poll Covid: Is your job essential?

[techbeck]

Just curious on whose job is deemed essential or not.  Currently most of my family are still working with some getting pay cuts/less hours.   A few out of work.

 

My job, we have Navy contracts.  We also provide backup power systems for hospitals and nuclear power plants.  So I am still working every day and going in to the office.  I can also work from home.

 

My GF is also a PA and she is seeing patients daily with COVID.  So I have some concern for her.

 

If you are still working, put yes.  If you are not working because of COVID, then No.

Edited April 9, 2020 by techbeck

[jnelsoninjax]

I'm unemployed at the moment, so my job consists of me taking care of the house (which I was doing prior to being unemployed) so I answered no.

[+Warwagon MVC]

Not sure how to answer it. I'm self employed doing computer repair out of my home. I can still do a lot of my work remotely.

[Astra.Xtreme]

My employer supplies safety and automation solutions for government, nuclear, aerospace, and pretty much all manufacturing companies in the US, so we're still open.  Besides a slight dip in sales, I've been completely unaffected luckily.

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

My job is essential to the firm.  My firm is involved in major contracts globally.  Some of those contracts are with the NHS.  Business is currently up (by quite a margin) for us.

 

Is my job essential to the world continuing?  Not at all.

 

I'm currently working from home, but working as per normal.

 

I've no idea how to answer - lol

[Brandon H Supervisor]

I work in a call center that troubleshoots credit card machines so we're deemed essential

 

I'm not even on the phones lol. I write/maintain the website for our troubleshooting references the agents use.

I'm still going into work every day because they have me also helping get everyone setup for BCP in case the agents need to work from home.

[adrynalyne]

Poll is misleading. 
 

Essential job? No. 
Still working? Yes. 
 

Answered no on poll.

[Jim K Global Moderator]

Medical.  So yep...sort of.  Do not have any routine patients for my particular modality (emergencies/urgents only) ... though I've been assisting others during my downtime.  Been bored though...

[spy beef]

ASIC design engineer here, not really essential.

[tsupersonic]

I'm essential, but WFH. 

[+Biscuits Brown MVC]

Same as tsupersonic. Essential (including a letter I can present to law enforcement if I need to drive to the office) but I WFH and I'm not planning any drives in.

[shockz]

Yes, mine apparently is. But I'm allowed to work from home. If I have to go in, I have a paper indicating I'm "essential". In all honesty though, I'm only essential because I run core systems for my company, which contracts with health/medical/banking/government. 

[Nick H. Supervisor]

I marked "yes" according to the original post, but I wouldn't consider it essential. I work in IT Support. The Forum have said that if you can work from home then you should. Except for our team, where we need to have one person in the office each day. I was in on Tuesday, but aside from that we're working from home. Well, I was until about 4 hours ago. Now I'm on holiday for a week.

[Guest]

I dunno, kinda.

 

I support engineers who fix boilers for a large boiler manufacturer, so it's keeping hot water and heating going.

 

Did I need to spend two weeks in an office/call centre environment? Not really, especially now, seeing as they let us work at home in the end.

 

This was never the plan, one day they had a meeting to say that there is zero chance that we can work at home and to quash any questioning of it. The next day they did a 180, it was really weird.

[PGHammer]

3 minutes ago, Nick H. said:

I marked "yes" according to the original post, but I wouldn't consider it essential. I work in IT Support. The Forum have said that if you can work from home then you should. Except for our team, where we need to have one person in the office each day. I was in on Tuesday, but aside from that we're working from home. Well, I was until about 4 hours ago. Now I'm on holiday for a week.

Nick H. - part of the problem is that there was a LOT of resistance to letting folks WFH in the government (despite the government being set up for it for years) and it came from up the chain; it's as if they are "counting bodies".  I'm really wondering - was someone LITERALLY "counting bodies supervised" - and that is what drove the resistance to working from home?  The same is true in telecom (even cable companies).  Yes; I'm serious - the entirety of the cable company support network can work from home - and has been able to since 1988 using existing technologies.  The question is where is the resistance coming from - and WHY is it coming from there?

[Nick H. Supervisor]

1 minute ago, PGHammer said:

Nick H. - part of the problem is that there was a LOT of resistance to letting folks WFH in the government (despite the government being set up for it for years) and it came from up the chain; it's as if they are "counting bodies".  I'm really wondering - was someone LITERALLY "counting bodies supervised" - and that is what drove the resistance to working from home?  The same is true in telecom (even cable companies).  Yes; I'm serious - the entirety of the cable company support network can work from home - and has been able to since 1988 using existing technologies.  The question is where is the resistance coming from - and WHY is it coming from there?

