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Apple asks staff to return to office 3 days a week starting in early September

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Re: Apple asks staff to return to office 3 days a week starting in early September

#121

Post by PragmaticPulp »

pochamago wrote: post #69
k-mcgrady wrote: post #60

"Cook wrapped up the memo by saying that he's looking forward to seeing employee faces. "I know I'm not alone in missing the hum of activity, the energy, creativity and collaboration of our in-person meetings and the sense of community we've all built," he wrote." CEO's all spout the same nonsense. The majority of people work because they need to earn money. They're not working to make a new 'family' or change the wo…

There are also plenty of people who like their coworkers and enjoy spending time with them each day. I don't think everybody finds work to be an unfulfilling drain on their leisure time

> I don't think everybody finds work to be an unfulfilling drain on their leisure time

Well said. WFH doesn't fix a bad job or a draining company culture. If your job is miserable and you can't stand your coworkers then you need to find another job, remote or not.

Re: Apple asks staff to return to office 3 days a week starting in early September

#122

Post by akomtu »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #28

Why? Because of the already sunk cost into office space? Any other reasons? I know I can drive 40 min and stare at the same laptop and email/zoom with the same people. What’s in it for me? All I see is unnecessary agony, and a lot of it. I produce more from home. Why does an employer want me to suffer more, even if it will cost them? What’s in it for them?

A wild guess: execs supplement their income by having stakes in food/rent businesses around the HQ offices. If employees don't come, those businesses will lose customers and the execs will suffer. I mean, if you were such an exec and knew the corp is about to build a large office somewhere, wouldn't you buy 40-60% stakes in key businesses there while they are cheap? And wouldn't you cry wolf if the new office never opened beyond 10% capacity? I've seen a few strange apartment complexes built in odd places and charging brazen rent that doesn't make sense unless the owners knew something years ahead.

Re: Apple asks staff to return to office 3 days a week starting in early September

#123

Post by ModernMech »

BrissyCoder wrote: post #110
hwbehrens wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm obviously an outlier, but I live an 8 minute (peaceful) bike ride from work. I hate commuting, so I optimized for that for this job, and working from home last year was absolutely a net negative for me. Distracting kids, poor work-life balance, more expensive (AC, food, water, etc). I think the lesson here is, some companies can be remote-first, some companies can be in-person, and different employees will prefer…

I don't understand how so many people in this thread are saying they spend more on food while working from home. How is this possible? Does it vary by country? In Australia at least it is orders of magnitude less expensive to prepare food at home purchased from a supermarket than it is to buy food whilst out an about. Or are these people working for companies that provide food or something. I just don't get it.

> Or are these people working for companies that provide food or something.

It's this. Companies started offering food to keep their employees in the office longer. That people here are saying they prefer eating at work due to the cost shows it worked.

Re: Apple asks staff to return to office 3 days a week starting in early September

#124

Post by haliskerbas »

BrissyCoder wrote: post #110
hwbehrens wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm obviously an outlier, but I live an 8 minute (peaceful) bike ride from work. I hate commuting, so I optimized for that for this job, and working from home last year was absolutely a net negative for me. Distracting kids, poor work-life balance, more expensive (AC, food, water, etc). I think the lesson here is, some companies can be remote-first, some companies can be in-person, and different employees will prefer…

I don't understand how so many people in this thread are saying they spend more on food while working from home. How is this possible? Does it vary by country? In Australia at least it is orders of magnitude less expensive to prepare food at home purchased from a supermarket than it is to buy food whilst out an about. Or are these people working for companies that provide food or something. I just don't get it.

Those people probably get food at work. If you add up all of my snack eating + multiple coffees + lunch and dinner it becomes fairly costly per day.

Re: Apple asks staff to return to office 3 days a week starting in early September

#125

Post by ajsnigrutin »

swiley wrote: post #114
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * I had a stronger work/life separation. I rarely turned on my work laptop at home. This is imho the worst part of WFH. Some people come to work at 6:00 and go home at 14:00, some come at 10:00 and leave at 18:00, and some even later. If you're in an office, the latecomer can just check the early birds office, "oh, you're here, can we ..." / "he's not here anymore, this will wait 'till tomorrow". With WFH it's cons…

I guess I should be happy that I work at a company with people in the EU. If you get up early and stop replying to emails after 15:00-16:00 (when there isn't something scheduled going on) no one gets surprised.

I work in EU too, but a lot of coders around here start at 10:00+.. especially in smaller companies.

