
The Coronavirus Is Forcing Techies to Work from Home. Some May Never Go Back - bra-ket
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/the-coronavirus-is-forcing-techies-to-work-from-home-some
======
Traster
There's two things I want to point out here. Firstly, maybe I'm the exception
rather than the rule, but I don't have a massive battlestation PC at home (nor
the room to get one) so working from home means working on my laptop and
constantly struggling for screen real-estate.

Secondly, large corporations seem to function via rules that are completely
immune to reality. Every 10 years or so Intel will not only insist everyone is
in the office, but will look at relocating teams into their head offices for
any given project - literally giving the people the option "Hey! I hear Gdansk
is lovely this time of year". This sort of organisational bullshit from large
companies isn't going to go away. However, you can look at the opposite side,
I know people (not engineers) who work at companies where they hot-desk every
day and the office is only provisioned for 70% of staff to turn up on any
given day because they're too cheap to actually provide everyone a desk.

I guess what I'm saying with that second point is that for most large
businesses these choices are going to be more about corporate bullshit than
some sudden epiphany that working from home is great.

~~~
steverb
My employer provides me (and other remote employees) all the equipment needed
to work from home. Laptop, Docking Station, Monitors and Keyboards.

But you are right about the corporate BS.

~~~
ghostpepper
You still need space to set it up. I have a large "battlestation" desk with
multiple monitors and a nice chair at home but not everyone wants (or should
need to have) that.

~~~
rconti
I'm fortunate enough to have the space in my 3/1 1140sqft SV home for a desk
and desktop computer and the like. Basically, it's giving up a bedroom,
although of course the computer does not take up the entire room. Thankfully,
we don't have kids, so it's not an issue, but it's a non-zero cost,
particularly if you're renting.

OTOH, of course, someone will come along to point out that you can afford 20
spare bedrooms if you work remote and can move from SV to a farm in upstate
NY.

------
PragmaticPulp
I worked for a company that was forced to go all-remote due to problems with
our office space. I thought it would prove to management that remote work was
a net win for everyone. I expected both productivity and employee happiness to
increase.

I was wrong on all counts. The problem is that you can’t suddenly transition
people to WFH and expect them to figure it out right away. This doesn’t
resonate with 20-something developers who spend much of their home time glued
to a computer in a quiet room, but it will resonate with the parents who have
kids at home.

In our case, productivity fell immensely in certain teams and departments.
People scrambled to find quiet space at home where they could hide from young
children. Others struggled to work efficiently with purely digital
communication. A surprising number of people couldn’t handle being productive
without the watchful eye of their manager. Some people tried to take vacations
and respond with one-liner emails from their phones. Some of us were more
productive, but it wasn’t anywhere near as uniform as I expected.

I’m concerned that this sudden, forced WFH environment will hurt perceptions
of remote work more than it helps.

~~~
aaomidi
This is valid, but I wouldn't be living in Seattle if it wasn't for Microsoft.

Small house sizes wouldn't be an issue if I was living basically anywhere
else.

If this situation continues maybe I'll try to transition to full time remote
and go live somewhere quieter?

~~~
rconti
I don't know. Low density housing is not JUST an issue for commuting, it's an
issue for access to all services. But of course, commuting, with everyone
traveling at the same hours, is the #1 bottleneck.

------
arwhatever
For the sake of The Universe, please set a good precedent by being highly
productive during this time!

