News

Elastic COVID-19 update

By
Shay Banon

We thought it makes sense to share an email I sent internally at Elastic, unfiltered, and the action we are taking in dealing with COVID-19 situation, in the hope of helping others, as well as letting our community understand its impact. Here it is:

Heya team,

I wanted to share with you the next steps in our response to COVID-19 (coronavirus). This is the delta from the last weekly communications you have received. The current status document has been updated to reflect it.

I know the situation affects so many of you and people close to you. We are here to support you with any decision you make, and here to help if needed. On to the updates:

Events

  • SLT+ELT Offsite / Mar 9-12: Physical presence canceled, moved to virtual. Agenda remains the same, days will start at 6 am PT to support our people from various time zones, and the days will be shorter.
  • Field Leadership Offsite / Mar 17-20: Physical presence canceled, moved to virtual. Agenda will get trimmed, and expect ~4 hours a day agenda, taking time zones into account.
  • ElasticON Tour (Sao Paulo / Mar 18, Raleigh / Mar 24): Physical presence canceled, moved to virtual. Due to travel required from enough Elasticians outside of the event location, we are moving the event to be fully virtual.

Local events will continue to be held based on local guidelines. We are also looking into moving more local events (community, elastic days, workshops) to be virtual based on need.

The team is working hard to figure out what it means to hold a virtual ElasticON event, and we will keep you posted.

Future events remain unchanged for now. The status of our Elastic Global All Hands (GAH) in May remains the same. We are planning to have GAH, but please do not book any travel to it as the chance it will move to be fully virtual has increased.

Travel

All internal travel should be canceled. For travel to customer, partner or community events, local travel is ok, based on local authorities’ guidelines (shared in our status doc). Approval is required from your manager for travel across countries or regional travel in the United States or for any remote working arrangement for which you’d have to travel.

Offices

We recommend and strongly encourage that people work from home. Our offices will remain open based on existing current local guidelines. Buffet catering will be canceled. If you are not able to work from home for any reason (space, kids or pets, etc.) please let us know and we will help you figure out the best accommodation.

Time off

If you need to log time off due to non-illness circumstances related to COVID-19 (school or daycare closings for example) we will be creating a specific time-off category in Workday. This will not consume your vacation or annual leave time.

Public training in-facility

We are canceling all public in-facility training classes and will be moving them to our existing online/virtual instructor-led training for the next few months. We will assess the exact length and if we need to extend the timeframe weekly.

Final thoughts

We have such a strength with the fact we are already a distributed company and being virtual is second nature to us. I want to thank the company and our customers, partners, and community during this time for the resilience you are showing. And our community is already well-versed in engaging with us online. This affects all of us, and I want to thank all of you as we go through it together.

Shay