452 6y ago
    I have an anecdata. I work for a fortune 500 financial company. I am personally acquainted with someone who transitioned from our offshore (India) team to the US. His salary went up 3x doing the same job with the same title, and all he changed was geography.
    - mjburgess 6y ago
      He also changed his cost of living.
      - ajmurmann 6y ago
        Salaries aren't based on cost of living, but on cost of labor. Those are related, but not tightly.
  - robbyking 6y ago
    I worked as what would now be considered a full stack developer during the dotcom bubble (and bust), and during that time thousands of engineering jobs were outsourced overseas. There were a couple main issues that I'd be curious to see if modern development teams would be able to overcome: * The communication lag. When developers are working opposite hours from the rest of the team, small issues can take a day or longer to resolve. Even simple stuff like "can I cut the branch or is your feature not QA ready?" * Rigidity. Specs are almost always incomplete (or inaccurate) in one way or another, and remote developers who aren't familiar with a company's product and goals have a difficult time distinguishing between what a product owners wants and what they ask for. These aren't insurmountable issues, but they were the two things that really slowed things down for the teams I worked with.
irrational 6y ago
Same with my company. People who must be on campus can go back to the offices by the Fall, but everyone else - probably not until next year.
SupriseAnxiety 6y ago
“The End Of Times is Neigh” Times New Roman Times Magazine Times Square Hmm.
zoolander2 6y ago
how much of these permanent WFH will impact Uber's revenue? I swear work commuting is a big chunk of their revenue
- perl4ever 6y ago
  I don't understand how people could possibly do that; apart from the cost, my experience with Uber and Lyft was awfully stressful. Something new and unsettling would happen in 5/6 rides - I didn't particularly feel like it was worse on average than a regular cab, but I didn't feel secure either. Drivers taking their hands off the steering wheel, fumbling and accidentally hitting the SOS button, tailgating...I only used them when I absolutely had no alternative.
staysaasy 6y ago
Remote work is such a fascinating leadership challenge given how dogmatic both sides have become. The tone of the debate is verging on a religious argument (on both sides), but it's all centered on work-related topics which typically don't engender such extreme responses.
- k__ 6y ago
  "religious argument (on both sides)" Care to elaborate?
  - staysaasy 6y ago
    Yup for sure. I (generally) see two camps on the remote work debate: - WFH / unlimited remote work is the future, forcing people to come into the office is oppressive. - Remote work harms culture and collaboration, we all need to get back into the office ASAP as we can't be effective remotely. Overall I've just been surprised at the intensity of the remote work discussion, and surprised that we don't see deeper analyses on cost of rent, employee retention rates, productivity across jobs, environmental effects of less commuters, etc. My point was simply that as this topic elicits strong feelings, it presents an interesting leadership challenge.
    - AdrianB1 6y ago
      Is it really forcing? If the work contract says "we pay you $X/month (or hour) to come to the office and do this work" is this oppressive? I work from home since mid 2007, I know the benefits and I know the price. I do go to the office from time to time without anyone forcing me to do it. Without physical presence there is a significant negative impact for employees, I think the best of the 2 worlds is 1-2 days per week (organized in any way, even 3 days every 2 weeks) when each team is in the office, while teams will be in and out on rotations, so you do save on office space and rent, have a significant portion of WFH but still have the teams meeting regularly. Even with video conference, it's not the same as passing by on the hallway, at the water cooler and having a 30 seconds chat with random people in your department.
deegles 6y ago
I'm in the worst of both worlds right now. Unable to commit to fully remote but still having to pay to live close enough to commute. I think a lot of people are stuck like this until their companies decide on a long-term solution.
jkaptur 6y ago
Ask HN: do you make any distinction between "working from home" and "working from home during a pandemic"? I see a lot of people arguing that WFH is the new normal, citing long reopening timelines, their own preferences, increased productivity, Twitter's policy change, etc. But just a few years ago, IBM and Yahoo radically curtailed their WFH policies, and they made (what seemed to me to be) pretty credible arguments that the policies were being abused (WFH employees not getting on VPN for days at a time, for example). I wonder if what we've seen since March isn't really "working from home", it's "working from home during a pandemic", and there just isn't anything else to do (with the critical exceptions of housework and child, elder, and sick-person care). The current situation has actually been good/neutral for my personal productivity, since I'm more able to easily chat with my colleagues across the country... but why exactly is that easier now? Are they more available because they're working from home, or because they're stuck at home?
- riffraff 6y ago
  I am unsure this is the answer you were looking for but I do make a distinction. I've been working remotely for 10+ years, and the 3 months of lockdown were the worst I've had, for the simple reason that _my family was locked in with me_. I am sure remote working is not for everyone, but I like it. Yet, I live in an apartment, my kids can't go out to play and can't be expected to behave all the time, me and my spouse have to sync up call times so one of us can be on top of the occasional emergency etc. We're lucky compared to people who lost their job or had reduced income, but I'm not looking forward to more work-during-lockdown.
  - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
    This seems to be the primary issue I see at work right now. People without kids are loving wfh and people with kids are struggling with distraction causing some of them to come back to the office just to work remotely with the rest of us.
    - ordinaryperson 6y ago
      I do not have kids and do not love WFH during lockdown. Simple things that would be a 30-second conversation in the office are now 30-minute Zoom meetings. Slack noise -- already a distractor to begin with -- has gone up 10x. If I have X hours at home or in the office I know exactly what limited amount of time I have to accomplish a task and can more easily allocate chunks of that time to specific needs. In lockdown it's like living/working in a casino with no clocks and no sense of time or progress and it's harder to do time management (IMHO). If I need something from someone in the office I can walk over and ask, virtually people have the ability to ignore you for days on end without consequence. I have no doubt that some people's personalities prefer this style of interaction but I hate WFH like this (in lockdown) or this much (months on end vs once a week) despite having no kids.
ineedasername 6y ago
My workplace is pushing aggressively to eliminate remote work, with 50% off remote work in the next couple of weeks. I'm in one of the biggest hotspots, and as the last few months have shown, a significant amount of work has been perfectly viable from home. But before this shutdown, my workplace had a hard ban on WFH. It's the "the workers will be lazy if they're not in the office" mentality. As though you couldn't be lazy at work as well.
k__ 6y ago
Next step in work evolution, I'd say. Now we just have to increase entrepreneurship by some orders of magnitude and things will scale like never before.
ubermonkey 6y ago
A cycling pal of mine is an in-house lawyer at a big oil company here in Houston. They were told a couple weeks ago that there were no plans to go back to the office until at LEAST 2021. All the work is being done just fine.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  Working for a unionized public sector employer, they are nevertheless doing the charade of "well, we'll go back next month, oops, maybe not" over and over. So I guess it's not just the heartless capitalists. Most recently, a mid-July date was mooted for returning to the office, but a few days later it was announced that the union-negotiated work-from-home arrangements have been extended to October. It's ambiguous whether there will be a transition period, or if really nobody wants to go in. But nobody seems to want to push things out as far as next year all at once. Some employees feel threatened and say they're not going back until there's a vaccine. I'm just kind of bemused for the moment, because I'm almost 100% sure that as things get worse, there is no chance of following through on the plans, yet the authorities keep making them, and then pushing the date out a little more. I'm fine with going back to the office as soon as other people are and management can explain why we should. But I'm not sure that's happening in the forseeable future. Every day we get an email from our dear leader talking about going back as though we need to keep our hopes up, yet we are also told how well we are doing working remote. So...why return?
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  Big telco company is also telling their employees not to expect to return to offices until at least 2021, and to expect maybe even two years of working remotely before returning to work is reconsidered.
aphextron 6y ago
I've been trying recently to wrap my head around what life is going to be like from here on out. Where do we go? Things will never be the same again. Remote work will now be completely normal, that's for sure. But how do we get back to living our lives? Fundamental assumptions I've had about the things I've wanted to do in life are now basically no longer an option. Will Silicon Valley no longer really be a "thing" anymore with physical meetups, hackathons, conferences etc. being a thing of the past? Surely at some point we have to reckon with this, rather than just hunkering down in our caves.
- raz32dust 6y ago
  This is not forever. We will likely have a vaccine at some point, may be within a year or two. We will also keep getting better at treating it over time - in identifying susceptible populations, developing cures, and hospitals being better equipped.
  - geomark 6y ago
    Near term availability of a vaccine seems like wishful thinking. The data is noisy, but some of it indicates antibodies to the virus are short lived. That would implicate the usefulness of a vaccine. And that's if one can be developed, a serious question given the lack of success in developing vaccines for other human coronaviruses.
- radomysisky 6y ago
  There is no going back. The "normalcy" won't return to big western cities. Take a few, e.g. NY, London, Seattle, SF, Paris. Each of these cities were already crippled with homelessness. They're all so expensive that even a six figure income is barely enough to scrape by. They were all decimated by COVID. And now they've all been thrown into weeks of civil unrest, further exacerbated by local leadership stoking, rather than extinguishing the fire.
maa5444 6y ago
productivity was high only because there was nothing else to do during the lockdown... use your brain
holidayacct 6y ago
That's good for their sysadmins and softwar engineers. They love to raise anxiety levels and create ambiguity interpeters (people who start believing there is meaning in people and objects around them) in NYC. Yes, this is a real thing... Don't ask for details, the short story is someone discovered they could exploit people with genes for paranoid schizophrenia to make them anxious and afraid to the point they look for meaning in things around them.

