Interview with M.L., COVID-19 Changing the Business World, HIST 150 Honors Spring 2021, Conducted by Nick Lawrence, March 14, 2021

Introduction to Interview

In March of 2020, the United States of America was struck with the deadly pandemic known as COVID-19. Due to its powerful health effects and contagious nature, people all over the country were forced to quarantine in their homes and limit entering public places. However, one of the most significant changes came in the workforce. Depending on the duties of the individual, some workers were required to keep coming in to work and even come in more, while others were ordered to stay home and work remotely.

For M.L., he was grouped with workers that were strongly influenced to stay home and work remotely. As a businessman, he is always working and always has something to do, but he had to learn to adapt to working from home. With these new working environments came new experiences, both positive and negative. On the positive side, as M.L. was not going into his office, he was much less likely to get the virus. However, on the negative side, it was not entirely easy for M.L. to find a routine and find a solidified place in the house to work.

Throughout the interview, M.L. speaks about what he is as his job title, what he does in his position, and what his business does. He also talks about how COVID-19 has altered the business world, changed the way he works, and modified how his company does business throughout the pandemic. Finally, he gets personal and describes his thoughts on his new working conditions and how COVID-19 has personally affected how he has done his job.

Biography

M.L. was born in Edison, New Jersey and got his bachelor’s degree at Scranton University, majoring in mathematics. He then got his master’s degree at Pennsylvania State University. As of right now, he is a telecommunications project manager for TATA Communications, and he has been with the company for over fifteen years. Before TATA, he worked at ITXC, which is another telecommunications company, so he has been in the business world for many, many years now.

Transcript

Nick Lawrence 0:08
Hi, my name is Nick Lawrence, and today I’m interviewing Mike. Mike, how you doing today?

M.L. 0:14
Doing well, thanks. How about you?

Nick Lawrence 0:16
Doing well. Can you give us a background on, you know, who you are, what you do?

M.L. 0:22
Sure. Um, I was a math major or I went to college in University of Scranton, as a math major, and with an intention to minor in computer science, and went into a job in quality assurance [responsible for ensuring that products and services meet the established standards set by the company]/project management [process of leading the work of a team to achieve goals and meet success criteria at a specified time] for SEI Investments, was my first job out of out of college in 1994. As I mentioned, I went to school in Scranton, originally from Central New Jersey, and found myself in Philadelphia area of Pennsylvania, and proceeded to dive a little bit deeper into project management, and then eventually dabbled in sales and product management, and most recently in business operations.

Nick Lawrence 1:13
You’ve been in the business world for a long time, yeah?

M.L. 1:15
It’s been, it’s been 20 plus years. So yeah, it’s been a good experience, and a lot of interesting travel and fun stuff.

Nick Lawrence 1:24
Yeah, that sounds awesome. How has the business world changed since your first job out of college?

M.L. 1:30
Um, I would say, originally, I worked on mainframes [computers used for data processing], when it was back in COBOL [Common Business-Oriented Language] programming language and C++ programming languages, where you had to work on I guess it was solutions and so forth, where now it’s much more GUI [Graphical User Interface] programming languages and so forth. So I’m working on a big mainframe going to completely small computers, you know, very powerful small computers, obviously. I would also say that the communications part of it has really completely changed. Back in the day, it was telephones, calling your colleagues you didn’t… Email was was a thing in 1994. But it wasn’t, it wasn’t as prevalent as it is today. And instant messaging certainly wasn’t really a thing. Whereas now you can really kind of connect with anybody at any time.

Nick Lawrence 2:35
You say communications, and obviously, among the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been a really useful tool. What are some of the advantages and disadvantages that have been presented while working for your telecommunications company throughout a worldwide pandemic?