~~~
GreenJelloShot
Suddenly forcing non-remote workers to switch to remote work overnight is not
going to produce great results. By the time the workers get the hang of
working remotely effectively, their bosses will have already decided that it
is a bad idea.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
Is that what I'm missing? I find that a lot of the people here love working
from home, but whenever I do it as a one or two day off event, I find that I'm
not terribly productive. Do you need time to settle into it?

~~~
GreenJelloShot
Imagine having only ever used Windows as an OS. Then one day someone hands you
a Linux machine. You try it for a day or two, but then go back to Windows. And
then you wonder why your coworkers keep saying how great Linux is.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
As someone who develops on the Microsoft stack, I don't dream that, I live
that. But great analogy.

------
lukifer
Arthur C. Clarke predicted that computers would usher in an age of
telecommuting more than 50 years ago:
[https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/arthur-c-clarke-
predicted...](https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/arthur-c-clarke-predicted-
future-of-remote-and-flexible-work-1964/)

As with most predictions, there's a difference between predicting something
existing at all, vs. predicting normalization/ubiquity; so there's a sense in
which he was accurate, and a sense in which he missed the mark.

There are a million little reasons why physical proximity still makes a
difference to company culture and human behavior, so some amount of that will
always be with us. But I think it's fair to say that while we'll partially
regress to the mean after Coronavirus blows over, the rate of WFH-friendliness
will end up being significantly higher. (Depending on how long the scare
lasts, the necessity of distributed-first culture changes might even grease
the wheels for hiring remote workers, leading to secondary effects on the
labor market.)

------
notacoward
As someone who has worked remotely full time for years, most often not in
fully-remote teams, I've been having a lot of fun watching my coworkers make
the adjustment. We had a meeting today with 18 separate people or groups of
people, which is far more than I've seen before. It actually went pretty well,
but there were definitely some moments when people had trouble deciding who
should speak next or had to ask for something to be repeated because someone's
internet connection glitched at a bad moment. Over the next week or two I
expect that our internal chats will be super-active, and I'll get more VC
requests than usual. I just hope people remember this when it's over, maybe
having a bit more empathy and/or sticking to the generally better habits
developed during this experiment.

------
joelrunyon
After a narrow escape from a Milwaukee cubibicle 8 years ago, I've been remote
working for nearly the last 8 years.

If you're making the transition, I put together a few of the most helpful
things I've learned over the past decade. Hopefully it's helpful -
[http://woven.com/blog/remote-work-guide](http://woven.com/blog/remote-work-
guide)

------
Ericson2314
I don't understand this HN obsession with remote work. Productivity wise,
sorry, we are social species. Labor rights wise, yes it's good to be away from
the boss but you are also away from your coworkers.

Basically, rather than ending up with a utopic remote work coup d'etat into
some sort of of distributed co-op, I imagine programming becoming yet another
gig work job. And if tons of people do move to lower cost of living areas,
well, wages will go down. (You need the majority/expectation of non-remote
work to prevent that.)

If power is what you lack, household cost cutting in the form of remote work
won't get you there. Put solidarity before your individualist paradise.

------
Animats
Well, we'll find out first in tech. Most US coronavirus cases are in Silicon
Valley and the Seattle area.[1]

[1] [https://hgis.uw.edu/virus/](https://hgis.uw.edu/virus/)

~~~
AtomicOrbital
another rendition of this John Hopkins map
[https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...](https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6)

------
jasondclinton
As a manager of a new team, I'm a little scared about being available to help
my new-hires acclimate to the tech stack and culture without proximity.

We're getting ahead of additional Coronavirus impacts now, though, by
establishing team chat channel and expectations for virtual presence and
having discussions about how to maintain software engineering productivity on
a remote laptop. Next thing on my list is to establish team culture of it
being okay to quickly jump on a VC for high bandwidth information exchange and
leaning-over-the-shoulder type stuff.

I see a lot more written communication in the future, too.

~~~
tjr225
Group transparency and face to face pair time is critical. Your new hires need
to be able to feel comfortable asking stupid questions in Slack channels full
of smart people.

~~~
jasondclinton
I've heard this referred to as "situational awareness" and "psychological
safety". The former being aware of what your team is up to (and everyone being
in that state); the later feeling like you ask a question without someone
judging you or the team just generally treating you as a whole person.

~~~
Kaze404
This is very important. I hang out in programming communities focused on
helping others and way too often I see people asking perfectly valid questions
filled with apologies and guilt over not knowing something. It's a bit sad
honestly, but it's nice seeing them open up after you help tem figure it out
without judgment.

------
orev
The biggest thing with working from home is that you have to actually WORK.
For most companies, that means being available and doing “work stuff” during
work hours, and that’s not just some stupid rule that incompetent management
made up.

Almost all jobs require coordination with other people, and you need to be
available to address clients’ needs when they expect you to (i.e. during
business hours). You can’t have meetings or other coordination if everyone is
on their own schedule.

The only jobs that might not need this are developer jobs where you just need
to commit your code at the end of the day. So if your vision of WFH comes from
this perspective, you’re in the vast minority of the overall workforce who can
operate this way.

Too many people think that WFH means you can set your own hours, watch your
kids, have the TV on, go to the gym, run errands, etc. If you have a well
established track record, then maybe you can do one of those things in a day,
once in a while, but people without the right work ethic will fall off the
wagon pretty quickly and ruin it for everyone else.

Especially in a case like COVID-19, people working from home may be stuck with
their kids and other family who are also forced to stay home, making it more
difficult to establish good habits.

