How Much Is Essential?

[WrongHanded]

The Covid-19 pandemic and 'stay-at-home' orders have made one thing clear to me. If all the somewhat essential work is still being done, our society is doing really well.

Let me explain. A lot of people are not currently working. But we still have water, trash collection, electricity, gasoline, food distribution, medical care, auto repair, road repair work, etc, etc.

This tells me one thing that I'd previously not too seriously considered. The basic needs of survival for our whole society, are easily covered by fraction of the population. We've come a long way, and that's pretty awesome.

 

[Magnum]

I've thought that too. 3/4 of the workers stay home but the world continues to spin. Either the folks out of work don't do anything or what they do is of very little consequence. Convenience is what's lacking these days and I hope we can get back to whatever the new normal us going to be, ASAP.
My wife and I are both essential workers, she's a nurse and I'm an auto mechanic. Thus mess has affected our hours but hasn't done any real harm yet. On a side note, I've had so much time to spend with my kids that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise so there is a silver lining.

 

[WrongHanded]

I've thought that too. 3/4 of the workers stay home but the world continues to spin. Either the folks out of work don't do anything or what they do is of very little consequence.

What we have in the US is a consumer economy. So a big part of our work force is involved in selling us, or serving us, "luxuries". One day, robots will do all the essential work, and the vast majority will likely recreate rather than work. Or at least, work far fewer hours. We're becoming more efficient all the time.

My wife and I are also essential workers, though in honesty we both question just how truly essential our work is in the short term (meaning 1 or 2 months).

 

[climbnjump]

I've thought that too. 3/4 of the workers stay home but the world continues to spin.

Well, I don't know what percentage of workers are actually unemployed, but there are many workers who CAN stay home and still work. My last job was Systems Engineer in IT for a financial services company. My official office was located in one of their data centers, but 90% of my job could be done from home.

There were about 125 people employed in that particular facility and only about four or five folks ever needed to be there at any one time because the rest of us could work remotely.

These were Windows servers and once a month they had to be "patched" with the latest security updates from Microsoft. There were only two of us who were responsible for this task. In order to minimize disruption to external customers, the patching was done overnight on a Saturday. So about 10pm, my cohort would be in his home office and I would be in mine and together we would patch, reboot and verify the operation of about 7,000 servers in data centers in 5 states. Much was automated, of course. But with that many servers, there were always some "problem children" and most of our time was spent troubleshooting those to bring them back online and into service. We would typically be done by about 7 or 8 am the next morning. But still, it was a heck of a lot of work that was done across the country by two guys in their basements.

 

[Grumulkin]

In Ohio some business are essentially closed but according to the governor there are 40,000+ new job openings due to the lockdown. Methinks some would rather collect unemployment than work.

 

[thegunguy]

These were Windows servers and once a month they had to be "patched" with the latest security updates from Microsoft. There were only two of us who were responsible for this task. In order to minimize disruption to external customers, the patching was done overnight on a Saturday.

I manage machines for clients, and Microsoft laid off most of their staff that tested patches, so sometimes a real stinker gets through. My process is to have an RMM tool on each machine, wait a reasonable amount of time after a patch comes out, then test it on selected machines, and if there is no issue tell the RMM that the new patch should be installed on the regular installation schedule.

A few fail, but that seems to be tied to the number/sequence of patches occurring at once. Failures generally take the second time.

Easier than it used to be, certainly.

 

[climbnjump]

My process is to have an RMM tool on each machine, wait a reasonable amount of time after a patch comes out, then test it on selected machines, and if there is no issue tell the RMM that the new patch should be installed on the regular installation schedule.

The organization I worked for was large enough that there were three "environments" of server farms. The lowest level was considered development and was patched first. At this level, we were testing mostly for patch functionality and effect on the OS. The second level was a copy of the production environment so when the patches were installed there, the folks who owned the applications were charged with making sure that the patches hadn't broken their respective apps. Only once that was all signed off on did we actually rollout and install in the production environment.