474 points by danso 6y ago

I've always assumed most writers for these papers don't actually come into the office anyway. What's different? They're extending that to full time staff as well?

cbron 6y ago
Yes. I worked for a major newspaper and would guess that all the people in editorial make up less than 50% of the staff. You have business, accounting, tech, delivery, support, sales, security etc...

OldFatCactus 6y ago

A friend that works there told me that they have been polling their employees for strong feelings around going permanently remote

levesque 6y ago
I have strong feelings against permanently remote. I feel like this hasn't been fully thought out. Face to face interaction is much more high bandwidth than remote video calls (in other words, it conveys more information). Not to mention that this transfers the costs of office space to the employee, maybe this is why all employers are quick to jump on this bandwagon. Curious to see where this new trend will fall in 2021.
- flak48 6y ago
  Many companies have been reimbursing home internet and electricity bills since March. Mine even paid for an chair, desk, monitor and lamp of my choosing for my home office. I hope this becomes the norm if remote becomes mainstream
  - jrockway 6y ago
    This is probably not the norm. I have a friend that works in a call center, and they've been working remotely during the pandemic. Her company won't pay for anything; she uses her personal laptop, personal consumer-grade Internet connection, etc. The consumer ISP doesn't provide their stated upload and download ever, and the ISP charged her $100 to come out and investigate the issue without fixing it. (You run a speedtest to their speedtest node, and it doesn't live up to what is advertised. How can the ISP turn around and charge the customer for telling them that!?) The company won't pay for the debugging. When the Internet dies, she's told "welp, you're done for today" and doesn't get paid. (She also works 4 days x 10 hours, so one bad day costs more than the average 5 x 8 employee.) It is kind of a nightmare making every employee responsible for being the IT director for free. I imagine that most companies are not going to see good results here. (It's good when it's good, but what do you do when it gets bad? Nobody has a plan.) All in all, consumer ISPs seem to be doing pretty good with the pandemic, but I worry that it's mostly a string of good luck rather than solid infrastructure investments.
    - heelix 6y ago
      Commercial internet does not cost a lot of money. I do a cable modem and while my speeds are a bit slower than the residential option (for the same money) I don't have bandwidth caps or 'talk to the hand' when an issue happens. Night and day between the two experiences. Worth looking into.
      - jrockway 6y ago
        I agree. The problem is cost (higher, not being paid for by the company), and rewarding the ISP for their poor service by paying them more. My philosophy is that you just have to accept that we messed up by letting one company monopolize the space, and pay them more for their better service... but not many people agree with me.
    - Spooky23 6y ago
      > You run a speedtest to their speedtest node, and it doesn't live up to what is advertised. How can the ISP turn around and charge the customer for telling them that!? Easy, the CPE equipment is garbage or placed in a shitty location. I'm a nerd, but my ancient wifi setup started to struggle with the entire family working and schooling all day. I upgraded to a Ubiquiti solution with multiple antennas and life is good.
- wahlrus 6y ago
  I don't think you're wrong. There will certainly be some sort of correction of the bullish remote-work spirit. But the 2020 lockdowns will fundamentally increase the amount of remote work permanently to at least some degree. Like how before Bernie Sanders ran for president, no one in mainstream US politics was even talking about socialized healthcare. Or how before Andrew Yang, no one outside of silicon valley had ever heard of UBI. This is hyperbole, but you see what I mean.
- machinehermit 6y ago
  I think it depends on how much you like being social too. Not interacting with people, not having a place to go, just being in the house all day is absolutely terrible for my long term well being. If my place goes full remote I would have to consider renting an office.
  - kyawzazaw 6y ago
    > Not interacting with people, not having a place to go, just being in the house all day is absolutely terrible for my long term well being. Could this just be due to a pandemic? I think in normal WFH, what you described wouldn't be much of a problem.
    - munificent 6y ago
      There's a thing I see all the time online where people massively underestimate human variance. While people have many things in common, they are all over the place when it comes to many important emotional and mental characteristics. There is no one-size-fits all for anything behavioral, not even close. If they say it's bad for their long term well-being, they very likely know exactly what they're talking about even if your own experience is very different from that.
      - aggie 6y ago
        I initially read the comment the same way, but I believe they were saying that when the pandemic is over you won't be isolated, not that isolation wouldn't be bad for wellbeing.
    - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
      I'm like the parent commenter in feeling office work helps me: For me, I don't do social very well, but I still need to interact with people, I get on well with people (AFAICT) but seldom does anyone ever really want to spend leisure time with me. Work forces me to have social interactions that help my "sanity" (by which I mean: a vague hand-wavey notion of mental health). I'm "happy" day-to-day with hiding away at home; but I tend to spiral downwards as I don't get much social interaction outside of work. Banter is good medicine. For me this is a midlife thing. YMMV, and the parent is probably quite different, but that's my recent experience.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  For some of people, probably more than you'd expect, work is pretty much the only social contact.
  - TigeriusKirk 6y ago
    I see this comment in every one of these discussions, but finding new venues for social contact is a fairly simple adjustment to make once you accept that it's necessary.
    - BurningFrog 6y ago
      Depends on your social skills. Don't assume everyone is as gifted as you are. And even so, if half your waking time goes away as an opportunity to socialize, that's a big opportunity cost.
    - bespontovy 6y ago
      "A fairly simple adjustment"? I've been in therapy for exactly this for a year. For me, this shit has been tough. Not saying your experience isn't valid, but would you please stop generalising?
- shougg 6y ago
  I’m happy to have the cost transferred (some parts are debateable, I need internet, a desk, and a monitor for home anyways) if it means no more commuting and no more open offices. My focus has significantly increased in the past few months.
- ghaff 6y ago
  A fair number of people probably feel like you do. But I strongly suspect that, at least with many companies, a certain percentage of people never come back into the office except sporadically. So even for those who do return full-time, the atmosphere and work style will be changed for an indefinite period of time. I know a number of people in the process of permanently moving out of cities--in several cases to rural locations many hours away. For people with houses, the office space cost is likely less than the commuting cost. But it is indeed an issue for many in tiny city apartments.
- the_gipsy 6y ago
  > Face to face interaction is much more high bandwidth I'll take quality over bandwidth any day.
purple_ferret 6y ago
The New York Times Building is nice but it's a terrible (although generally convenient) location
- xhkkffbf 6y ago
  If you take a bus to Port Authority, it couldn't be more convenient. And I would guess that the Times Square subway stop may be the one spot where the most lines converge.
  - shougg 6y ago
    Right, it’s convenient, but Port Authority competes closely with Penn Station and Times Square for “most loathed place in New York”. Compare with Google office in Chelsea or FB office in the East Village (ish). Those are pretty nice places to walk around.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  New Yorkers love to hate Time Square but it's really not so terrible, just crowded. It's in close proximity to everything, and it looks pretty at night. And as you said, it's really easy to get to.
  - caymanjim 6y ago
    It's literally across the street from Port Authority, which is an open-air shooting gallery and homeless camp. It's not a nice area.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Yes, the Port Authority: aka the world's worst bus station. But you go a few blocks and you're in Hell's Kitchen which I find a pretty interesting neighborhood with nice ethnic restaurants. Or walk south 10 blocks or so into Chelsea. When I'm in NYC I often stay at about 42nd and 10th out of choice even if I'm not at a Javits event. It's near things but is out of the craziness of Times Square itself.
spyspy 6y ago
The Times has actually been very progressive about WFH policies. Partially because they've been consolidating the number of floors they occupy at 620 8th Ave, so there's legitimately less room for everyone. But every team was designed to be remote friendly and there was very little expectation to be in the office. Some people lived in NYC and still refused to bother to come in for months at a time. Source: worked at NYT through 2019.

code4tee 6y ago

This seems to be the norm for many companies. Everyone is throwing in the towel on 2020 so far as the office goes with the goal to take a fresh look for 2021 at the end of this year. Many will likely never go back to the setup they had before. If you’re in the market for commercial office space you can probably get some killer deals moving forward.

praiseDang 6y ago
I remember getting downvotes for mentioning the lockdowns are going to either last 2 years or it will be a waste of effort. The benefit of science is that I was correct, the negative of the internet is that popularity rules.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

Loughla 6y ago

Meanwhile, my employer has said zero remote work once the state transitions into the next phase. They want to be "fair" to everyone, including those who have positions that cannot be performed remotely. So, you have a co-morbidity? Nope. You have no childcare suddenly? Nope. It's startling how stuck in the 1980's some people are. Just absolutely astonishing.

