Coronavirus in Massachusetts (Quincy: ordinance, biking, heat)

[Bridge781]

I guess I’m at a point where at 41 I feel much of the ‘needed my face time is bull too. I can also see it being useful when someone is new. Since this pandemic began we did have a few people start late March and they’ve had to learn everything remotely. I imagine that wasn’t easy but they are doing it.

I’m definitely team wfh, maybe not everyday but a few days a weeks. I’ve paid my dues on the mbta and the office can be very overrated and commutes are a time suck.

People will still choose to live in Boston. It is a nice city one way or the other. I don’t think anyone would die if the real estate prices came down a bit or lost a restaurant or two. No offense to the restaurant or owners but the amount of places to eat is pretty ridiculous. The take out scene is highly luxurious. People would survive without having so many choices. Maybe it would actually be easier for others to navigate into the city to experience it as well. The joy of venturing into the city has been gone for me for a while. I’d personally love it if some companies and people left. Pretty sure I won’t get my way there though.

[jayrandom]

Originally Posted by yesmaybe

I thought there might be a staggered approach, maybe only some retail stores are allowed to reopen on 5/18. But the mask order seems directly aimed at letting everything reopen then (or soon thereafter), albeit with the mask. It does make sense since it's especially important in Boston to get things back to normal ASAP. As I mentioned letting WFH get popular would be devastating to Boston long term.

What is Boston good at? Pharma, medical, finance (including insurance), and tech.

No way Pharam is ever going to be work from home. Sure some people can get away with it, but for the most part you need labs filled with people. I think those people are still largely going into their labs even right now.

Medical is the same. Robot doctors are a few decades away.

Finance can shift to WFH. It already was. My wife works in Boston in insurance but her company has been phasing in WFH for a while. I'm sure some finance stuff needs people physically there, but I suspect most of that stuff needs those people physically located in a small portion of NYC.

And tech (where I nominally work) can't all go WFH, either. Sure, anything that is only data or software focused can, but a lot of tech involves actual physical stuff. That won't easily make the WFH switch either.

[Bridge781]

I don’t think many of the people here realize how often folks in Boston do work from home. Pharma absolutely has jobs that don’t need to be done in a lab. I work with many regulatory affairs and medical affairs folks and they have no issues working from home.

Most things that involve tech and engineering can be done at home. At my last job many of the engineers worked from home or were located in other countries working remote.

I think if people are happy to go into the office then go. For the ones who would prefer to stay home leave us alone. Let our bosses make the decision.

[western mass and love it]

Originally Posted by Arya Stark

And what is wrong with that?

I disagree. I can't tell you how much work related bull has been cut back since working from home. Not only the time taken up with chatty co workers but the needless phone calls and general waste of time.

And I think most people wouldn't demand it daily but perhaps 2 days or so a week.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed not having endless meetings that have nothing to do with my job, but I’m required to attend. Those meetings were such time wasting affairs. I’ve actually increased my work output and put in less time working at home. Just don’t tell my boss that.

[jayrandom]

Originally Posted by Bridge781

I don’t think many of the people here realize how often folks in Boston do work from home. Pharma absolutely has jobs that don’t need to be done in a lab. I work with many regulatory affairs and medical affairs folks and they have no issues working from home.

Most things that involve tech and engineering can be done at home. At my last job many of the engineers worked from home or were located in other countries working remote.

I think if people are happy to go into the office then go. For the ones who would prefer to stay home leave us alone. Let our bosses make the decision.

Sure, a lot can be done from home. The stuff that can nominally be done from anywhere will eventually be done from anywhere. I'm all for people commuting less when they can.

All those huge labs in Kendall Square aren't there for decoration, though. Labs are integral to the core mission of developing pharmaceuticals. And certainly some engineering can be done remotely, but in my experience the results are almost always worse than stuff that's done in person on a regular basis. I don't say this as someone who likes go into work. I love working from home. In person work ends up being better. Remote collaboration is better better when you meet face to face regularly, at least when you're building actual things. I wish that weren't true.

[brightdoglover]

[quote=jayrandom;58006174]What is Boston good at? Pharma, medical, finance (including insurance), and tech.

...QUOTE]

You forgot education. At least recently!

[BostonMike7]

Only so much engineering can be done remotely. I can do CAD and make dwgs in my basement in my underwear, but last I checked I don’t have a fully stocked lab to perform testing and analysis. Still need to go to a central lab/office to get stuff done.

Of course those offices can now be smaller if my documentation person can be 100% WFH.

[Bridge781]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bos...outputType=amp

[robr2]

Originally Posted by jayrandom

No way Pharam is ever going to be work from home. Sure some people can get away with it, but for the most part you need labs filled with people. I think those people are still largely going into their labs even right now.

My son does research at at biotech firm and he is going into the lab 2-3 days a week. He has to schedule hood and equipment time in advance to ensure social distancing and he can do all his result related paperwork at home. He does tend to go in the evenings for lab work and often stays very late.

He expects this to go on for some time. There's a lot of brainpower they wouldn't want anything to happen to.

[OutdoorLover]

Originally Posted by robr2

My son does research at at biotech firm and he is going into the lab 2-3 days a week. He has to schedule hood and equipment time in advance to ensure social distancing and he can do all his result related paperwork at home. He does tend to go in the evenings for lab work and often stays very late.

He expects this to go on for some time. There's a lot of brainpower they wouldn't want anything to happen to.

I am a scientist working in R&D IT at a Cambridge biotech. I'm in charge of most of our enterprise scientific apps. I haven't been into the office myself for more than 1 month, and it's the same for most of our people. In addition to foundational pieces like Outlook, SharePoint and the company intranet, we have the cloud-based Microsoft ecosystem like Office-365, OneDrive and Teams - the latter is being used extensively for intra-company discussions whereas pre-epidemic it was only used to work with our various service providers and collaborators; now it's just our go-to resource for meetings, period. People use VPN to access systems that they can't log into via the public internet.

My understanding is that our lab people go in on an as-needed basis. While in the office, they practice social distancing and wear masks. Since conference rooms are very available, they even hold many of the discussions among those on-site via Teams, with participants sitting in different CRs.

We've been told that while they will be looking for sensible ways for more people to work in the office, things are perceived to be going pretty well, and there isn't a critical business need to rush people back. There will likely be some mitigation measures in place at least through the end of the summer.