Like a lot of people, on March 11, 2020, I was told to take all my computer equipment home with me and set it up there to work from home for at least the next month. In fact it wasn’t just me, but the entire company was going to be working from home. I should say right here that I am a part time computer support specialist for an manufacturer in Denver, NC and a computer consultant that works from home to provide computer services and business solutions remotely (virtually) to my clients.
This series of blog posts is going to be about my experiences both as an employee sent home and as a home based consultant.
In later installments, I am going to talk about how to protect yourself, your business, and your company’s businesses data, their computers and internet security.
I have been providing computer solutions for 25 years. I am not bragging about my experience. I have probably made more mistakes (and learned from them) that most people. Every new job, whether it was as an employee or as a consultant, has made me grow immensely. Both as a technician and as a person.
Depending on which hat I was wearing at which company, I always tried my best to provide the ultimate satisfaction to those that I was helping. I learned from some great managers during my years. From John at my first NYC job to Nick at the Data Center on Long Island.
So now that we are working from home, it is a whole new scenario. Not because you are working from your home, heck most of us have worked from home from time to time. It is because keeping you, your computer and your data safe is now outside of the safety of your business network.
Hundreds of thousands of men and women found out one day that they were to take their computers home and start working from home. A good percentage of them had no idea what was to come. Taking apart their work computers and putting them in a box and bringing them into their homes was the easy part.
The problems started when they had to figure out where they were going to set them up in their house until the restrictions were lifted. Little did any of us know that it would be over 6 months (and counting) that we would be working from home.
Those first few days setting up your new home office were tedious for a lot of us. You had to find a large flat surface close to a power source … the kitchen table, maybe? After all this wasn’t going to be a long drawn out stay at home till 2021 thing, right?
We needed to also find the internet and how do you connect the business computer to it? My desktop isn’t wireless! Is it? I plugged it into the network port on the wall. And boy is the internet slow when you finally did connect to it!
You were so used to coming into work, sitting down, turning on your computer and going to get a cup of coffee. After a brief talk with other employees, you returned to your computer you have taken for granted since you started. If there as a problem, you called the help desk (me). And they accessed your computer remotely and resolved the problem and you were back to work.
Now at home, you are tasked with setting up the computer, plugging in all those wires, kicking yourself for not having taken them all! and wondering what the phone number is for the help desk.
The week we were sent home, I put in almost 60 hours helping everyone that could contact me, get their home computers setup, by talking them through which plug went where and how to connect to their home wireless routers. Which of course were the home versions and you would be sharing the bandwidth with not only your household, but if you were on cable, you would be sharing that bandwidth with the neighborhood and all the other men & women who were now working from home. Add to that the millions of kids that were either playing games, streaming video and music, surfing the web and of course connecting to their school’s remote learning site!
It, was, indeed, a long week!
More to follow.
Please leave your questions or experiences here. Through our mutual stories we learn and grow!
Rich Schierer