Who's on Lock Down or Working from Home because of you know what?

[beefkabob]

I'm an attorney in BigLaw. My firm asked everyone to WFH starting tomorrow, though technically global offices will be open where legal. IT infrastructure has been bolstered considerably to support a whole firm going remote. The open question is how much I'll be able to bill, given that our (soon to be first) daughter's kindergarten has gone virtual, and we'll have to see how much parental guidance she'll need. That will fall to me, because...

My wife is a neurologist at a university hospital. She has a rotation that will enable her to monitor patients from home for the next two weeks. After that we'll both be going on parental leave for our forthcoming daughter, so we'd largely be home anyway. Just fewer visitors. My sister-in-law was going to fly in from Vienna on April 1, but obviously that's not happening.

Power couple alert!

If only I'd married up...

Congrats on your coming kid. And your other kid being in kinder.

My tutoring center already had lots of kids using Skype. Now they all use Skype. A handful have shown up for class. We lecture them then let them stay for that class. The office is open for next week at least, but it's 3400 square feet and up to 4 people, all in different rooms. We're pretty far from each other. Yeah, I have way too much office space. Now I'm paying for it all, and it's barely used! In 7 days, none of it will be used! The cleaners came to the office today, but I canceled them at my house and office from now on. Just left them some extra money at the office.

Meanwhile, the kids are at home going stir crazy. The wife is home. She's a school computer teacher. So no work for her for at least two weeks, other than the occasional email.

Just requested to double our farm CSA order. We go to a secret location each Saturday and pick up the veggies.

Gotta flatten that hospital admittance line!

 

[gikigill]

Oz here, still not much sign of WFH in my or related offices yet.

Already have guidelines in place though and due to sensitive information, company is just giving paid time off instead of WFH for 4 weeks if necessary.

 

[Rollaven]

SH, the Netherlands. I have to stay home, they've closed the schools and daycare for my 8 year old until the 6th of April. I can do something at home but not much. After that it will probably be special leave for me.

 

[VMAT4]

WFH here in South Central PA. The Governor put out the word late last night or early this morning for State Employees in the Capital Complex and Dauphin County.

 

[stunta]

Working from home for a week now and the "recommendation" (typical CYA response) from the overlords is to do that for the rest of the month. I suspect this will extend well past this month. All interviews have been made virtual which makes hiring a bit interesting but workable. Still getting paid so am luckier than most.

 

[JohnYang1997]

Just wear masks when go out and wash hands frequently. This is how China overcomes the virus. Seriously shame on people who think that wearing masks means carrying the virus.

 

[Alexanderc]

I’m at a big university trying to teach my classes online for the next two weeks. On the bright side, I can work from my home office where my stereo is.

 

[Foxenfurter]

I work in IT Finance in London. We have been Working from Home this week and it is now policy. Just announced schools are closing imminently so we expect to go into lock-down too.
Idiots are panic buying toilet rolls, cleaning products, tinned food. It's not looking great....

 

[Martin]

I have worked from home for over 15 years. I work for a company that makes the tools that allow people to work from home. The entire company was mandated to work from home beginning last Monday until further notice. We are scrambling to help our customers make the same option available for their employees.

My son's high school is on spring break this week and will take another week off next week. On March 30th they begin virtual school using Chromebooks until at least the middle of April. A large portion of our school district's students depend upon free school lunches. The schools are making bag lunches available to all students for pick up each morning.

 

[SIY]

If someone would invent actual Waldos, I could work from home.

The commute seems just as crowded as ever, so apparently I'm not the only one who has to trudge into work every day.

 

[HemiRick]

I have WFH for over 25 years, as a self employed car mechanic......I am also a hermit, so this quarantine/social distancing thing is like normal to me.

 

[Berwhale]

I began WFH today. I cancelled my yearly rail ticket to get a partial refund. The kids will be at home from tomorrow.

 

[WesParker]

I work in IT Finance in London. We have been Working from Home this week and it is now policy. Just announced schools are closing imminently so we expect to go into lock-down too.
Idiots are panic buying toilet rolls, cleaning products, tinned food. It's not looking great....

You guys are a week behind the USA in TP rampage.

 

[LTig]

My employer has ordered everybody who is able to WFH. I started on Monday but the VPN was much too slow for running eclipse via ssh and X11 (it had worked the week before in the evening due to much less usage). Luckily I can use an office in a lonely container so no direct contact to anybody. There's even a pair of Mackie HR824 ready to play. Meetings with colleagues are done with Webex. Telefone and chat. So far I'm even more productive due to less disturbing...

My wife does WFH since yesterday (same employer), for her work the VPN tunnel is good enough.

When I walk through the company most offices (application, software, sales) are either empty or very sparse populated.

 

[GD Fan]

Started working from home on Friday (3.13.20.), thankfully. The downside is with financial markets in a full meltdown it just means working around the clock discussing results that change dramatically by the end of the day, the last time I left the building was Sunday, and the nearfield system on my (small) desk isn't sufficient for all-day enjoyment. On the upside, the sidewalks and people here in Manhattan can be avoided, my stereo is a short walk down the hall, and the commute no longer wipes out a big chunk of the day.

Stay safe and healthy everyone. This could be a lengthy slog.

 

[Totoro]

My employer has ordered everybody who is able to WFH. I started on Monday but the VPN was much too slow for running eclipse via ssh and X11 (it had worked the week before in the evening due to much less usage). Luckily I can use an office in a lonely container so no direct contact to anybody. There's even a pair of Mackie HR824 ready to play. Meetings with colleagues are done with Webex. Telefone and chat. So far I'm even more productive due to less disturbing...

My wife does WFH since yesterday (same employer), for her work the VPN tunnel is good enough.

When I walk through the company most offices (application, software, sales) are either empty or very sparse populated.

Just out of curiosity, why would you run your ide remotely like that? Is it a security thing, or do you have to run it on giant boxes or something? I just ask because I haven’t done it that way in a long time and I’m curious whenever I meet someone who works in a totally different style than me.

 

[murraycamp]

I'm a partner in a boutique litigation practice (<10 lawyers) and all attorneys and staff are working remotely. Fortunately, we made sufficient timely investments in IT so we are cloud-based.

I hope all my fellow ASR members and their families stay safe.

On a lighter note, as I am ensconced in my home office, I am grateful for my cans setup and am giving my D50s, Atom, and Focal Clears quite the workout.

 

[kokishin]

Santa Clara County CA (Silicon Valley) and neighboring counties implemented shelter-in-place aka lockdown on Tuesday 3/17/20.

Even the dopes who compose our Board of Directors for our condo closed our little private gym even though the county Dept of Health said private gyms can remain open.

 

[Willem]

Our university has closed a week ago so my wife and I are now teaching online from home. I must say it is not quite the real thing, particularly for interactive small group teaching. The fact that not all students have very good microphones on their old laptops does not help. On our side we fortunately invested in good external computer audio (and microphones in particular) years ago.
On the bright side, I am pleasantly surprised how well the internet seems to survive the much higher load. Some pages like BBC News load a bit more slowly at times, but that is about it. For when/if the load gets even bigger the European Commission is now having discussions with Netflicks about reducing their bit rate when necessary. But for now the internet is alive and kicking here in the Netherlands.

 

[mansr]

I went out for some shopping a while ago, and the streets were less busy than usual but not deserted. Some shops are closed (the Apple store among them), but most are open. Quite a few restaurants and bars are closed. One pub had a notice on the door saying they only accept contactless payments. Waitrose was out of toilet paper, pasta, and potatoes, very low on carrots and other root veg. Have people finally realised that the use-by dates on those things are nonsense?