Things have changed a lot at Autodesk, over the last few weeks, as they have for most people on the planet. Working from home has become the norm: for someone who works from home, anyway, it’s been interesting to see the playing field levelled a little: with everyone working remotely the dynamic in meetings has been very different. I have to admit that in many ways it’s refreshing for me, personally, especially when combined with the fact I’m able to focus on “real” work, without having the regular distraction of travel to deal with.
People are even socializing via video conference, to the point of having “virtual beer busts” (although 6pm in Europe being 9am in the Bay Area makes it a little challenging to all have a drink together). Interesting times indeed.
Some colleagues are managing less well with the situation, by all accounts: one example I’ve heard being some of the younger people in our Inside Sales hubs working from hard-hit cities such as Barcelona. If you’re stuck in a small studio apartment – which you only ever rented to have somewhere to sleep close to the city centre and to the office – then things must be really hard, right now. My heart goes out to my colleagues in this situation (and as I said a few weeks ago, feel free to get in touch if you need someone to chat with).
At Autodesk Research things are a little different, though. Social distancing has proven to be such a natural fit for most people in Research that we’ve decided to make it permanent. When things eventually go back to normal – or to the “new normal”, whatever that may be – Autodesk Research will continue to limit our exposure to a) the world at large b) our non-Research colleagues and c) each other. This decision has come about after crunching the numbers from the latest employee engagement survey, where it became clear that most people in Research love working from home and in isolation. Given this data, the powers that be in Autodesk Research have sensibly decided to implement a maximum of two Research employees working from any Autodesk office, with only one allowed to be present at any one time. Everyone will have an annual quota of 10 in-person interactions they can spend on high value activities (such as customer visits or – and this is more likely – social occasions) where they feel it’s really valuable to see someone in person. To be clear, this is not a required number of interactions, but a maximum number of possible in-person interactions: people will be encouraged to meet less often, of course.
Aside from making our Research staff much happier, we also expect this move to improve business continuity during any future waves of Covid-19 as well as during any completely new outbreaks. It just seems a more resilient model, and a win-win given how much people here appreciate working this way.
On a side note, I started looking into an appropriate collective noun for Autodesk Researchers. The closest list I could find was here, for groups of scientists. I quite liked a conjecture of Autodesk Researchers, although perhaps that should be a confusion, which was another solid option. In any case, the point is somewhat moot, at this stage, as it’s no longer very likely you’ll see a group of us together.
