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

#501

Post by vba616 » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 6:41 AM UTC

tombert wrote: post #97

dnathi493 wrote: post #5

I left Apple after years of lack of any flexibility on the remote work process. They wouldn't allow transferring to any alternative office for most teams. From what I understood, VPs could protect a small minority of some of their employees if a senior leader made a case to them. Unfortunately, this just seemed to lead to the most politically connected folks going remote and directors friends and favorite hires getti…

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…

>there's no such thing as "my own time" with Apple

Companies that aren't nearly as "cool" and pay a fraction, can be just as possessive or more so.

I am well aware of the saying "better to ask for forgiveness than permission" and how some rules are broken by everyone with a tacit understanding.

However, once when I investigated volunteering for an extremely well known and mainstream nonprofit, they gave me some required paperwork, which said that any IP created during my volunteer work belonged to them.

I didn't have a firm intention to do IT work as a volunteer or not, but I was told I had to sign to volunteer regardless.

I thought I would ask my employer if I could sign the agreement; if it was compatible with the stuff I'd already signed, that asserted ownership of work outside of regular hours, if related to the business.

At a lower level, people had no idea. It was passed up the chain all the way to the chief corporate counsel or whoever, and eventually they said no, with an air of "WTF why are you wasting my time?".

I felt like the ultimate decisionmakers can live in a different reality, where things don't happen because nobody has an incentive to tell them.

I didn't particularly mind, since I wasn't set on that particular organization to volunteer with, and I learned something.

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

#502

Post by viraptor » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 6:45 AM UTC

microtherion wrote: post #500

viraptor wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't get that one. You need to be in some really extreme timezones to not have any overlap. I worked with both UK and US from Australia (not Apple) and it was possible. Occasionally I'd do a meeting at night and start later the next day, but it was always my choice.

As I said, our team is literally spread evenly around the globe (though not nearly in equal numbers). Every hour of the day is bound to be awkward for someone .

In those cases we split the meeting and someone sent in the notes async. At the level where all those people absolutely must be present... I would hope they're paid enough and have enough agency in their roles to figure out the solution.

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

#503

Post by saagarjha » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 6:50 AM UTC

ericd wrote: post #362

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.

Apple’s cafe charges for food, and gives its interns very outdated machines. They’re much stingier than Google, or at least they were.

When I was an intern I got a new, latest model (for the time) MacBook Pro. At one point I also got a maxed-out trashcan Mac Pro too that they just had hanging around, which made WebKit builds far more pleasant.

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

#504

Post by jayd16 » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 6:52 AM UTC

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?

You can catch a spare minute by the coffee machine but you have to schedule zoom.

Maybe you could fire off a slack and hope for the best, but you can't really guage when a good time for a chat can be.

Async communication is good but its not quite the same to try to meet someone over slack, out of the blue, like you might in the break room.

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

#505

Post by saagarjha » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 6:52 AM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #399

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…

> Large companies have gotten away with paying under market price This doesn’t make any sense. What the large companies are paying is the market price. By definition. It’s literally not possible for all of the big companies to be paying under market price at the same time. That implies some other prevailing market price somewhere else, yet we’ve clearly seen the highest salaries come from the big companies. The big c…

> It’s literally not possible for all of the big companies to be paying under market price at the same time.

They did and there was a lawsuit about it…

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

#506

Post by saagarjha » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 6:55 AM UTC

yodsanklai wrote: post #419

paxys wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at sites like levels.fyi. The usual FAANG suspects aren't anywhere near the top of these comp lists these days.

I just did (in London), mostly Google/Amazon/Meta at the top, plus a few hedge funds, including Jane Street which pays insane amounts of money but who's also much more selective than FAANG.

Check entry level pay for SF and throw Lyft/Stripe/Snap on that chart.

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

#507

Post by peanuty1 » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 6:57 AM UTC

moneywoes wrote: post #388

arcticbull wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... what do you think would happen to the stock price of high flying growth companies that don't even make a profit? They're already down as much as 80%. If I were looking around today, I'd kill to join one of those high growth tech startups with a solid balance sheet that just got the crap kicked out of its stock.

Any names? Besides SQ I don't see many

In addition to Block there's Pinterest, Coinbase, and Roblox.

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

#508

Post by indemnity » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 7:01 AM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #496

raydev wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Not if you're all in North America. I've worked for two large, distributed companies in the last several years, where I reside in Eastern time zone. There's enough overlap between me and teammates in the Pacific time zone…

Yeah, I don't get that one. You need to be in some really extreme timezones to not have any overlap. I worked with both UK and US from Australia (not Apple) and it was possible. Occasionally I'd do a meeting at night and start later the next day, but it was always my choice.

Try UTC+12/13 and having to regularly coordinate with Europe :)

Working with the US and Asia is fine though, always have a couple of hours of overlap.

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

#509

Post by AlotOfReading » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 7:01 AM UTC

Qub3d wrote: post #293

LAC-Tech wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What CS questions would be irrelevant for front end? I don't quite follow.

I imagine they're complaining about the technical interview. For the record, when I did the technical interview I didn't find it too onerous -- mostly a more advanced sort of FizzBuzz to check you could do some intermediate math and handle basic data structures and logic flow. My understanding is that at Apple this can vary quite a lot in difficulty or depth depending on what team you're looking at, and who is interv…

Indeed. My last onsite with apple concluded with a couple hours of grilling on how to write performant synchronization primitives on various real architectures. I was not interviewing for the relevant teams.

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

#510

Post by bryanrasmussen » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 7:03 AM UTC

song wrote: post #30

windows2020 wrote: post #21

Maybe it's me, but I have yet to experience 'innovation' result from a conversation held over coffee or a chance encounter. I've had better luck creating connections with other parts of the business and exchanging ideas over the infrequent cocktail party where it's a mission of the night. Say all you want about open floorplans and irrelevant quiet encounters. Having said that, every situation is unique.

I have worked in remote companies and companies that had butt in chair requirements, so far all the remote companies have been more innovative and had more cross talk between teams than the companies that required people to be in an office all day, every day. Of course, that's just my experience but I do have a feeling that certain type of people feel that there's more innovation around coffee and chance encounter be…

> but I do have a feeling that certain type of people feel that there's more innovation around coffee and chance encounter because it's a nice story to tell oneself but it doesn't really happen.

It seems somewhat uncharitable to assume that there are different people who believe things about how innovation happens to them, but not that there may be differences between how people innovate.