Tim Cook tells employees the return to offices will begin on April 11th • Hacker News Board

Re: Tim Cook tells employees the return to offices will begin on April 11th

#351

Post by mattnewton » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 12:06 AM UTC

birdyrooster wrote: post #299

paxys wrote: post #291

I suspect we are going to see some turmoil in the tech hiring space with stock prices taking a beating in recent months. Large companies have gotten away with paying under market price for talent because employees have seen massive gains from stock appreciation over the last decade. If total comp starts going down year over year, suddenly the more traditional, no-frills system at places like Apple, Microsoft and Amaz…

Can confirm, Google was really stingy with their RSUs compared to Apple, but the perks really aren't that good with the exception of the food, which, when speaking to current Googlers, they say the food quality has fallen precipitously. Google at the time I worked there seemed to lean heavily on its reputation to reduce total comp.

As someone who left Apple for Google, I can say that Apple was even more stingy for all but the most senior levels, where they were competitive. Their TC could come close to matching Google because the stock appreciation was greater with AAPL than GOOG, but the offer letters had lower salary and usually no performance based cash bonuses when I was there.

Re: Tim Cook tells employees the return to offices will begin on April 11th

#352

Post by lupire » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 12:08 AM UTC

abledon wrote: post #111

tombert wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

COVID made my situation worse at Apple. I worked in a satellite office (NYC), and while in the office, most folks in California were reluctant to schedule meetings later than ~2pm california time because they didn't want to keep people in the office late. When we went fully remote, suddenly it seems like any compunctions about that vanished; I would have meetings until 9pm 3 nights a week, I guess because the manager…

> b) there's no such thing as "my own time" with Apple, since I was salaried and well-compensated. Is there 1 FAANG company that is the most friendly/accomodating to someone who wants to develop their own software/indiegames on the side?

Develop or sell? No one cares unless you want to be a big name or big money.

Re: Tim Cook tells employees the return to offices will begin on April 11th

#353

Post by lupire » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 12:11 AM UTC

giantrobot wrote: post #280

nickff wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "While I have overtime included in my contract I still am able to reduce overtime (it is still being tracked to ensure compliance with local workers protection laws) if the project situation allows." The people talking about working long hours at Apple are getting paid commensurately. There's a reason why people work at FAANG companies despite the constant complaints.

> The people talking about working long hours at Apple are getting paid commensurately. Not really. Most divisions in SWE do stack ranking (unofficially). The top quintile (decile in some groups) gets a majority of compensation at review time. The bottom half is lucky to get a cost of living adjustment to their base pay. They likely will get no RSUs and little if any cash bonus. Despite the disparity in compensation…

Higher level engineers get paid more? And that is suprising or unfair?

Re: Tim Cook tells employees the return to offices will begin on April 11th

#354

Post by tharkun__ » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 12:12 AM UTC

tombert wrote: post #345

VBprogrammer wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When we went fully remote, suddenly it seems like any compunctions about that vanished; I would have meetings until 9pm 3 nights a week This is why there is a decline button next to the accept button. An outage or something disastrous, sure I'll stay online till midnight to help in anyway I can; a regular status update type meeting, no way.

I didn't feel like that was really an option. It became recurring meetings three times a week, and I got the vibe of "if you don't go, it's gonna look bad".

It may or may not have been an option. If you never try it definitely wasn't an option.

I have never worked at a FAANG myself, so this might not be something that works in those places. But what I do is to simply put "Out of Office" on my calendar outside of my core working hours. I don't even have to decline. I can honestly say that it was automated and I never even saw their invite. If someone complained about it I would tell them that I can definitely make exceptions, just need to check w/ the SO as she might have a meeting she can't move and we have the kids to take care of. I also don't react well to invites over night. I have my calendar in my head well enough to know when to wake up/be home etc. for the first meeting. So something you put on my calendar "in between" will in most if not all cases not even be seen. I do not have notifications enabled on my cell. This has so far worked without fail and only a few people have ever asked me for a specific slot and moving something. Basically the OoO reply get them to rethink and at the very least they know they gotta talk to me first and can't just plug something on my calendar and I will show up.

That said, any regular meeting someone puts on my calendar in a free slot with enough notice I will simply accept, be there and do my best to contribute. Meetings someone puts in 5 minutes before (or worse, yes this has happened during the meeting) and then ping me "are you coming" will result in a very stubborn me. Yes I would quit over someone throwing a fit for my stubbornness. No it has never been necessary. They all backpaddled.