~~~
downerending
> The biggest thing with working from home is that you have to actually WORK.

Quite true. I can be at the office and not get shit done all day and it looks
like work. I can be at home, kill it, and even save the company, and it still
doesn't really look like work.

Wally would never work from home...

------
m101
Many roles in finance require you to be in the office because of regulatory
reasons, like recording of communications on trade related issues. Banks often
don't allow the use of mobile phones on trading floors too, and working from
home for certain functions is just not allowed.

~~~
dnadler
I've had a much different experience at 2 very large asset managers, and one
pretty large hedge fund.

They all have strict security, but we can remote just fine. My phone has a
locked-down VPN set up so I can communicate by phone, slack, and email, and I
can remotely log in to my computer through Citrix. My previous companies have
had similar set ups. I was involved in the portfolio management and research
side of things, and this was true for all of my colleagues.

Remote access to Bloomberg terminals works fine through these solutions.

------
hairofadog
They'll go back.

------
chickenpotpie
It seems, historically, that once workers gain rights in times of crisis, they
aren't keen on giving them back. For example, in Rwanda it used to be taboo
for women to work, but once the Rwandan genocide happened they were forced to
let women work because of an absence of capable men. 26 years later and it's
the country with the highest percentage of women in the workplace. Once people
are forced to see how nice things are a certain way they don't usually want to
go back.

~~~
claudeganon
I think we might actually see labor tensions around this issue. All the big
companies seem to be adopting WFH, but the ones who aren’t are going to run
the risk of conflict and unrest.

There was a lot of talk when Kickstarter unionized about how tech employees
don’t need similar protection relative to the dangers workers faced during the
first mass waves of unionization. I think that calculus might change in cases
where workers are forced to expose themselves and their families to a pandemic
because their bosses value butt-in-seats over employee safety.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
Agreed. I'm very aligned with that talk - I was and remain skeptical that a
union would be good for me - but if my bosses don't start recommending WFH
within a few days I'm going to be pretty frustrated.

~~~
claudeganon
Unions can have their downsides, but they’re also one of the few ways that
workers can fight back against dangerous workplaces and expose those
conditions to the public.

This is happening right now with the nurses’ union in California, who are
exposing the CDC’s stonewalling and failure in testing for COVID-19 and the
danger this is posing to everyone:

[https://act.nationalnursesunited.org/page/-/files/graphics/N...](https://act.nationalnursesunited.org/page/-/files/graphics/NU-
Quarantine-RN-press-conf-statement.pdf)

~~~
perl4ever
I got a message recently from the (public sector) union I belong to, talking
about response and precautions due to the epidemic, and there was not one word
about trying to get permission for employees who can work from home to do so.
They only talked about those who are required to deal with the public.

While it certainly seems reasonable to prioritize those at the most risk, on
the other hand, in my brief experience with a union, it almost seems like they
tend to prioritize problems they can't solve and ignore what can actually be
done.

Laptops are standard-issue in my agency, so it seems like if the person at the
top ordered it, essentially everybody could work remotely for the next month
or two.

~~~
claudeganon
Have you spoken with your rep? It is the case that a lot of these issue do
require a bottom-up push, even when having unions.

~~~
perl4ever
Yes.

------
mlazos
I really like my workspace even though it's open, although I suppose I could
get five monitors for home. I'm interested to see if I get more productive
with more focus time.

------
frandroid
Some of us like the office...

