Has your employer told you to work from home yet? (Let us know what industry you're in)
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- By the end of 2026, how useful do you think agentic/multi-agent AI systems will actually be in your daily work or personal projects? Posted on March 11th, 2026 | 40 comments
Called it last weekend. (Score:3)
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I just returned from an O/S trip and my boss ordered me to work from home for 2 weeks as a precaution (not sick, BTW). I usually WFH anyway and only attend the office infrequently.
Most of our offices around the world are currently closed and everyone who can is working from home, so that's something.
I'm very glad I have a job I can do remotely. It'd suck to have to burn more leave or not get paid just because I came back from a holiday.
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My job is kind of hard to do from home, but as an airline pilot there won't be much work to do in the next month or so anyway.
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Hows the internet connection up and down going?
Trump worked at home last weekend and EVERY day (Score:3)
Trump has been working from home for a long time. It ain't working.
By the way, when Trump said Covid-19 tests were available for everyone who wanted one, what he REALLY meant was "I can get a Covid-19 test whenever I want it." I count it as another scandal and attempted coverup that they tried to lie about the little fact that he had been tested.
I do NOT feel any schadenfreude because of all the people who are suffering and sick because of Trump's incompetence, but I'm going to get sick from the super-schad
I do not want to see Trump dead (Score:2)
I want to see him in public court, blabbing away and sinking all the people around him to the third degree.
Please have a long life, leader of the free world!
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Same boat on both counts.
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Yeah, I'm not naive enough to think that the company that I work for really cares for their staff. They just want to avoid getting sued for something like criminal negligence when employees start getting sick from coronavirus when they were forced to be in the office with infected staff members.
Other (Score:3)
"Can you confirm that you can access all required network drives and resources from home?"
So it's not work-from-home, but it's intelligence gathering to see how many of us can. Of course, if we hadn't made our emergency plan and then shelved it 2 years ago, we'd know the answer to this question already. But I get ignored when I point out that if you don't ever test your emergency/backup plan, you won't know if it works until you need to use it.
I expect that by the end of next week I'll get a mandatory WFH for 2 weeks until this starts to blow over.
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Making a contingency plan for when the office is not usable was one of the first things I had to do as a team manager. Thankfully it was pretty simple since the plan was basically 1) Take your laptop and RSA token with you 2) Business as usual. We'd have new people try working from home when onboarding to make sure everything worked. I imagine it's more difficult if you need paperwork or other stuff in the office though.
The last week we went through a series of escalating measures. First people were told to
I'm my own boss. (Score:2)
I told myself to do WTF I liked.
Watch out for HR. (Score:2)
They can appear at the most unexpected times in all companies.
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A wild HR appeared!
You used LOGIC!
It's not very effective...
Supplemental solution approach (Score:2)
Data limits should be removed for the duration of the crisis to more strongly encourage people to work at home. Ditto toll charges on phone calls.
Related question: What is the best teleconferencing software? The mathematical analysis of "best" would involve the trade off between peer-to-peer data exchanges versus server costs of preparing special views for each participant... Or did the solution just collapse to a singularity? The central server only needs to maintain a list of frames for each participant a
Manufacturing - Can't do it from home (Score:3)
I work in a machine shop, making gears... something that can't be done remotely.
Should things get shut down, I'll be working at home on some projects in Lazarus.
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Same here, I'm an MRO guy. If its made out of metal, I have to fix it. That includes machining, rigging, welding, piping, etc.
I just love to ask people what happens when all the factories shut down because of supply chain failure due to the virus.
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Re: Manufacturing - Can't do it from home (Score:2)
Industrial supply chains come from China or Europe. Those are just starting to give production issues.
It really depends on where product is sourced, and how much the factory keeps on hand.
For the record I had a pallet of product air freighted from China the last week of Feb.
2,000pounds of plastic tape.
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Nope (Score:2)
I work at a callcenter. We close down, we don't make any money, just like a restaurant or a retail store, and it would make even less sense than for one of those sorts of establishments because its a secure facility, not open to the public.
I can't see the owners/management making the decision to just not bring in any income at all for any period of time.
