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Apple's director of machine learning resigns due to return to office work

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Re: Apple's director of machine learning resigns due to return to office work

#171

Post by [deleted] »

holografix wrote: post #67
sabellito wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a strong dislike for remote work and will only work at companies with offices where people are expected to go to the vast majority of days. I absolutely understand that it's the opposite for some people.

Same here. I currently work at a very prestigious tech company and I’m surprised by how boring it actually is. There’s hardly anyone around in the office and frankly I couldn’t care less about the free stuff. They pay me enough that I can go out and buy my own snacks. What I want is a team to learn from and grow. Not some teachers pets that sit behind zoom calls making sure they know exactly what’s “on the test” so t…

[deleted]

Re: Apple's director of machine learning resigns due to return to office work

#172

Post by buzzert »

yeahwhatever10 wrote: post #157
buzzert wrote: post #146

I can’t help but notice the timing of this. ML is starting to fizzle out as a “savior” of the industry after lofty promises were never fulfilled. Goodfellow was hired right at the peak of ML hype, so I have to assume his salary/total compensation was extraordinarily high, so he was very expensive to keep around. Apple would’ve made an exemption for exceptional talent. They didn’t make the exception for him.

Don't know about your first point on ML, but I think the second point is the more salient one. If Goodfellow was that productive and that much of a value add they would have found a way to keep him.

I don’t mean to disparage ML generally. I think it has a lot of promise in academia, but its utility in the consumer electronics industry (especially one that’s pivoting towards entertainment services) seems pretty limited.

Re: Apple's director of machine learning resigns due to return to office work

#175

Post by [deleted] »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #78
thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #38

Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the on…

The office is where the very expensive labs are. For at least parts of Apple engineering, very expensive equipment and prototypes are under lockdown and too expensive to duplicate for WFH. (at least that's how it was during my several years there.)

[deleted]

Re: Apple's director of machine learning resigns due to return to office work

#176

Post by ianai »

wanderingmind wrote: post #98
ineedasername wrote: post #70

I'm trying to hire for a position right now and it has dragged on for months for two reasons: 1) WFH is now limited to 1 day per week, and a 3 month probationary period where new hires don't even get that. 2) Salary. It's still a job seeker's market and my workplace is not keeping pace. It's spec'ed for 3 years of experience but salary is about the median for a new graduate w/o professional experience. I'm happy to t…

What you need is a new job where they don't treat your skill as a cost center

“directly supports the main revenue-generating operations of the organization so there is real $$$ lost by having this position empty”

How companies consider that a cost center is beyond me. But I’ve seen them do it.

Re: Apple's director of machine learning resigns due to return to office work

#177

Post by almost_usual »

holografix wrote: post #67
sabellito wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a strong dislike for remote work and will only work at companies with offices where people are expected to go to the vast majority of days. I absolutely understand that it's the opposite for some people.

Same here. I currently work at a very prestigious tech company and I’m surprised by how boring it actually is. There’s hardly anyone around in the office and frankly I couldn’t care less about the free stuff. They pay me enough that I can go out and buy my own snacks. What I want is a team to learn from and grow. Not some teachers pets that sit behind zoom calls making sure they know exactly what’s “on the test” so t…

> What I want is a team to learn from and grow. Not some teachers pets that sit behind zoom calls making sure they know exactly what’s “on the test” so they make themselves look better.

I’m not sure what your role is but zoom calls really don’t mean anything as an IC. Not unless you’re responding to or handling an outage and debugging on the fly.

What you produce and how well it works is how you’re measured. Documentation and written communication is equally as important.

Re: Apple's director of machine learning resigns due to return to office work

#178

Post by alar44 »

buzzert wrote: post #146

I can’t help but notice the timing of this. ML is starting to fizzle out as a “savior” of the industry after lofty promises were never fulfilled. Goodfellow was hired right at the peak of ML hype, so I have to assume his salary/total compensation was extraordinarily high, so he was very expensive to keep around. Apple would’ve made an exemption for exceptional talent. They didn’t make the exception for him.

ML isn't fizzling out. What planet do you live on?

Re: Apple's director of machine learning resigns due to return to office work

#179

Post by csande17 »

JW_00000 wrote: post #154
Godel_unicode wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this question is there are people, like me, for whom the answer is "a lot". I have repeatedly gotten my employer to do things for me that they would not have done on their own. They need me more than I need them, and we both know it. This is also by the way the main dissenting opinion in the recent Amazon union vote. There were several people who were interviewed by the economist as voting no, who sa…

Open question (I'm not American, so I don't get the full context): would you lose that bargaining power if a union was created at your workplace?

Say, for sake of argument, that I'm the World's Greatest Widget Engineer. I'm worth more than the average employee at my company, so I can get stuff I want by negotiating individually with my employer.

On the other hand, if a union imposes some broad agreement on the company under threat of strikes, I can't convince my company to break that agreement on my own because I'm not more valuable than the entire rest of the company combined.

A union's interests are probably not completely aligned with mine—they're focused on protecting the majority of employees, who are probably not as valuable as me—so forming a union could very easily lead to me getting less of the things I want. For example, if a union convinced a company to pay/promote based on seniority rather than performance, that could be good for most of the people in the union but bad for me.

Re: Apple's director of machine learning resigns due to return to office work

#180

Post by worik »

praxulus wrote: post #102
sabellito wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a strong dislike for remote work and will only work at companies with offices where people are expected to go to the vast majority of days. I absolutely understand that it's the opposite for some people.

Some people prefer remote teams, some people prefer in-person teams. I don't know anyone who likes hybrid teams though. Eventually I suspect we'll end up with a mix of remote and in-person employers, and workers who have a strong preference one way or another will just have to filter potential employers accordingly. There might be a way for larger businesses to have certain teams work remotely while others go into th…

I know some one who does hybrid. A university law lecturer. Has to show up for some meetings, some lectures (some still remote).

When at all possible, they work from home.

It is funny who we know. Not at all a representative sample.

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