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Apple employees criticize work-from-home policy in open letter

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Re: Apple employees criticize work-from-home policy in open letter

#201

Post by blitzar »

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #78
5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your hybrid is mandatory then you can expect to be back to full time 5 days in a years time approx.

As a manager, these types of comments and sentiments are so incredibly frustrating for me. This is pure supposition based on no evidence. It's entirely a byproduct of a lack of trust in management intentions. Taking my company as an example, while the executive team has been ambiguous, I know that a full return to 5 days of asses in seats is not being contemplated at all , not the least of which because we don't want…

> even the slightest hint of asking people to come to the office even just one day a month elicits exactly this kind of response

Which in turn makes the executive team suspicious which makes them hint at even just one day a month which makes people suspicious which ...

I dont have any solutions - but I agree with you.

> They laid out their policy, they've demonstrated their commitment to that policy

That is all you can do while hoping that both sides (and yes in this case there are good people and bad people on both sides) chill the fuck out.

Re: Apple employees criticize work-from-home policy in open letter

#202

Post by jhenkens »

RC_ITR wrote: post #173
shuckles wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are people who are convinced by this logic aware that the vast majority of Apple employees don’t work in Apple Park and instead in extremely unremarkable office buildings throughout suburban Bay Area?

And do they ignore the fact that many of apple’s most important employees work in physically secured labs where physical device access is a major part of their job? Like sure GitHub can be remote top to bottom, but an insane amount of Apples workflow is prototype driven and those prototypes cannot physically leave their secure facilities. Hard to argue (from a retention standpoint) that those people need to come in f…

I'm sure at a certain stage it is prototype, in secured buildings. But I have a friend who works at Apple full time remote (for a dozen years now) who routinely gets unreleased hardware at home to work on the software changes for. They is very intentional about only revealing stuff after it is public, which I think is still technically a breach of his NDA (revealing that they'd been working on it).

Re: Apple employees criticize work-from-home policy in open letter

#203

Post by BaseballPhysics »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #132
BaseballPhysics wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a manager, these types of comments and sentiments are so incredibly frustrating for me. This is pure supposition based on no evidence. It's entirely a byproduct of a lack of trust in management intentions. Taking my company as an example, while the executive team has been ambiguous, I know that a full return to 5 days of asses in seats is not being contemplated at all , not the least of which because we don't want…

> It's entirely a byproduct of a lack of trust in management intentions. Absolutely true. Employees do not trust management for good reasons, because they have experience with management not being open and honest with them (speaking generally here, of course there are exceptions). Management's goals are often counter to those of the employees. Whereas workers want good pay, flexibility, work/life balance, and so on.…

> Management's goals are often counter to those of the employees. Whereas workers want good pay, flexibility, work/life balance, and so on. Management wants control, pay people less, have them work more, and so on. Many managers pretend they care about what the workers want, only to force on to them what they want. People pick up on that bait and switch after a few times. Again, speaking generally here, this isn't universal, but it is common.

Yes, there are companies that behave this way. And there are many companies that don't. As you say, it's not universal.

The question is: What kind of company is Apple?

I honestly have no idea. But to assume, universally, that all companies will renege on their hybrid work commitments is much too cynical for me.

Re: Apple employees criticize work-from-home policy in open letter

#204

Post by chekibreki »

tharne wrote: post #16

Stop whining and vote with your feet. If you're talented enough to work for Apple, there are plenty of other wonderful companies out there that will happily let you work remotely. Not every company needs to have the exact same policies on everything.

You are right, I will apply to Apple, because I don't like working from home.

Re: Apple employees criticize work-from-home policy in open letter

#205

Post by karaterobot »

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #78
5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your hybrid is mandatory then you can expect to be back to full time 5 days in a years time approx.

As a manager, these types of comments and sentiments are so incredibly frustrating for me. This is pure supposition based on no evidence. It's entirely a byproduct of a lack of trust in management intentions. Taking my company as an example, while the executive team has been ambiguous, I know that a full return to 5 days of asses in seats is not being contemplated at all , not the least of which because we don't want…

> a full return to 5 days of asses in seats is not being contemplated at all, not the least of which because we don't want to lose ~30% of our staff.

Then it sounds like they probably do want to a full return to in-office work, but don't think they can get away with it. If the argument from your leadership doesn't begin with "according to these very clear numbers, our profitability as a business has suffered due to remote work," then it's reasonable to consider what the real reason might be: Wanting to exert control, or the sunk cost fallacy of leasing commercial real estate, or a justification for managers to have someone to manage. Who knows? These things are often not well explained. But anything except an existential business risk is a bad reason as far as I am concerned, when the "resources" so clearly want it to go otherwise.

