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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

#381

Post by nomdenator »

holografix wrote: post #298
almost_usual wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Document…

I totally understand your pov and it’s often the one shared by full remote folks who enjoy it that way: “I produce good work nothing else matters”. I find that a really sad, if not completely rational, outlook. See I don’t want to work with someone who outputs great work only. I want to work who can share a joke, help out, bounce ideas of, experiment with new things and fail/succeed. In other words, I like work to be…

Being able to feed off each others' expertise can be more than the sum of individuals also.

Reading all the responses it seems there's advantages both to being at home or on site and the trick is to find the balance.

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

#382

Post by discordance »

Someone1234 wrote: post #234
discordance wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He’s a director and is most likely supposed to be an example. “If the director isn’t coming in then why should I?”

Well, why should you? Nobody in that department needs to be at the office.

Totally. Just trying to look at it from Apple’s return to office perspective, regardless of whether it’s appropriate or not.

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

#383

Post by barry-cotter »

astrange wrote: post #318
barry-cotter wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have weekends in China and it’s not because of any labor movement. Working conditions and compensation increase because of supply and demand dynamics, which unions are a part of but not necessary for. For another example of countries that do not tolerate independent labor movements where economic growth led to better working conditions see Vietnam.

"Not because of any labor movement" is a strange way to describe a communist government.

Why? A totalitarian/authoritarian government that bans strikes where all worker’s organizations work hand in glove with the government and management describes fascist and communist approaches to unions perfectly. The historical roots of the ruling party are hardly relevant.

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

#384

Post by aiisjustanif »

me_me_mu_mu wrote: post #325
andrewia wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a few obvious responses to your comment. First of which is that switching jobs is not as easy as you make it sound, even in the tech industry. There's still a lot of effort that must be put into interviewing and it takes quite a few weeks unless you get lucky. It becomes even more difficult when you need arrangements due to a disability, visa sponsorship, future maternity/paternity leave, etc. Second,…

I totally get that but come on.. if you can get into FANG you literally don’t have any job security fears. Don’t mention edge cases that may affect a few people but for the vast majority? Please.. the most pampered group of workers in tech. I would understand if this was non tech, and I’m not familiar with outside of US, but this is a non issue. Btw speaking as a full time remote employee.

IT workers at FAANG is the edge case tbf. I get that you bring it up because of the article, but even the the average FAANG employees can spend over a month interviewing.

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

#385

Post by skeeter2020 »

kadoban wrote: post #197
Aeolun wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have much more bargaining power, yes. But you’ll also be bargaining as part of a group that includes Joe Useless, who sits in the next cubicle over and ostensibly fulfills the same role as you. The company may be happy to give you a 10% raise, but they’d rather lower JU’s salary by 10%, so they won’t budge on your demands for an increase, since it’d also apply to him.

> The company may be happy to give you a 10% raise, but they’d rather lower JU’s salary by 10%, so they won’t budge on your demands for an increase, since it’d also apply to him. Then don't organize the union to work like that. A union is an agreement for the workers to pool their negotiating power, not an agreement for any particular pay structure.

> A union is an agreement for the workers to pool their negotiating power, not an agreement for any particular pay structure.

Are you a member of any union? the #1 thing they do is secure a collective bargaining agreement which precisely spells out the pay structure for everyone covered.

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

#386

Post by hiptobecubic »

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…

These sound like separate problems. Your coworkers being more interested in perf than work will not change just because you force them all to commute for two hours a day.

My experience talking to a lot of people both for and against wfh has been that people with shitty teams hate being remote, because it's hard to do when everyone is putting in zero effort to make remote work "work." The other big group that wants wfh to end are the "my coworkers are my only friends" people. Good for them, i guess, but personally i think that's not a wise way to structure one's life. I understand why companies love it and want to foster it though.

A very small number say things like "I find it difficult to collaborate with anyone over the internet."

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

#387

Post by noisy_boy »

csande17 wrote: post #179
JW_00000 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Say, for sake of argument, that I'm the World's Greatest Widget Engineer.

Say, I am not.

> so I can get stuff I want by negotiating individually with my employer

I cannot, see above. Does that mean I don't deserve to have the bargaining power for the best deal for myself?

> 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.

Well, based on the fact that I'm part of the majority i.e. not as valuable as you, it works very well for us (who are not the World's Greatest Widget Engineer).

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

#388

Post by maleldil »

acheron wrote: post #362
holografix wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally understand your pov and it’s often the one shared by full remote folks who enjoy it that way: “I produce good work nothing else matters”. I find that a really sad, if not completely rational, outlook. See I don’t want to work with someone who outputs great work only. I want to work who can share a joke, help out, bounce ideas of, experiment with new things and fail/succeed. In other words, I like work to be…

I have family and friends to be joyful with. I want my coworkers to shut up and do their job.

I completely agree. I've always worked remotely. This separation is all I know, and I can't imagine why someone would want something different. As a manager, I don't conduct "team building" exercises. I try to ensure that collaboration is flowing, but I don't care if team members are only talking about work or if they develop some social relationship.

This is in stark contrast to my wife, who had worked in the office before the pandemic and continued with the same philosophy during remote work. She finds my way too cold, and I find hers too wasteful. I would dread working on her pseudo-remote environment.

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

#389

Post by skeeter2020 »

lozenge wrote: post #87
prirun wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have much more bargaining power about your work conditions as an organized union. You also give away your power as an individual to those running the union.

Your biggest power, the option of resigning to work somewhere else, is still with you. You just get backup from the union for when you don't want to exercise that power.

Well, since the original question before we got distracted was about flexibility in how you work, you definitely give that up as part of a union. Your collective agreement will spell out how, when and where you work, how much you get paid and also compel you do to things in support of the union, even if you don't agree with them. Those are all pretty big individual powers.

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

#390

Post by hiptobecubic »

holografix wrote: post #296
ricardobeat wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is being in the same physical place the requisite for being 'a team'? Open-source work traditionally has been distributed, and I bet it often results in teams that are closer than the ones from work.

Is a comfortable car with plenty of fuel a requisite for a long road trip? No, you can go by foot, horse, etc. it sure does help though. Open source work is a infinitesimally small proportion of *work*. No I don’t think it results in teams that are closer at all, I think (and can present no data either) that it’s just as likely to result in bickering and infighting. Guido leaving Python might be a good example.

People quit their in-office jobs all the time too.
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