Several counties in the CA Bay Area just announced a general order for non-critical employees to stay home. There are a lot more people on the “mandatory” list now…
Had an all-hands meeting this afternoon to go over the plan. We’re divided into “M-W-F” and “Tu-Th” teams to come in those days and telework the others. I got Tu-Th, so I’m pretty happy with that. I don’t mind going in to the office, in fact I kind of like it, but the commute is horrible so anything that keeps me off the road is a huge favor to my mental well-being.
There’s not really that much reason for me to actually be in the office normally, but my department head just doesn’t care for telework and has resisted before, but this plan was handed down from on high.
I voted “mandatory” though the reality is that if we can wfh we are very strongly encouraged. My company has a large manufacturing facility and a significant office facility as well. We also have a number of facilities world-wide. If we work in the building there are rules intended to keep personnel density low and distances sufficient for health and safety (these directives apply globally).
I’m very pleased with my job and company and they’re certainly doing what they can.
I am a manufacturing and test engineer in a factory. Very little of my job can be done from home. Our product is being used to contain the spread of the virus. Staff who are not involved in production are advised to stay home.
I work for a university, in as much as the three institutes “belong” to the university. We’re about 40 miles away from the main campus, broken into several centers with different focuses on disabilities, and have no 18-22 year-old students in our charge- well, my center, anyway - we do MH/IDD training for adults who have at minimum a masters already. a different center on works with young adults who are interning in middle/high schools.
As of yet staff, on campus and off, are not yet being forced to work from home, though the kids are not allowed back on campus after spring break and will be taught online through at least the first week of April. There have been a lot of e-mails about how to get work from home officially approved on a case by case basis.
Today was the last day anyone from my center worked in the office and as of tomorrow we’ll all be working from home. So it’s “optional” but not really because our director of operations **really ** wants us home: he filled out and filed all the required paperwork for us over the weekend before we even knew about it.
Given I edit video, I’m the only person who needs to use a desktop instead of a laptop, so I spent an hour this afternoon breaking down my station and packing it up. And I’ll begin the workday by setting it all up in my kitchen. Not having a home office means I hate to work from home, so it’s going to be a really long three weeks/three months/eternity until the pandemic is over…
The plan is for us to start working from home two days a week, unless somebody pulls the ripcord and we all just stay home. I’m in a USPS data center, so the state lockdown stuff doesn’t necessarily apply to us. That whole “rain nor sleet nor gloom of night” thing. We didn’t have the opportunity to work from home before because we’re contractors, with no remote access allowed ever since that thing they call The Breach.
Last week, they told us we’d all be getting laptops this week so we could VPN in and work from home. When my week started on Saturday, I found out that instead they had fast-tracked us all to get remote access from our home computers and everybody with a laptop should bring one in and get it set up. I don’t have a laptop, so I had to drive back and forth a few times… they can’t fix anything with the Entrust token remotely, and they can only fix the remote connection when I’m at my computer… I would love to work from home. Hell, if I could have worked from home, I’d have stayed in Berkeley and kept seeing my girlfriend rather than moving to Minnesota. Which, ironically, they’re on shelter-in-place in the Bay Area right now.
I work for a very large government contractor. Current corporate guidance is that teleworking is optional: people have to ask their supervisors, but supervisors are encouraged to approve. Many people on the program I support have opted to telework, but some are still going to the office. I’m one of them.
My job could easily be done remotely (I’m a tech writer/editor and my home office is well equipped), but I only interact with a handful of people in person on a daily basis, I have a short commute, and there’s noisy construction happening next to my house. Mostly, though, I’m in no hurry to start being home alone all day every day…once that starts, it will be that way for weeks. I actually prefer having other people around during the day. So, as long as my boss and others are going to the office, I figure I’ll go in, too.
I think all of this will be moot by next week, though, as I expect corporate policy to shift to “telework unless you can’t.”
I work better with people around. And my company laptop runs better when it’s directly connected to the corporate network, vs via VPN. And I’d rather poke my head out of my cubicle to ask someone a question than have to send an email or IM. And I like the physical separation of work vs home. And it’s good for my car to be driven regularly. And I have no vending machines at home. 
I work from home and the economic fallout from this crisis will probably double my workload in the coming years.
i said “I work from home anyway” because I do, most of the time. However, my client has gone to “everyone telework if you can” as has my employer, so I’m not even going in the handful of days a month that I did before.
