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

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

#451

Post by myvoiceismypass »

briandear wrote: post #190
NoSorryCannot wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person you responded to mentioned all-cause mortality. Remove the base rate, then you're left with excess deaths. How do you explain excess deaths if they are not covid? And that's not to say an explanation other than covid is impossible, but it would need to be compelling.

> How do you explain excess deaths if they are not covid? Delayed medical care because of Covid fear. I missed my annual physical two years ago and ended up with a heart attack I barely survived last October. People were delaying routine screenings such as mammograms, physicals, and other preventative care. There are also increases in suicide, deaths of despair, especially in younger people. Addiction especially. Nob…

Out of curiosity, in what way did missing a physical cause or lead to your heart attack?

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

#452

Post by jacinda »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #415
steeve wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is the exact opposite: most innovation I came across was the result of a in-person informal discussion. So yeah, YMMV

How does the in-person part differ from zoom or phone?

Less mental overhead and friction in terms of setting it up. 1000s of years of evolution. The experience of people who post on HN and their comfort with digital interaction may not reflect how a majority of people feel.

I wonder if there is confirmation bias in the opinions of people who are voluntarily spending a large amount of time on forums already. They had a preference for written asynchronous communication already.

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

#454

Post by diogenescynic »

kaczordon wrote: post #53
throwaway6734 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing that matters is death rate for those that are vaccinated.

I remember when we used to care about hospitals overflowing.

I feel like that was always BS and just a scam to rationalize our poorly resourced yet highly paid hospitals. Wait times at ER were always bad, the pandemic just made it slightly more bad. The underlying problem was always there.

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

#455

Post by microtherion »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #277
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…

> 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.

In principle, I agree, but I should point out that "No meetings outside regular daylight hours" and "My employer shouldn't care where in the world I do my job" are not compatible with each other.

In the course of a week, I collaborate literally with people in the UK, California, China, and Saudia Arabia. People are occasionally have to take meetings outside daylight hours. Best we can do is to (a) minimize the number of meetings overall (a lot more things can be done asynchronously that is often acknowledged) and (b) spread the pain fairly so nobody has to always take meetings at awkward hours.

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

#456

Post by paulcole »

nano9 wrote: post #406

If remote really works and the market is fair, then this is a good opportunity to see evidence in its favor. Somehow, I don't think fully remote companies will find it easy, unless they have some secret formula for finding remote talent. Companies like GitLab (fully remote) continue to be outliers.

> If remote really works and the market is fair

2 MASSIVE “ifs” there.

Remote wasn’t a choice for the vast majority of people over the past 2 years — it was thrust upon them. And despite what the pro-remote people will say, a huge number of them didn’t thrive because of it. They may have been more productive but they were also more miserable. Remote “worked” because it was the way companies stayed in business - it essentially had to work, even if it sucked for a ton of people. When remote truly becomes a choice then we’ll start to see whether it really works or not.

And then there’s the old saying about markets staying irrational longer than most of us can stay solvent.

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

#457

Post by giantrobot »

lupire wrote: post #353
giantrobot wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

The issue is there's not necessarily any fair measurement of "higher level engineer". With stack ranking if you've got five people on a team only one member of the team can be the top quintile getting the majority of compensation. Even if the work of everyone is roughly the same. It's asinine.

There's also no clarity into how to be considered the top of the rankings. The only guidance from managers is to "innovate" and work more.

It's a really demoralizing system unless you're at the top of the stack. It's further demoralizing that the managers are told in no uncertain terms to make the system as opaque as possible.

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

#458

Post by paulcole »

olliej wrote: post #240

I'm so glad that Covid cares about the economy. I also hate the obsession with in office work. I know for many people there's a social aspect to being in the office, but honestly I don't consider 4 hours of commuting each day to be worth the socializing aspect of in office work.

I hate the obsession with remote work. I commuted 10 minutes by bike and loved it. Remote work is hell for me. I’ll never pursue work at a remote company ever. I would happily take a pay cut to work in an office again.

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

#459

Post by DataJunkie »

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.

Current Googler. Everything you say is correct.

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

#460

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

pempem wrote: post #369
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if that will have the effect you desire. It's not a secret that there are a lot of companies that pay less money than big tech. That doesn't stop people hungering for those big tech jobs. Having specific salary numbers doesn't seem likely to change the situation.

Must disagree. As someone working in an MBB, the total comp of a potential exit is 100% a daily topic of conversation. IMO initially it's possible that folks will not be deterred but that is truly a matter of time and space for the knowledge to be available, make its way through and then impact people's behavior.

It sounds like you're disagreeing with something I didn't say. The person I replied to said that if small and medium businesses published compensation information, it would cause job seekers to prefer FAANG companies less. I said that was not true -- FAANG companies will still be very attractive to job seekers even if other businesses publish their salary info. Job seekers already know that smaller companies cannot match FAANG pay, and the exact amount of the deficit is not very important.
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