M.L. 2:52
Yeah, so I went into the telecom world, probably 20 years ago, started in the financial world, and then kind of moved into Telecom. And more recently, the, I guess, they would say, one of the advantages would be, you know, really being able to work without having to be physically located somewhere. So with COVID, we had to kind of adjust our, our operations to be more remote. The company I work for is a global company and our offices are all over the place. So we’ve got, you know, offices in North America, some in Europe, some in Asia, a large presence in India, being in Asia. But we had to communicate with them pretty quickly when everyone went home, and our offices closed. So we were able to do that pretty quickly, given our telecommunications background and all of our communication solutions. And that was a huge advantage for us, is that we were already in that world. So it was easy to, to kind of, take our products and use them since we were already selling them out there in the market.

Nick Lawrence 4:09
Of course.

M.L. 4:10
Um, on the disadvantage side, I think, you know, we were really unable to travel as I mentioned, we had so many global offices everywhere. So we have, my employees are located primarily in Asia. And you know, not being able to visit them physically, where I’d go out there once or twice a year you know, really was a real struggle. Because that face to face you really can’t, you can’t replace me you can do it with video, and we did that but but it doesn’t, it doesn’t replace, I guess, the face to face communications.

Nick Lawrence 4:47
Right, of course. Um, so being at home, and not at the office, what are some of the pros and cons that come with these new work environments?

M.L. 4:59
Yeah. I was fortunate enough to work from home a couple of days a week, in the, in the past, before the pandemic, so, I was fortunate enough to have that opportunity so I adjusted to things pretty easily. But I would say, you know, the pros were certainly the, the time of family, being able to get out and have lunch with my wife, or my children was a real, was a real benefit. Being able to play with my dog, Teddy is great, I mean, he, he’s probably the most well adjusted out of all of us from this pandemic. And when we go back to work, it might be a bit of a struggle for him. But you know, I’d be able to help the kids with the, with the schoolwork is really nice, as you know, that they’ve had a challenge of, you know, learning remotely, and helping them along the way certainly was, was a nice, nice perk. On the downside, I think it’s really learning the discipline to turn yourself off when you’re constantly at work. So, you know, there’s no more commute to the office, there’s no more, you know, time consuming prep, and getting ready. So you could literally be online at 7am in the morning, and work, you know, quickly find yourself working through lunch. And pretty soon, you know, it’s six o’clock and you haven’t, you know, you haven’t taken a break. And, you know, you go back into your computer at eight o’clock at night, and all of a sudden, you’re checking your email again, and you’re back online. So being able to turn yourself off is a big, I guess, skill to learn. You know, while it’s an advantage of, you know, for the company, and because you get, you get you online a lot, you got to keep your work life balance. The other the other con, I would say, just now that I’m thinking about it. I’m constantly having to change locations at home, I don’t have an office at home, per se a room that I dedicated for an office. So a lot of times I would use, you know, a spare bedroom or a basement or which we have a little bit nicer setup with and, and or the kitchen table. So my youngest son, when he was done with his school day, you know, he wanted to decompress and go play his video games that were in the basement, my office was there, I’d have to move. And so the distractions were a little bit tough to get around. But for the most part, everyone was pretty understanding at work, because everyone was dealing with the same stuff. I mean, that a lot of co workers had real small children with, you know, babies in the house and you know, crying and all sorts of crazy stuff. So right, it was it was a good experience.

Unknown Speaker 7:49
Hey, well, there’s no more long rides to work. No more getting stuck in traffic. So that’s always nice.

M.L. 7:56
Yes, very.

Nick Lawrence 7:57
I understand that your company decided to temporarily close several company offices. Do you think that was a smart thing to do, in the grand scheme of things? Yes or no? Why or why not?

M.L. 8:07
Yeah, yeah, I would say it was, you know, for our, for our place, for sure. It was definitely the right call. We we have pretty crowded closely confined offices. And funny, it’s funny, because all about a year ago, we went through a rebuild and all of our offices to make things more dynamic, and, you know, took out offices and, and put people in closer proximity where there was really a remote, I’m sorry, a hot desk environment, which is basically like, you could be working right next to somebody, you know, two feet away, in more cubicle setting or open desk setting, and those people would be quite on top of each other. So getting people out of the offices was definitely a good call. And like I said, we had the advantage of being able to use our communication tools to send everybody home. But I think it was the right call because it took it took our personal safety into account. And we’re still at this point, we’re remote. Some of the countries have relaxed their their rules. So I think our offices in Europe are going to start to come back sooner than North America, and maybe even India.

