
Charter prohibits working from home despite spread of coronavirus - csnover
https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/16/charter-coronavirus-work-home/
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perl4ever
I think some people may just be shell-shocked and reacting too slowly.

My employer refused to allow working from home for the most part last week, up
until Thursday.

After several days of union negotiations, they floated the idea on Friday of
letting people request up to four days per two week pay period to be remote.
That was at about 3 PM.

Just after 4 PM, an email went out saying that people were allowed to work
remotely 5 days a week for the next month or two. So some of us got kind of
upset that they were making it an individual decision. Somebody may have to
come in, but most people shouldn't and some people can't. It needs to be
collectively managed, in my opinion.

So then, today, around COB, there's another email saying everybody is
_required_ to work remotely for the next couple weeks unless there is some
specific exception.

So it's just dramatically evolving day by day.

~~~
chrisseaton
> they floated the idea on Friday of letting people request up to four days
> per two week pay period to be remote

I don't understand why do they think of it in terms of people requesting it
like it's a perk? Even out of time of crisis it's not some luxury it's just a
normal working arrangement.

~~~
perl4ever
Normally, it's allowed one day a week, but not at all for new employees, and
not without advance approval.

One answer to why it's this way would be that's what the union contract was
negotiated to be.

My inference is that government employees are considered to be lazy and/or
like children, that you can't trust them in general to work on their own.

But I really wished people to understand it's neither a perk nor an
entitlement now. It can't be an individual decision, because whether one
person goes in depends on what other people do. Telling people they can stay
home if they want makes it into a prisoner's dilemma situation. People
(leadership and rank and file) are trapped by their individualistic thought
patterns when the only solution is to _both_ do what you are told _and_ be
told to do what is in the collective interest.

People sometimes talk about how other cultures don't prioritize the individual
as much but they never sound like it actually makes sense, it's just kind of
patronizing. Right now, it's making sense to me, but a lot of people (e.g. on
my Facebook feed) seem to just be writhing in misery over trying to choose the
best thing for themselves and guilt over other people not necessarily being
able to do the same thing.

~~~
pdonis
_> government employees_

Where did anyone mention government employees?

~~~
vips7L
He did. He's op, he works for a government.

~~~
pdonis
Ah, I saw his follow-up post.

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gaogao
Wow, I really admire Nick Wheeler, the engineer in the article raising the
issue, standing by his principles.

~~~
JPKab
I work in the Denver area. Maybe I'll hit him up on LinkedIn to come work for
my company.

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battery_cowboy
Fuck this company, and others like it. I know nothing will happen in the end,
but these executives should get imprisoned and barred from ever holding a
leadership role ever again.

~~~
kiba
And 3 to 7 decades, it's going to happen again because anybody who remembered
the crisis are either dead or had forgotten what should be proper response.
Imprisonment isn't going to change anything.

~~~
battery_cowboy
If we had the will to imprison them, I figure we would also have the will to
fix the system.

------
zaroth
This is a little tone deaf honestly, and not for the reasons people might
think.

Amazon factory workers can’t dial it in. Nor can restaurant workers, or
grocery shelf stockers, or gas station attendants, or truck mechanics, or of
course almost everyone in the medical/police/fire profession.

Sure, people who can work from home effectively should. But there are also 300
million people desperately depending on supply lines staying up, and shelves
staying stocked, manufacturing of basic goods, and food supply continuing.

Despite any “shelter in place” orders, there’s probably a solid 30% of the
employed population which one way or the other are doing mission critical
work. Charter is providing mission critical services, and while a small
percentage of their workforce probably could dial it in, I wouldn’t be
surprised if the vast majority of people there actually need to be on-site to
do their job.

Maybe most of those people have to commute _in_ to the Bay Area though...

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PaulHoule
They're too afraid that they'll have to upgrade the "middle mile" to
accommodate teleworkers.

------
cornishpixels
I used to work for Spectrum, in Business Class tech support. Several friends
still work there, in NOC and Enterprise tech support. All of them have
laptops, "in case [they] ever have to work from home". Meanwhile, they're not
allowed to work from home.

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Metacelsus
This is comic book villain level evil.

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sneak
Here's a whole thread from @dhh about a few dozen others:

Head of thread:
[https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1239286206803742721](https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1239286206803742721)

> _Do you know of a tech company that’s asking people who could work from home
> to come to the office? Reply to this thread, so we can track these
> irresponsible organizations, and remember their names even after this is
> over._

Unrolled:
[https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1239286206803742721.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1239286206803742721.html)

------
justinclift
Does that mean Charter would potentially be liable for the deaths of anyone
caused directly by this?

eg say a Charter employee catches COVID-19 at work, then one of their elderly
relatives catches it from them + passes away

If there's a clear chain of transmission, and Charter refused to stop it...
well...

------
badrchoubai
Glad to know this happened in Colorado, one less TeleCom to worry about (as if
I was ever worried...)

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sys_64738
I know somebody at Charter. This is absolutely how they work. No WFH. No
exceptions. None.

~~~
axaxs
It's obvious. It requires the type of collaboration you can only get in person
to figure out how to sell home phone, oversell data, mess up billing, charge
people for devices they don't have, constantly spam customers, and most
importantly, escape legal action.

~~~
sys_64738
I'm not sales or technical support. I'm talking back-end engineering and their
software teams.

------
xivzgrev
Tomorrow’s headline: “charter offers terminated employee job back. Employee
refuses.”

~~~
derefr
Has there ever been a case of a company obstinately following its own HR
policies into the grave? E.g., no sick days allowed, but then everyone gets
sick, so everyone is fired and now the company has no employees and ends up
liquidating?

~~~
kube-system
It's usually a slower process that results in failure.

Companies who lose employees will hire _someone_ to replace them. The more
desperate they are, the lower quality the employees will be.

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raymend2020
Just heard they _tested_ wfh for employees for a week probably as a publicity
stunt and are making everyone return to the office come Monday with no
definite plans to allow cloud/software engineers to work from home in the
immediate future. There are a lot of older employees in that company. This is
really unacceptable! The CEO was paid $98M in 2016 while the employees saw
very little compensation gains. There was a strike for 5 months in 2017 to
protest. It’s clear where their priorities lie...

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rolph
i think they dodged a legal bullet when said fellow resigned in lieu of being
fired.

~~~
dghughes
Would it not be constructive dismissal even with the letter of resignation? He
was forced to resign only due to pressure and due to the danger to himself.

~~~
rolph
yes it could be interesting if he wanted his job back badly enough.

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pgrote
Name and shame. It is the only way to move forward.

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blondin
i am grateful i work in a field where i can work from home. for some people
around me, not going to work is synonymous to not working and not getting
paid.

some people are laid off.

working from home is okay for some of us. but maybe we should not be taking it
for granted...

~~~
mech422
I understand your sentiment, but disagree with the gist of it. I've been
working from home for 20 years, and it IS fairly normal in tech. I mean, why
should a 'cloud architect' have to go into an office to work on the 'cloud'?

I realize this isn't the case for all careers, but this always makes me
wonder, should hourly employees feel special they get overtime pay because
some people don't? Its just different norms for different positions...

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mindfulplay
I assume people will name and shame Elon Musk too: still way over his head -
thinking he is smarter than the scientists.

~~~
x3n0ph3n3
He said the "panic" was dumb. Panic _is_ dumb. Well-reasoned remediations and
precautions are not panic.

~~~
mindfulplay
He immediately followed up by claiming that the number of accidents cause more
deaths than COVID19....

The love for Elon Musk in this site is super strong! He is certainly
infallible.

