Hacker News Reader

Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

When will stores be open again, when will we do meetups again, when will we be able to travel again?

Around 10 weeks for stores and meetups, longer for travel depending on the destination.

However, Covid-19 will likely be a lesson in single point of failure, supply chain dependency, and failure planning. To that end things will take decades to go back to the way they were. Companies will not be willing to accept massive losses again, so they'll change the way they operate. That will continue until the cost reductions from going back to the way things were win out.

For some things, like remote working, I don't think we'll ever go back. It'll be a thing companies plan for, implement, and accept as normal after this.

(I'm in the UK though, which probably makes a difference.)

View on HN

> For some things, like remote working, I don't think we'll ever go back.

This could go two ways:

(a) people realise that remote working is very doable, because they managed at short notice, during a crisis, and thus it will increase.

(b) people will believe that remote work is not doable, because they didn't manage at short notice, during a crisis, and thus it will not increase.

I would be very surprised if anyone who didn't handle the change well, would accept "well you realise that you changed to this overnight, with zero planning some of us have spent the last decade or so 'making it work'?" and try again in a better scenario (i.e. time to make a proper home office, time to adjust to a different way of working, etc).

Given the potential cost savings for both businesses and individuals there is already an incentive to do it; this situation will force companies to make the effort and try. I'd be surprised if there are many companies that get to the end of, say, 12 weeks of quarantine and haven't figured out how to make it work at least to some extent, or at least worked out some of the things that block it so they can start working on those problems.

There's a huge difference between everyone working remotely, and some. If a big chunks of your direct colleagues are in the office, the remote people will miss out on information, which will draw them to the office.

Of course they will try - they're forced to because a dead or quarantined workforce isn't exactly productive.

But the ongoing incentives have existed for many years, and the numbers of companies supporting true remote working has been essentially a rounding error.

The problem is that these companies are adopting it because they had literally no other choice - not because they wanted to try it - so there's automatic friction there.

I think a lot of society (particularly big city issues) could be reduced greatly if remote working was adopted more broadly, but I've also heard all manner of arguments about why remote working "doesn't work" for the past decade or so I've been doing it.

Few weeks ago there were local reports of increased sales of teleconf gear (like webcams) thus companies and probably individuals have invested money in remote working gear. So I am hopeful that companies/people will want to get their money's worth of that equipment and keep using it.

I still haven’t seen anyone change their mind on remote work. It’s all temporary. I’d love to see it though.

Interesting, that you say longer for travel.

To what extend is travel restricted at the moment? What happens when someone from - say - Germany flies to the UK?

As far as I can see, flights can still be booked.

What happens when someone from - say - Germany flies to the UK?

In that case I think it's still allowed, but there are a lot of entry bans and visa restrictions in place (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travel_restrictions_related_to...) that probably won't be lifted for a long time.

The EU allows flights from the EU, EEA and the UK, but no others, so Germany-UK happens to be allowed but there are no flights from any non-European country to Germany.

Entry for non-residents isn't possible, but flights still are as far as I know. Of course very extremely reduced, but it appears you can still book tickets for some flights. (Not counting one-off government recovery flights getting tourists back home, which probably make the majority of "passenger" air travel entering the EU right now)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com