Nick Lawrence 9:24
That’s great. That’s great. Um, how have other types of business individuals, professionals like you, been affected throughout the virus?

M.L. 9:36
Yeah, um, it’s been interesting because I’ve been talking to people both in my company and outside. And, you know, I know a lot of sales people that have been really impacted when, when your job is traveling to places to visit clients and so forth and you can’t do that or it’s, you know, severely impacted. If you’re a salesperson you work you may work on commissions. And if you can’t get in front of your customer, you can’t make sales and if you can’t make sales, you don’t get paid. So it’s that’s definitely the hardest hit, I would say is having sales people trying to do this without being physically located next to the customer. Um, you know, obviously, I would say that the the additional thing that they realized and all this is that you can do the job from anywhere. So, you know, there’s been a large or an even further effort of offshoring all offshoring jobs to cheaper areas of the world.

10:40
Even among a young little guy playing video games in the basement, but um.

M.L. 10:46
Yeah.

Nick Lawrence 10:46
Uh, tell me a little bit about, um, I’m sorry, I forgot.

M.L. 10:52
The term offshoring.

Nick Lawrence 10:53
Yes. I’m sorry.

M.L. 10:54
Offshoring. Yeah, sorry, I didn’t realize when I said that I was probably a, it’s kind of an industry term. So, so offshoring is kind of where a company has decided to take their, it’s not necessarily lower skilled jobs, but jobs that they can, they can fill in other areas at a cheaper cost. So for example, customer service, and you may hear it, when you call a customer service line for an 800-number or something like that, you may be talking to somebody that is in the Philippines or in India, because it’s much cheaper for them to handle the calls than it is for somebody in the United States to pay them. So that’s what you know, a lot of companies have done is move things offshore. This, this pandemic is almost kind of heightened that or increased that because you now have communications that is, you know, that are even more global. And you can realize you don’t need to be in the same place, you don’t have to be physically located.

Nick Lawrence 11:51
Right.

M.L. 11:52
So that’s where that, that, that pace has picked up a little.

Nick Lawrence 11:55
Right, right. Of course. How has your economy dealt with the US economic collapse and recovery? Yeah, your company, and not only just the US, but all over the world?

M.L. 12:09
Yeah, yeah, it’s, um, I mean, we’re, we’re fortunate or unfortunate to however you look at it to be a multi, you know, multi national or global organization, in that our customers, you know, are literally, you know, out of six out of the seven continents. So, you know, we deal with, you know, both enterprise and wholesale kind of customers. So, we hit all different sorts of economies, ones that have started to come back, and then ones that have kind of put it put things on pause. But, um, you know, really what our company has done, has been pretty, I guess, humane, or the word is kind, I guess, but they haven’t really, you know, gone through the layoffs, you know, our business has been impacted. Some negatively, some positively, positive in the sense that people are using, you know, phones to communicate still, but, but negatively in the sense that the move to, you know, tools like Zoom and Teams and stuff like that has really kind of picked up the pace. And now people are not using the phones, like in the old days, you’d have to join a conference call, you would have to, you know, call a number, dial into a conference bridge, and then everyone would do the same thing. That’s how we kind of make money is on those phone calls. When you move to Teams and Zoom, and you use the internet, which is relatively free, except for the infrastructure, then you don’t have to, you don’t have to worry too much about the cost. And that, you know, obviously impacted us. But, you know, for the, for the most part, our company has been good about not laying, laying people off. You know, they’ve cut a lot of new positions, you know, deferred some salary increases and so forth. But, but for the most part is that has been pretty, pretty, lightly affected, I guess, is the word.