Re: Apple asks staff to return to office 3 days a week starting in early September

#126

Post by gnulinux »

BrissyCoder wrote: post #103
Nbox9 wrote: post #51

I work for another company that is going to do a partial return to office. I will be looking at options for companies that offer full in person office (or 90% in person office) after things settle down. I have worked full remote for a total of 5 years of my career, and I believe working in the office is a competitive advantage. * Overhearing hallway conversations (and joining them) helps spawn invocation. * I often d…

> I often do/did paired programming, and over-the-shoulder code reviews. These are easier in person I’m sure I’m not the only person who has the exact opposite experience with this. I can’t think and get mentally blocked when I have someone peering over my shoulder or I’m staring at their screen. I find this kind of collaboration so much easier if I’m in the comfort of my own desktop setup, sharing the screen over Te…

I think this has to do with seniority. When I was a lot more experienced than my coworker, doing pair programming was insanely fun. Because it felt like solving a puzzle with a friend, or exploring a video game with my sister. Now I'm occasionally pair programming with my manager -- who's like a 1000x me -- pair programming is mentally blocking. It's because my peer thinks so much faster than I do that it feels like I'm watching an action movie on 10x speed except every 3 minutes someone pauses the movie and asks questions.

EDIT: To make myself clear, this is not a criticism of my boss, it's just that pair programming with someone who is a lot more experienced than you is just naturally intimidating.

Re: Apple asks staff to return to office 3 days a week starting in early September

#127

Post by swiley »

pochamago wrote: post #69
k-mcgrady wrote: post #60

"Cook wrapped up the memo by saying that he's looking forward to seeing employee faces. "I know I'm not alone in missing the hum of activity, the energy, creativity and collaboration of our in-person meetings and the sense of community we've all built," he wrote." CEO's all spout the same nonsense. The majority of people work because they need to earn money. They're not working to make a new 'family' or change the wo…

There are also plenty of people who like their coworkers and enjoy spending time with them each day. I don't think everybody finds work to be an unfulfilling drain on their leisure time

>There are also plenty of people who like their coworkers and enjoy spending time with them

You can do this without forcing them to be around you. That's apparently a new concept to a lot of people.

Re: Apple asks staff to return to office 3 days a week starting in early September

#128

Post by newsclues »

themacguffinman wrote: post #96
coldtea wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I save money by spending less on food, drinks, and electricity. Compared to commuting (car+gas) and time-to-commute opportunity costs (to use for personal house tasks, side projects, self health)? I seriously doubt it.

Not everyone spends a significant amount of time commuting by personal car to the office. I see a lot of angst about hypothetically long 1-2hr commutes when the average commute in major tech cities is ~30 mins, and of course you can always control it by living closer to the office. Sure, not everyone is willing to make sacrifices for commute, which is one reason why it can be a competitive advantage.

I commuted 1.5 hours each way, bike in summer and public transit in winter both took the same time. I loved biking but public transportation sucks.

Why?

Rent was triple what I was paying to be close, or double to cut the commute in half. And I had no job security.

Re: Apple asks staff to return to office 3 days a week starting in early September

#129

Post by tolbish »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #14
thrower123 wrote: post #4

This might be the worst possible schedule. Mandatory Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays? Terrible. Neither fish nor fowl. Shit, or get off the pot. But deliberately constructing the schedule to make actually getting to work remote impractical is mendacious at best.

The deliberate choice of Thursday over Wednesday is quite a strong indicator that even part-time remote is not an option, so you can't even just commute into the city for work and live a ways away during the rest of the time.

"We found that a Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday model encourages people to take a four day weekend."

Re: Apple asks staff to return to office 3 days a week starting in early September

#130

Post by PragmaticPulp »

dm8 wrote: post #65

I maybe in the minority in this comments section but I genuinely enjoy working from office. I enjoy the social aspects. And commute never bothered me, albeit max commute for me was 45 mins (in the bay area). The only downside that I always felt was parking situation. Lot of my friends feel the same about office work. I believe going forward there will be companies (and employees) in 2 camps -- remote first and hybrid…

> I maybe in the minority in this comments section but I genuinely enjoy working from office.

In my experience, plenty of people enjoy working from the office. Many of us enjoy a mix of in-office and WFH.

The comments sections on these articles tend to receive a lot of projection from people who simply hate their jobs and view WFH as a partial antidote to that.

That, and a lot of comments from people who have absurdly long commute times. In the past I've had good success with mixed WFH/in-office schedules and very flexible schedules to allow people to reduce their overall commute burden. For those who can't or won't relocate closer to the office, full remote companies are always an option. For everyone else, I suspect we'll see a trend toward returning to office for the sheer efficiency and communication improvements.

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