InfoQ Homepage COVID-19 Content on InfoQ
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Workplace Challenges & Opportunities for Software Engineering Professionals
Skills shortages, the great resignation, remote and hybrid working, continuing impacts of COVID-19 and increasing demand on software professionals have been examined and surveyed over the last few months and have identified both challenges and opportunities for software engineering professionals at this time. Time pressure, resource limitations and increasing customer demand contribute to stress.
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Will the Hybrid Work’s Great Paradox Be the Decade’s Challenge?
The pandemic moved the office home, and while the medical system is trying to eradicate it allowing us to resume our lives as we know them, we also need to understand what the new normal will be. While some leaders will return to the office as soon as it is allowed, others adopt a fully remote approach as the main-approach. Probably a hybrid approach would be the new normal for most of us.
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Assessing Remote Employee Experiences for Hybrid-Remote Work-Settings
Employers and employees have begun to prepare for their return to the office. One of the options is a hybrid-remote work setting which aims to support individual preferences when it comes to where, when, and how to work. According to Kaleem Clarkson, assessing your remote employee experience can help to make decisions on workplace flexibility policies.
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Collective Learnings about Remote Working during Covid-19
The response to the pandemic showed how to make sure people are productive and included in a hybrid environment, and it's all due to the learnings we carried on from March 2020. Many organisations demonstrated how it’s possible to work in an inclusive and productive way even if people are distributed around the world.
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The Impact of Radical Uncertainty on People
Humans look for certainty as that makes them feel safe. Suddenly becoming an entirely distributed team due to the pandemic disrupted people. According to Kara Langford, radical uncertainty can cause people to believe they are in danger and lead to health issues. People will respond differently; uncertainty has also shown to lead to fresh ideas, innovations, and social good.
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Virtualizing Design Sprint and UX Workshops
Design sprint and UX workshops can be done virtually using a combination of remote whiteboards and communication platforms. It brings advantages like being able to invite international experts, having remote participants attend, less travelling, smaller carbon footprint, and lower costs.
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The Post COVID Normal Will Be Hybrid Work Environments
The Microsoft Work Trend Report points to flexible, hybrid work being the new normal, leaders being out of touch with their employees, an exhausted workforce, innovation at risk, shrinking networks, the need for authenticity to spur productivity and well-being & a huge negative impact on GenZ. The report provides concrete advice for charting the way forward to overcome these and other challenges.
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Manuel Pais on Team Topologies during COVID-19
Manuel Pais, co-author of Team Topologies, recently spoke alongside leaders of Capra Consulting who have used the topologies to move from hierarchical structures to empowered teams. We report on the journey and speak to Pais about team topologies in the context of COVID-19.
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Facebook Open-Sources AI Model to Predict COVID-19 Patient Outcomes
A team from Facebook AI Research (FAIR) and New York University (NYU) School of Medicine has developed deep-learning models that use chest X-rays to predict COVID-19 patient prognosis. In a comparison study, the models outperformed human radiologists, and could be used to help hospitals predict the demand for supplemental oxygen or intensive care.
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Remote Onboarding Changes the New Hire Experience
As organisations make remote working more and more the norm, the employee onboarding experience needs to change to engage new people with their colleagues and the organisation effectively. The onboarding experience needs to be designed to engage the new employee and actively make them feel welcome and a part of the team.
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Remote Working for Tech Workers is Here to Stay
Remote working is here to stay for tech workers, irrespective of what happens with COVID-19. Many tech companies are changing their long term planning and hiring practices to allow for remote working in the future, and benefits packages are being reworked to provide support for parents with child care and home schooling pressures.
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Q&A with Katherine Kirk on Managing Entropy in Uncertain Times
InfoQ talks to Katherine Kirk about her recently published talk on thriving when control is removed. We discuss the impact of the current pandemic on organisations. Kirk explains the importance of contextual strategies which acknowledge and counterbalance the impact of entropy.
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Using Measurement to Optimise Remote Work
Dave Longman of HeadForwards wrote about using data to demonstrate the effectiveness of remote work during lockdown. Michael Schrage of MIT’s School of Management also wrote about the importance of using data-driven insights to improve performance in the current climate. Laura Giurge of London Business School talked about how isolation is teaching individuals and firms to be remotely effective.
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Google Meet’s Scaling Challenges during COVID-19
Google wrote about their challenges in scaling Google Meet due to increased usage since the COVID-19 pandemic led to more people using it. The SRE team at Google used their existing incident management framework with modifications to tackle the challenge of increased traffic that started earlier this year.
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Remote Collaboration Fatigue is Real, Remote Workers are More Empathic, Remote Work is Here to Stay
As the shift from in-person to remote working persists, organisations have been doing research into the impact this is having on individuals and teams. Studies by Gartner and Microsoft indicate that remote collaboration fatigue is real, remote workers are more empathic and inclusive, and remote work is here to stay.