Re: Apple employees criticize work-from-home policy in open letter

#206

Post by Fomite »

dncornholio wrote: post #118

Ignorant European here, I fail to see any connections.. > They said that Apple's reasons for implementing the policy don't stand up, and that the policy is wasteful, inflexible and will lead to a "younger, whiter, more male-dominated, more neuro-normative, more able-bodied" workforce How does this even work?

The logic behind this is that work from home allowed greater participation from not-these groups. Folks whose physical or mental health was improved in a work from home environment (I know someone with chronic migraines, for whom the typical 'Glass and steel open office' workspace is basically hell on a random draw of days).

Work from home also allowed for more schedule flexibility - it's hard to run an errand, pick the kids up from school, etc. when that's a 15 minute trip, rather than having to commute back home. This burden often falls disproportionately on women, and workers with families (who are likely slightly older than those who don't).

Removing the constraint of "You have to have the capital to move to SV to work here" allows hiring from a broader and more diverse pool of groups with less generational wealth, which means likely a more diverse body of job candidates.

Whether you agree with this or not, there is a logic behind it. Heck, I think they actually missed a couple axes of workers Apple is going to miss out on.

Re: Apple employees criticize work-from-home policy in open letter

#207

Post by 3245457 »

nimbius wrote: post #50

In other words: We blew five billion dollars on Apple Park. its a monument and a testament to the ineffable power and glory of our babel made manifest. You will attend this church of man in blessed reverence or you will find the cold streets at your feet.

Keep in mind Apple just returned 27 billion to shareholders [1] because presumably there was no better use for it. I doubt the cost of a 5 billion office park is causing them to loose sleep.

[1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/04/apple-reports-second-...

Re: Apple employees criticize work-from-home policy in open letter

#208

Post by kodah »

ChadNauseam wrote: post #116
nimbius wrote: post #50

In other words: We blew five billion dollars on Apple Park. its a monument and a testament to the ineffable power and glory of our babel made manifest. You will attend this church of man in blessed reverence or you will find the cold streets at your feet.

I'm fully remote and love it, but let's not pretend that Apple engineers are at risk of homelessness if they decide they don't want to work at apple anymore

Actually, I'd caution you there. There's roughly 25k Apple employees in the Bay area and Apple is a top payer in terms of salary. I've been shopping for homes in the Bay since I arrived and South Bay is easily 1M+ for a very tiny home. Oakland is about 600k+ and usually both markets require cash on top to get a home. That puts average mortgages (and rent) in the 3-5k range. If the average salary is limited by the number of companies that can pay more than 3-5k per paycheck (you want rent or mortgage to be 1/3 of your paycheck for risk purposes) then yes, Apple employees, depending on when they get their place to live, could already be over leveraged and at risk.

Re: Apple employees criticize work-from-home policy in open letter

#209

Post by Fomite »

PabloRobles wrote: post #23
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please think for a second about how a WFH policy might impact some groups more than others.

Could you, please, give your point of view on it? This is something I never thought about.

The logic behind this is that work from home allowed greater participation from not-these groups. Folks whose physical or mental health was improved in a work from home environment (I know someone with chronic migraines, for whom the typical 'Glass and steel open office' workspace is basically hell on a random draw of days). Additionally, for those whose health conditions are such that COVID-19 is still a concern in the "Manage Your Own Risk"-era, losing work from home means losing one of the major ways to manage that risk.

Work from home also allowed for more schedule flexibility - it's hard to run an errand, pick the kids up from school, etc. when that's a 15 minute trip, rather than having to commute back home. This burden often falls disproportionately on women, and workers with families (who are likely slightly older than those who don't).

Removing the constraint of "You have to have the capital to move to SV to work here" allows hiring from a broader and more diverse pool of groups with less generational wealth, which means likely a more diverse body of job candidates.

Whether you agree with this or not, there is a logic behind it. Heck, I think they actually missed a couple axes of workers Apple is going to miss out on.

Re: Apple employees criticize work-from-home policy in open letter

#210

Post by kalleboo »

ethbr0 wrote: post #137
nimbius wrote: post #50

In other words: We blew five billion dollars on Apple Park. its a monument and a testament to the ineffable power and glory of our babel made manifest. You will attend this church of man in blessed reverence or you will find the cold streets at your feet.

I thought building Apple Park was just to keep Ives around a few more years.

That's what I thought the Apple Car project was, so he had something to design that just wasn't a rounded rect with a black mirror
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