Benefits of Covid-19

[jjackstone]

This is not a thread to downplay the seriousness or danger of Covid-19. It is simply to show that there are some temporary benefits.

The major benefit I see is that lower pollution levels are being seen around the world due to factory closings and less traffic of all combustion vehicles. Skies have turned blue in places where they are normally brown or yellow. Google pollution and coronavirus and you can read all the stories you want about this. The hope would be that at least a few of our leaders would see and understand that this could be normal if they had the vision and guts to eliminate fossil based energy as soon as possible. The oil and coal industries know it too. That's why they fight so hard to block renewable industries and technologies from the world. Enough of this topic.

The next benefit I've seen is on a more local level. I see families getting to spend more time together. Moms and Dads are home from work and kids are home from school. While we know the economic costs of this it is still nice to be able to watch families enjoy more time together.

Seeing people helping each other more. There are always going to be people who volunteer their time on a regular basis. But from my observations on some of the social media sites, more people than average are coming out to help their neighbors. And to me that is a good thing. Too many folks don't even know their next door neighbors these days but in this crisis they are meeting them and helping them.

Does any one else have positives to this disease?
JJ

[Fat Charlie]

I had a sniffle and was ordered to get it checked out. So I played "react to possible coronavirus".

It was glorious. I've never been able to take care of a cold by resting at home. Cold symptoms hit late Monday morning, I got sent home Monday afternoon, by Wednesday night it was almost entirely gone. On Thursday it was entirely gone.

That, and most dogs in the country probably think they're in heaven.

[redpoint5]

This may speed the rate at which we move toward distributed work. As companies are forced to implement remote work solutions, they may find that it works out well, and since they have already invested in facilitating work from home, they may retain that model once the crisis abates.

If that happened, it would have knockon effects. There would be less need for people to live in dense cities, so housing prices would fall. Less gridlock on roads due to less commuters. Less fuel consumption due to less commuters. Less time wasted commuting. The demand for office space would decline...

My big hope is that prestigious universities lose a bit of their value, exclusivity. If we're really serious about education, then offering extremely cheap online classrooms is the way to go. I've always dreamed of hiring the top educators in their respective fields, recording their lectures, and offering online courses based on those lectures. There's simply no reason why these top educators need to repeat the same lectures every semester to a new group of 400 people crammed into a lecture hall when you can do it once, and distribute to an infinite number of people. Not only that, but the lecture can be revisited as needed.

Why do banks close? It's the computers that do the important work, and they don't rest. I hope we demand that the banking system catch up to the 20th century, let along the 21st.

We probably should abandon the handshake as a greeting, as much as I like it. I've always liked the Japanese bow.

Then there's the unspoken societal benefits, such as providing some relief to our social security, medicare, and other tax draining systems. The disease tends to cull the least productive in the population. That isn't to say we should be happy that people are losing loved-ones for the greater good of society, but it is a benefit to society as a whole nonetheless.

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

This may speed the rate at which we move toward distributed work. As companies are forced to implement remote work solutions, they may find that it works out well, and since they have already invested in facilitating work from home, they may retain that model once the crisis abates..

I have to work from home and besides working in my pjs and cooking at home it actually sucks.

I am “on call” since many aspects of my job aren’t possible remotely.

The trouble I foresee is that I am much less efficient even on items I can do remotely, if I have questions I can’t simply interact with the equipment to find solutions, it’s more difficult to find anyone that knows anything and overall slower to do everything.
I can see some companies taking a knee jerk reaction like you suggest but everything will go down hill if they aren’t very careful in who/how/when they do it.

Hopefully this is understood

[redpoint5]

True, I work 95% from home and miss social interaction and find it difficult to collaborate on something because people can ignore IMs and emails, but cannot ignore someone standing in a cubicle. It's also not healthy to wear lounge clothes while working since there's something about that routine that prepares one to work.

I'm not more productive from home, but one podcast said on average people are 30% more productive working from home. They talked about 5 levels of distributed work:

The Five Levels of Distributed Teams

Level 1: Non-Deliberate Action
Nothing deliberate has been done by the company to support remote work, but employees can still keep the ball rolling somewhat if they’re at home for a day.
They have access to their smartphone, and email. Perhaps they dial in to a few meetings.
But they’ll put off most things until they’re back in the office, and will be a shadow of their office-bound selves.
Level 1 is where the overwhelming majority of organisations were prior to the COVID19 outbreak.

Level 2: Recreating the Office Online
This is where most organisations now reside — especially traditional ones.
It’s where your employees have access to videoconferencing software (eg. Zoom), instant messaging software (eg. Slack) and email, but instead of redesigning work to take advantage of the new medium, teams ultimately end up recreating online, how they work in the office.
This extends to many of the bad habits that permeate the modern office and suppress the ability of knowledge workers to actually think — here’s looking at you 10-person video-calls when two people would suffice, 60+ interruptions a day — now via Slack and phone calls, the sporadic checking of and responding to email more than 70 times a day throughout the day, or the hyper-responsiveness that is expected of all employees, leaving them wired to desktop dings like Pavlov’s dog.

At Level 2, people are still expected to be online from 9 to 5, and in some cases to be subject to what essentially amounts to spyware, with employers installing screen-logging software, such as RescueTime, on their employee machines so that they can play the role of Big Brother (see the Dictator’s Guide below for more like this).