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Seems like what VPNs are for...
Re: Nope (Score:2)
Can't work from home (Score:2)
No, I'm retired (Score:2)
But when I was working, I did a lot from home, back in the aughts. MSPG was about that even then. Now there are so many more tools that I often wonder why there are still cubicle farms. My brother has been working-from-home for months now. Has to travel from ATL to Bumfsck, AL every other month for face times, though.
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A lot of companies think they can better guard their business secrets, if they don't give remote access.
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A lot of companies think they can better guard their business secrets, if they don't give remote access.
And those companies are what I like to call, wrong.
Interesting numbers (Score:1)
I could, but ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Anecdote: I get paged in the middle of the night to look at some shop floor automation problems.
"What's the error message?" I ask.
"Get your ass down here now!"
I get dressed and drive in. Maybe an hour or more. I arrive, look at error message and recognize a server problem that I could have logged in from home and fixed in 10 minutes.
Enjoy stopping your aircraft production line for nothing, buddy.
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So you need to let him know that you really do take downtime seriously (not just by saying it, but by your actions. So make a calendar on the wall, color the days red/green if there was no downtime that day. Or since you probably already have someone tracking that at your company, make a list of every downtime
Re: I could, but ... (Score:2)
The correct response is, "I found the problem, I'll be back in an hour to fix it."
Yes if I was still working for Cisco... (Score:2)
... as a contractor who worked from home the whole 1.5 years. :P
Zoom (Score:2)
I was informed that our (large public university) will be closed to students until the end of the school year (May). I'm going to have to teach via Zoom for the next 8 weeks. I'm thinking of streaming a speed run of Doom while I lecture. Do it Twitch style.
Gotta tell you, I'm really surprised that a major research institution like this was so ill-prepared for anything like this virus. The state government has done a good job, but man, people were not prepared. We Americans live charmed lives.
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Re: Zoom (Score:2)
Well, WoW users use TeamSpeak, so there's your real alternative there.
Interestingly enough, when we switched to Zoom, we had one employee who was adamant that TS would be a fine solution instead, and in fact there have been times he and I used it because Zoom had problems.
Already work from home. (Score:2)
I already work from home (I develop software).
My kids, who are currently on their spring break, just had that break extended another week by the school district.
University (Score:1)
Faculty, staff, and researchers will continue to work on campus for now.
Large gatherings are strongly discouraged.
Spring sports are canceled.
Hemming and hawing (Score:4, Interesting)
The university I work for has encouraged people who can to work from home, but my department leadership is apparently not listening. I can do my job from home (I’m a web developer), so I’m going to be having a chat with the university HR about our department.
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By current estimates, the pandemic spread in the U.S. is roughly 9 days behind that in Italy.
"This is an excellent article. Please read it."
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca [medium.com]
Yes, software engineering (Score:2)
Company has a fat pipe (like, 10Gb/s+) and VPN, so we (100+ people) can all work from home without problem really, except the one tinkering with hardware in lab.
I already WFH from time to time when there is huge traffic jam, snow storm, etc
Yes (Score:2)
Yes, my company has made this mandetory (except when absolutely nessecary)
Doesnt affect me too much though, ive had an exemption, and have been working from home the last few years anyways. (2 hour commute each way)
I'm Retired So I Voted No (Score:1)
Yes, and I already work from home (Score:2)
I'm already 100% remote, but most of the people in my company work at our corporate office. However, they recently told all employees (except for a skeleton crew) to work from home.
Only if sick (Score:1)
Currently the official stance has been to work from home if you are sick. Which with a 5 day incubation time, that is just stupid.
The sad thing is that almost everyone here could work remotely with no real impact. Those who would need to be here, would be better protected if the rest of us were home.
Honestly though, come next week I may just work from home anyway.
Telecom (Score:2)
Mixed.
Management employees can work from home, ( *you bet your ass executive and upper level management already are ) but non-management typically cannot.
Even if a non-mgmt job function CAN be done from home, they are still required to officially report to a work location.
*These are the same folks who came up with the idea of " Open Office Concepts ", " Shared Work Space ", etc for everyone else, but they enjoy their own
private offices.
