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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

#661

Post by gspr »

marcyb5st wrote: post #610
wikibob wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus Christ. I eat well and spend maybe $400 a month on groceries and food. I’ve heard that Google recruiters attempt to con potential employees into some ridiculous assessment of the “free” food as a compensation benefit with numbers like those that you posited above. I can’t imagine valuing daily meals that highly.

I work for Google and live in Switzerland where food is really expensive so my situation doesn't generalize well. However, if 1) I cook all my food, and 2) try to have a healthy diet I spend easily the equivalent of 30USD/day. Going to a restaurant sets you back around the same amount per meal. So, assuming I work 200 days/year going to the office and get free food would save me 6k USD/year (also assuming I cook 100%…

And you live in a country with a really nicely developed public transport infrastructure, so you don't go through the nightmarish car commutes that most USians probably have in mind. When I lived in CH, I did not mind the days I had to commute – it was mostly a relaxed trainride where I could get work done 75% of the time.

I really think a lot of this debate is colored by Americans thinking of the American commute.

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

#662

Post by ls15 »

technotony wrote: post #658
ls15 wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Depends where you live and if you have to heat or cool your house to work from home. Homes are much more inefficient to moderate temperature than offices. That may or may not offset the benefit from commuting, and even less so if done on public transport with lower emissions.

That only applies if the home is empty when people are at the office. If my family stays at home while I commute, then there are emissions from commuting, heating the home and heating the office.

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

#663

Post by papito »

lrvick wrote: post #637
wikibob wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus Christ. I eat well and spend maybe $400 a month on groceries and food. I’ve heard that Google recruiters attempt to con potential employees into some ridiculous assessment of the “free” food as a compensation benefit with numbers like those that you posited above. I can’t imagine valuing daily meals that highly.

My wife and I were spending maybe $1000/mo on takeout -and- we had free lunches at offices until the pandemic. Once I committed to WFH life, it became a logical next step to double down on the freedom aspects and start my own consulting firm. That meant I needed long term thinking. I learned to cook more often and turned my entire front yard into a garden. Overall I would say WFH has been net healthier on my mind and…

I am a huge proponent of Blue Apron (or a similar service). Have been a customer for 7 years now. It cuts down on grocery waste (do I NEED 1 liter of sherry vinegar to cook one thing?), and you pick up a ton of techniques that may not be chef-advanced but very useful in every-day cooking.

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

#664

Post by smoe »

jjeaff wrote: post #255
rubicon33 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what most of the newcomers to WFH don't understand: There is a big different between WFH for a few months where EVERYONE else is also WFH ... and WFH for YEARS where some, or most, of the others are in office. The latter is years upon years of feeling disconnected, left out, and sidelined. The vast majority of companies even if they allow remote are not remote first. Remote first involves actual structural an…

Surely there are other reasons to leave your home than work and other people to socialize with in person than co-workers.

Sure, but work is still a significant portion of ones waking hours. Personally, I wouldn't want to work in a place where I can't or don't enjoy socializing with co-workers. I hope, what comes out of this pandemic is, that there is going to be higher diversity in work modalities one can make part of a job seeking decision.

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

#665

Post by dkdbejwi383 »

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 agree with a lot of your points, but not this one. Even if I were to take my lunch to work, I would still end up spending some money on coffee or snacks (because I can't always predict exactly what I will want to eat or drink during the day), and if I'm in a rush in the morning at home (e.g. slept in), I can just make lunch when I end up having the time, versus having to buy lunch in the office if I left without time to prepare some food to take.

The electricity point stands I suppose, but it's hard to quantify the difference, for me, as I moved only a few weeks before the pandemic, so don't have any pre-pandemic, work from the office data to compare with.

The £150 odd I save each month on travel costs likely more than makes up for any extra spending on leccy

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

#666

Post by dkdbejwi383 »

deanCommie wrote: post #445
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:…

You don't have to commute. You chose to commute. You maybe did it for a larger house. Or maybe for cheaper rent/mortgage. We're not talking here about folks on minimum wage who can only afford to live 2 hours outside of the city they are working in. The highly paid software engineers on hackernews could absolutely afford to live 5 minutes from the office, 30 minutes from the office, or 2 hours from the office. They c…

> You don't have to commute. You chose to commute.

Are you suggesting people live at the office?

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

#667

Post by drstewart »

bloqs wrote: post #625
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…

1.Interesting, the vast majority of these are not work related for me. Maybe one a year is in some way useful 2. I would contest that with sufficient quality screen share this simply so marginal it's dismissable 3. This makes several assumptions about personality and socialising and isn't always the case. Forcing people to see each other does not create social closeness. Sustaining good friendships over instant messa…

>I save 4 hours a day lost to transport being forced to listen to podcasts and have more meaningful work and play time as a result.

Man, people are really starting to stretch their commute times. Actually no, I save 8 hours a day commuting! No, 16! No, 350395803 hours!

Let's be 100% honest: you did not spend 4 hours a day commuting pre-WFH. You just didn't.

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

#669

Post by dkdbejwi383 »

randomsearch wrote: post #580
midasuni wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You work at offie A, your spouse works at office B. There’s 20 miles between them. How do you avoid the commute?

Well, for one thing only _one_ of you needs to commute. Secondly, you can work towards a situation where you don't have that commute, or it's cheap / clean / easy / you don't lose all the time. Spoiler: live on a trainline or buy a bicycle. Third, I don't believe this is the main reason for commuting. I think it's because people want to live in one place and work in another, which is usually a bad idea - especially f…

> Secondly, you can work towards a situation where you don't have that commute, or it's cheap / clean / easy / you don't lose all the time. Spoiler: live on a trainline or buy a bicycle.

Does "commuting" only mean "driving in a privately owned car" where you are based? I'd consider travelling by rail, bus or bicycle to also be commuting.

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

#670

Post by PoignardAzur »

dhx wrote: post #585
cgio wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CEOs and leadership teams would not mind remote work I believe, at least not as a general rule, given there are benefits to the bottom line, e.g. real estate, other expenses, productivity arguably. What I think is the key concern for leadership teams, is that remote work does not allow for an environment to train the next generation of workers. Most of the experienced people do just fine remotely, but imagine wfh exc…

What is the benefit of mentoring or guiding less experienced workers through new tasks in person as opposed to remotely with voice calls and screen sharing / live multi-user document editing / similar real time collaboration tools? I've generally found remote work a better model as all people involved can edit the same document / diagram / model / code at the same time collaboratively, or at least have a better view…

My recent experience (I've started two different contracts since the pandemic started) is that companies are at lot worse at on-boarding when everyone is remote than when everyone is in the office.

Maybe it's just that we all need to get new habits and adapt to this new medium, and it's only n=2, but so far my intuition is that on-boarding is harder when your colleagues with the relevant experience aren't one office away. Asking questions on Slack just isn't the same.

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