Level 3: Adapting to the medium
At level 3, organisations start to adapt to and take advantage of the medium. Mullenweg points to shared documents (such as a Google Doc), that is visible to all and updated in real-time during a discussion, so that there is a shared understanding of what is discussed and decided, eliminating the risk of lost in translation errors and time wasted thereafter.
It’s at this stage that companies start to invest in better equipment for their employees as well, such as lighting for video-calls and background noise-canceling microphones.
Effective written communication becomes critical the more companies embrace remote work. With an aversion to ‘jumping on calls’ at a whim, and a preference for asynchronous communication

Level 4: Asynchronous Communication
‘I’ll get to it when it suits me.’ This is the nature of asynchronous communication.
The reality is that most things don’t require an immediate response. For most things, a one-way email or instant message should do the job, with the recipient responding when it suits them.
If something really is urgent, then the mode of communication should reflect that. Pick up the phone, or tap that person on the shoulder, but only if it is truly urgent.
Aside from the obvious and massive benefit of giving knowledge workers time to think, create and get into the flow state (a psychological state whereby we are up to five times more productive according to McKinsey), but asynchronous communication predisposes people to making better decisions.
As Robert Greene says, if you want to cut emotion out of the equation, increase your response time. Giving people time to think between question and response, rather than fall victim to blurting out the first thing that comes to mind in a meeting or when tapped on the shoulders, delivers a compound benefit to the organisation over time.
In order to avoid tennis games and duplication of effort, ensure that asynchronous messages:
provide sufficient background detail, where necessary provide clear action item(s) and outcome(s) required.
provide a due date
provide a path of recourse if the recipient is unable to meet your requirements.

Level 5: ‘Nirvana’
This is where your distributed team works better than any in-person team ever could. Mullenweg equates this level with having more emphasis on ‘environment design’, insofar as the organisation’s culture, and the physical environment people work in is concerned.

I'd say my company is somewhere between level 2 and 3. I do have a sweet headset, an electric standing desk (standing now), printer/scanner, and 3 displays.

[jjackstone]

So are you new to work at home guys increasing your power usage?
JJ

[redpoint5]

I've been working from home for 3 years. My electricity consumption may have gone down due to my awareness of it.

I turn the thermostat off when it's just me, and instead have a 100w heat lamp pointed at me. The office is consuming ~210 watts at the moment, and that includes my laptop, 3x 24" displays, heat lamp, and desk light.

Monthly consumption for both the garage and office (same circuit) is 60 kWh, or about $6.

By working from home, I've developed a routine after my wife leaves to turn off lights, turn off hair or clothes irons, and open blinds to maximize solar heating. All the most commonly used stuff are on smart switches, so I have routines set to turn off fans/lights at the time my wife leaves. When she gets home I have a "I'm home" routine that turns on everything we use when home.

Certain lights are on motion sensors such as the garage, game room, laundry, pantry, and closet. No need to remember turning those lights off. All lights are LED, some on dimmers. The instant hot water heater is on a smart switch that has a schedule to turn it off at night and during the workday.

[oil pan 4]

Highlights all the flaws of globalism. Looks like outsourcing all our manufacturing jobs to Asia wasn't the great idea everyone thought it would be and a good chunk of out sourcing everything to China for the last 25 years is about to be undone.
Suddenly no one thinks open boarders are a good idea, just look at Rhode Island, the ultimate sanctuary state that supports open boarders, don't want new yorkers fleeing to their state. Oh the irony, it is not lost on me.
Mexico wants to close the boarder.
For a brief moment people actually started to question how government employees on a low six figure salary rapidly become multimillionaires.
It looks like for the first time in generations large numbers of people are realizing the government doesn't exist to take care of them. When stuff goes sideways you are responsible for you. AntiGun and Gun hating liberals suddenly see the need to own a gun.
Biden is irrelevant.
The house sets up a covid19 investigation panel to Monday morning quarterback every decision made by the trump administration. Showing how petty and hateful they are.
The bail outs are supposed to have strings attached for multinational companies to bring jobs back home.
Stimulus checks are about the be cut and no one's screaming "not my president".
Last Gallup poll 60% of Americans approve of trumps handling of the virus.
I have only received 1 call about extending my cars warranty in the last month, I think the death toll in Asia is far higher than what we have been told.

[jjackstone]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

...By working from home, I've developed a routine after my wife leaves to turn off lights, turn off hair or clothes irons, and open blinds to maximize solar heating. All the most commonly used stuff are on smart switches, so I have routines set to turn off fans/lights at the time my wife leaves. When she gets home I have a "I'm home" routine that turns on everything we use when home...

Ha! I have the same system except that I am retired. My roommate heads off to work and I go around turning off all the things she has left on. I put her desk top in sleep mode or it will continue to pull 100 watts for another 15 minutes unless she is running some program that won't let it automatically sleep.
JJ

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Highlights all the flaws of globalism. Looks like outsourcing all our manufacturing jobs to Asia wasn't the great idea everyone thought it would be and a good chunk of out sourcing everything to China for the last 25 years is about to be undone.

I'm undecided on this one. China in particular is a danger to global freedom because they are Communists and don't respect the rule of law. Intellectual property and health standards/inspections don't ring high on their priorities. Any company doing business there should expect their intellectual property to be forfeited to the Chinese. There's a reason why I can get knock-off Gillette razor blades that are identical in every way for a fraction of the price.

The problem with supply isn't outsourcing, it's not having a sufficiently diverse outsourcing. If we can get the same thing from 3 different countries, it reduces dependence on any single source and increases competition.

Globalism has the potential to unlock new efficiencies. For example, a development cycle can run 24/7 by moving pieces of development to various time zones. There are language and cultural barriers that can increase inefficiency, but it's possible to realize a net benefit to globalized development.