Working alone: The self-quarantine economy
The global coronavirus outbreak is giving us the “world’s biggest work-from-home experiment,” said Jessie Yeung in CNN .com. With millions in Asia under quarantine, and more companies in the U.S. taking precautionary measures, the past few weeks have “marked a step toward widespread” adoption of remote work. Thanks to technology such as videoconferencing and cloud storage, this transition is smoother than ever. Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon started telling their Seattle-based employees to work from home last week, said Alex Kantrowitz in BuzzFeedNews.com, and as “social distancing” becomes the norm, many more offices will follow. The health crisis is “a test case for the moment working remotely will broadly replace working in person.”
This is a test case we don’t actually need, said Molly Wood in Wired.com. We’ve had plenty of experience with remote work, and we’ve learned that “the only thing worse than conference rooms is conference calls.” In San Francisco, as office lights “wink out one by one,” everyone is talking about how to use tools such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams and Hangouts. The problem is that “we all know these tools don’t work that well.” Despite years of breathless promotion, we know that the reality of remote work is predictable “frustration and miscommunication.” We should not “ignore health guidelines and force people to work in an office during a pandemic,” said Kevin Roose in The New York Times. Working from home will be the only option for many in this health crisis, and it’s a good option generally “for new parents, people with disabilities, and others who aren’t well served by a traditional office setup.” But for the rest of us, it’s disappointing. “Working in isolation can be lonely,” and it doesn’t spur innovative thinking. Apple’s Steve Jobs was “a famous opponent of remote work” who believed that creativity comes from spontaneous meetings and chance discussions. “I’ll stay home as long as my bosses and the health authorities advise. But honestly, I can’t wait to go back to work.”
I actually like working from home, said Charlie Warzel, also in the Times. I live in Montana, meet colleagues via Zoom and Skype, and “social distancing is close to the status quo for me.” My life is efficient thanks to “Hermit Tech”: Netflix, Peloton, Google Hangouts. It’s easy enough for me and many other white-collar workers to self-quarantine. Some of us come near to doing that every day. But many services—think especially of DoorDash and Amazon—only work because “others have to be out in the world on your behalf.” While we’re burrowing in, we need to be “mindful of the people underwriting and powering our convenience.”