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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

#581

Post by IshKebab »

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…

Surely they're better for disabled people because there are fewer doors to deal with?

And why on earth would open plan be specifically bad for black, female or older people? Do you think open plan offices are all like The Wolf of Wall Street?

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

#582

Post by bckr »

greybox wrote: post #528
bckr wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, off the top of my head, black folks, asians, and latin folks might be more likely to be caretakers and/or further from the office. That said, if they have Apple salaries, I'm sure they can work it out. That said (again), they might need to spend more of that Apple salary than their peers to figure it out. So, it's a bold and unsubstantiated statement, but might have some truth to it. Idk, wish they would cite s…

Im pretty sure caretakers can;t work from home .... Also isn't it pretty racist /sexist to suggest that just because your black or a woman, you won't be able to commute?

> pretty sure caretakers [can't] work from home

Why not?

> Also isn't it pretty racist /sexist to suggest that just because [you're] black or a woman, you won't be able to commute?

I don't agree with the framing of this... The question is whether or not WFO would impact these folks more negatively than their peers, not that they wouldn't be able to do it at all.

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

#583

Post by bckr »

EricE wrote: post #432
lowbloodsugar wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, expecting (and demanding) that the other person can interpret your body language is also a choice. Consider you are the only person in the room who can't speak French. Everyone else can speak French and your native language. Would it be appropriate for them to drop into French whenever you ask a question, talk about it, and then answer in your language? No. Not only would you feel excluded, but you'd also be…

>However, expecting (and demanding) that the other person can interpret your body language is also a choice. It's not a choice, it's respecting millions of years of social evolution. You are arguing that the way peoples brains are wired should be ignored to accommodate *you*. Good luck with that. Also not sure where body language rates up there like someone with an actual physical disability or people just being assh…

> This feels a whole hell of a lot like "this is hard and I don't want to learn how to do it so I'll make up some syndrom to excuse it". Bah.

I don't think that's a charitable interpretation and is uncalled for.

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

#584

Post by smeej »

passivate wrote: post #527
smeej wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to force my neuro-divergent brain to work in an office setting where I'm surrounded by noisy people (any people, really), lights that may flicker, and temperatures I can't control is going to limit my career a lot more than failing to have serendipitous conversations in a hallway. What works for you may not be what works for everybody, and that's the point. It could be that remote work would have limited your…

>What works for you may not be what works for everybody, and that's the point. Instead of making it personal, lets make it general. According to you how many people have a problem working in the office for the reasons you listed?

What difference does it make whether their reasons are the same as mine or different from them?

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

#585

Post by BigHatLogan »

fartcannon wrote: post #534
BigHatLogan wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any advice for how to do this? E.g. do people join Discords that they're interested in and then start chatting (Where do they even find them?)? I'm in my 30s now, and much of this is unfamiliar to me, but I'm interested in learning more about it. My social network has definitely shrunk significantly these past two years.

Yes! Just make a discord username, and you can 'explore' for communities. Find one you like - for example, Big Hat Logan, there are quite large communities for Dark Souls and Elden Ring respectively. Then just start dropping hot takes! It's just like this place! I'm kidding. You should probably lurk for a while until you understand the community vibe. That's going to be a lively place though. You might wanna try sear…

Thanks for the response! Haha, love that you got the naming reference.

That sounds good. I do have a Discord, but I've only ever used it to make voice calls with a friend of mine...but I think I'll definitely check out these public servers. I know my old university has some too but they don't show up on Discord search, so I'm guessing they're private.

Thanks again--appreciate the response. Sometimes I feel like a dinosaur by how out-of-the-loop I am: Telegram, Discord, etc.

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

#586

Post by ghaff »

closedl00p wrote: post #397
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 woul…

It's hard for me to imagine my first job in tech as a PM being remote. Modest apartment, not knowing people in the area, and general lack of spontaneous contact. OK, the communication tools were much more limiting and the social/cultural norms were different too. (Actually had email but way too many sales reps and SEs liked to call anyway to ask some question that could (sometimes) be resolved in a one minute email.)

So maybe it would be just different. But hard for me to wrap my head around.

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

#587

Post by hezralig »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #102
turtledove wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many companies are. Traditional, old school companies like Google and Apple are slow to move here, but many tech companies are moving to a "we pay you your value, not your cost of living".

I've only seen one (Airbnb) but perhaps there are others I've missed. I don't think we will be able to know how it is going to play out for a couple of years. They may validly intend to do what they say today, but market forces may ultimately force them to change their approach. I'm happy to wait and see personally.

Hasn't Gitlab successfully been a remote-first company for years before the pandemic? https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/resource...

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

#588

Post by Fomite »

dncornholio wrote: post #268
Fomite wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The logic behind this is that work from home allowed greater participation from not-these groups. Folks whose physical or mental health was improved in a work from home environment (I know someone with chronic migraines, for whom the typical 'Glass and steel open office' workspace is basically hell on a random draw of days). Work from home also allowed for more schedule flexibility - it's hard to run an errand, pick…

How it makes for more white employees I fail to comprehend. Even if there was reason, remote work only hides the problem but does not solve it. You could argue letting people work from home creates only more separation of cultures.. If you want bigger cultural diversity just treat everyone equally?

`If you want bigger cultural diversity just treat everyone equally?`

As a brief thought experiment for you:

- You have one pool of workers who work well in an environment with ambient noise and distractions

- You have a second pool of workers who need quiet spaces to concentrate

You treat them all equally by placing them in an open plan office with an excellent office-wide Spotify playlist.

Do you think you'll end up with both pools being proportionally represented?

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

#589

Post by scarface74 »

t-writescode wrote: post #294
tofuahdude wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We swap jobs all the time and there is no expectation of permanence; not a very good analogy.

Some people like their jobs and their coworkers and aren’t especially interested in changing companies. Sometimes leadership wants to do the right thing, but they can’t hear the workers through the managers

So you really think the CEO of Apple didn’t know that people would prefer to work from home and have the option to work from some place that cost less?

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

#590

Post by dwaltrip »

ensan wrote: post #523
turtledove wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They pay well because demand for engineers is high. Cost of living is high because engineers have bought all the stock in the area. You've got the order backwards.

"They pay well because demand for engineers is high" Do they pay their teams in Canada, India, China, etc. as much as SV? No.

Lower barriers to communication and the building of shared conceptual models of the domain will make a team much more effective.

An engineering team in the same timezone whose members have a similar general context for how they approach work will be able to do all of that more easily.

In my mind, that explains much of the difference.

Of course, there are fully-remote teams and companies that work hard to overcome some of those obstacles, but it seems to be non-trivial to do so successfully.

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