This virus has spread for more than five months. I have been working remotely for the third month.
Lifestyle Change
So far, I enjoyed working remotely. On my weekends, I will spend time coding for fun. Therefore, I have no problem focusing on doing the work despite being at home.
My workout habit changed drastically as the gyms are closed until further notice. The silver lining is that I save money and time working out at home.
Remote Working
A few days back, Twitter announced that employees can work remotely forever. Facebook announced a plan to embrace remote working. They are going to adjust the wage according to the locations.
As a software engineer, this got me thinking about what work will be like after the lockdown is over. If businesses embrace remote working, engineers will have the opportunity to work for overseas companies without relocating and dealing with visa issues. However, I think that the software engineers' salary will not be as attractive as it currently is given that businesses can hire talents living in places with a lower cost of living.
For most businesses, IT is a cost center. So long the tech works, it's good enough. You don't have to spend more money to hire great people since the IT quality wouldn't affect the bottom line significantly. It makes sense to outsource the cost center to cut costs. I think this makes business sense, but I won't want to work for such companies.
Data Science
I have seen many projects regarding COVID-19 built. From contact tracing to data visualization, any idea you have, you can probably find on the web. The COVID-19 data never interest me.
Final Thoughts
I think remote working will be the new norm moving forward. And we should embrace it as I am sure that COVID-19 wouldn't be the deadliest virus we will see.