401–410 of 632 posts
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If we're stereotyping, I think you're overestimating human rationality and the power of emotional thinking, which is also a pretty common trait among engineers.
I’m not stereotyping though; I said if engineers are cynical their is probably a reason. I didn’t say all engineers are cynical or all mangers give them a reason to be. It sounds like you have a disconnect with your ICs if you don’t understand why they don’t trust you.
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We're all workers, and we should be supporting one another. Everyone has different concerns, but if you have a boss you have more in common with others who have bosses. Worker solidarity raises us all up. Support workers in improving their workplaces rather than blowing them off for making slightly more.
Blindly offering solidarity with absurd claims makes everyone involved look petulant. Be careful who you cast your lot with.
Someday you'll have concerns about your job and you'll wish tech workers stood by you on the picket lines.
I don't pretend to understand all the grievances of nurses, concrete pourers, or railyard workers, but when they say "this is a problem for us" I'm there in support.
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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…
" Coddling ?" Social anxiety is a genuine mental illness, and a protected disability. This kind of arrogant, ableist crap is exactly why we need to destroy the cultural norm that everybody being in the office all the time is the only way to do work.
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…
Why force either?
But I understand it's far easier for companies to pick one and apply (especially Apple and other large companies who have invested heavily in expensive real estate that would otherwise sit empty).
> and that the policy is wasteful, inflexible and will lead to a "younger, whiter, more male-dominated, more neuro-normative, more able-bodied" workforce. Does anyone take tossing around words like this seriously anymore? I am pro working remotely, but this is just ridiculous.
Younger = less likely to have a family so commutes are not as big of an issue + the many responsibilities of having a kid that are easier to manage wfh
Whiter = this is the one that I have the least contextual evidence for off the top of my head, but feel safe assuming it's at least partially true given the other factors
Male-Dominated = the kid issues raised above certainly affect women more than men
Neuro-normative = designing your own wfh space + not requiring travel to an office seems pretty clearly better for neuro-divergent people, especially when the office still exists for those that need to utilize it
Able-bodied = much easier to wfh when you're in a wheelchair, don't have to commute with eyesight impairments, etc
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 co…
If that's not important to you - like you are towards the end of your career and pretty much happy with where you are - then that's a trade off that might not have as big an impact. But it IS a trade off and people need to be honest about it and stop hiding behind ridiculous gobbledygook like the crap that was at the start of that employee letter.
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> I talked with my nephew about this, since I noticed he and his friends never really have sleepovers and such like our generation did, and he cited this very reason. His friends are more fun to be around in a Discord call than in person. To each their own, I suppose, but I find this unhealthy. I would encourage my child to be interactive in person, not to hide behind the computer. I say this as a WFH IT employee who…
That said, I would say my nephew is significantly more social than most people in my generation were, because he is able to get in 5 hour calls with his friends every night, whereas that might happen only once every few weeks in my case, at best. He's learning and socializing way more than even my most social peers were able to growing up.
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> 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…
Yeah maybe. I'd be curious to know how big of a factor it actually is. Would an extraverted person using a wheelchair prefer to work from home, or go in? I'd be hesitant to assume something like that is necessarily the biggest factor for somebody. It could certainly trend that way though. I don't see that as super problematic.
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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?
Then you're included as disabled. You have a neurological makeup that increases the difficulty of securing and succeeding in employment. You have almost certaimly been given fewer opportunities than you would if you were neurotypical and good at politics. Private-sector politicians and frat boys love open-plan offices; most of us are neutral at best, and with age most people come to loathe them.
Not sure what a "Private-sector politician" is, nor what your intense hatred of open-plan offices has to do with collocated workplaces in general, but I can assure you that the reasons people split across the remote vs. office spectrum is far more diverse than your generic bucketing of "white male jerks == office love; everyone else hates them".
It's kind of ironic that someone has such polarized, uncompromising views on the topic, supported by the reasoning that "they don't reflect and support a diverse and non-binary workforce"