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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

#611

Post by odessacubbage »

jdeibele wrote: post #435
unethical_ban wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

One of the things that's different about modern videogames is that it's better to be at home with your own Xbox or PlayStation or PC if you want to play with your friends. We have 4 Wii controllers because when the kids were younger they could play with friends and the games didn't take a lot of explaining. Going further back, you needed an opponent, probably because the systems were doing all they could to keep trac…

on one hand, i think the death of couch coop & splitscreen has had a deeply underappreciated impact on how kids choose to recreate & interact, otoh i remember all the elbows thrown over screen cheating or the crummy madcatz controller and can't help but think that kids today are probably having a far more harmonious bonding experience.

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

#612

Post by bsder »

jnwatson wrote: post #481

An important point that’s missed is that working in an office is dramatically worse now than it was when I started my career in the late 90’s. I had my own office as intern. When I needed focus time (which is a lot of time as a developer), I could close a door. Especially with Apple’s open-concept HQ, the delta between WFH and office is larger than it has to be. The market is speaking. Apple pays well below the rest…

> An important point that’s missed is that working in an office is dramatically worse now than it was when I started my career in the late 90’s.

Yeah. I think this is significantly being understated.

There is a VAST difference between "in person" meaning "You have your own office" and "in person" meaning "Open office plan with no dividers at all".

For the first, I wouldn't have much of an issue coming in. For the second, I'd probably take up pitchforks to avoid it.

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

#613

Post by xiphias2 »

jnwatson wrote: post #481

An important point that’s missed is that working in an office is dramatically worse now than it was when I started my career in the late 90’s. I had my own office as intern. When I needed focus time (which is a lot of time as a developer), I could close a door. Especially with Apple’s open-concept HQ, the delta between WFH and office is larger than it has to be. The market is speaking. Apple pays well below the rest…

It was not totally missed. The fact that it's so much harder to work in open office than home was in the letter, but sure it should have expanded on it being different from 20 years earlier.

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

#614

Post by hyperman1 »

rsanek wrote: post #609
hyperman1 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before my time, the company did some kind of retreat of 2 days, with sleeping in,for all 40 of the IT staff. The idea was to get them to know each other,as they where dispatched to 20+ divisions and only spoke by phone. There was no work to be done there, no cringy corporate stuff, just a mountain of food and drinks. It must have been expensive. We're now 20 years later, and they're still referring to it. But when an…

> a very political corporation Not saying the retreat was a wholesale bad idea, but it sounds to me like part of the reason it's political could be because there's an in-group and out-group derived from the retreat.

Can't add much detail her, except this group of 50 people is tiny compared to the whole IT team, and political was a problem long before the retreat.

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

#615

Post by LightG »

For what it's worth, I fully support the letter. It's well written and really sums up what many modern workers want.

We've reached a technological tipping point when it comes to flexibility. Either embrace it or die.

I've had my head in my hands watching one of our departments efforts trying to hire staff (who are forcing in-office presence), they cannot find the employees and are now offering other benefits to compensate. No dice. Not their fault, it's being forced by directors. From afar, I'm watching the slow death of the company as existing talent withiers and isn't replaced.

Embrace it or die.

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

#616

Post by wink »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #393
shlurpy wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As usual, it depends. Imagine a team that sat in one room, communication was terrible. People never had time for questions. Queue the pandemic and everyone working from home and suddenly communication improves tremendously, people who you'd have to pester endlessly for a review or ask about some code they wrote suddenly answer the same day. Your team lead is not on the phone in the room where you're trying to work.

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

#617

Post by wink »

odessacubbage wrote: post #611
jdeibele wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the things that's different about modern videogames is that it's better to be at home with your own Xbox or PlayStation or PC if you want to play with your friends. We have 4 Wii controllers because when the kids were younger they could play with friends and the games didn't take a lot of explaining. Going further back, you needed an opponent, probably because the systems were doing all they could to keep trac…

on one hand, i think the death of couch coop & splitscreen has had a deeply underappreciated impact on how kids choose to recreate & interact, otoh i remember all the elbows thrown over screen cheating or the crummy madcatz controller and can't help but think that kids today are probably having a far more harmonious bonding experience.

I remember a distinct evening where I got in trouble because I was at a friend's place and playing Super Mario Kart on the SNES for too long instead of coming home. Had we had an opportunity to play online it wouldn't have been a problem.

I don't really know, I am old enough to have experienced this, and LAN parties in the late 90s were indeed fun, but they took a lot of planning, expenses, and parents driving you there. I've been online since I was 15 and when we finally didn't have to pay by the minute everything was a lot better. No more coordinating for a full weekend, etc. That said, I have zero negative memories of splitscreen, except that the person who owned the game/console was always a lot better due to more practice...

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

#618

Post by wink »

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…

I think the problem is more that even people who are not artistically inclined can manage to draw a diagram of a few servers and connections. Despite having tried it for 20 years everything I draw with a mouse looks like something done by a 3y old with crayons.

So no, without a tablet to draw on I find online whiteboards 100% useless so far.

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

#619

Post by wink »

lolsal wrote: post #239
CalRobert wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your lunch break should be a break, not time you're forced to spend with your colleagues.

I agree! You're welcome to do whatever you want. But I am a friendly person and find it easy to make friends with my co-workers and we don't even talk about 'work' most of the time. I still have lunches with my colleagues from years ago that live in the same city, even though we don't work together. Not every perk is about oppressing your freedom or exploiting your time and labor.

For me the main problem is that going out for lunch in person with coworkers (even ones from other departments I've never met) is completely fine and I like to do that (when I was in the office I did that 3-4 days per week) but when I am having lunch at home I don't like it at all. I can't put my finger on it but it always feels like useless smalltalk and not making any connection where in person that works quite well. And I'm neither pro-office or anti-WFH or even someone who doesn't make friends online... but going out for lunch or a beer or just an afternoon coffee break is something that I can't reproduce via video/audio.

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

#620

Post by nazka »

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #78
5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your hybrid is mandatory then you can expect to be back to full time 5 days in a years time approx.

As a manager, these types of comments and sentiments are so incredibly frustrating for me. This is pure supposition based on no evidence. It's entirely a byproduct of a lack of trust in management intentions. Taking my company as an example, while the executive team has been ambiguous, I know that a full return to 5 days of asses in seats is not being contemplated at all , not the least of which because we don't want…

I mean it seems all the reasons are laid out in your response.

Just reordering them:

> I can shout from the rooftops that, no, we're never going to mandate a full return to office

> the executive team has been ambiguous

> it appears to be impossible to convince them otherwise

You can claim all you want but if the CEO and all the chief officers are not the one making it all clear and not just taking about it at a standup but in black and white on paper. Then it means nothing and what you claim means nothing too to your employees. Like someone said next step after that is to put it in the contract.

Also it’s up to you and the other managers and officers, and not the people bellow you, to create a trusting environment and trust with your team. It’s frustrating you to hear comments like that but it should be instead a red flag for you about the health of your team. Because it’s even more stressful and frustrating to be in the very seat of an employee where there is no trust at their work and the leaders are vague about critical part of their work life and don’t care and (not pointing finger at you but just saying) are just frustrated when they voice their concerns instead of listening and acting as leaders.

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