“I tell you,” he said in an earlier interview, “this whole teleworking thing — as much as we sell it to our customers, I’m not sure I want to do it 100 percent of the time.”

In addition to Mr. Robbins, the video conference featured several mental health professionals, who spent an hour answering questions from Cisco employees grappling with the stress of working from home during the coronavirus outbreak. “Nobody prepares for this,” he said.

Cisco, which makes networking equipment, has seen demand for its Webex video conferencing system spike. In response, it has redeployed teams to focus on making sure big customers can conduct everyday chats and board meetings remotely.

Still, it is a stretch. “None of this technology was designed to support the entire world working from home,” Mr. Robbins said. “The Webex teams haven’t slept in days.”

As the coronavirus sweeps the globe, even chief executives — who normally flit from meetings to conferences in chauffeured SUVs and private jets — have been confined to spare rooms.

From there, they are working to keep their business afloat as the stock market plummets; managing supply chains upended by travel restrictions and labor shortages; and trying to keep their employees healthy and sane. For this installment of Corner Office — our biweekly C.E.O. interview column — I talked to the leaders of several prominent companies about what the experience has been like.

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Here is a direct link to the complete interview.

David Gelles writes the Corner Office column and other features for The New York Times’s Sunday Business section, To learn more about him and his work, please click here.