Some folks can't work from home because they are required to be onsite
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I stand corrected.
This arrived in our inbox just moments ago:
******************
Hi,
I want to talk to you briefly about the Coronavirus pandemic and how we’re responding to it.
Make no mistake, we’re facing a public health crisis.
As a company, we’ve faced difficult situations many times over our storied history. Natural disasters, man-made disasters, economic crises but nothing exactly like this one.
This is why we prepare. It’s times like this when our incredible team stands out. That
Re: Telecom (Score:2)
Then go to the office and spend your day building a strike movement with your coworkers. There's no management to stop you.
It's Coming (Probably) (Score:2)
Not yet, but the warning order went out. (Score:2)
Well, informally. We all work in a SCIF in Chantilly so it's a scramble to see what we can actually do from home.
No (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: No (Score:1)
Re: No (Score:1)
Re: No (Score:1)
Re: No (Score:1)
Student (Score:2)
Nope. Working from the office is still mandatory. (Score:2)
Management's position is that everyone has to come to work at the office if they are not sick. For those of us with kids (our governor has shut down all public schools for the next 3 weeks) we have to work with our managers to make arrangements on a case-by-case basis.
Meanwhile, 90% of the staff have laptops. We use Office 365, and therefore OneDrive, Teams, Skype for Business, Sharepoint, etc. Our phone system is VOIP based with Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac apps that work anywhere in the world. We ha
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Need a new word (Score:2)
What's "optional but not really optional"? Sorta like when my wife asks "do you want to visit my mother with me?" ;)
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"strongly encouraged"
Everyone but me (Score:1)
Re: Everyone but me (Score:1)
Nigerian Prince (Work at home/hut) (Score:5, Funny)
I am a Nigerian Prince and have work from home in my palatial grass hut for years now. I spend most of my time trying to move my funds out of Nigeria by emailing people to help me, for a share in the profits.
My cousin, Nigerian Astronaut (Air Force Major Abacha Tunde) was the first African in space when he made a secret flight to the Salyut 6 space station in 1979. He has been stranded there since 1990 when the Soviet Union was dissolved. His other Soviet crew members returned to earth on the Soyuz T-16Z, but his place was taken up by return cargo and I need to get my funds out of Nigeria to finance a rescue mission. He is in good humour, but wants to come home. I've told him to remain in self-isolation but need the funds to send him food by rocket.
I work from home, but... (Score:2)
I work in a small R&D group, and I am the only one who asked to work from home one day a week well before the coronavirus outbreak. So I got from my employer the needed hardware and software: the software enables me to connect to employer's IT infrastructure, and on the other side it allows HR dept. to check that I am really working.
After coronavirus outbreak, everybody in the group had to work from home, but since my coworkers do not have the required
We've made it optional (Score:2)
We run what is essentially a serviced office with bespoke systems for brokers, and were lucky to have built in remote access from the start. Saying that, we've now bought headsets and SIP clients for everyone, plus laptops for staff that didn't already have them. So everyone can work from home if they want to.
That said, I told my boss that if we all have to self isolate, I'm calling shotgun on the office being my office from home.
Good Company Policy (Score:1)
Very Large Company,
10-15% work from home regularly, and on-site employees that can work from home, are basically allowed to whenever they want, and if at any point you think you are sick, or are sick, it's strongly encouraged to not go into work (by management and peers).
2 weeks ago, international business travel banned, large corporate gatherings, conference attendance etc.. banned.
If you do/did travel internationally (for personal or business), Work from home for 2 weeks. If you can't work from home, paid
Optional but I insisted (Score:2)
I have asthma, and my doctor has advised me to take extra precautions. So when the email came out saying that remote work was even an option, I jumped on it and asked to begin immediately.
Difficulty is that my work is physical -- at the moment, building small wiring harnesses -- so it can't be done purely from a keyboard. So I'll pick up boxes of parts, and drop off completed units, off-hours (I know the building's alarm code) to minimize possible airborne exposure.
