Ask HN: How well do you think your team handled the start of lockdown? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How well do you think your team handled the start of lockdown?

11 pointsGormisdomai8 comments

Did your team take it easy in the face of all the uncertainty? Or did they pivot to covid-19 related work and double down on productivity? Now that you have hindsight do you wish they had done anything differently?

View on HN

I informed my supervisor that a lockdown was imminent and that we should prepare for it, e.g. set up users' VPNs, do a test run to identify needs, etc. My supervisor told me to mind my own business and not encroach on her authority, in writing.

The stay at home orders came in two days later.

She violated the order a number of times because she had no readiness for remote working. She forced a number of staff to violate it as well.

My employer is not an essential business.

Caring for children is an issue for those having them (basically slashing productivity in half). Also too many calls that could be async communication.

Other than that it works amazingly well.

Pretty well. Half a dozen guys from IT went into the office on March 16 to prep laptops and a printer or two for staff requiring them. The building shortly went into lockdown, with only an engineer visiting a couple of days a week. I'm not sure that anyone from IT has been back.

I don't do much support, but I know our guys have been doing a lot of Zoom training and support.

Our department was already 100% remote for the past two years since corporate shut down our office... so yeah, things haven't felt too different, except our clients have pushed back some of their campaigns (not cancelled them though, at least not yet) because of the virus, so work is somewhat light.

Good thing, too, since it's been harder to focus with everything else going on.

Fair enough I guess, we already had people working from home once or twice a week. So it was pretty easy to adapt to the lockdown overall.

Actually having enough to do has been a tad challenging though, since quite a few customers have pulled funding for digital marketing and web development work in the pandemic, especially those struggling in the events industry.

It's been a complete disaster. Email and phone response times have quadrupled, if anyone bothers to answer at all. I think everybody is playing video games for a living now. Most conference calls involve someone's dog barking in the background. I'm extremely introverted though, so I couldn't be happier.

We were fully remote before quarantine so there was no difference, but we've had to change our marketing strategy.

Also shameless plug but we released fun side project to make us all take breaks in timed video chats: http://hallway.chat

-- did they pivot to covid-19 related work and double down on productivity?

This kind of expectation from my employer is what pisses me off. This is pure MBA type manager talk that normally expects that an employee working from home is going to be more productive and in thinking so builds undue pressure on employees who are already uncertain about their family, health and future.

I reject this question.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com