Silicon Valley under the epidemic: Apple's headquarters has been empty for Amazon for three weeks, and some companies have laid off employees.

At the end of February, Han, who works in the Google search department, had a fever. He suspected that he might be infected with COVID-19 virus. At that time, Santa Clara County in Silicon Valley had just announced the first confirmed case. However, when he came to Stanford Hospital with a mask, he found that none of the doctors here wore a mask. "We were a little worried about the spread of the epidemic, and then it broke out." Zhao Han recalled.

Today, the epidemic is changing the habits of Californians. Rowling, a graduate student at a university in Silicon Valley, recently found that even in supermarkets where ordinary Americans go, the proportion of wearing masks has risen to about 40%, while in Asian supermarkets, especially in China, everyone is "fully armed and well dressed". Once, wearing a mask on the street would attract strange eyes, but now people have become accustomed to it.

On April 5th, Beijing time, according to the data of Johns Hopkins University and CDC, as of April 4th, EST, the cumulative number of COVID-19 cases in the United States exceeded 300,000, making it the country with the largest number of confirmed cases.

The number of confirmed cases in California on the west coast is as high as 9 19 1, second only to new york and New Jersey on the east coast.

Starting from the early morning of March 17 local time, six counties and cities in San Francisco began to implement "in-situ refuge". On March 19, California declared the whole state of flight ban. Prior to this, many technology companies in Silicon Valley had asked employees to work from home.

Under the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic, Silicon Valley, which was originally bursting with popularity, was much colder than usual. For China employees working in Silicon Valley technology enterprises, compared with the invisible virus, some people are worried about social risks such as unemployment caused by the epidemic.

Central Park in Santa Clara County is sparsely populated.

The street in front of the salesforce tower, the tallest building in San Francisco, is empty.

Apple Inc

Going to work in the company requires SVP's approval, and Apple Park has become empty.

At Stanford Hospital, Zhao Han, who had a persistent high fever, was finally diagnosed with mycoplasma pneumonia after being misdiagnosed and referred again. After this "Oolong", Zhao Han's trust in local medical institutions has also been discounted. He told the Beijing News reporter that in the face of COVID-19 virus, "they are not fully prepared".

Bao Ming, who works in data science at Apple, told the Beijing News reporter that he was not surprised by the spread of the epidemic in the United States. "It can only be said that sooner or later, so many flights come and go every day, especially Silicon Valley and new york, which are particularly closely connected with the whole world." Bao Ming said.

Bao Ming works in Apple Park, Apple's headquarters in Cupertino. In the past three weeks, he also witnessed the gradual change from a crowded place to a deserted place. At first, the company didn't force employees to work from home, just said that they could work from home. However, starting from last Wednesday, their department began to require that if they want to work in the company, they need to obtain the approval of SVP-level executives, who are directly under the management of CEO Cook. Now only people who really need on-site work will go to the company.

Prior to this, Bao Ming continued to go to the company for two weeks. On the day of receiving the notification email, many people have already left, but basically half of them are still working in the company. Then many colleagues need to go home to take care of their children because of school suspension and other reasons. A week later, only one or two of the dozen people in Baoming's office area will come to work. After that, Bao Ming became the only "left-behind"

In this special period, Bao Ming goes to work every day, and the only thing he can see is that he needs to queue up to drive to take his temperature. As soon as I entered the office area, "the population density immediately came down." Usually there are many people walking or running on the road in the park, but now there are none, replaced by people who do cleaning. Employees don't wander around, but only go to the canteen when they eat. At first, the canteen also introduced some measures to avoid employees' gathering and contact, but later it was simply not done.

The apple orchard in the epidemic was almost deserted.

Google

The boundary between work and life at home is not clear, and the network failure rate increases.

Like Apple, Google has started to work from home.

After a period of treatment, Zhao Han's body has basically recovered. During working at home, he felt that the pace of work was no different from that in peacetime, and the processes such as meetings and progress reports were still going on as usual. If there is any problem, it is that everyone can meet in the company park, but now they can only stay at home. Therefore, the company and the team are also more concerned about everyone's mental health, and will advise everyone to do sports and exercise at home, and encourage each group to organize some board games and other activities to enhance the ties and feelings between employees.

