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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

#331

Post by nathanaldensr »

21723 wrote: post #304
fullshark wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the discussion is so dishonest on both ends at this point. The complaint that returning to the office will lead to a "younger, whiter, more male-dominated, more neuro-normative, more able-bodied" workforce is maybe the most absurd attempt yet to destroy RTO plans. At the end of the day employers want to see what their employees are doing and employees want to avoid insane commutes / high COL rents / not feel lik…

> The complaint that returning to the office will lead to a "younger, whiter, more male-dominated, more neuro-normative, more able-bodied" workforce is maybe the most absurd attempt yet to destroy RTO plans. It isn't. If you are disabled, black, female, or older, an open-plan office is not a comfortable place. It's a halfway house for frat boys, but people for whom being unfairly evaluated and unjustly terminated is…

Your comment is ridiculous. I'm an able-bodied white male but I'm also not neuro-normative, nor do I enjoy open office plans. What people do like open office plans? Hasn't this issue been settled yet?

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

#332

Post by Apocryphon »

scottLobster wrote: post #298
sam0x17 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unapologetically, yes, and I'd take it a step further. Often the online version is more fun and more interactive than a bunch of people uncomfortably thrust into the same room. There are things people suddenly become comfortable saying and doing that they wouldn't normally say or do in person. If you've grown up with gamer friends you know exactly what I'm talking about -- seeing someone's silly avatar light up when…

Coddling social anxiety is not a good argument for WFH. There's a difference between introversion (needing time away from people to recharge) and social anxiety (not speaking up or interacting differently in person vs online). Unless you're banking on some cyberpunk future where people only ever interact online, social anxiety is a maladaptive disorder to be confronted, not a personality quirk. And FYI there are plen…

> Unless you're banking on some cyberpunk future where people only ever interact online

...you're in one!

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

#333

Post by BaseballPhysics »

karaterobot wrote: post #274
BaseballPhysics wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I said " not the least of which because ". I didn't say that was the only reason. This is precisely the kind of cynical reading-between-the-lines that I'm talking about.

> I didn't say that was the only reason. But, it was the only reason you gave.

From the HN guidelines:

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

I wasn't attempting to give you a complete and thorough explanation of our work-from-home policy or the reasoning behind it, but rather just one (very important) factor that's part of the overall calculus. I believe that was clear from the context.

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

#334

Post by lolsal »

onesafari wrote: post #280
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…

This is a rift between digital only natives and digital hybrids. The hybrids know the tradeoffs of both. Digital only don't have the lived experience to know what they're missing.

I hadn't thought of this distinction before; thank you for enunciating this point!

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

#335

Post by bckr »

sofixa wrote: post #87
solenoidalslide wrote: post #2

Perhaps the most compelling argument was that Apple was being hypocritical in the way it markets its own products. "We tell all of our customers how great our products are for remote work, yet, we ourselves, cannot use them to work remotely?" the letter states.

What products do they market for remote work? The Apple Studio Display that has an integrated camera with the quality of a late 2000s flip phone?

They have created a series of epic comedy-advertisements for their productivity suite:

https://youtu.be/GC5Gmkn92Bg

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

#336

Post by lolsal »

thrower123 wrote: post #306
lolsal wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds a bit like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman Having lunch with colleagues has nothing to do with 'backchannel communication'. Sometimes it's nice to hear about where we like to go camping, or what cities are nice to visit in their home countries, or ... nothing to do with work or shipping products. No matter how 'correctly' you think you're doing things, you still haven't convinced me after…

Nothing in all the years I worked offline in offices convinced me that whiteboards were particularly useful. At least we eventually had high-resolution cameras in our smartphones so we could photograph them when people insisted on doing planning on whiteboards - more than once I've seen software architects lose days of work because the janitors were overzealous with their dusting.

> Nothing in all the years I worked offline in offices convinced me that whiteboards were particularly useful.

Wow! That's pretty extraodinary to me. I wonder how we use them differently?

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

#337

Post by mehphp »

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #215
karaterobot wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 r…

> 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. I said " not the least of which because ". I didn't say that was the only reason. This is precisely the kind of cynical reading-between-the-lines that I'm talking about.

Meh, engineers tend to be pretty intelligent. If they are being cynical about management then it’s probably founded.

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

#338

Post by ineptech »

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…

I think in-office culture does work better in a lot of ways, but we as a society spent a century building and optimizing that. We've only been WingFH for a couple years, and it seems (to me) blazingly obvious that it won't take long to adapt to and improve the tools and culture of it to the point that the benefits outweigh what we've lost.

Apple choosing the office over WFH in 2022 feels a lot like the US choosing coal over solar in the early 2000s - a manifestation of the sunk cost fallacy that will look short-sighted embarrassingly soon.

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

#339

Post by Apocryphon »

randomsearch wrote: post #242
Apocryphon wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, they can and should provide funds so that employees can rent out coworking spaces that are located near where they live, as opposed to commuting far to the physical office.

I like this idea. If I already have a home office, so I get paid this extra fund too? Or does my coworker only get it because he doesn’t have a home office?

Maybe everyone gets paid it because teams might want to use the WeWork for local in-person collaboration rather than meeting at HQ, if it's logistically easier. Some team members might have home offices but others do not.

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

#340

Post by bckr »

dehrmann wrote: post #258
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?

Then again, maybe that would bring the prices down in a place that you want to live anyway.
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