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Apple has a new work-from-home policy, but it’s still not what employees want

arstechnica.com

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Re: Apple has a new work-from-home policy, but it’s still not what employees want

#101

Post by throwaheyy »

caskstrength wrote: post #96
zwkrt wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, this is the thought of people with nice detached houses in the suburbs. Commuting doesn't have to be the horrible pain some people make it out to be. When working for Amazon, I always lived within a 30 minute walk of the office. The walk through Seattle was always beautiful and I looked forward to it each day. I would get a coffee at the same cafe and had relationships with people there. Some days I would leav…

You are saying that you always live near your office, so who is stopping you from going to the same park or cafe while WFH?

Because then you go back home, which is really your work.

The WFH pushers like to set up a “why spend 1-2 hours on commute when you could use that time on other things” straw-man. Some of us enjoyed our 20-30 minute commute as a separation between work and the rest of our lives.

It is not nice to come home from that coffee shop and see your workplace, waiting for you, across the room when you walk in your front door.

Re: Apple has a new work-from-home policy, but it’s still not what employees want

#102

Post by throwaheyy »

VLM wrote: post #54
throwaheyy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost no one? Based on what? Most people where I work are not going in to the office every day, but it cannot be inferred that it is because they don’t want to. The thought of permanent WFH, with your job occupying a corner of your 600 sq ft apartment in perpetuity, is demoralising. Just having the option of a change of scenery, even if one doesn’t make use of it every day or even once in a given week, makes a huge…

My house is vastly nicer than any workplace I've ever visited. Admittedly I was never a servant at a castle or museum or something cool like that. There is some confusion between covid lockdown vs WFH. I live in a recreational state with great phone coverage and wifi everywhere, I must spend at least half my time at some comfy park or a table outdoors at a coffee shop or something similar. Certainly I spend a lot of…

Thank you for proving my point.

Re: Apple has a new work-from-home policy, but it’s still not what employees want

#103

Post by derekp7 »

pkorzeniewski wrote: post #77
throwaheyy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost no one? Based on what? Most people where I work are not going in to the office every day, but it cannot be inferred that it is because they don’t want to. The thought of permanent WFH, with your job occupying a corner of your 600 sq ft apartment in perpetuity, is demoralising. Just having the option of a change of scenery, even if one doesn’t make use of it every day or even once in a given week, makes a huge…

Based on common sense - how many people want to waste 1 or 2 hours each day on commute when they could spend it better in so many ways? Or maybe I'm out of touch and people don't value their free time as much as I thought..

For me, if I'm working from home I tend to start my work day about the time I'd leave to commute. And there is no hard stop for the day. For my commute, I have a pleasant to drive car (nothing fancy, just a hybrid Fusion), with a commute that is about 50 minutes with small parts of it in traffic (without traffic the commute would be 35 minutes). So I do have a bet of zen time when driving to work or back home, and it is useful to see and be seen. However at the same time I have invested quite a bit in my home office setup (mostly time not really mone6), more than what they provide me at work. At the office I really miss my home 32 inch 4k monitor. Also I miss the coffee I have at home.

Re: Apple has a new work-from-home policy, but it’s still not what employees want

#104

Post by anon2020dot00 »

spoonjim wrote: post #92
Johnny555 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“What employees want” isn’t really relevant I think John Deere said the same thing. When enough employees get together and demand what they want, they'll get it.

Exactly. What employees want and what they have the leverage to get can be worlds apart.

Leverage is important and maybe most employees don't have enough leverage and so can't really do much about what they want.

But what employees want, especially if reasonable, would also affect employee morale and satisfaction.

Even without leverage, employees that love their jobs versus employees that hate their jobs makes a big difference.

Re: Apple has a new work-from-home policy, but it’s still not what employees want

#105

Post by caskstrength »

throwaheyy wrote: post #101
caskstrength wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are saying that you always live near your office, so who is stopping you from going to the same park or cafe while WFH?

Because then you go back home, which is really your work. The WFH pushers like to set up a “why spend 1-2 hours on commute when you could use that time on other things” straw-man. Some of us enjoyed our 20-30 minute commute as a separation between work and the rest of our lives . It is not nice to come home from that coffee shop and see your workplace, waiting for you, across the room when you walk in your front door…

> It is not nice to come home from that coffee shop and see your workplace, waiting for you, across the room when you walk in your front door.

Dunno, I just close my work laptop when I'm done working and ignore it for the rest of my day just fine. I understand that non-insignificant amount of people have some weird psychological issue with that, but I don't agree that we should force everyone back to the office because of that.

Re: Apple has a new work-from-home policy, but it’s still not what employees want

#106

Post by nebula8804 »

hbn wrote: post #88
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny thing is, I'm the opposite after getting a Mac for work at my current job. You can't disable pointer acceleration via the Mouse configuration control panel. You have to use some terminal command. Scroll wheel acceleration can't be disabled at all without using 3rd party software. The Home/End should bring the cursor to the beginning/end of the current line, not the beginning/end of the current document. Disappe…

> The Home/End should bring the cursor to the beginning/end of the current line, not the beginning/end of the current document. Cmd + left/right arrow > And why is there not even an option to ungroup my windows in the Dock? If I have 3 Chrome windows, I want 3 Chrome icons so I can switch between them more quickly. Windows groups by default, but there's at least an option to ungroup them. Cmd+` to jump between Window…

Thank you for those tips! They just made my already great experience even better! In fact the window switching does not have that silly animation that you have on Windows. Its like the classic alt+tab!

Re: Apple has a new work-from-home policy, but it’s still not what employees want

#107

Post by throwaheyy »

caskstrength wrote: post #105
throwaheyy wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because then you go back home, which is really your work. The WFH pushers like to set up a “why spend 1-2 hours on commute when you could use that time on other things” straw-man. Some of us enjoyed our 20-30 minute commute as a separation between work and the rest of our lives . It is not nice to come home from that coffee shop and see your workplace, waiting for you, across the room when you walk in your front door…

> It is not nice to come home from that coffee shop and see your workplace, waiting for you, across the room when you walk in your front door. Dunno, I just close my work laptop when I'm done working and ignore it for the rest of my day just fine. I understand that non-insignificant amount of people have some weird psychological issue with that, but I don't agree that we should force everyone back to the office becau…

You might (bigotedly) dismiss it as a “weird psychological issue”, but I look at it as a personal boundary.

Re: Apple has a new work-from-home policy, but it’s still not what employees want

#108

Post by rndgermandude »

throwaheyy wrote: post #44
pkorzeniewski wrote: post #8

It's funny how these big companies try so hard to make their office space as "cool" as possible and think employees enjoy them but the moment they are given the choice to work remotely almost nobody wants to go back to office, at least not on a daily basis..

Almost no one? Based on what? Most people where I work are not going in to the office every day, but it cannot be inferred that it is because they don’t want to. The thought of permanent WFH, with your job occupying a corner of your 600 sq ft apartment in perpetuity, is demoralising. Just having the option of a change of scenery, even if one doesn’t make use of it every day or even once in a given week, makes a huge…

>Of course that group has a big house in the countryside among the birds and the trees, where they don’t have to deal with neighbours, traffic noise, or other distractions. But that doesn’t entitle them to make those decisions or project their opinions onto the rest of us.

To flip your argument, why does your decision to live in a crowded, noisy, high rent (= small living space) city entitle you to make those decisions or project your opinions onto the rest of us?

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