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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

#641

Post by zelos »

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 save money by spending less on food, drinks, and electricity.

I've been enjoying not having to spend £4k/year on a rail season ticket. It looks like in the UK the new part-time season tickets are aimed at people commuting 2 days a week, whereas tech companies seem to be converging on 3.

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

#642

Post by Vhano »

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…

Your points are personal preferences. They don't support "competitive advantage" claim.

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

#643

Post by okareaman »

dougmwne wrote: post #600
okareaman wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who enjoy the camaraderie of the office, signing birthday cards, gossiping by the water cooler and talking about their 10K run for charity never struck me as the smartest people. It always struck me as a ridiculous waste of time.

The entire thing feels like such a charade to me. Cute birthday cards and asking about each other's weekends. All signaling and no real human empathy. The moment someone needs actual support they are kicked to the curb. Not our problem! The person who sat in the cube with my Partner for years committed suicide. Poof, it was like he never worked there. Have facilities clean out the desk. This is not your family.

They encouraged us to dress up for Halloween. A coworker came in with a cowboy costume including a toy gun. HR sent him home for bringing a gun to work. It was one of those you used to be able to buy at the 5 and dime. It might even have been his toy gun when he was a kid. It was absurd. As soon as it was time to do layoffs, they let him go. The family friendly atmosphere evaporates quickly when it's time to do layoffs. Your description of what happens after a suicide sounds about like I would expect.

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

#644

Post by woutr_be »

Elora wrote: post #319

Some here are being honest, so I'll be brutally honest: Covid has upset the master-slave relationship, and they're realizing they're giving up too much control. Yes, even the supposedly forward-thinking, progressive tech world. It's so much easier to ignore the BS of "company culture," "a new family" and other such nonsense when working remote. Plenty of people here have outright stated they work as a way to fund the…

I agree. And as an introvert, working from home has actually made work more fun. I never liked sitting in a room with other people, nor did I like going out for lunch with my colleagues or having to do small talk face to face. I hated having to walk up to colleagues that I didn't know, just to ask them a few questions.

All these things are completely gone when working from home. I can focus on my work, get the job done and have my personal life back. Once I finish work at 6 (often earlier these days), I got the entire evening to myself. I already managed to go to the gym during lunch time, or did some groceries during the day.

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

#645

Post by pojzon »

tmpz22 wrote: post #482
gnicholas wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The food/drink part could be the most of it. A Google employee enjoying free food and drink could save $60/day versus buying prepared food ($10 for breakfast, $20 for lunch, and $30 for dinner). If you drink much coffee or other beverages, that could be another $15/day. If you weigh this against spending an extra hour or two commuting, then it looks like a lousy bargain. But if you are like many people, and ended up…

Right but a Google employee living in SF and commuting to Mountain View will spend 3 hrs/day commuting give or take. Are Google employees worth $20/hr?

This is the real question ppl commuting to work should ask themselves. Is 1-2h per day of commute worth the pay/benefits I get ?

When I get paid 200$ per hour, saving 20-30$ but losing 2h is totally not worth my time.

I would rather spend that time with family or my hobbies.

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

#646

Post by Cthulhu_ »

ls15 wrote: post #617
heavyset_go wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I save money by spending less on food, drinks, and electricity. For those of us who have to commute, it's not exactly the norm to be saving money while commuting. Commutes are responsible for a 10% drop in hourly wages[1], and the median commute time results in spending 10 full days commuting a year. The average commuter in one of the largest metro areas in the country will spend over 13 full days commuting a year:…

Private transport is also one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing daily commute seems like a good way to improve our carbon footprint. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200317-climate-change-c...

One of many, though; I'm really getting my hackles up with corporations making end users responsible for things like plastic, industrial farming and co2 emissions. Yes they're a part of the equation, but there's much bigger impact to be made if they work from the top down.

Mind you, there are things like that going on (at least in my neck of the woods), with things like subsidies to consumers for going to battery powered cars and installing solar panels, and subsidies to e.g. energy producers for building wind farms out at sea.

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

#647

Post by Cthulhu_ »

giantrobot wrote: post #605
trainsplanes wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading FAANG employees talk about food prices makes me realize the old "It's one banana. What could it cost, $10?" is something that was written based on reality.

At Apple Park lunch at Cafe Macs could easily run $10-15 (without a drink) depending on what station you ordered from. The food there was good but not exactly cheap. The campus was really too big to leave for lunch unless you arrived at some stupid early hour to park underground below your office. It's a 10-15 minute walk to the south parking garage and then at least a 10 minute drive to the closest places to eat and…

And I thought spending up to eight euros for a warm meal (I'd have a sandwich in the evening) was stretching the budget.

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

#648

Post by detaro »

square_usual wrote: post #538
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…

The unfortunate part of this is that once people start responding to e-mails at 12AM, suddenly everybody is expected to respond at 12AM. It's a race to the bottom when separation from work and home life isn't really mandated. I've faced this first hand as I switch from one company to another. In my previous place, we enforced a hard limit on when we could be expected to respond, and nobody ever messaged me on slack/…

The expected part is very much a culture thing that doesn't have to happen. My coworkers work all kinds of weird schedules, so there really is no basis to assume that someone will respond at a specific time if you haven't scheduled that with them, and it works just fine. I guess in a place where only a few people deviate that might be trickier to establish.

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

#649

Post by yosito »

If companies find it works best for them to have people in the office, I understand that. But as someone who has been working fully remote since 2010, I would personally never commit to a job that didn't give me at least 3 months of working vacation per year (minimum) where I can work from wherever I want. I hope it becomes the norm for companies that aren't fully remote to explicitly offer working vacation between 3-11 months per year as a standard benefit. Most of the companies I've worked with are fully remote, but have an office available for those who want to work there, and do an all hands on-site once or twice a year for two to four weeks.

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

#650

Post by mschuster91 »

pm90 wrote: post #458
Aeolun wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as you are enjoying yourself it’s fine right? I enjoyed that for a while too, but just developing became boring, so now I’m also trying to play office politics. Not in the sense of some machiavellan scheme, but previously I’d just utterly ignore it.

Office politics can be amusing if you’re able to step away from it a bit and don’t care too much about the rat race. It’s immediately obvious who are the folks genuinely interested in building value and who are drones interpreting what their managers order them to do.

It's a real pity how much resources get outright wasted due to petty office politics squabbles... too bad many managers don't care :/
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