coliveira 6y ago
The reality of post-coved is that such employers will start losing people as never before. Most businesses are now transitioning to remote work as default.
r00fus 6y ago
Does it make sense to name & shame these bad actors?
- Loughla 6y ago
  The issue is, I know I would be fired, and cannot afford to lose this job. There is no one hiring in the area, and we're geographically locked due to factors around my child that I don't care to get into here. So, the answer is yes, but there is no way to do that without losing my health insurance, and probably home. So that's neat.
  - zaphod12 6y ago
    No idea what you do, but a lot of companies are newly open to full-time remote employees, fwiw. Sounds like you work for jerks.
  - praiseDang 6y ago
    If you don't mind, what is your comorbidity? Are you old or obese? Or some other health condition?
  - amcoastal 6y ago
    You're not geographically locked from working remotely. Lots of places are hiring remote workers. I'd start applying immediately.

niklasd 6y ago

I've heard now from a couple of people that they've enjoyed remote work and some have already sucessfully negotiated that in future they will work part time from home. So it really seems that some of the change will be permanent.

j0hnml 6y ago
Same here. I don’t think the majority of folks will start working remotely permanently, but I could very well see more and more people splitting time between WFH and working from the office. If some people on a team start to do it, others on that same team will start to ask if there’s still a reason for them to still be coming into the office every day. And I think this is especially true for densely-populated areas as people realize how much time and stress are saved not having to commute into the office _every single day_.
- danielbln 6y ago
  Before covid, being able to work from home once in a while was something of a perk. After a few months of fully remote it is now a hard requirement for me, a significant chunk of my work time has to be able to be home office, or I'm walking away.
- ghaff 6y ago
  As someone who works at a company that is normally pretty split between offices and remote/WFH, I've seen this first hand. I don't actually mind going into the office now and then (and it's only about a 30 minute commute). But (increasingly pre-Covid), I'd go in and not run into anyone I worked with or even knew. Eventually I just gave up my desk when I had to move anyway. And pretty much stopped going in at all unless I had a specific meeting.
conanbatt 6y ago
I've worked remotely most my life but as a new parent...I really want an office.
- untog 6y ago

elicash 6y ago

Here's a photo of the newsroom so you can get a sense of the degree to which they work in proximity: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/12/18/opinion/sunday/18pubed/18pubed-superJumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/12/18/opinion/sunday/18...

jmalicki 6y ago
So unlike a modern tech company, they sit farther apart and at least have barriers between their desks?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- gruez 6y ago
  agree on the bigger desks bit, but what difference does a 12" tall barrier make?
  - Rebelgecko 6y ago
    In addition to the privacy aspect, it probably helps reduce the travel distance of any particles that one exhales
    - ardy42 6y ago
      > In addition to the privacy aspect, it probably helps reduce the travel distance of any particles that one exhales Maybe a little bit, but I'd think you'd want barriers that are at least head-height if you wanted to to that.
  - dannyw 6y ago
    COVID? Not a lot. But normal office work? Just a little bit of privacy. Enough so that casually glancing at what someone else is doing is discouraged. But also, not enough so that communication is too discouraged.
  - 6y ago

jb775 6y ago

Not a good time to own commercial office real estate. Office rental rates will likely race to the bottom as more and more businesses decide to stay remote.

purple_ferret 6y ago

I wonder how good their remote security is. I imagine every single government regularly tries to hack them.

xhkkffbf 6y ago
Yeah, but now the governments have to manage multiple platforms. Some are writing on Android tablets, others are using Windoze. There's probably some joker still running a TRS-80 Model 100, the former favorite of the sportswriters everywhere.
ryanSrich 6y ago
Can you elaborate on what you mean by remote security? - Cloud security? - Controlling physical safeguards remotely? - Something different?
- purple_ferret 6y ago
  physical security of remote devices

superfamicom 6y ago

Companies who were the butt-in-seat type most likely didn't have a sudden realization that WFH and telecommuting was productive, most likely they want you back in the office but they just don't want to do the required work to transform the office into a safe environment.

