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

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

#71

Post by paganel »

mlang23 wrote: post #14

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.

The way Germany is still allowing these music festivals (and football matches) to continue is what a 9-year old would do, to be honest, not the other way around. Granted, they're not alone in this, it seems like France has followed the same path. And why are you focusing your message only on Italy? Switzerland has adopted very similar measures (again, for very good reasons).

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

#72

Post by mcv »

rsynnott wrote: post #67
inferiorhuman wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. San Francisco just reported its first cases today, but there's definitely been panic shopping. The city closed down Lowell today as a precautionary measure (but that leaves nearly 200 campuses open). Even if you don't suffer any health or financial effects…

> if our idiot president succeeds in closing the Mexican border Wait, is he trying to do that? Why is that his solution to everything?

He just got given a new excuse to close some borders. It would surprise me if he didn't make use of that.

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

#73

Post by mlang23 »

montenegrohugo wrote: post #47
mlang23 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People die on a daily basis, especially elderly ones. Sorry, but I am not buying this hype.

Now that is just an amazingly callous comment.

Thanks for your comment. I learnt a new word!

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

#74

Post by znpy »

orion_uranus wrote: post #62
input_sh wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way. I need a change of environment in order to be fully productive. Whether it's a cafe next door or an office, doesn't matter as long as it's not my home.

Have you tried the library? Personally I noticed it help me if I did my usual routine but instead of going to work I'd go work at home. What I mean by this is that i'd wake up at my normal time, wear actual work clothes and fully prepare myself like I'd usually do going to the office. Gets my head in the right space.

> Have you tried the library?

I tried that but quite frankly, it's enormously dangerous: libraries are not meant to be a workplace and as such, for example, there (usually) is an explicit exclusion of responsibility in case of stolen goods.

Basically, if you work from the library and your work laptop gets stolen, it's only your fault, cannot blame on anyone else.

And that's right, in my opinion.

At least coworking spaces usually provide some kind of storage (lockers for example).

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

#75

Post by [deleted] »

rsynnott wrote: post #67
inferiorhuman wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. San Francisco just reported its first cases today, but there's definitely been panic shopping. The city closed down Lowell today as a precautionary measure (but that leaves nearly 200 campuses open). Even if you don't suffer any health or financial effects…

> if our idiot president succeeds in closing the Mexican border Wait, is he trying to do that? Why is that his solution to everything?

[deleted]

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

#76

Post by rsynnott »

gnrlst wrote: post #44
mlang23 wrote: post #14

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.

Italy may be overreacting, and at a huge cost to its economy. Yet, its better to overreact to things like this, than underreact. If anything, your country is the 9year old, not Italy.

Italy is if anything suffering from initially underreacting; they let the problem get far too large. At this point they din't have much choice; they've got a very serious problem.

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

#77

Post by znpy »

guessmyname wrote: post #8

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 f…

> to buy a bunch of expensive equipment

It should be said, though, that some as-a-service vpn and a good network engineer could probably hack together a good-enough temporary solution.

I'm thinking of aws vpn services, along with proper routing and bridging on the appropriate sides.

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

#78

Post by feistypharit »

mcv wrote: post #64

> "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.

The us is totally unprepared for this. Similar to our all out other public infrastructure, we've been neglecting it for years.

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

#79

Post by WalterGR »

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-wo...

"The policy applies to people who work for other companies but provide services like bus rides or food service to Microsoft."

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

#80

Post by samsonradu »

freepor wrote: post #7
strstr wrote: post #4

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 gr…

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 d…

I'm almost sure it won't work. Everything you mentioned is true but there's one even more important thing. There are plenty of people who literally don't care or dislike their jobs and would take every opportunity to work as little as possible. While this might work for Google & co. where employees are relatively happy and passionate about their work, it would fail spectacularly in other environments.

Also I don't think management can be fully blamed for dismissing remote work as it would represent a considerable cost-cutting opportunity. It's likely not worth it as the overall productivity would drop too much.

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