Slack isn’t alone. Microsoft has made its cloud “productivity suite” free to small businesses for the next six months, including its Slack competitor, Teams. Google followed suit with its own business subscription, while videoconferencing service Zoom has lifted limitations on its own free tier, allowing conversations to exceed 40 minutes.

The art of Skype set-dressing: how to video-call the office when in quarantine | Imogen West-Knights

But for every company smoothly moving to the future of remote working, others have hit problems. Some have been comparatively minor: Facebook employees found their corporate network was banned from the takeaway service DoorDash for suspicious behaviour, as the company’s entire workforce began placing orders for delivery all over the Bay Area in California while logged in to a VPN connecting from the same IP address.