TACIXAT 6y ago

I really hate how this is being dragged out in month sized increments. My partner and I went to Austin for a month and a half and now are back in the Bay Area to hear the next decision on her office reopening. 2021 is 6 months away. That's not enough to move somewhere else that would make the pain of moving worth it.

ryanSrich 6y ago
I say this with all seriousness, and I understand some people don't have this luxury, but if you do, please quit. These companies will continue to punish their employees if they are allowed to do so. The only way to create change is through leverage. This goes for anyone facing this decision. If you have the ability to quit, you should absolutely do it. Take a year off, find another company that doesn't support archaic business practices, start your own business. You owe it to the people that don't have that option. The people that are forced into commuting. The people that are forced into depression because they have to continue to pay their massive rents in absurdly expensive cities. The people that have incredibly poor mental health because they're pulled into gross office politics that pit employees against each other. We must force these companies to change their bad behavior.
- adjkant 6y ago
  The things you describe are far from the charged language you're using, and also much of your description may not apply at all to the post you responded to. How does someone quitting their job because their work is playing a global pandemic step by step help any of the things you listed? This approach is a very logical decision and honestly complaining this loudly about that step is incredibly privileged in a time where many are facing layoffs and pay cuts. Oh no! Your company has kept paying you, you're working remote for a job you were hired for in person, but you can't get a guarantee of when you'll be back in the office because of a pandemic? The horror! That's not to take a "be happy with what you get and lick the boot" approach at all, but many companies have quite nice policies in regards to how COVID-19 is being handled. Your issue appears to be with non-remote work in general, but you also make it seem like high COL cities are the only option. If someone is not able to be mentally stable working in the bay or Seattle or NYC etc, there are plenty of small cities with tech jobs that will pay good money with low COL and a short commute they can go work at. They absolutely should quit, for themselves. That was true before any pandemic. > The people that have incredibly poor mental health because they're pulled into gross office politics that pit employees against each other. Again, where was any of this mentioned? It sounds like you are projecting the issues of some companies. These companies should absolutely change their behavior, but again, this was true before the pandemic. I'm not sure how someone quitting will tech them a lesson either as those places probably already have high turnover and they won't have much issue hiring n the current market. You say you create it through leverage, but I see no such leverage being developed in quitting even if all of this was true.

fierarul 6y ago

Everybody talks about online mobs and trolls but what happens when the entire workforce is online? How vicious can one (mob) be against another co-worker when you can't phisically see him to calibrate what's really going on and the reaction to what you do?

dannyw 6y ago
Well hopefully you don't have vicious mobs at your workplace.
- tsm 6y ago
  My generally-pretty-friendly workplace has recently had quite a bit of viciousness about: a) bbatsov's response to calls for Rubocop to be renamed b) The use of "master" as the canonical branch's name in our main git repo c) Linking to xkcd #75 (which uses the c-word) (the link was provided in response to a thread about mixed levels of profanity)
  - onetimeonly____ 6y ago
    When bikeshedding meets virtue signaling you know you're in for a good ride
    - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
      I have to admit I have a weakness for reading but not participating in these shit-hit-the-fan github threads. So many people arguing over something so trivial.
  - Consultant32452 6y ago
    It sounds like your workplace has jumped the shark. I hope you're able to find another soon.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  I don't right now, but I certainly have people who dislike each other for some reason or another, and I'm worried about what that looks like when they all start going 3, 6, 9 months without seeing each other.

momokoko 6y ago

Get ready for a wave of outsourcing of everything from tech to bpo like the US labor market has never seen in the coming 6 months. Once employers go through the initial pain of setting up remote work, the more than 50%(and sometimes as much as 80%) cost savings will be irresistible. If you are not in government, healthcare, or other industry that does not have legal requirements to maintain a US presence and you work in an office, I would be saving every penny and working on a career change ASAP.

protonimitate 6y ago
Ah yes, the outsourcing FUD train is ramping up. Remote work has been a possibility for employers for a few decades now. Nothing has drastically changed since the new wave of WFH to change that, other than its more widely discussed. > 50%(and sometimes as much as 80%) is there a source for this? I'm not convinced that the only reason "everything gets outsourced" hasn't happened yet is because employers are lazy.
- Consultant32452 6y ago
  I have an anecdata. I work for a fortune 500 financial company. I am personally acquainted with someone who transitioned from our offshore (India) team to the US. His salary went up 3x doing the same job with the same title, and all he changed was geography.
  - mjburgess 6y ago
    He also changed his cost of living.
    - ajmurmann 6y ago
      Salaries aren't based on cost of living, but on cost of labor. Those are related, but not tightly.
- robbyking 6y ago
  I worked as what would now be considered a full stack developer during the dotcom bubble (and bust), and during that time thousands of engineering jobs were outsourced overseas. There were a couple main issues that I'd be curious to see if modern development teams would be able to overcome: * The communication lag. When developers are working opposite hours from the rest of the team, small issues can take a day or longer to resolve. Even simple stuff like "can I cut the branch or is your feature not QA ready?" * Rigidity. Specs are almost always incomplete (or inaccurate) in one way or another, and remote developers who aren't familiar with a company's product and goals have a difficult time distinguishing between what a product owners wants and what they ask for. These aren't insurmountable issues, but they were the two things that really slowed things down for the teams I worked with.

irrational 6y ago

Same with my company. People who must be on campus can go back to the offices by the Fall, but everyone else - probably not until next year.