I'm still trying to figure out how best to
Kinda (Score:2)
On Tuesday we had a weekly team meeting (small dev shop). When it was over, I asked whether there are any plans for working form home. The answer was: no. On Wednesday the boss came in and asked what would be the logistics. In the afternoon I gave a short intro on VPN, RDP, ssh tunnels, ... to the team - they never cared about network internals as long as it worked. On Thursday we got approval from the mothership. We have also found out that our ISP blocks connections from outside, so we filled a change req
Mandatory except Critical things (Score:2)
We have been encouraged to work from home... (Score:2)
We are encouraged to work from home to slow the spread.
We are banned from all but one building.
It is a rural area.
The stores are empty of canned good and toilet paper.
Our little hospital can not withstand an inrush of patients, so I hope everyone practices social distancing to slow the spread.
With the flu, you typically spread it to 9 people.
With corona, you typically spread it to 45 people.
Corona spreads quickly, so stop touching your face :)
Working home now. (Score:2)
(Possibly related: About three weeks ago I buttonholed the boss (VP) and told him he should make plans for the possibility that I and/or my wife, might not survive COVID-19. She and I are both getting along in years and have relevant "pre-existing conditions". He said he had enough worries without that. ;-) )
I had occasionally worked from home and one of the other key people in our group did it a lot. Much of our software group is in India, HW design in Vietnam, HW manufacturing in China, vendors and de
IT in Insurance space (Score:2)
I work in the US for a large, multinational insurance company based in Japan. Email came out last week that offices will remain open at this time but that everyone should test their WFH abilities to ensure they are prepared should something change.
Yes (mandatory) for me (Score:1)
Yes (Score:2)
Retired (Score:2)
I am keeping my nursing license active though in case the shit really hits the fan. Only 3 of my 40 holdings have decreased their dividends so far so I'm still good.
My Boss (Score:2)
I'm a physician. Working at home won't work (Score:2)
Still at work, 6 days a week. (Score:1)
Mandatory Now (Score:1)
Last week it was voluntary, for the next 30 days mandatory. Also for the next 30 days unlimited sick time that doesn't dip into your PTO
Hard to move things when I work at home (Score:2)
Stupid BS Manager (Score:1)
My colleagues and I were supposed to work from home using Skype and other technologies. We barely have to communicate at the office face to face, so it's already limited contact as it is.
Last week, all of us on the same team/ same manager got an email mandating we work in the office, and will not be allowed to work from home (even though we all have VPN's, etc..) even if we are sick. Then, we were told if we didn't scan in at work, he'll know, so no playing hooky. Well, guess which member of our team ha
Re: (Score:2)
There are very few grounds to go over a manager's head, but I dare say this might be one of them.
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to the prosecutor's office. The last time I heard, reckless endangerment was a felony.
Not yet. (Score:1)
Just Switched Today (Score:2)
Optional work from home was announced Friday the 13th. Now a few minutes ago they announced work from home is mandatory. We will only be able to access the office if there's a business critical need.
It's complicated (Score:1)
No, it's not feasible (Score:1)
retired/disabled (Score:2)
copd, lung cancer and PAD so I will go down quick if I get the virus.
Technology (Score:1)
Someone Tested Positive (Score:2)
Telecom related, Senior Engineer in Operations owning the Kubernetes infrastructure.
The company has mandated working from home if the job permits it. We even had a, "if you need something from work in order to WFH, fill out this form and you can come in between these hours to pick up your gear" message :) But I probably work from home a good percentage of the time anyway due to the snow over the past couple of months. 7 more inches coming on Thursday.
While somewhat of a social person, I am heavily introver
5kw lasers don't run themselves (Score:1)
I Informed my Company... (Score:1)
I got two favorable responses.
Management has taken it in stride.
WFH (Score:1)
My newest life as an elected official (Score:1)
I've served as a Milwaukee County Supervisor, an elected position here in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, for most of the past decade. We need to adhere to open meetings laws. And as part of the County Board Finance & Audit Committee, we are in charge of making decisions on how to spend millions of dollars on contracts and spending and overseeing the $1.2
Voluntary/Unofficial for now (Score:2)
In the mean time we are awaiting the results of the trial and further developments.
work (Score:1)