------
naveen99
s/Techies/students/g

s/Work/Study/g

------
Keverw
I like the idea of work in a way, but I also think the in person connections
are valuable. Maybe a company could have a hybrid of that idea, allow people
to work at home but also have a office that's sorta more like a co-working
space but open to their employees only.

Then another thing that's lame about remote work is you have to limit the
location people can work remotely due to employment regulations, so if your
company is in California you aren't allowed to hire someone from Ohio without
doing a bunch of extra paperwork and expenses. I got a job offer for a company
in San Francisco but wasn't sure about it 100% or if it'd last so I thought
trying remote would be interesting and then transition but the HR person told
me no even though she was interested in me. But I guess they didn't want to
register in other states, paying taxes in multiple states, payroll, some
states require worker comp and probably applies if you work from home even,
etc as it would create a bigger Nexus for a company with a handful of
requirements for a state the HR person has never even visited or has an
address in the state even (so they have to pay for a virtual office service, a
agent for the company in the state and add extra costs and administration
since some states won't accept a out of state address for some paperwork). So
many companies unless it's already big with locations all over the US rather
just deal with a single state for now... Then businesses large enough to meet
the requirement have to file equal opportunity reports, what location do you
put down? Someone's house (then fill out a separate form for every house - so
50 employees is 50 locations if no office in the area they could visit?), the
virtual office address or what? Sounds like some say the office they report
too, but if you worked remotely for a company in California from Ohio where
they don't have a brick and mortar regional office seems to complicate things.
Maybe in that case you report to their California office even if you never fly
to or visit California? Seems like the laws were written never considered the
possibility of working remotely and different answers depending on who you
ask.

But the whole remote thing can get even more confusing, like apparently if you
work for a company in New York remotely and a few other states they wants you
to pay income taxes even if you never visited the state due to them
considering it telecommuting even if you never psychically commute there, so
double taxes even though your state will let you credit taxes paid to others,
I expect NY would be much higher... Plus there's conflicting info and other
things if you look up this type of stuff.

Someone lived in Tennessee and was found to owe Taxes to New York.
[https://www.biglawinvestor.com/new-york-telecommuting-tax-
pe...](https://www.biglawinvestor.com/new-york-telecommuting-tax-penalty/)

> If you work remotely for a company based in New York, Delaware,
> Pennsylvania, Nebraska or New Jersey, even if you physically never step foot
> in those states, you may be subject to state income tax in those states.

Which doesn't make sense according to what the HR person said, if they had to
setup in your own state to hire you wouldn't it credited as payroll taxes in
your state instead of New York? Then if you lived in Ohio full time and tried
to claim New York taxes as a credit for working full time, I wonder if that's
a huge red flag as they'd probably assume you psychically commuted instead of
working remotely. Especially if you live in a lower tax state where due to the
credit given to higher taxed New York so you ended up owning nothing to your
state, paying all your income to state not close enough to commute to everyday
by car.

Then I know Delaware is popular for incorporating too even if a company puts
their HQ in California... Surprised everyone at the GooglePlex in California
isn't considered to be working remotely in Delaware?

Then some states say you owe taxes just for checking email while waiting in
the Airport during a layover, so some companies track where employees are and
pay taxes in multiple states, but some companies aren't capable enough to deal
with this stuff since the big assumption is a employee is just staying at one
location and seems like a grey area. So technically if you send your employees
to a conference or trade show in another state, opening up another can of
extra compliance, however I feel like a lot of companies probably just ignore
this unless they make it a regular thing.

Then remember seeing if you are a contractor like a plumber, a business and
employee is expected to file and pay taxes in every single city they visit a
customer so that can add up too - but not every state allows cities to tax
people and some have proposals to simplify this. Some contractors might visit
a city one off if they aren't big enough but I guess some might just limit
their service area but I know we had a roofer come from a hour away once, and
tons of little small cities in between. So if a one off job, and then some
cities expect you to keep filing even if zero and not all cities even put the
forms online. I know one idea was to just let the state administer the city
taxes as part of the regular state tax forms, then the state would forward the
money to each city what they are owed and take a 1 or 2% cut for doing it, but
cities wasn't happy with this idea and rather do it themselves. Then in some
states like Michigan, was reading tax software won't even handle cities.