Re: Tim Cook tells employees the return to offices will begin on April 11th

#355

Post by lupire » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 12:12 AM UTC

LAC-Tech wrote: post #303

CSSer wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deep questions about data structures and sorting algorithms that are perfectly addressed by the standard library in JS iirc. I understand that virtually anything in CS is or can be relevant, especially for such a competitive role. I don't think one should limit their knowledge wholly to a specific domain, but it seemed like there was so much emphasis put on these kinds of concepts that there was very little time left…

I feel like the binary tree questions may actually be relevant for JS, considering there aren't any the standard lib.

I'm sure Apple has a JS lib with a binary tree in it.

Re: Tim Cook tells employees the return to offices will begin on April 11th

#356

Post by hatware » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 12:14 AM UTC

calculatte wrote: post #298

birken wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the public are also "following the data", then the polling data and scientific consensus are likely to be highly correlated. I don't think it is nefarious at all that the general public and political leaders come to the same conclusions at about the same time when both are reacting same set of factors.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." - William J. Casey, CIA Director (1981)

It's amazing what people will ignore even though it's directly in front of their eyes.

Re: Tim Cook tells employees the return to offices will begin on April 11th

#357

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 12:15 AM UTC

IHLayman wrote: post #340

Ntrails wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is still primarily an on-site company. At some point I would like people to quit vilifying a completely legitimate business setup because it doesn't fit their world view. I want to be in the office, and I prefer it when my coworkers are there too. I respect that not everyone feels the same - but I do think it is up to the employer to decide. So I will be picking companies that suit my preferences.

At some point I would like people to quit vilifying a completely legitimate business setup because it doesn’t fit their world view as well. But as you can guess from my lead up, I look at it from the opposite direction. If there is no reason for software developers (or other IT professionals who don’t have to have physical access to the servers to do their jobs) to be in the office, and we have been far more producti…

[deleted]

Re: Tim Cook tells employees the return to offices will begin on April 11th

#358

Post by thund » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 12:15 AM UTC

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #346

birdyrooster wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can confirm, Google was really stingy with their RSUs compared to Apple, but the perks really aren't that good with the exception of the food, which, when speaking to current Googlers, they say the food quality has fallen precipitously. Google at the time I worked there seemed to lean heavily on its reputation to reduce total comp.

At least according to levels.fyi, Google is paying people at equivalent titles quite a bit more than Apple is. For example a senior engineer at Google is listed as having an average total comp of $380k, whereas at Apple it's only $310k. Now it's entirely possible that there is title inflation at Apple, so that a "senior" engineer at Apple is less senior than a senior engineer at Google. Or perhaps the samples are ske…

we need small companies to publish their compensation data on sites like levels.fyi, so people stop dreaming about big corps expecting huge salaries and rewards. There are many companies out there, with freedom to experiment fast, learn new tech, have a great work-life balance, without the huge tech debt of these corps, and they deserve a chance to have "rockstars" "ninjas" and so forth in their ranks

Re: Tim Cook tells employees the return to offices will begin on April 11th

#359

Post by Cookingboy » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 12:16 AM UTC

paxys wrote: post #291

I suspect we are going to see some turmoil in the tech hiring space with stock prices taking a beating in recent months. Large companies have gotten away with paying under market price for talent because employees have seen massive gains from stock appreciation over the last decade. If total comp starts going down year over year, suddenly the more traditional, no-frills system at places like Apple, Microsoft and Amaz…

>I suspect we are going to see some turmoil in the tech hiring space

I agree, but I don't think the disruption will go the way you or I hope it would.

Many of the companies that is "one tier" below were able to offer higher comp only because of sky high valuation from the recent bubble. Most of them aren't in the kind of cashflow positions that can sustain such high cost if the stock value correct. If we enter an economic situation where stock value go down for companies like MSFT, Google and Apple, what do you think would happen to the stock price of high flying growth companies that don't even make a profit?

And guess what, most of them are coming to the realization that you don't need to actually pay $300k+/yr to hire some IC just to build React components or spin up another Node.js microservice. I know of quite a few companies (especially the ones that took a beating on the market recently) that's already starting to pivot more aggressively to foreign developers and starting to look at engineering offices outside of the country. If anything, the past two years only made a global workforce to be easier than ever to adopt.

Basically I think given the macroeconomic that's going on, the days when barely profitable or even cashflow negative "growth" companies offering FAANG-beating compensation packages will soon be gone. The numbers just won't add up anymore.

Re: Tim Cook tells employees the return to offices will begin on April 11th

#360

Post by hatware » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 12:19 AM UTC

heyitsanewacco wrote: post #181

nightski wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CNN is basically a tabloid at this point.

Everything is a tabloid, including government reporting. We won't know how many people have died of COVID unitl the academics start studying excess deaths and get into years long fights over the minutiae of "with" and "of." We still don't have exact numbers on any modern genocides and likely won't ever. I never expected a "free democracy" to run into basic stalinist subversion of facts, but here we are.

> but here we are.

2 years into just 2 weeks to stop the spread of information.