working from home

[Hook]

Well, I've been self employed as a childrens entertainer for 21 years now. I started as a clown in 1999, I had 7 sub-contractors that worked for me and we did about 20 events a weekend. That all fell apart in 2008 with the recession and I created Silly Sam the Music Man and have performed (as he) full time since, doing concerts and teaching a pre-school music curriculum that I wrote. About 6 weeks ago I started driving for Ubereats as a side hustle and now that I guess is my profession. My wife and I both decided to self Isolate about 2 days ago. We have enough for a month(ish) then we will see what's what..
Stay safe my friends!

[bruno]

Great thread, sorry not been around very much.
I am a IT technical architect for Vodafone, for whom I'm have worked for, for 28 years now. Have spent the last couple of years on regulatory projects GDPR et al, but also on very many other projects - its a long list, and I've had many fingers in many pies :-). Started with a degree in Physics, went into hardware and then into software development, last 10 years drawing boxes in Visio and writing HLD's. Lots of UNIX and Windows dev (I have a real soft spot for Delphi) and worked on lots of Oracle technologies with big databases. Have been fortunate in my career, as I still very much enjoy working in the role that I do, although I miss actually writing code. Music gives me balance.

I miss all you guys - and particularly the one's that I have met. Hopefully we all come out of this unscathed, I do suspect the world of travel will be harder once this is all done. Hook - brother - hope you guys are okay, and I hope that we will be able to meet up again in the future, at some point.

We are all under lockdown, which is hard not seeing the kids - however, we are meeting up for virtual evening meals on WhatsApp video calls, which works really rather well. I recommend anyone in this position to do this, as its fantastic fun and gives a sense of normality to the drudgery of lock down. Any one who wishes to connect on WhatsApp, please do. if you are bored and want a chat - with my name, I'm not hard to find (Bruno Borzoni) :-)

Stay safe all, and continue to make music - its never been more important.

B.

[kenny mac]

I work for the ministry of defence.
I work with a robotic profile cutting machine and basically cut the steel that acts as the rib cage if you like for all the mod ships we create.
I used to physically do this by hand using a profile burner way back in the day but now load the jobs through the computer
and  robotically cut them to size using plasma gas.
Who could have known the biggest threat to our countries would come in the form of a bug.

[Mike Huntingford]

I retired from the military after 30-years.  Got bored and went back to work.  I am now an armed Patrol Officer for Colorado State at a major school district in Colorado.  We are classified as mission-critical but we have been reduced to working only 40% of our normal scheduled work - consequently, I work 2 days a week until further notice.

Mike

[IanR]

Hi everyone,

I am the Manager of Strategic Planning at the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning in Victoria, Australia. I co-ordinate the strategic and business planning for the department. That involves all the fun stuff like doing SWOT analysis and developing outcomes and key performance indicators. I am really busy at the moment because plans are changing on an almost daily basis, and we are keeping our executive teams and ministers informed on the impact of the social distancing on the delivery of our high priority projects and services.

Ian

[Ferryman]

Hi everyone,

I am the Manager of Strategic Planning at the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning in Victoria, Australia. I co-ordinate the strategic and business planning for the department. That involves all the fun stuff like doing SWOT analysis and developing outcomes and key performance indicators. I am really busy at the moment because plans are changing on an almost daily basis, and we are keeping our executive teams and ministers informed on the impact of the social distancing on the delivery of our high priority projects and services.

Ian

Well done Ian, that sounds like important work right now. So keep doing what you do!

[Hook]

Everybody seems to be so accomplished with important jobs and responsibilities...and then there's me. 
This is an impressive bunch!
Rock on!

[Ferryman]

But none of us have a haircut like you....

[Tangled Wires]

I am a Quantity Surveyor for a Regional House Builder in East Anglia . Its not a very Rock'n'n'Roll profession but have been doing it now for 35 years and despite threats to try something else over the years have never had the inclination or bottle to take a leap of faith, although who knows what direction this crisis will take many of us in now.

Currently half our staff are Furloughed, and I am one of the few still working full time (at home), but with all of our Housing Developments shut down for the forseeable future I am not sure how long that will last.

Nice to get an insight into other members day jobs,

[cuthbert]

This has been an interesting thread!

By day I'm a Senior Quality Engineer for a large software company that makes creative tools for designers, publishers, and hobbyists. I marked my 20th anniversary there this past August. I used to commute by automobile down to Boston from Maine three days a week to work in our remote office, but I've been telecommuting from home full time since 2010.

There's quite a bit of drudgery involved in the job itself (writing test plans, test cases, and bug reports, plus creating and running test passes for regression testing). That said, I do enjoy having some design input (and finding new bugs) as new features are planned and implemented. For the product I've been working on for the past four years, we release a new version of the application twice a month, so it's always been very busy. We use Slack for instant messaging and BlueJeans for video conferencing.

I guess I'm one of the lucky ones since little has changed for me as far as work goes. However, there has been the expected adjustment for my colleagues who formerly worked together in the San Francisco office but now must do so from home due to the lockdown orders. Hopefully, this pandemic situation we're all going through will start to resolve soon as the infection rate begins to trend down. So much has changed in just a little more than a month...