Confusing stuff... I guess this is something you'd have to probably hire a
knowledge HR person to help you deal with this stuff, but who knows if the
know all the little details when dealing with multiple states. I guess for a
single person it's not worth it, so easier just to tell someone from Ohio no
if they aren't willing to move to California right away. Seems like every
states have stuff like this, be cool if some state encouraged fiber internet,
remote work and relaxed regulations for remote companies - I guess instead
people are forced to move even if they could work remotely technically but
can't due to the bureaucracy and red tape burden getting in the way. So sounds
like states will end up losing both residents and income instead of making
some money they make zero. Same with how some affiliate programs banned people
from Ohio participating, sending them a email with a short notice to stop
sending traffic. However I guess the larger corporations like Google probably
can hire people remotely nationwide since they are big enough to handle the
extra burdens imposed by every state where they have people working remotely.
Then cities and county has extra stuff too... Also wonder how OSHA works with
remote, if you are on the clock and run to the bathroom in your house and
ended up tripping and stubbing your toe... Is that a accident report just as
if you worked from the office? Then what about the employment posters if
working remotely - and even some cities have their own too... I guess make
them available on the internal website maybe as I doubt someone would hang
those on the wall in their bedroom. but another thing to monitor and keep up
to date across all the locations people work remotely from. Also looks like
some states even require you to reimburse them for internet access, but some
make you track what's person or business? Sounds a bit annoying but might be a
good perk... Free internet from your company if you work from home!

Maybe the tech and culture isn't holding back remote work, but the government
putting all these artificial limitations. I wish we'd have some modern tax
reforms and even take advantage of tech. My favorite idea I've had for a while
would just cut all payments for a flat tax, sorta like how PayPal takes a
transaction fee for every payment. Have the gov take a transaction fee and
have some agency that's responsible for redistributing it to states and
cities, so as a business it'd be super simple.

Stuff like this is a bit discouraging, you'd think 2020 remote work would be
easier. As someone who dreams of a startup, I think making a MVP/prototype and
seeking investors to relocate to a bigger city, renting office space would be
the best path and just hire people locally would be simpler. Unfortunately I
feel it's a disadvantaged though since talented people all across the country
or even world that could be a good fit but can't just easily hire them
remotely due to all the red tape. Just seems crazy if you hire someone
remotely from across the country, you have a pile of regulations to follow
like a brick and mortar business locally would. So I could see why a business
in California would say no to wanting to deal with hiring people remotely,
they have so much stuff in Ohio to deal with just for one person. Seems easier
to just say no or require relocating to where the company is located. Just
seems like the ways the regulations are or read doesn't really consider remote
at all. Not sure if places would embrace it, seems like remote businesses
would cut down on things like property taxes too... Why cater to Google across
the country when you could try and force them to build a local regional
office?

------
lykr0n
Working from home is the worst. My team is already making plans to work
together off site at a bar/cafe/etc until we get back into the office.

~~~
pmlnr
Contradicting the very idea of staying the f away from people till the big
wave of infection passes, bravo.

~~~
baddox
You can look at it that way. Another way of looking at it is if my company (or
the government) refuses to let me access my office, I should not be obligated
to work. Do factory workers have to take home textiles and sew them from home?
(I hope not, but I wouldn't be surprised if some places tried that.)

~~~
kjakm
>> You can look at it that way. Another way of looking at it is if my company
(or the government) refuses to let me access my office, I should not be
obligated to work.

In that case the company should not be obligated to pay you. There's a good
chance your employment contract contains a clause allowing your place of work
to change at any time (within a certain distance of where it is when you
join).

~~~
baddox
> In that case the company should not be obligated to pay you.

Perhaps not, but in California the company is _never_ obligated to pay you
except for labor you've already done.

> There's a good chance your employment contract contains a clause allowing
> your place of work to change at any time (within a certain distance of where
> it is when you join).

In California, you don't have an employment contract period. Even if you did,
I doubt the requirement to (for instance) maintain an Internet connection at
your home so that you always have the ability to work from home would be an
enforceable clause.

