Your job is unimportant (keep doing it anyway)

I work in IT – like many of the readers of this blog. Also like many of the readers of this blog, I’m now working from home (which is actually normal for me), but with all travel pretty much banned for the foreseeable future (which isn’t). My children’s school is still open (unlike many other governments, the UK has yet to order them closed), but when the time does come for them to be at home, my kids are old enough that they will be able to look after themselves without constant input from me. I work for Red Hat, a global company with resources to support its staff and keep its business running during the time of Covid-19 crisis. In many ways, I’m very lucky.

My wife left the house at 0630 this morning to go into London. She works for a medium-sized charity which provides a variety of types of care for adults and children. Some of the adults for whom they provide services, in particular, are extremely vulnerable – both in terms of their day-to-day lives, but also to the possible effects of serious illness. She is planning the charity’s responses, coordinating with worried staff and working out how they’re going to weather the storm. Charities and organisations like this across the world are working to manage their staff and service users and try to continue provision at levels that will keep their service users safe and alive in a context where it’s likely that the availability of back-up help from other quarters – agency staff, other charities, public or private health services or government departments – will be severely limited in scope, or totally lacking.

In comparison to what my wife is doing, the impact of my job on society seems minimal, and my daily work irrelevant. Many of my readers may be in a similar situation, whether it is spouses, family members or other people in the community who are doing the obviously important – often life-preserving – work, and with us sitting at home, appearing on video conferences, writing documents, cutting code, doing things which don’t seem to have much impact.

I think it’s important, sometimes, to look at what we do with a different eye, and this is one of those times. However, I’m going to continue working, and here are some of the reasons:

• I expect to continue to bring in a salary, which is going to be difficult for many people in the coming months. I hope to be able to spend some of that salary in local businesses, keeping them afloat or easing their transition back into normality in the future;
• it’s my turn to keep the household running: my wife has often had to keep things going while I’ve been abroad, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to look after the children, shop for groceries and do more cooking;
• while I’m not sick, there are going to be ways in which I can help our local community, with food deliveries, checks on elderly neighbours and the like.

Finally, the work that I – and the readers of this blog – do, is, while obviously less important and critical than that of my wife and others on the front line of this crisis, still relevant. My wife spent several hours at work creating an online survey to help work out which of her charity’s staff and volunteers could be deployed to what services. Without the staff who run that service, she would be without that capability. Online banking will continue to be important. Critical national infrastructure like power and water need to be kept going; logistics services for food delivery are vital; messaging and conferencing services will provide important means for communication; gaming, broadcast and online entertainment services will keep those who are in isolation occupied; and, at the very least, we need to keep businesses going so that when things recover, we can get the economy going again. That, and there are going to be lots of charities, businesses and schools who need the services that we provide right now.

So, my message today is: keep going, but do so with a sense of perspective. And be ready to use your skills to help out. Keep safe.