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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

#611

Post by bloopernova »

hiptobecubic wrote: post #361
klabb3 wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The free-rider problem applies to basically any system with cohorts. It's part of the incentive structure, for sure, but it's not the only part. As long as you accept utility in collective systems (ie if you're anything but a pure anarcho-capitalist), you recognize that in some cases (such as public roads) the value outweigh the costs of the free-rider problems. Once you're past that point, it should be all about tra…

I have noticed in the US more than anywhere else I've lived, the most important thing to everyone seems to be that no one gets anything unfairly. I've noticed more with Conservatives because of the noise they make about things like welfare freeriders, election fraud etc, but i imagine it applies to Liberals as well when talking about other issues. People seem to genuinely prefer letting poor people starve over accide…

It's a strange attitude, to be sure. In my experience, many Americans have the view of "if it's not perfect, it's not worth doing" when it comes to large-scale social or legal concepts. It's like they don't accept that there's going to be inefficiencies in any large organization.

And, yes, so many rail against something like single-payer healthcare because it would be "unfair" for them to pay for someone else's care, when they already are doing the exact same thing as part of private healthcare! Not to mention it would be cheaper, but paying $5,000 for single payer is seen as evil when people are paying $10,000 for private healthcare! (both figures are simply illustrative and not intended to be factual examples, before anyone rips my head off)

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

#612

Post by sodapopcan »

holografix wrote: post #289
sodapopcan wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on my second highly-collaborative, fully remote team and I'm always learning a lot and challenged. You're "teacher's pets behind zoom calls" example is very oddly specific and not a thing I've encountered.

I think it’s to do with everyone getting along and working well as professional colleagues but not as a team . There’s little camaraderie though or sense of shared ownership. interactions are more transactional, deliberate, thought out. People maximise what’s best for their OKRs only. If this months it’s John on zoom or Jeff and if Mary was replaced with Sue, does it really matter? There’s a reason team events and of…

Our experiences are very different then. We do 1:1 personal zoom calls, we’ll play board games online, we have a drop-in company-wide hang out every other week, and we pair quite a bit and very often through a zoom link in slack asking for help.

I guess it depends on what you want out of work. If you’re the type who wants work to be _only_ work and absolutely nothing more, then I can see how the forced interaction at an office would be beneficial. Otherwise a strong culture around people and collaboration makes the office largely irrelevant. Yes, you do miss out on the random hallway interactions, but there is no perfect solution and I happily trade that for no commuting, hanging with my dog all day, mid-day naps, my own office, throwing in loads of laundry during the day, private bathroom, better coffee, etc etc etc.

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

#613

Post by kristiandupont »

TomSwirly wrote: post #598
Closi wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your post paints a false dichotomy. It's not always a choice between working from home and commuting huge distances to an office in a city you hate. I live 10 minutes from the office and live in a town I love. This isn't luck - it's a choice I have made. Also, please don't take this the wrong way, but some of your comments make it sound like you might be in the category of people who don't find it as easy as…

> I live 10 minutes from the office and live in a town I love. This isn't luck - it's a choice I have made. 95% of people don't get that choice. What junior engineer is going to turn down an offer from Google because the Mountain View area is a wildly expensive dump?

Perhaps 95% of people truly don't get that choice, but your hypothetical junior engineer certainly does, at least given the current market for developers. Unless you consider "taking the highest paying job above anything else" to be an irrepressible force.

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

#615

Post by sylens »

_ph_ wrote: post #562
chrisan wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I genuinely believe many people who prefer working at home rather than an office have unfulfilling work lives and struggle to form meaningful friendships/relationships with colleagues. Absolutely not true. I've been WFH since 2008. Many followed overtime and the company went full WFH in 2015 closing our office. We have a video call 3x a week and shoot the shit learn about each others lives just the same before we t…

It is different. Yes, there are some colleagues with whom I have regular online contact, some of them I really only got into contact with during the pandemic. We have regular calls and exchanges. But I also have a lot of colleagues, which I don't have close contact with and contact to those has mostly evaporated during the pandemic. That are those people, I might talk to when meeting them in the coffee room, but real…

> In the office you walk to the coffee room in that time and there you meet people in the same phase. They are taking a break and you don't interrupt each others work when having a chat.

Except those whose assigned desks happen to be close to the coffee room/kitchen. That's the problem with the way offices have been designed - there is always going to be some subset that has less than ideal conditions.

The worst open office setup I saw a year before the pandemic had a conference room with no door, just a big pane of glass and a gap in the glass to enter. There were desks outside this conference room (like everywhere else on the floor) which meant whoever had to sit there was subjected to meetings and speakerphone all day long.