Nick Lawrence 14:01
Yeah, that’s great. And it’s just ridiculous how things have changed.

M.L. 14:06
Yeah.

Nick Lawrence 14:06
Like how.

M.L. 14:07
How quickly.

Nick Lawrence 14:07
Yes, of course. When the pandemic did first begin, what exactly were you feeling when it was said that you would have to stay home? And that, that your company would be closing offices? What were your initial thoughts? And what are your thoughts, you know, now?

Unknown Speaker 14:22
Yeah, I think originally, I was definitely worried, um, you know, didn’t really, you know, didn’t really understand or didn’t really think about how it would impact the business. You know, I knew we were going to be doing more more communication. So that was going to be good for some areas of our business, but for other areas of our business where, you know, we sell internet back, you know, internet capacity at a wholesale level. I thought that could really hurt us negatively. So I was, I was concerned that it was going to potentially force the company to, to move towards, you know, layoffs and really reducing our overall staff. But how I feel now, I think I’ve realized that it’s kind of hastened certain things, some of our products have really taken off a lot faster than we thought they would now because companies are realizing they have to do this. And, and that’s been a positive. But I think the entire thing was, you know, closing offices and so forth were was certainly the right thing to do. And obviously, we were pretty early on that, which was, which was a good thing. You know, we all said, “Oh, it’s gonna be a month.” And here we are a year later. And we’re still, you know, we’re still not back. So, definitely the right thing to do.

Nick Lawrence 15:46
Of course, of course. Um, speaking of staying at home, it’s sort of become a new norm among all things. Do you think now that you’ve been working at home for so long, do you think that’ll ever go back to working at the office? And do you think you can say the same about other businesses?

M.L. 16:04
Yeah, um, I think it’s going to be, as I mentioned, I was working from home a little bit before, and I think it was, you know, it was certainly a benefit. And that I was kind of used to, I do wonder, you know, what, five days a week in the office will be like, again, as I’ve gotten used to that, that flexibility. But, and, you know, and certainly a time at home with my family. But I think, you know, I think the, the going back to the office is just going to be a lot different. I think you’re just not going to have, you’re not going to have the numbers that you had in the past. I think, you know, the commercial real estate market that, you know, the folks that sell office space to companies is going to really change. I think it’s going to be a much more come-and-go kind of thing where people are in the office a couple of days a week, and they’re home a couple of days a week, just because it’ll allow us almost like the schools did, right? Where they said, okay, you kids can come this day, and then another group comes the next day. Because it just doesn’t, it doesn’t bode well, but you know, this is obviously not gonna go away tomorrow. So and I think, you know, the other businesses, um, you know, I think brick and mortar businesses are really going to struggle. What I mean by that is, you know, the, you know, actual physical buildings where you go into a store and buy something at Kohl’s.

Nick Lawrence 17:31
Right.

M.L. 17:31
I think, you know, that, that, they’re not going to see the revenues they once saw the way they saw them, where someone comes in and buys things, I think it’s going to be a lot more of that, you know, I forget what they call it, but what’s the term? It’s, it’s where you buy online and pick up in the store? BOPUS. You know, it was, you buy it online, and you go pick it up in the store, or you pick it up in the parking lot, or so forth. So they’re gonna have to really up their game when it comes to internet shopping, which is going to be interesting to see if they can do that. So, I think Amazon and a lot of other online businesses are really going to continue to grow. And, you know, unfortunately, that could mean less and less small businesses, less of the mom-and-pop kind of shops where they’re going to struggle unless you really have a, a business presence. So you are an online presence.

Nick Lawrence 18:27
Yeah, unfortunately.

M.L. 18:28
Yeah.

Nick Lawrence 18:29
Um, I want to go back to what you were saying about, about how bringing in specific people, or not specific people, but bringing in different people, that’s not even talking about the health concerns that those people might have.

M.L. 18:45
Yeah.

Nick Lawrence 18:45
I find taking into account that so. Um, so overall, to close our interview.

M.L. 18:52
Yeah.

