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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

#251

Post by roflchoppa »

jedberg wrote: post #234

As a Cupertino resident, I'm pretty upset with their WFH policy. At the very least they should have let small teams choose their in office days. Now I need to keep track of which days of the week they have to be in the office, because traffic in Cupertino will be 2x-3x worse on the days they are in the office. Their choice of forcing everyone back on the same day is not only bad for their workers, but it's bad for al…

This work from office thing is really killing travel times in the Bay Area. 237/880 is almost back to pre-pandemic levels, the HOV lanes are making the problems worse.

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

#252

Post by BaseballPhysics »

banannaise wrote: post #223
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…

> 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.

I wish I knew!

The technology industry in general is one with some of the most empowered workers in the economy. The incredible imbalance in labour supply-and-demand means that salaries and benefits are sky high, work conditions tend to be quite favourable, and employees have a ton of options in selecting employers that have positive work environments.

And yet there are some who seem to think that tech workers are continuously under attack from heartless corporations looking to maximize profits at all costs, even at the expense of workers.

Absolutely, if you're working in, I dunno, service or manufacturing industries where labour supply is high and anti-union efforts have resulted in a rollback of labour rights, there is every reason to be concerned.

But in tech? I genuinely have no idea where this perception comes from or how it can be justified given the current structure of the labour market.

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

#253

Post by Octoth0rpe »

thebean11 wrote: post #219
Octoth0rpe wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I don't see how at a minimum "more able-bodied" should be controversial. Someone who requires a wheelchair has a much easier experience when WFH. "Younger" is a likely extension of that given how age affects mobility.

People in wheelchairs leave their homes all the time. Apple has buses and offices that I'm sure are wheelchair accessible. Apple probably offers pretty good insurance to get a motorized wheelchair if needed. If someone really can't make it to the office physically, I'm sure the policies are somewhat more nuanced. I understand it may be more difficult for certain people, but I guess to me it's a non sequitur. Doing di…

> I understand it may be more difficult for certain people

If you can understand that, then you should understand that certain people will make rational decisions to minimize their difficulty. Remote work positions are more available now, and such people will likely naturally gravitate towards them. Consequently, non-remote positions will be disproportionally more able-bodied, which is exactly the point of the Apple employee statement.

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

#254

Post by balaji1 »

thrower123 wrote: post #226
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.

Companies being paranoid about "losing control of employees" seems overblown. People (at these tech cos anyway) (on average) are very responsible as individuals and motivated to work and grow their careers.

It not obvious what carrot or stick motivates people to deliver. But there has to be a way to achieve what the team|org|company wants even with remote workers. As a company - clearly specify and quantify goals, regularly share metrics of progress, provide better tools for working and focus on the long-term.

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

#255

Post by smoldesu »

lolsal wrote: post #239
CalRobert wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I agree! You're welcome to do whatever you want. But I am a friendly person and find it easy to make friends with my co-workers and we don't even talk about 'work' most of the time. I still have lunches with my colleagues from years ago that live in the same city, even though we don't work together. Not every perk is about oppressing your freedom or exploiting your time and labor.

You're still welcome to ping people on Slack during lunch and see how they like that. More often than not though, I think you'll find that they're going to respond to you once they're back on the clock. It's fine if you're a friendly person, but I think you underestimate how much social pressure is involved in talking to people during their lunch break. The only reason I really engage in conversation while eating lunch is because the alternative of "I'd rather just enjoy my food and save the work talk for work time" is a faux pas.

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

#256

Post by larkost »

RC_ITR wrote: post #178
bmitc wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the percentages? Apple built Apple Park to not house the majority of employees?

Would it surprise you to hear that, despite taking the mantle as the new HQ (because it’s the most impressive building) it’s just an incremental office build and people still work at one infinite loop?

Even more than that. Most of the Silicon Valley employees of Apple do not work in either the Spaceship or any of the Infinite Loop locations. There are dozens of buildings around Cupertino and Sunnyvale (many quite large) that house Apple employees. If you just drive down Deanza Blvd you will see Apple sign after Apple sign pointing out those builds (and that is just one street).

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

#257

Post by ianbutler »

daniel-thompson wrote: post #41

> CEO Tim Cook called in-person collaboration benefits "irreplaceable" and in an email, the executive team talked about the importance of "the serendipity that comes from bumping into colleagues" during in-person work. Another extroverted MBA who doesn't understand why many engineers need big, unbroken chunks of silence & concentration to do great work.

Hi senior engineer here, I enjoy being with my co-workers and you can definitely make people understand you need your time in an office setting. This sounds like a communication issue that a lot of devs have but that's squarely our failing not other people in our orgs.

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

#258

Post by dehrmann »

dboreham wrote: post #161

Remote work is an existential threat to large knowledge-work-based corporations or at least to their management hierarchies. Having spent $$ on fancy buildings that are now empty is just one aspect of this. Problem for them is: the genie is out of the bottle now. We've spent 2y proving that things are humming along just fine without everyone on a campus, commuting for 2h every day.

It's actually the other way, and employees should be worried. If working remotely is really just as effective, why pay a premium for Bay Area talent?

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

#260

Post by MattGaiser »

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…

Depends on who you are. I cannot really process non-explicit communication all that well nor do I like to whiteboard without access to research, so I prefer a playing field where everything is explicit/where I am researching as we work.

In person I am socially clueless and add next to nothing to the whiteboard.

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