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Comment by jsharf | Hacker News Reader

This is a horrible "experiment".

Duuuude I was just asked to stay at home for 2 weeks because I might have coronavirus (I was in Shanghai "recently"). Sure as heck I'm not going to be productive. (I'm a software engineer in mountain view, and my company has asked me to WFH for 2 weeks)

Following reasons:

- Emotionally it's a tiny bit scary. hard to focus.

- I didn't have ANY time to setup -- a lot of my gear is still at work.

- My team didn't have time to prepare -- we still have daily standups which are hard to join from VC.

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In a way that makes the experiment more interesting. You're kind of forced to try make things work under very sub-optimal conditions rather than some artifical text-book version of what we think work-from-home should ideally look like. I reckon that after a few days of poor productivity, you and your colleagues will find ways to be productive despite of these circumstances, and in fact the difficult circumstances might even yield new and better processes and habits.

I guess the only thing is it risks giving the panopticon micromanagement brigade an unfair point when some of these arrangements do go awry.

Depends how big the changes are. If you need to replace a whiteboard for task tracking with Jira, move your standups to a meeting room, and sort out the meeting room microphones that mean you can't always hear everyone well, the person might be back at work before you've finished all the reforms :)

> move your standups to a meeting room

Please don't do that. People should participate using their own PC (or phone, in a pinch). Meeting rooms make it worse for everyone.

They could priority mail you the stuff you need. They can add a laptop into someones hand or just make someone hold the phone for you to join the standup via Skype or something. The only argument I understand is the emotional one

Is this the google equivalent of “I went to a school outside of Boston”?

(Intuit also has a significant presence in Mountain View)

Perhaps but in this case I turned out to correct.

I’m disgusted at myself that I can’t say something similar about my employer.

Are you a software engineer? Just wondering what 'gear' you really need - as opposed to would like - to do your job.

I'm a software developer who maintains very strict separation between work hardware and personal hardware. I keep my work laptop at work and only take it home with me when I know I'll be working from home the next day. It's amazing to be able to commute with no bags or anything on the days I'm working in the office successively. If I was forced to WFH without notice due to Coronavirus and I didn't have my work laptop with me, I would not work at all. Someone would have to drive to my place with my work laptop or agree to pay for a new computer I'd buy for the purpose for those two weeks or so.

Did the company mandate you to use separate laptop or you put your restriction yourself ?

I put that restriction on myself, a selection of reasons follows: I don't use AV software but my employer requires it on machines in its domain, I won't allow remote management of my personal hardware but my employer uses remote management for wiping lost devices, and it helps to maintain a clear separation between personal and work time. All of the requirements my employer places on its hardware are reasonable for work hardware and I'm not opposed to these measures, but that's why IMO work hardware needs to remain work hardware - you can't compartmentalize a single device so that say an accidental remote wipe only affects your work files on the machine / phone.

If you put your restriction on yourself then you are responsible on fixing the situation yourself. Its not acceptable to simply say 'I would not work at all'.

The "situation" here refers to having to work from home without notice due to Coronavirus. That's not a situation one thrusts upon themselves. I disagree that that's something one should be responsible for preparing for by always carrying their work laptop home. In fact, doing that puts the laptop at a risk of theft when in transit, which before the Coronavirus outbreak was definitely seen as more likely than a random epidemic.

This is no different from the office building burning down or having to close for a few weeks for a similar reason resulting in working from home without notice. In that scenario, I'm also not responsible for "fixing" the fact that some of my equipment stayed in the office and is now not accessible to me, preventing me from being able to work.

It's a really, really good practice, whether or not one's firm mandates it. An employer has every right — moral everywhere, legal many places — to monitor your usage of its hardware, software and networks, which implies that if you are doing personal things (say, your finances, or even social networking) that it would be exposed to your passwords and activity.

Meanwhile, you have a duty to be responsible with your employer's data. Your employer can secure its own hardware, but it cannot secure resources you own — which means that if you use your own hardware & software to work with your employer's data that any breach is your fault.

Given those realities, I prefer to use my employer-issued hardware, software & network for my employer's work, and my hardware, software & network for my own purposes. That way my employer is secured from my mistakes, and I am secured from my employer's mistakes (or nefariousness).

> Someone would have to drive to my place with my work laptop

If sending your laptop by taxi to your home would mean two weeks of work that seems like a very cheap solution.

I agree, I meant to address the point the grandparent made about what grade you could possibly need as a software developer which I read as implying that surely you must be good to go with just a laptop. And I wanted to bring attention to the fact that for many developers, "gear" would be that specific work laptop, not any given laptop. So it's not like there would be no disruption, you still need to grab it in advance to work from home.

Every company I've worked at will not allow me to leave my laptop at the office. They all claim it's something about the office not being safe from theft in some way or another. My bet is it's just a lot easier to get people to be constantly connected if they have their work laptop with them at all times.

I believe it's partially with the quantity of theft/damage (i.e. a fire) that could occur if all laptops are left in a single location overnight.

A theft at the office, could result in dozens of computers going missing.

A theft a single employee's home, is likely limited to a very small amount of devices.

Dr is the big one I've seen, from an ops side. If anyone with a laptop that can work remotely takes it home and the building burns down, well your company can still mostly work until replicated.

Not my idea, not my decision, but someone must have weighed the costs of laptop w/docks vs desktops and risk of one site going offline for a few weeks and decided it was worth it. For a finance company, I guess those days could carry a lot of cash flow if not regulatory risks as well which could help push the laptop argument.

I really liked the model laptops we were deploying and how the push allowed us to clear out some real old desktops. It was helpful to be mobile but I did keep an old desktop at my desk with tools and more that I could remote to from another desk or from home to do things on site.

Even if "regular" productive work is hard, you could use the time to learn. Read books, build prototypes, think about the hard problems you, your team and your company are facing or will be facing.

This feel like a great way to get some thinking time!

It's horrible when the employer don't lower their expectation.

We had some campaign on remote working, actively adjust the toolset/processes/expectations, and we don't usually measure by output so it's a rather interesting experience for now.

Cant you get some one to have that gear sent to you

> Emotionally it's a tiny bit scary. hard to focus.

These are just excuses. If you were going to get fired for not working or someone gave you a bonus of half a million for two weeks of work you’d sure as hell focus.

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