Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

engadget.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 632 posts

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

#221

Post by 3245457 »

kcplate wrote: post #115
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.

This is exactly the case. Its been my observation that companies with substantial (owned) brick and mortar facilities tend to be the ones promoting return to work programs now. Apple definitely falls into this group, perhaps more than any other company.

https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/google-investments-office... "Google will spend $9.5 billion on offices and data centers this year"

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9764995/Facebook-de... "In addition to the housing and retail spaces, Facebook also plans to have 1.25 million square feet of new office, meeting and conference room space for the social media company."

https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/29/this-is-the-first-look-at-... "Nvidia is preparing a new, massive building in Santa Clara, CA and this is it. Called Voyager, it will be larger than the building Nvidia just finished constructing by 250,000 square feet."

I could go on...

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

#222

Post by yellow_lead »

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.

And remember Apple offices are on top of toxic waste dumps / superfund sites!

[1] https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2021/12/apple-poisoned-me-...

[2] https://disasterarea.home.blog/2019/07/12/apple-headquarters...

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

#223

Post by banannaise »

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…

> This is pure supposition based on no evidence. It's entirely a byproduct of a lack of trust in management intentions.

What do you think the lack of trust comes from? We have a large body of evidence that management does things in exactly this way. You can argue that this evidence isn't germane, but you can't argue that it doesn't exist.

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

#224

Post by CalRobert »

lolsal wrote: post #213

Can anyone honestly and sincerely tell me that online whiteboards are exactly equivalent to in-person whiteboard sessions? There is no value in having lunches together with your colleagues? There is no value in body-language when communicating? I'm all for fully WFH policies, but I think it's a bit naive or dishonest to say that it's exactly the same work experience. I've been working remote for over a decade and wil…

Your lunch break should be a break, not time you're forced to spend with your colleagues.

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

#225

Post by colinmhayes »

LightG wrote: post #100
azemetre wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe allow teams, but I don't think allowing individuals to choose isn't good. Having a team that's half remote/half in-person is worse of both worlds. What typically ends up happening IME is that the in-person half typically gets way way way more visibility than those working remote. It's especially worse if the company isn't remote first at all. It's especially terrible if the team is remotely distributed as well.…

"in-person half typically gets way way way more visibility than those working remote." That's a management problem, not a policy problem. Sorry.

You're not really offering a solution though. Management might agree with you and solve the problem by just forcing everyone to RTO.

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

#226

Post by thrower123 »

lolsal wrote: post #213

Can anyone honestly and sincerely tell me that online whiteboards are exactly equivalent to in-person whiteboard sessions? There is no value in having lunches together with your colleagues? There is no value in body-language when communicating? I'm all for fully WFH policies, but I think it's a bit naive or dishonest to say that it's exactly the same work experience. I've been working remote for over a decade and wil…

Working remotely is better than all of those things, iff you commit to doing things correctly and writing things down.

Doing things correctly would help if you were in the office too, but you can paper over the inefficiencies of doing things incorrectly by wasting more time on the backchannel communication face-to-face.

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

#228

Post by seneca »

newsclues wrote: post #152

“It will make Apple younger, whiter, more male-dominated, more neuro-normative, more able-bodied” Love to see the source of data that supports every single one of these issues. I remember the Google memo from James Demore was backed by sources unlike this letter.

You won't see citations for these for the same reason the citations in Demore's memo didn't matter. Facts have no relation to articles of faith.

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

#229

Post by banannaise »

hackerfromthefu wrote: post #138
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…

If you want people to 100% believe it, add it to the employment contracts, with significant payments if the company reneges. However I think you will find that the executives won't go for it.

Yep. Money where your mouth is. Corporate management has a history of only responding to direct incentives, so if they want me to believe anything they say, then they have to give themselves a direct incentive to follow through with it.
Post reply on HN