SupriseAnxiety 6y ago

“The End Of Times is Neigh” Times New Roman Times Magazine Times Square Hmm.

zoolander2 6y ago

how much of these permanent WFH will impact Uber's revenue? I swear work commuting is a big chunk of their revenue

perl4ever 6y ago
I don't understand how people could possibly do that; apart from the cost, my experience with Uber and Lyft was awfully stressful. Something new and unsettling would happen in 5/6 rides - I didn't particularly feel like it was worse on average than a regular cab, but I didn't feel secure either. Drivers taking their hands off the steering wheel, fumbling and accidentally hitting the SOS button, tailgating...I only used them when I absolutely had no alternative.

staysaasy 6y ago

Remote work is such a fascinating leadership challenge given how dogmatic both sides have become. The tone of the debate is verging on a religious argument (on both sides), but it's all centered on work-related topics which typically don't engender such extreme responses.

k__ 6y ago
"religious argument (on both sides)" Care to elaborate?
- staysaasy 6y ago
  Yup for sure. I (generally) see two camps on the remote work debate: - WFH / unlimited remote work is the future, forcing people to come into the office is oppressive. - Remote work harms culture and collaboration, we all need to get back into the office ASAP as we can't be effective remotely. Overall I've just been surprised at the intensity of the remote work discussion, and surprised that we don't see deeper analyses on cost of rent, employee retention rates, productivity across jobs, environmental effects of less commuters, etc. My point was simply that as this topic elicits strong feelings, it presents an interesting leadership challenge.
  - AdrianB1 6y ago
    Is it really forcing? If the work contract says "we pay you $X/month (or hour) to come to the office and do this work" is this oppressive? I work from home since mid 2007, I know the benefits and I know the price. I do go to the office from time to time without anyone forcing me to do it. Without physical presence there is a significant negative impact for employees, I think the best of the 2 worlds is 1-2 days per week (organized in any way, even 3 days every 2 weeks) when each team is in the office, while teams will be in and out on rotations, so you do save on office space and rent, have a significant portion of WFH but still have the teams meeting regularly. Even with video conference, it's not the same as passing by on the hallway, at the water cooler and having a 30 seconds chat with random people in your department.

deegles 6y ago

I'm in the worst of both worlds right now. Unable to commit to fully remote but still having to pay to live close enough to commute. I think a lot of people are stuck like this until their companies decide on a long-term solution.

jkaptur 6y ago

Ask HN: do you make any distinction between "working from home" and "working from home during a pandemic"? I see a lot of people arguing that WFH is the new normal, citing long reopening timelines, their own preferences, increased productivity, Twitter's policy change, etc. But just a few years ago, IBM and Yahoo radically curtailed their WFH policies, and they made (what seemed to me to be) pretty credible arguments that the policies were being abused (WFH employees not getting on VPN for days at a time, for example). I wonder if what we've seen since March isn't really "working from home", it's "working from home during a pandemic", and there just isn't anything else to do (with the critical exceptions of housework and child, elder, and sick-person care). The current situation has actually been good/neutral for my personal productivity, since I'm more able to easily chat with my colleagues across the country... but why exactly is that easier now? Are they more available because they're working from home, or because they're stuck at home?