Nick Lawrence 18:52
Have you enjoyed being at home with your family, or do you miss going into the office? Do you miss that sense of normalcy?

M.L. 18:58
Yeah, it’s, it’s funny. I’m sure if you asked my wife, she would tell you that she misses me going into the office, because, you know, as much as it’s nice to be around, it’s, you know, it’s also very, you know, breaks up everybody’s routine. I mean, everyone’s routine is just not what it normally is.

Nick Lawrence 19:14
Right.

M.L. 19:15
So, yeah, I miss it in that sense. I miss going into the office and seeing my co workers, it’s, it’s, you know, there’s people I have not talked to that I, you know, I may not work with all the time, but I sit next to them when I’m in the office. So I do talk to them when I’m there. But, but here, now, it’s, you know, I don’t pick up the phone and call them because I’m not usually working with them.

Nick Lawrence 19:36
Right. Of course.

M.L. 19:37
If I catch them on a call or something like that, or you know, then we’ll say hello, but I do miss that camaraderie.

Nick Lawrence 19:44
Face-to-face interactions?

M.L. 19:45
Exactly. Exactly. I mean, even you know, even this is a little bit odd. You know, to be to be kind of, you know, doing over a Zoom call is a bit, is a bit strange, but you know, knowing, you know, seeing you and therefore, you know, being able to see you on the video is is a good thing, because it gives you a name to the face. But, but yeah, I do, I do enjoy the time home with family. And like I said, I’m hoping that the way things change for businesses is that you’re going to have the couple of days a week at home a couple days in the office. And I think that is the healthiest thing for everybody, you know, as we go forward.

Nick Lawrence 20:27
Right, so there have definitely been pros and cons of this pandemic. But Mike, thank you so much for coming in and shedding some light on how business has changed with COVID. So thanks so much.

M.L. 20:38
Thanks Nick. I really hope that this helps. This is a really good conversation. It sounds like you guys are really kind of thought the questions through and hit me with some hard questions. So appreciate that.

Nick Lawrence 20:50
Alright, thank you so much.

M.L. 20:51
Yep.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Historical Context

Once the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we knew that the world was going to change, in some ways for the better and in some ways for the worse. And we also knew that businesses were going to be affected, both in positive and negative ways. To further contextualize what is discusses during this interview, I carried out research regarding the details of how businesses, the economy as a whole, and business employees have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the articles below talked about how COVID-19 has forced so many workers to work from home and not be able to come work in local offices and have face-to-face meetings. Another article discusses how the best and biggest companies in America have been negatively impacted by COVID-19, as millions of Americans filed for unemployment. The article also explains that the chaos began when the stock market went into a drastic freefall. My last article below explains how small businesses have taken the brunt of the fall of the economy. First, mass layoffs and closures occurred. Next, the risk of closure was negatively associated with the estimated length of the virus. Third, many small businesses are financially fragile, and fourth, the majority of businesses planned to seek funding through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

Bibliography

How the biggest companies in America are impacted BY COVID-19. (n.d.). Retrieved February 22, 2021, from https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/how-the-biggest-companies-in-america-are-impacted-by-covid-19/ss-BB12zC0Y

Bartik, A., Bertrand, M., Cullen, Z., Glaeser, E., Luca, M., & Stanton, C. (2020, July 28). The impact of covid-19 on small business outcomes and expectations. Retrieved February 22, 2021, from https://www.pnas.org/content/117/30/17656\

Another day not at the Office: Will working from home BE 2020’s most radical change? (2020, September 20). Retrieved February 22, 2021, from https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/sep/20/wfh-not-office-working-from-home-2020-radical-change-effects-lockdown

Follow-Up Commentary

This interview took place on Zoom and was not edited at all. I sent M.L. the consent form prior to the interview and we both joined a Zoom meeting that I created. No changes were requested and no notable follow-up conversation was had. I used Otter.ai to transcribe the audio recording, and I edited the transcript to correct run-on sentences and grammatical errors made by Otter.ai.