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

391–400 of 632 posts

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

#391

Post by EricE »

dleslie wrote: post #354
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…

> whiteboards Digital whiteboards are trivial to share, recover, modify and maintain. They're light-years beyond the limited physical variety. My team leans heavily on Miro, for instance. > Lunch Lunch time is a break. Not everyone wants to spend their break with their coworkers; but even for those that do, nothing is preventing you from having a conference call or video call over lunch. > Body language Not everyone…

>Not everyone understands or can engage in body language.

Well you sure as hell aren't going to get better at it by throwing up your hands and declaring it just isn't for you. I'm naturally introverted, but when I say that to co-workers they don't believe it - because over the years I have learned to adapt. I'm very extroverted at work - because it's necessary. Yup, I pay a price - it's exhausting and I need time to recharge. But the benefits of adapting to normal work environments instead of demanding the world adapt to me are immeasurable.

There are tons of things I can do now that I couldn't do before. Many of them are unpleasant. But they are necessary and without many of them I wouldn't be anywhere near where I am today. Good luck with waiting for the world to adapt to you. Let's get back together in 30 years and see how that attitude works for you. I'm sure the universe will have been incredibly unfair to you :p

This whole victim = anything hard/I just don't want to do is getting old. And it devalues people with legitimate issues.

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

#392

Post by conductr »

burkaman wrote: post #367
thebean11 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The conclusion is that we should remove barriers whenever possible. Climbing a mountain is more difficult for people in a wheelchair, but that's just the way it is, we can't make the mountain equally accessible for everyone. Climbing the stairs of a skyscraper is more difficult for people in a wheelchair, but it doesn't have to be that way, we can install an elevator. Extend that to everything. We shouldn't ask peopl…

Chewing is so inconvenient. Feeding tubes for everyone!

That’s a joke… we need the flexibility to cater to those who require it. We don’t need to make the baseline match the minimum. I think ADA and other items do well in this regard. So, just let a person WFH if attendance is overly inconvenient. It’s not the standard expectation. If working in the office is a baseline then It doesn’t mean they get to move to another country then claim the commute is now inconvenient. I think this wasn’t really much of an issue before Covid. Why is it now?

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

#393

Post by skeeter2020 »

shlurpy wrote: post #247
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 if commuting time was fully paid work hours, then companies would quickly agree that minor optimizations like this aren't worth it.

If you think active, in-person collaboration is a "minor optimization" than it doesn't feel like you're starting from a neutral, open position on this issue.

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

#394

Post by spullara »

lghh wrote: post #387
EricE wrote: post #359

Neuro normative? Good grief. They don't want to work in the office - no need to gobbledygook it up in some bizarre appeal to authority. I can say as someone who now works full time remote while also geographically isolated, it's not all a bed of roses. I do miss the serendipitous hallway conversations - some of the best directions in my career came from those spontaneous and unplanned in person interactions. I'm towa…

> Neuro normative? Good grief. They don't want to work in the office - no need to gobbledygook it up in some bizarre appeal to authority. I'm not sure what you're saying here. Do you not think neuro-normativity is a real thing? Or do you think that neuro-divergent people will be worse off with a truly flexible work-from-home policy? I don't think they are requesting that the office cease to exist. It sounds like they…

There is no possible way for someone just out of college to actually understand the tradeoffs. Young people have little to no experience with building a career or what it entails.

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

#395

Post by asoneth »

shlurpy wrote: post #247
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 if commuting time was fully paid work hours, then companies would quickly agree that minor optimizations like this aren't worth it.

Commuting time may not be officially factored into working hours but companies already pay for it in domains like tech where they must compete against each other for employees.

Given the number of companies that offer fully remote or hybrid work, a comparable company that wants their employees in the office five days a week has to provide higher compensation and/or lower standards to meet their staffing needs.

The important question for companies is not whether they want to be in-person/hybrid/remote in abstract, the question is how much they're willing to pay.

