petrea_mitchell (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
petrea_mitchell) wrote2020-05-24 03:28 pm
petrea_mitchell) wrote2020-05-24 03:28 pm
Entry tags:
Week 10
In addition to the roses, lawn signs are blooming all around the neighborhood, proclaiming the presence of graduating high school seniors in the houses nearby.
Myself, I have a nice long weekend to come to terms with the fact that I'm probably working from home for the long term. The latest word from the CDC is that we can all be a little less paranoid about touching things (though hand-washing is still a good idea, because other diseases still exist) and instead should focus on minimizing the total amount of time we spend around other people. Even with distancing and masks, the longer people are in each others' company, especially indoors, especially with a lot of talking, singing, or shouting or going on, the more virus gets transmitted, it turns out. Which sounds to me like the end of the nonessential office.
The tech industry has been heading in this direction for some time, and, indeed, may be long overdue for it. I remember a few years ago, a complaint was circulating about the big tech players' insistence on trying to drag ever more people into the housing insanity of the SF Bay Area that ran something like
Now everyone has decided this isn't so critical after all. Facebook has told its regular employees to work from home until the end of the year and think about whether they really ever want to come back to the office. Twitter has said the hell with it and made everyone permanently remote. Smaller companies are following suit. The pressure may be off the Bay Area soon in a big way. SF Gate reports that two-thirds of tech workers would consider moving away if they could work from home.
Management at my company has only said so far that they intend for us to be among the last wave of people coming back to work in the office. But I think that by now they must have looked at the cost of office space vs. beefing up the VPN.
At any rate, I don't expect to be back in the office anytime soon, so I'm looking at my options for a more permanent working-from-home setup. First up, I should really free up the card table for cards and boardgames again. Today I went poking through the listings for desks and tables on a couple of sites and eventually concluded that I'm going to have to go into a store with my laptop to try some out. I've found candidates of the right width and depth, but they're all a few inches higher than I'd like to have my hands resting. There are a few with big enough keyboard trays that they might hold a laptop, but I'd have to go and check in person.
I don't really want to be around a lot of shoppers after yesterday's run to the farmers' market. At the grocery store nearly everyone is staying focused and making an effort to keep their distance, but people at the farmers' market seemed very unclear on the whole concept.
Myself, I have a nice long weekend to come to terms with the fact that I'm probably working from home for the long term. The latest word from the CDC is that we can all be a little less paranoid about touching things (though hand-washing is still a good idea, because other diseases still exist) and instead should focus on minimizing the total amount of time we spend around other people. Even with distancing and masks, the longer people are in each others' company, especially indoors, especially with a lot of talking, singing, or shouting or going on, the more virus gets transmitted, it turns out. Which sounds to me like the end of the nonessential office.
The tech industry has been heading in this direction for some time, and, indeed, may be long overdue for it. I remember a few years ago, a complaint was circulating about the big tech players' insistence on trying to drag ever more people into the housing insanity of the SF Bay Area that ran something like
1995: The Information Superhighway will allow anyone to work from anywhere, anytime
2015: Must be willing to relocate to San Francisco
Now everyone has decided this isn't so critical after all. Facebook has told its regular employees to work from home until the end of the year and think about whether they really ever want to come back to the office. Twitter has said the hell with it and made everyone permanently remote. Smaller companies are following suit. The pressure may be off the Bay Area soon in a big way. SF Gate reports that two-thirds of tech workers would consider moving away if they could work from home.
Management at my company has only said so far that they intend for us to be among the last wave of people coming back to work in the office. But I think that by now they must have looked at the cost of office space vs. beefing up the VPN.
At any rate, I don't expect to be back in the office anytime soon, so I'm looking at my options for a more permanent working-from-home setup. First up, I should really free up the card table for cards and boardgames again. Today I went poking through the listings for desks and tables on a couple of sites and eventually concluded that I'm going to have to go into a store with my laptop to try some out. I've found candidates of the right width and depth, but they're all a few inches higher than I'd like to have my hands resting. There are a few with big enough keyboard trays that they might hold a laptop, but I'd have to go and check in person.
I don't really want to be around a lot of shoppers after yesterday's run to the farmers' market. At the grocery store nearly everyone is staying focused and making an effort to keep their distance, but people at the farmers' market seemed very unclear on the whole concept.
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