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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

#531

Post by Valakas_ »

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.

The problem is that often what is best for employee's quality of life and mental health is not aligned with the best for the company. If there is 1% better output from a worker if they're at the office, but they suffer 50% less mental health, compared to WFH, then guess what the company is going to chose.

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

#532

Post by ghaff »

indigodaddy wrote: post #513

So much for big orgs adopting fully remote as an option eh? I really thought that had a chance… Can anyone list some medium-to-biggish orgs with fully remote options? Is there a website somewhere that might have a list?

I think you'll find that it's available at most large-ish tech companies but how common it is varies a lot. At some, it will be quite normal. At others, it will be the rare person with some specific background or skills.

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

#533

Post by graeme »

tialaramex wrote: post #432
graeme wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s contingent on the number of waves being four and the number of years being two though. I have no expectation covid is done. At a certain point you have to pay attention if it’s bad enough. (It isn’t now)

That influenza virus didn't go anywhere, it's still with us, but people stopped caring after the worst of the pandemic. COVID-19 will now do the same. That's a bad but predictable outcome of short term thinking.

Spanish flu’s mega waves stopped though. My point is if covid keeps swamping us then we won’t be able to ignore it.

Easy to say “I’m done with covid” at the bottom of a wave, which is where most of the world is now. (Referring to the popular attitude, not you)

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

#534

Post by sokoloff »

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.

India is 10.5 hours from both coasts of the US (for most of the year).

If two employees work at the same local times, they have to work an 11 hour day to have 30 minutes of overlap.

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

#535

Post by blcknight »

unmole wrote: post #495
blcknight wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not FAANG but Red Hat employees can contribute to open source on their own time — even if it competes with something that Red Hat makes.

Does Red Hat even make proprietary software? I thought the business model was to open source everything and charge for enterprise support and cloud services?

Right, it's all open source, but you could be making after-work contributions to open source projects that might not be in the interest of Red Hat, and that's perfectly fine.

The policy is public: https://www.redhat.com/licenses/RH_CoC-June_2020_Eng.pdf

"Participation in an open source community project, whether maintained by the Company or by another commercial or non-commercial entity or organization, does not constitute a conflict of interest even where you may make a determination in the interest of the project that is adverse to the Company’s interests."

A lot of employees were concerned about losing this after the IBM acquisition, but the former CEO made a lot of promises to us especially to protecting our autonomy, and (so far) IBM has kept those commitments to us.

I cannot imagine a more open source friendly place to work. I'm constantly surprised by how other companies operate open source projects or treat their employees who want to contribute to them (at work or otherwise). Unfortunately as Red Hat gets larger, we hire more people without that love of open source and they want to do things differently, but thankfully they don't get much traction.

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

#536

Post by eschulz »

zarzavat wrote: post #494
eschulz wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main thing about money, Bud, is that it makes you do things you don't want to do. -Lou Mannheim

That may work at McDonalds but the average Apple employee has options and can work pretty much anywhere they want. “My way or the highway” is not a good strategy for retaining the best talent.

You're right

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

#537

Post by LightG »

dymk wrote: post #155
LightG wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be wrong. I'm staunch in favour of remote. I like it, it works. But I recognise the benefits of in-person. I would wager that what most people like me want is a bit of control of their schedule and to be able to work in a hybrid manner. The end. I know as that's what I was going to ask my boss, before he dragged us all back in to the office and stopped remote completely in Nov-21. Most of our team have left a…

Hybrid work solutions are good only for those who _want_ to do them. For everyone else, they're a compromise, also known as "the worst of both worlds". Telling employees that they _need_ to be in the office on days X, Y, and Z destroys most of the utility of remote working. They even chose Monday, Tuesday Thursday so people couldn't have a four day long block for working or traveling elsewhere. If Apple cared about f…

I think someone below me said it best. You can set all the rules you like, but in the end, "cohesive teams will self organise" to make it work.

We didn't have to set any guidelines, we just did what was needed. If that meant we could fly 5 days a week at home. Fine. If, when lockdown easedup, it meant choosing to come in 1 or 5 days a week, we self organise towards that. And it's fine.

Our team proved we could do that over 2 years, so the sudden yank back into the office was a slap in the face, and destroyed our team. I'm still bitter about it.

Just know that if that's your policy, that's what you're risking. It may not manifest as quick as it did with our team, but the internal cracks will be there that you'll need to manage, if you can at all.

And I don't agree with your "worst of both worlds" wasn't our situation. We were all in agreement about things would be and it worked. In that situation, you declare that as a core part of your organisation and new employees can choose whether they want to be a part of that or not.

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

#538

Post by paulcole »

Apocryphon wrote: post #524
paulcole wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You know you can still simulate that commute, right? People who miss the boundaries of the office environment away from home, the social aspects, the prospect for promotions, sure. That all makes sense. But the commute? There’s nothing stopping you from biking those ten minutes before your remote job. During the quarantine you had more time than before to bike, and probably less traffic to boot. And as an aside- did…

I worked in a large open office. I also live in a tiny apartment that’s designed to be lived/slept in, not 24 hours a day in.

Thanks for the tip though.

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

#539

Post by knighthack »

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…

Would love to know how it was like working at Apple? How toxic was toxic?

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

#540

Post by jen20 »

paulcole wrote: post #538
Apocryphon wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know you can still simulate that commute, right? People who miss the boundaries of the office environment away from home, the social aspects, the prospect for promotions, sure. That all makes sense. But the commute? There’s nothing stopping you from biking those ten minutes before your remote job. During the quarantine you had more time than before to bike, and probably less traffic to boot. And as an aside- did…

I worked in a large open office. I also live in a tiny apartment that’s designed to be lived/slept in, not 24 hours a day in. Thanks for the tip though.

> I worked in a large open office.

This is my personal definition of hellscape.

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