I would not like to host a 750+ people video conference using 1988 technology...

[cork1958]

I'm retired so I voted for my wife and said yes, although I don't have a clue why her job is essential! It wasn't a week ago when she got laid off but went back to work this week. As of now, I don't know how long she will be back to work, but with the hours she's working this week and Saturday, doubt if it's just for 1 week. I think she'll have to go through the health questionnaire and getting a new permission to drive slip.

 

She works for a company making office furniture.

[PGHammer]

12 minutes ago, kalkal said:

I dunno, kinda.

 

I support engineers who fix boilers for a large boiler manufacturer, so it's keeping hot water and heating going.

 

Did I need to spend two weeks in an office/call centre environment? Not really, especially now, seeing as they let us work at home in the end.

 

This was never the plan, one day they had a meeting to say that there is zero chance that we can work at home and to quash any questioning of it. The next day they did a 180, it was really weird.

Of course they can - The folks doing the actual repairs can park the trucks at home; heck the DISPATCHERS can dispatch from home as well - existing technology (it has been available for over ten years - if not twenty)! Again - what's driving the resistance?  Something smells - and it's not the cologne.

[PGHammer]

2 minutes ago, Nick H. said:

I would not like to host a 750+ people video conference using 1988 technology...

You don't have to use 1988 tech - tech has advanced since them - you can do it using Teams - or Skype - or even Facebook Messenger (the latter costs nothing - and likely is already in the houses of the folks doing the work).

[Guest]

1 minute ago, PGHammer said:

Of course they can - The folks doing the actual repairs can park the trucks can home; heck the DISPATCHERS can dispatch from home as well - existing technology (it has been available for over ten years - if not twenty)! Again - what's driving the resistance?  Something smells - and it's not the cologne.

I'm not following, the engineers pretty much have the short straw in that they physically have to repair boilers at people's homes. I on the other hand was on the end of the phone for the engineers, and now doing that at home thank god! Feel bad for them, however I've no doubt that if they had the option, that they would be working from home instead of working out in the field.

[PGHammer]

1 minute ago, kalkal said:

I'm not following, the engineers pretty much have the short straw in that they physically have to repair boilers at people's homes. I on the other hand was on the end of the phone for the engineers, and now doing that at home thank god! Feel bad for them, however I've no doubt that if they had the option, that they would be working from home instead of working out in the field.

Again - do they have Facebook Mesenger or Skype?  You can dispatch from your house - using either.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, PGHammer said:

Again - do they have Facebook Mesenger or Skype?  You can dispatch from your house - using either.

Dispatch what?

 

We're talking about Gas Safe engineers on Gas appliances, you need to be Gas Safe trained to work on any Gas appliance, for fairly obvious reasons...

[PGHammer]

7 minutes ago, cork1958 said:

I'm retired so I voted for my wife and said yes, although I don't have a clue why her job is essential! It wasn't a week ago when she got laid off but went back to work this week. As of now, I don't know how long she will be back to work, but with the hours she's working this week and Saturday, doubt if it's just for 1 week. I think she'll have to go through the health questionnaire and getting a new permission to drive slip.

 

She works for a company making office furniture.

it still can be done to an extent from home.  Furnitureland South literally has their entire staff WFH - and they make mid-end to high-end furniture for half the United States.  Our own rep is WFH - her office is in Greensboro - however, her home is not.  WE are located in Maryland,  It's why I asked what is driving the resistance.

[PGHammer]

2 minutes ago, kalkal said:

Dispatch what?

 

We're talking about Gas Safe engineers on Gas appliances, you need to be Gas Safe trained to work on any Gas appliance, for fairly obvious reasons...

I'm talking about sending out the repair folks.  Can you or can you not you not send out repair folks via Skype or Facebook Messenger?

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, PGHammer said:

I'm talking about sending out the repair folks.  Can you or can you not you not send out repair folks via Skype or Facebook Messenger?

Oh we're nationwide, sure, we're not exactly small and we have full background telephony set up, and all we needed was a VPN to work from home the exact way we worked in the office.

 

The crux was "We don't have the support structure" in place to make it feasible. Well, we're working at home now at the very least, not sure why they were so against this, old habits I guess.