As far as “if you can, why not”: some employers (and some clients, for contractors like me) are weird about having you In. Your. Desk. And. Visible. whether it is strictly necessary or not. Heck, my own project has a contractual “x warm bodies on site each month” - which could be either “1 body X days” or “x bodies 1 day apiece”. My work requires no face to face with anyone there - but since many of us don’t even live in the metro area, I get nominated to contribute to the x count.
Working from home is optional, but I’m going in anyway.
My court has severely cut back on hearings, so very few members of the public are coming to court. I’m using the partial closure to catch up on civil case files. I can walk from the parking garage directly to my office and see hardly anyone. I think I’m pretty safe, and it’s much more convenient to access the court case-management system and files in person than from home.
My office did a quick study of what it would take to work from home and the corporate office accelerated the internal process. We came to work Monday with the computers ready to go and out the door we went. I thought it would be next week but I had already upgraded my wifi to deal with it.
I’ve been a 100% telecommuter for the past 5 years or so, and most of my group also telecommutes somewhere between half and full time.
Betcha never really thought how one of the people who helps make sure your money is doing what you expect it to do is doing it from their home, rather than some big corporate office campus. 
My partner is in the “can’t telecommute” category as they’re a hairdresser. Right now, they’re effectively unemployed as they work three days per week at a San Francisco barbershop, and getting a haircut is specifically listed on the “illegal” list.
No students officially for two weeks. That brings us up to two week ‘till Ramadan. I am betting on no students for a full eight weeks. But we are still coming in to the office. All the paperwork is done. Now boredom sets in.
I work at an advertising agency; I’d been working from home 1-2 days a week for the past five years.
The agency president announced, last Monday (March 9) that we could work from home full-time if it made us more comfortable, and I did stay home all week last week. Then, on Friday (March 13), he announced that the offices would effectively be closed, and WFH was made mandatory, on an indefinite basis.
Technically, it’s still possible to go into the office for “critical meetings,” whatever those are, but I can’t picture a reason for doing so, and one has to get permission from the agency president to do it.
While I’ve figured out how to be productive at home over the past five years, I do like being able to go into the office, to see colleagues and friends. Plus, frankly, face-to-face meetings are often preferable. Also, my wife is home all the time (she retired from teaching several years ago), and even after five years of me working at home, she can’t get it through her head that I’m often on conference calls with clients, and that wandering into the room I’m working in to ask me something (or while talking to the cats) without warning isn’t desirable.
I work for a small company and yesterday only six of us showed up. I figure it’s more dangerous to go to the drug store.
I could work at home but my wife, daughter (24), daughter’s boyfriend (24), and son (21, home on spring break) are all there and I wouldn’t get shit done.
College instructor here. Our spring break has gone from one week to three weeks, and no assignments are to be due before March 30th. This gives us time to prepare for preparing the classes that are not already online. Students will not be back on campus the rest of the semester (including commencement, probably), but faculty has the option to work from our offices or from home. I’m choosing home.
Our school system is closed through April 1st (officially; our principal told us that’s not gonna happen). Spring Break, originally scheduled for mid April, is this week. Next week we go remote. Classroom teachers have “office hours” from 8:45 until 12:45 where they interact with students remotely, and work on planning and collaboration the rest of the day. I said that I’ll be available to help with research or locating resources all day, and will meet with teaching teams to figure out how I can support them at the end of the week.
Of course no one knows what this is going to end up looking like. I’m trying not to spend too much time thinking about it during “spring break” without much success.
Our school system is closed through April 1st (officially; our principal told us that’s not gonna happen). Spring Break, originally scheduled for mid April, is this week. Next week we go remote. Classroom teachers have “office hours” from 8:45 until 12:45 where they interact with students remotely, and work on planning and collaboration the rest of the day. I said that I’ll be available to help with research or locating resources all day, and will meet with teaching teams to figure out how I can support them at the end of the week.
Of course no one knows what this is going to end up looking like. I’m trying not to spend too much time thinking about it during “spring break” without much success.
HHS has given the go-ahead, so now psychotherapists can provide telehealth to Medicare and Medicaid patients, hooray! Also, there’s a temporary relaxing of HIPAA standards so the patient can choose to Skype or other non-compliant software if they can’t figure out or have the bandwidth for a secure option. This will also be good for non-tech-savvy and demented patients who may not be able to learn a new system.
We’re figuring out how we can schedule our work at home without stepping on each other’s bandwidth given our crummy internet service.
Where I work, there’s a new “only half of the employees should come in each day” policy, so I am being told to work from home three days a week.