riffraff 6y ago
I am unsure this is the answer you were looking for but I do make a distinction. I've been working remotely for 10+ years, and the 3 months of lockdown were the worst I've had, for the simple reason that _my family was locked in with me_. I am sure remote working is not for everyone, but I like it. Yet, I live in an apartment, my kids can't go out to play and can't be expected to behave all the time, me and my spouse have to sync up call times so one of us can be on top of the occasional emergency etc. We're lucky compared to people who lost their job or had reduced income, but I'm not looking forward to more work-during-lockdown.
- Polylactic_acid 6y ago
  This seems to be the primary issue I see at work right now. People without kids are loving wfh and people with kids are struggling with distraction causing some of them to come back to the office just to work remotely with the rest of us.
  - ordinaryperson 6y ago
    I do not have kids and do not love WFH during lockdown. Simple things that would be a 30-second conversation in the office are now 30-minute Zoom meetings. Slack noise -- already a distractor to begin with -- has gone up 10x. If I have X hours at home or in the office I know exactly what limited amount of time I have to accomplish a task and can more easily allocate chunks of that time to specific needs. In lockdown it's like living/working in a casino with no clocks and no sense of time or progress and it's harder to do time management (IMHO). If I need something from someone in the office I can walk over and ask, virtually people have the ability to ignore you for days on end without consequence. I have no doubt that some people's personalities prefer this style of interaction but I hate WFH like this (in lockdown) or this much (months on end vs once a week) despite having no kids.

ineedasername 6y ago

My workplace is pushing aggressively to eliminate remote work, with 50% off remote work in the next couple of weeks. I'm in one of the biggest hotspots, and as the last few months have shown, a significant amount of work has been perfectly viable from home. But before this shutdown, my workplace had a hard ban on WFH. It's the "the workers will be lazy if they're not in the office" mentality. As though you couldn't be lazy at work as well.

k__ 6y ago

Next step in work evolution, I'd say. Now we just have to increase entrepreneurship by some orders of magnitude and things will scale like never before.

ubermonkey 6y ago

A cycling pal of mine is an in-house lawyer at a big oil company here in Houston. They were told a couple weeks ago that there were no plans to go back to the office until at LEAST 2021. All the work is being done just fine.

perl4ever 6y ago
Working for a unionized public sector employer, they are nevertheless doing the charade of "well, we'll go back next month, oops, maybe not" over and over. So I guess it's not just the heartless capitalists. Most recently, a mid-July date was mooted for returning to the office, but a few days later it was announced that the union-negotiated work-from-home arrangements have been extended to October. It's ambiguous whether there will be a transition period, or if really nobody wants to go in. But nobody seems to want to push things out as far as next year all at once. Some employees feel threatened and say they're not going back until there's a vaccine. I'm just kind of bemused for the moment, because I'm almost 100% sure that as things get worse, there is no chance of following through on the plans, yet the authorities keep making them, and then pushing the date out a little more. I'm fine with going back to the office as soon as other people are and management can explain why we should. But I'm not sure that's happening in the forseeable future. Every day we get an email from our dear leader talking about going back as though we need to keep our hopes up, yet we are also told how well we are doing working remote. So...why return?
heavyset_go 6y ago
Big telco company is also telling their employees not to expect to return to offices until at least 2021, and to expect maybe even two years of working remotely before returning to work is reconsidered.

aphextron 6y ago

I've been trying recently to wrap my head around what life is going to be like from here on out. Where do we go? Things will never be the same again. Remote work will now be completely normal, that's for sure. But how do we get back to living our lives? Fundamental assumptions I've had about the things I've wanted to do in life are now basically no longer an option. Will Silicon Valley no longer really be a "thing" anymore with physical meetups, hackathons, conferences etc. being a thing of the past? Surely at some point we have to reckon with this, rather than just hunkering down in our caves.

raz32dust 6y ago
This is not forever. We will likely have a vaccine at some point, may be within a year or two. We will also keep getting better at treating it over time - in identifying susceptible populations, developing cures, and hospitals being better equipped.
- geomark 6y ago
  Near term availability of a vaccine seems like wishful thinking. The data is noisy, but some of it indicates antibodies to the virus are short lived. That would implicate the usefulness of a vaccine. And that's if one can be developed, a serious question given the lack of success in developing vaccines for other human coronaviruses.
radomysisky 6y ago
There is no going back. The "normalcy" won't return to big western cities. Take a few, e.g. NY, London, Seattle, SF, Paris. Each of these cities were already crippled with homelessness. They're all so expensive that even a six figure income is barely enough to scrape by. They were all decimated by COVID. And now they've all been thrown into weeks of civil unrest, further exacerbated by local leadership stoking, rather than extinguishing the fire.

maa5444 6y ago

productivity was high only because there was nothing else to do during the lockdown... use your brain

holidayacct 6y ago

That's good for their sysadmins and softwar engineers. They love to raise anxiety levels and create ambiguity interpeters (people who start believing there is meaning in people and objects around them) in NYC. Yes, this is a real thing... Don't ask for details, the short story is someone discovered they could exploit people with genes for paranoid schizophrenia to make them anxious and afraid to the point they look for meaning in things around them.