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Comment by bluesquared | Hacker News Reader

As someone at a non-silicon valley non-FAANG company, how are those guys treating their hardware teams?

As an embedded hardware engineer, I've been coming in to the office on an "as necessary" basis. Reading between the lines, I'm rolling my eyes. 99% of what I do can be done at home with the equipment I have, yet our business unit has been the one R&D group expected to have butts-in-seats the whole "shutdown" due to being an "essential" (i.e. medical devices) business.

Hearing all of these tech companies taking the pandemic seriously is giving me some serious grass-is-always-greener feelings.

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I have access to my (Google) building to allow me to get to the hardware lab there, but it's somewhat discouraged to do so.

Equipment is not to leave the lab, but we are encouraged to set things up to allow as much to happen remotely as possible. So I've got remote power, remote debug probes, a brace of EM100 QSPI emulators, etc. The net result is that unless I need to physically change the cabling on something I can work from home. I work on data center hardware which makes this pretty practical. I don't know how folks on the consumer side of things are faring.

I have a Googler friend in the consumer hardware side, and I heard they're given more freedom to bring equipment home with them...

Roommate works in hardware at a FAANG, they were the first "back" in the office but since he doesn't really need to do lab work (he coordinates with overseas vendors) he only goes in once a week.

They are serious about not having people come in unless they need to be there for there work (e.g. actual design and testing).

Silicon Valley non-FAANG hardware + software company here:

If you need a lab, you are allowed to use it with approval from your VP. If you don't, you WFH.

Not Silicon Valley or FAANG, but I'm a MechE that makes "non essential" consumer products. We're officially WFH until 2021, with lab access available as needed. Most of the time that I'm going in to the office is when I'm getting things from our 3D printers, modifying parts using the machine shop or other large power tools that I don't have at home, or running tests. It probably works out to 1-2 days/week on average, but varies greatly depending on what's going on. We also have the opportunity to bring small lab equipment home with us as needed.

One of my family members works in hardware engineering here in the valley. They have been going to the office seven days a week for weeks, but only four hours at a time (and then working another six at home).

Their labs are open but at 1/2 capacity for social distancing, so they have to trade off who gets to be in them (and have to wear masks the whole time, temp checks, etc.)

Their deadlines haven't changed, and their counterparts in Asia are working normal hours, so they have to work seven days a week just to try to keep up since the lab is producing 1/2 the work it normally does.

>>[...] their counterparts in Asia are working normal hours [...]

Bingo. Global competition and productivity will likely be the larger factor than our (in)ability to balance work-life. I feel this pressure more so managing a remote distributed team around the world, even though we're software-only.

Are there clear advantages to having butts in seats, aside from that 1% and the chance that new work will require quick on-site coordination? Or is it just an "optics" thing?

I read somewhere that Apple had ordered their employees to set up a secure cabinet or locker at home for Hardware storage.

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