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

#616

Post by tsukikage »

malwarebytess wrote: post #483

Warning: Hot Take. I genuinely believe many people who prefer working in an office versus at home have unfulfilling social lives or bad home lives. The social dynamics, competition, in physical offices fills the void in their lives. Also seems like most of the people clamoring for a return to the office are also climbers & middle managers. For some work a physical presence is required not just preferable, but for mos…

It doesn't take being socially unfulfilled to prefer working in an office. It just takes not having adequate work space at home; e.g. if you have kids and not a mansion.

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

#617

Post by TsomArp »

chrisan wrote: post #560
Closi wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Warning: Hot Take. I genuinely believe many people who prefer working in an office versus at home have unfulfilling social lives or bad home lives. The social dynamics, competition, in physical offices fills the void in their lives. Warning: Hot Take. I have similar logic, but reach an almost opposite conclusion. I genuinely believe many people who prefer working at home rather than an office have unfulfilling work…

> I genuinely believe many people who prefer working at home rather than an office have unfulfilling work lives and struggle to form meaningful friendships/relationships with colleagues. Absolutely not true. I've been WFH since 2008. Many followed overtime and the company went full WFH in 2015 closing our office. We have a video call 3x a week and shoot the shit learn about each others lives just the same before we t…

Our minds and bodies are made for "real-reality" and not for "virtual-reality". That is one of the reasons why you cannot turn a webcam on a beach and say you are on holidays on the Caribe. Even if you heard all the sounds and try to relax, is not the same.

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

#618

Post by ttarr »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #588
Melchizedek wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, spending hours in a car instead of with my own kids is "mature". Spending the family income on cars and gas and paying an extra million for a house in order to make commuting even feasible is "mature". Destroying the environment, wasting precious resources and spewing out poisonous particles that enter the lungs and bloodstream of other human beings is "mature". And engaging in office maneuvering and chit-chattin…

> So, spending hours in a car instead of with my own kids is "mature". I spend 15 minutes walking in a park. Yes, spending hours in a car is not the best choice. One should ask themselves why they chose to sign a contract with a company hours away by car in the first place. If that isn't ok, why did you accept? > instead of producing great value I think you're giving yourself too much importance and too little to you…

> I spend 15 minutes walking in a park.

> Yes, spending hours in a car is not the best choice.

> One should ask themselves why they chose to sign a contract with a company hours away by car in the first place.

Good for you, realisticly not many people are that fortunate to find a nearby opportunity.

15 mins walk takes me nowhere, but remote work opens endless opportunities for me.

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

#619

Post by uwuemu »

I don't really get the debate. Surely people recognize that Apple is one of the most left-wing friendly (worker rights etc., you know the deal) and accomodating places to work at, if you care about such things. Surely people recognize that Apple was generous with the whole work from home thing. So now some people don't want to go back to the office, which is understandable, but there's one little problem from Apple's point of view, well actually one massive problem if you're upper management at Apple: for all the talk about the positives of working of home, there is a bottom line and that is the fact that productivity is down.

You can argument all day and night about how great WFH is, but if the management is seeing a drop in productivity, they will want you back at the office. THAT is why Apple (and others) is doing that. If you have a measurable productivity levels in your company (i.e. you're not Twitter), you should expect to be returning back to the office sooner or later because even if YOU are more productive, on average the productivity suffers with entire teams working from home.

And it just makes sense. It really does. Even if you don't want it to.

You can try to work hard and be focused, but not everyone can do that. I don't see people here talking about this often, but office isn't just a place for the employer to take advantage of you... it's a place where you're away from HOME on PURPOSE. You're supposed to get into a different head space, temporarily forget about your home life and issues and focus on work. How can you do that at home unless you have anything but a completely 100% supportive partner, no kids, no pets, no obligations or chores and an iron will? Most people don't have that... and for these people, working at the office will be more productive.

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

#620

Post by ianai »

Lio wrote: post #516
worik wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh golly, how right you are. > How companies consider that a cost center is beyond me. But I’ve seen them do it. I may have an answer: Because of our fetish with metrics. It is possible to measure the cost of an engineer or computer programmer. This can be assigned a cost which is arbitrarily precise. Calculating teh benefit is usually not so easy. So the decision makers (rational beings, just mislead by an intellect…

There's also a tendency for humans to over optimise the wrong things. John Sturman has a business game to illustrate this called the Beer Game[1]. It's supposed to illustrate shocks to a supply chain with limited knowledge of how the rest of the system is behaving. The players in charge of their part of the system try to reduce costs to get a better score but in doing so often catastrophically open themselves up to s…

Might be as simple as the decision maker assuming they won’t be around for the catastrophe. Or outright malice, for any number of reasons. “Hate of job” is a widespread phenomenon that people don’t even think they have to justify.
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