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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

#441

Post by gravypod »

rrggrr wrote: post #144

WFH is screwing young workers by eliminating the mentorship, learning by osmosis and relationship-building that has propelled many knowledge-based careers. If Goodfellow were truly a good fellow, he would recognize the higher purpose.

I have personally never met someone, who was under the age of 20, who didn't have a solid grasp of working with other programmers remotely. With open source being the power house that it is most promising programmers growing up now are already way ahead of the curve.

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

#442

Post by newbie2020 »

ensan wrote: post #222
buzzert wrote: post #146

I can’t help but notice the timing of this. ML is starting to fizzle out as a “savior” of the industry after lofty promises were never fulfilled. Goodfellow was hired right at the peak of ML hype, so I have to assume his salary/total compensation was extraordinarily high, so he was very expensive to keep around. Apple would’ve made an exemption for exceptional talent. They didn’t make the exception for him.

"ML is starting to fizzle out as a “savior” of the industry after lofty promises were never fulfilled." What? Siri, text completion, all the health- and activity-tracking features of Apple Watch, computational photography, Photos app, Face ID, and many, many more depend on machine learning. And let's not forget the Neural Engine in M1.

Siri is not a good example. It is horrible for most real-world tasks when I need to use hands-free

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

#444

Post by p1esk »

GoodJokes wrote: post #32
qbasic_forever wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We deserve to have input into how we work best and if that means walking away from companies run by egomaniacs that need to see butts in seats, then so be it. The logical conclusion of this line of thinking is to organize your coworkers. You have much more bargaining power about your work conditions as an organized union. The history of unionization stems primarily from workers demanding safe working environments.

Unions are for poor people. This person can be much more self righteous by quitting for another 6 figure paycheck. Very little risk.

For this person this is a 7 figure paycheck.

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

#445

Post by dafty4 »

01100011 wrote: post #371
ineedasername wrote: post #70

I'm trying to hire for a position right now and it has dragged on for months for two reasons: 1) WFH is now limited to 1 day per week, and a 3 month probationary period where new hires don't even get that. 2) Salary. It's still a job seeker's market and my workplace is not keeping pace. It's spec'ed for 3 years of experience but salary is about the median for a new graduate w/o professional experience. I'm happy to t…

This may change soon. Meta and Netflix reportedly have hiring freezes in place now. Other companies are cutting staff. The later half of 2022 may bring significant changes to the job market(along with many other things).

Thanks for posting the heads-up re: Meta and Netflix; in the latter case I’m not surprised (or maybe they could just reduce the obscenely high salaries they overpay so they can feel superior to other members of FAANG, which doesn’t really fool anyone about their engineering prowess (they’re a content company, not an engineering/product/big-cloud company like the others, and everyone knows it). That would also allow them to get rid of this let-a-person-go-after-a-few-months-but-don’t-worry-there’s-warmth-and-respect BS.

Regarding your 2nd statement: “Other companies are cutting staff”; you mean in big tech already? Who?

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

#446

Post by Skinney »

csande17 wrote: post #400
noisy_boy wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Does that mean I don't deserve to have the bargaining power for the best deal for myself? No, I do not believe you are entitled to a wealth transfer from people who are better at your job than you are. (Or, to put it another way, you're certainly free to do a little collective bargaining if you'd like, but the World's Greatest Widget Engineer has no reason to join your union.)

> better at your job than you are

What you mean is «better at negotiating than you are».

Work skill an negotiation skills don’t always coincide (in my experience they almost never do).

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

#447

Post by SheinhardtWigCo »

fivre wrote: post #164
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 doesn't want to give anyone a raise. They are not happy to give anyone a raise. Companies do not willingly increase their costs, full stop. You could maybe make an argument that companies may increase wages for high performers for retention reasons, because needing to replace valuable employees is a large, if somewhat intangible cost, but that's pretty iffy. Companies are made up of and managed by humans,…

> Large wage increases based on expertise happen because you're able to better sell yourself to _another_ company when changing jobs.

In that case, instead of banding together with Joe Useless to strong-arm the company into setting money on fire (from management's perspective), you're better off changing companies as frequently as the market will tolerate.

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

#448

Post by tjpnz »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #29
mupuff1234 wrote: post #8

You might agree or disagree with RTO but at least they aren't bending the rules for execs.

Unlike Google where Urs demanded his org back in person while he moved to New Zealand to safely work remote: https://www.businessinsider.com/google-exec-reportedly-worki...

Meanwhile taking up a place in MIQ which Kiwis desperately trying to return home could've used.

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

#449

Post by laichzeit0 »

lajamerr wrote: post #27

I assume Ian wants to get back into research/publishing papers as well, he hasn't published any good papers in a while. He probably wanted the industry experience/research of machine learning in commercial applications with the scale and support of Apple behind it. When Apple designs things they design it with a fixed narrow purpose. Where as with Google you build general solutions. I think he wanted the experience o…

Let’s say he wants to get back into research. I assume you mean academia? Do you think academics should be forced back to office, I.e. campus? Should universities just be fully remote? Researchers don’t need in-person interaction with each other and neither do students?

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

#450

Post by Sateeshm »

nextos wrote: post #232
filoleg wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to undermine your point, wich which i agree wholeheartedly, but I wanted to address one thing. I imagine quite a lot of people who worked on M1 hardware probably still had to show up to the office. For some positions it is just required. A friend of mine who worked on hardware at Apple had to go to the office almost every day throughout the pandemic (and no, i dont know what product he worked on, and I am not goi…

I think onsite working can be nice but the problem is that it is really hard to find a company that doesn't try to cram you into an open plan office with at least half a dozen people. I can't do any real work like that. Before COVID, I was going to the office to talk to people, attend meetings and do chores, whereas I did real work at home. It was unsustainable, as work ended up filling 80+ hours per week.

This was exactly my problem pre-covid. Just couldn't focus at office and end up doing most of the core work from home in the evenings. It was very unsustainable.
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