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My company (large-ish un-sexy software company you've never heard of) gave the software managers clear direction on this: "It's not realistic for people with school-aged children to be fully productive right now. Do not demand they take PTO or ask them to work at night. If they can only work five hours a day, that's what they can do."

I suspect it's unusual that my boss actually said that out loud, but I hope everyone is thinking it. This is a temporary situation none of us planned for, and it ought to be reasonable and expected to lower your standards until schools and childcare are around again.

Exactly the right response. Sounds like management may be a bit sexy though, stable companies that treat their employees well are rare.

Basecamp's founders have been working hard to hammer this point (lower expectations and treat humans like humans) home lately.

My company (large consulting firm you have probably heard of) gave us essentially the same guidance from the top. The culture was already one that discouraged micromanaging, but they flat out said they don't expect us to be as productive. Most of my team is realistically working 15-20 hours a week, and that's ok because our clients are doing the same and understand when we miss milestones.

I've actually been impressed at the amount of empathy that's been going around, at least when it comes to adjusting expectations. Hopefully it sticks around.

We might work at the same company!

I lead one of our teams and that's pretty much the explicit directions my VP gave us. Actually, the entire leadership team gave those directions. It's made me glad I switched jobs 18 months ago.

Somehow I'm the only one on our team with kids but some of my team has had a difficult time managing the change from an emotional standpoint and I just treat it the same way. I don't expect them to somehow magically "power through it". They're normally very productive and I know this will pass.

By this attitude you can recognise reasonable employers that care about their employees, and are not merely looking to exploit them.

One of the reasons we built Squawk, a push-to-talk group chat platform, was for this very reason. Many of our team have young kids at home, and current chat tools require too much work to ensure you're muted and not spamming your background noise all over the place. Might be worth a click - https://www.squawk.to

Exactly the same thing at Arm.

We had an all-hands and one of the questions was "are we expected to do our contractual hours" and the answer was to do what you can.

Honestly very impressed by how they are handling this, at every turn they repeat that they understand that everyone's situation is different.

"If they can only work five hours a day"

I appreciate the sentiment, but five hours?! That's your example of an acceptable low level of performance for someone working from home with a child with no possibility of childcare?

I'm splitting card of my toddler with my spouse, and on my BEST days, I get 3 hours of actual work done. 1.5 is more typical, and that's only because the toddler takes 2 hour naps.

Thanks for sharing. Three kids spanning elementary and middle; one is neurotypical, other two have different strengths and needs. My work space is a single car unconditioned garage, atop a stack of boxes. Yesterday I was inside between meetings for a total of 4 minutes between meetings and had reduced two of them to tears. Today I had to cut off my 1st grader, who was in middle of excitedly presenting me a LEGO she completed, because it was :59 after and I needed to get on a call. Granted, most days are a little more even, but it's hard to not feel like there's a choice between damaging relationships/reputation at work or damaging relationship with kids. They're of course not mutually exclusive, and kids are clear priority if it were.

Having work and home contexts now collapsed into single environment has had the surprising effect where each interaction with the family during my work day triggers the subconscious thought of whether I just made a tradeoff between work and home -- and if so, was it the right one. In isolation the amount of energy each thought takes is negligible, but add up each interaction throughout the day, and day after day, it's been incredibly draining.

I dunno, my thoughts change daily on this topic. But this is my venting of for whatever day it is. usually I type these replies and never submit, but cathartic, if nothing else, to vent and post this one today.

p.s. agree, while not optional, still incredibly grateful to still have a job.

Yeah, not a day goes by during this compression of work and home life that I don't wonder at least a couple of times if I am a bad parent. Kind of (I hesitate to use the word) good to hear others going through the exact same thing. Kids just want to spend time with me but after the 4th time of them just coming to say hi in 10 minutes and the cursor still just blinking on an empty line on the screen I sometimes, regretfully snap and feel bad about it. My productivity is 25% of what it was and now I'm not worried about being laid off but rather fired for lack of production.

Note: I thought I had it bad with my office, that has no door, but you have me beat pretty handily.

I work from home and since about February my productivity nose-dived. It suffered before they closed the schools because of worry and constant news checking, etc. Then when the schools closed here in March I have been near useless. I have started to claw back some routines and some short spells of focused work lately but as the main carer for the kids, I have constant homeschooling, cooking, peace-making, MacGuyvering, Wikipediaing, Joe Wicksing to do for them. Closing my home office door last about on average 3 minutes, probably.

The other problem is the confusion of what day it is and that since I got not much work done during the weekdays I also work at the weekend, which before was a complete no-no. Over the long term, this lack of time off for them and me probably is not good.

Cut and paste. I have three kids and they span a broad range of ages. I feel lucky to have a dedicated home office with a door that closes, but that doesn’t stop the constant interruptions from my kids. I can only imagine the global destruction of productivity that is happening right under our noses.

It's been estimated by economists that we've now lost every production gain made since the end of WWII.

Do you have a source for this? I suspected that the loss in productivity has been enormous, but that's a shocking assertion!

Exact same boat here, we can't complain because we still have our jobs, we feel terrible because our kids are getting bored out of their minds and all they want is our attention, i don't know how long we can go on like this.

I haven't figured out how to be as productive as night as I would be in the morning, which used to be my best hours.

You simply can't WFH with young children at home and no full-time caretaker. My wife and I tried alternating 6-hour shifts of work and childcare, 6 days/week, and finally gave up and hired a nanny.

Your comment has converted me from a lurker to a first time poster. I'm in the exact same boat as you and just wanted to tell you to keep on plugging away and doing the best you can. Its all we can really do.

I got stressed out just reading your comment. I hope you're able to return to normalcy soon. :(

3 devs with kids I know all implemented shifts - since they only need to be in meetings occasionally they will watch the kids and work after that.

You mean, they will watch the kids or mutually exclusive work?

This is really interesting, and rings a lot of bells for myself as well. Are you in the US?

I think it is time for a lot of people for a relocation to somewhere with better-larger living arrangements, and better access to childcare (private or public).

And it also should give rise to gig economy around private tutors/babysitters/nannys - which is very useful, and actually could be fun for a lot of people.

Thanks for this comment, I'm empathetic and am in a similar boat. I'm curious if there are managers/companies out there that are expecting the same level of productivity from their staff during these times?

I for one expect lower productivity from my staff whether or not they have kids, and am adjusting delivery dates to account for this.

Other than having not worked from home for many years now (which I am very happy to do when it works out), your experience is highly relatable. For the kids, I'm sad and wish I could do something more for them. But work abounds.

In the exact same situation -- take it for what it is and have faith that being there for your kids is somewhat of a silver lining I say

Hang in there <3