Zhao Han observed that for home office, each company's policy is different, even in the same company, different groups will be different. Although Google pays attention to communication, the usual cross-group communication is carried out through the screen, and short-term rapid communication is not that important. If it is inconvenient to work from home, it is that when local enterprises work from home in an all-round way, the possibility of frequent network failures will become higher.

Ningzhou, who also works at Google, also said that "working at home is not bad, and I am getting used to it", and the work efficiency has improved. But the disadvantage is that working hours have been extended, and the boundaries between working hours and living hours have become less clear. Regarding the issue of layoffs, Ningzhou said that he has not heard of layoffs from friends or teams around him.

Talking about the "war epidemic" in Silicon Valley and its impact on engineers and Chinese in China, Ningzhou revealed that "the initial impact of the epidemic was really great". According to him, after the epidemic spread around the world, Sino-US relations were also affected. Basically, China played the first half, overseas played the second half, and overseas Chinese played the whole game. Even in Google, which is inclusive of many yuan, China engineers and Chinese Americans face a few hostility and even fear being laid off.

At the end of February, some China engineers in Silicon Valley began to wear masks to work, which would cause passers-by to look askance. It was not until the beginning of March that the company completely requested to set up a home office, but this request was evaded. "Ningzhou said that masks could not be bought in the United States. At present, with the increase of imports, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has officially reminded people to wear masks.

"On the way back to new york from Silicon Valley, I put six or seven masks in my bag, but I was embarrassed to take them out and put them on, because no one was wearing masks at the airports and planes on both sides." Shen Han is an intern designer in the Silicon Valley office of a large domestic Internet company. After receiving the instruction that the company can work from home, she flew back to school on March 7. Shen Han remembers that in the company, no one will wear masks throughout February, "because the atmosphere in California is very relaxed." It was not until March that people began to change. At first, the masks issued by the company were all collected casually. Later, when the atmosphere was tense, it was limited to one per person per day.

Under the influence of the epidemic, the scene in front of Google's full office.

The food bought on the fresh platform was finally delivered three weeks later.

Technology Internet companies are usually more flexible, which makes telecommuting not a problem. Chen Zhong, who works in the office area of Amazon Silicon Valley, said that Amazon usually lets employees work from home one day a week, which is very common among technology companies in Silicon Valley, especially large companies. On the one hand, it can reduce the local traffic pressure, on the other hand, it is convenient for employees to handle housework. Many enterprises also provide employees with subsidies or reimbursement quotas ranging from hundreds of dollars for purchasing equipment and building working conditions.

Most respondents said that their work efficiency at home has not decreased compared with that in the company. However, some people told the Beijing News reporter that working at home would be less focused and easily distracted. Zhang Zheng, a programmer of Uber, said that cross-group or further communication is usually conducted online, so it has little impact, but there will be more face-to-face communication within the group, and now it will be conducted online. He felt that the pace of work had slowed down.

More problems come from life. "The food I bought on Amazon Fresh Food on March 7th was delivered today (March 30th)!" Lei Xiao is a programmer of ultramicro computer in Silicon Valley semiconductor enterprise. During the grounding period, Amazon Fresh and weee, a fresh e-commerce company for China people, are cooperating. It is his most commonly used shopping platform. The latter is difficult to brush the arrival status now, and even if it is brushed, it will be sold in the form of a bag. The delivery time of the former also needs to be robbed, because there is a serious shortage of manpower and it can only be delivered slowly. "Because there are so many infected people now, many people can't go out without going out. Basically, they buy food online. If they can't buy it, they will venture out to buy food. " Lei Xiao told the Beijing News reporter.

In contrast, the goods in offline supermarkets will be much richer. Except for the tight commodities such as roll paper and bottled water, most of them can be bought, "there is no price increase". "Maybe this supermarket has no flour and that supermarket has no milk, but more than 90% of the goods are still in sufficient supply." Zhang Zheng told the Beijing News reporter. Inconveniently, in order to ensure enough social distance, supermarkets limit the flow of people, and the shopping efficiency is much lower than usual. "In a supermarket I often go to, it took more than 40 minutes to queue up for the door, and the queue was more than 500 meters long." Bao Ming said that in order to meet the shopping needs of the elderly, supermarkets will arrange special time slots for the elderly in the morning, but this also makes the queue very long and slow.