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

#396

Post by km3r »

burkaman wrote: post #367
thebean11 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The conclusion is that we should remove barriers whenever possible. Climbing a mountain is more difficult for people in a wheelchair, but that's just the way it is, we can't make the mountain equally accessible for everyone. Climbing the stairs of a skyscraper is more difficult for people in a wheelchair, but it doesn't have to be that way, we can install an elevator. Extend that to everything. We shouldn't ask peopl…

Why do you draw the line at a mountain? We have the technology for outdoor lifts.

In the end it's a trade off, and while we should have minimum standards of accessibility, after that point its a trade off between productivity, efficiency, and accessibility. If having the entire team in office 2x a week makes the average worker XX% more productive, should we sacrifice that for the one teammate who has a harder time to getting to the office? What about the coworker who choose to live further away? Should my team push meetings around because I am not a morning person? What about the dead worker who can understand coworkers better when in person, should we require everyone to go in every day for them?

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

#397

Post by closedl00p »

EricE wrote: post #359

Neuro normative? Good grief. They don't want to work in the office - no need to gobbledygook it up in some bizarre appeal to authority. I can say as someone who now works full time remote while also geographically isolated, it's not all a bed of roses. I do miss the serendipitous hallway conversations - some of the best directions in my career came from those spontaneous and unplanned in person interactions. I'm towa…

Agreed-- as someone who is also later-career and personally enjoys WFH, I realize in retrospect that I learned a lot (both technically and in terms of how to be productive in a larger team environment) from less-structured in-person collaboration with more senior peers and mentors. And I feel that really set me up for growth and future success / leadership.

Some of that is possible remotely, but I don't think it would have been the same as there was a lot of on and off collaboration and chatting over the course of a month sitting side by side. Especially with someone senior who worked on a parallel team where we might not have talked as much if we'd only been meeting through meetings.

And as someone who's managed teams during the pandemic, I'll say that I saw WFH be especially challenging for some earlier-career folks and new hires, who I've seen trying to learn everything "on their own" and feeling a bit adrift. I went out of my way to have more 1:1 check-ins with them, set them up with other senior peers for regular video "coffee chats" and mentorship opportunities, and so on. But it was challenging.

I've also seen Slack be a powerful force for new or junior people asking questions about how to use a tool or the history of some decision (once we built a culture of "it's fine to just ask questions to this channel, no question is dumb"), especially across teams or offices, so async digital collaboration is powerful as well, of course.

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

#398

Post by solenoidalslide »

richwater wrote: post #315
hbosch wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might seem exhausting, or annoying, or overly descriptive... but it is true and I find it hard to dispute.

how exactly does making people come to the office result in a more white workforce?

"Who is willing to relocate to the bay area or Austin in the first place? Who are the ones getting priced out? Demographics/census, speaking."

I think that is the argument being made.

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

#399

Post by dleslie »

EricE wrote: post #391
dleslie wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whiteboards Digital whiteboards are trivial to share, recover, modify and maintain. They're light-years beyond the limited physical variety. My team leans heavily on Miro, for instance. > Lunch Lunch time is a break. Not everyone wants to spend their break with their coworkers; but even for those that do, nothing is preventing you from having a conference call or video call over lunch. > Body language Not everyone…

>Not everyone understands or can engage in body language. Well you sure as hell aren't going to get better at it by throwing up your hands and declaring it just isn't for you. I'm naturally introverted, but when I say that to co-workers they don't believe it - because over the years I have learned to adapt. I'm very extroverted at work - because it's necessary. Yup, I pay a price - it's exhausting and I need time to…

... How are those who are physically incapable of engaging in normal body language, due to any number of permanent physical conditions, going to simply pull themselves up by their bootstraps and do it? They're not.

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

#400

Post by warning26 »

lghh wrote: post #389
warning26 wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of these younger folks pushing for full time remote at the start of their career are putting themselves into a box I don't think they fully appreciate This 100%—I worked remotely for my first 5 years after graduating college, and I thought it was great until I went into a real office and found out what I was missing. I vowed to never work a remote job again (of course, the pandemic forced a quick end to that…

And you still have that choice both under the model that the workers here are suggesting and in the greater economy.

Problem is, when you give workers a choice to come into the office, it becomes a game theory problem that ultimately results in no one coming in.

"Why come to the office if none of my team members are there?"

Post reply on HN