For Shen Han, one advantage of working from home is that he can be reunited with her husband who is studying for a doctorate in New Jersey. However, the information I brush every day still brings me a lot of negative energy. Soft and interesting games like Animal Friends Club have become a sharp weapon against depression and autism. Because too many people bought it, the price of this game also went up all the way.

People queuing to enter the supermarket.

Safety tips posted by Costco supermarkets.

In order to fly back to the United States for more than 40 hours, many companies have frozen recruitment.

From Chengdu to Guangzhou, from Guangzhou to Qatar, from Qatar to Philadelphia, from Philadelphia to San Francisco-in order to get back to the United States before the entry ban came into effect, Lei Xiao almost circled the world in a journey of more than 40 hours. "If I don't come back, I may lose my job." Lei Xiao told the Beijing News reporter. After returning, Lei Xiao was quarantined according to the company's requirements. Before the end of the quarantine, an epidemic broke out in the United States, and the entry ban has not been lifted.

While the epidemic was raging, there was also a rare "stock crash" in the US stock market, and the stock prices of many star companies in Silicon Valley plummeted or even halved. With more and more confirmed cases, the impact of the epidemic on the economy is becoming more and more obvious. Compared with the risk of being infected with the virus, the risk of unemployment is equally real.

Comparatively speaking, Silicon Valley technology giants' ability to resist risks is much higher than that of ordinary enterprises, and their employees are generally more secure. The company must be under pressure. After all, so many physical stores are closed, and there will be some challenges in production. Recently, the company's share price has also fallen a lot. But at present, we haven't seen any big changes in employees, and we haven't heard of stopping recruitment or layoffs. "Bao Ming commented on Apple.

Zhang Zheng of Uber told the Beijing News that although the taxi business of the company was hit, the take-away business benefited a lot from the ban. As long as the company has business, it still needs people to do things, so we are in no hurry. Zhang Zheng said.

However, people began to hear that someone had been fired. A company providing power scooters in Los Angeles suffered heavy losses because it was grounded. "Directly open the plenary meeting, some groups can only keep one manager, and the rest are all laid off." Bao Ming said that the friend is desperately looking for a job now, but in the current environment, many companies directly freeze recruitment and no longer recruit new people. The dismissed employee was caught in the middle and was in a very embarrassing situation.

For fresh graduates who want to find jobs in Silicon Valley or other technology companies, it is much more difficult to find jobs. "We are the most difficult one because many companies don't recruit fresh graduates." Shen Han told the Beijing News reporter that after the company made an offer, it changed its mind and cancelled its position. "It's hard for everyone to find a job now."

There are also industries that have brought new employment opportunities because of the epidemic. /kloc-in March of 0/7, Amazon announced that it planned to recruit 654.38+million new employees in the warehousing and distribution field, so as to alleviate the delivery delay caused by the increase in business volume. Zoom's share price, which provides video conferencing software, once rose against the trend.

"The hardest hit in the epidemic is the service industry such as restaurants. I have seen some tea shops send links in various groups asking everyone to order takeout, and even the delivery fee is free. " Lei Xiao said. Generally speaking, Silicon Valley technology enterprises are lucky in many industries-less dependence on offline activities, less demand decline, and generally higher resistance of enterprises.

"Pure online companies will be much less affected, and entity-related companies will be more affected. Airbnb, which is closely related to offline, will be the most affected. " Cao Yan is the HR of a China Internet giant in Silicon Valley. Because the company is doing pure online business, there will be more business when people are grounded. "It's good in the short term, but it's hard to say if the epidemic continues, because everyone's advertising budget will shrink." For job seekers, in Silicon Valley, the great god always holds a lot of opportunities, while others have fewer choices. When the external environment changes, they will face risks and difficult choices. This is also the cruel side of Silicon Valley's survival law.

After work, there are still many people walking on the road, but everyone will subconsciously keep enough distance. In the supermarket, more and more people began to wear masks. Beneath the surface of a quiet life, there are signs of emotional tension from time to time. "This epidemic is dragging on every week, and there may be many people, and the trajectory of life has changed since then." Bao Ming said.

(The interviewees in this article are all pseudonyms)