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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

#641

Post by Closi »

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?

> 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?

Well in my view that actually is a choice.

They are making a choice between commuting lots and living somewhere they don’t want to in exchange for career advancement / to work for Google.

That’s not to say that they might not be happier with alternative decisions. Or maybe they decide to suck it up for a while and move where they want later down the line? But these are all choices.

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

#642

Post by civilized »

Closi wrote: post #590
twayt wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is unquestionably false for everyone I know including myself. 1. Many people already have built good relationships with their colleagues prior to WFH and talking to them over GVC helps the relationship. You are allowed to open up more when you know no one else is around except you and the person you're talking to 1:1. You don't have to be afraid that someone outside the meeting room or cubicle is going to hear y…

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…

It's naive and a function of serious privilege to posit that your home and job location are generally just a choice you can simply make. If you want a nice environment and a short commute, that substantially limits your opportunities. If you have a family or other ties with their own geographic restrictions, vastly more so. You absolutely were lucky to find something you liked. Saying otherwise is a textbook example of being born on third base and thinking you hit a triple.

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

#643

Post by Closi »

arinlen wrote: post #597
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 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 lives and struggle to form meaningful friendships/relationships with colleagues. This take makes no sense at all. If people had unfulfilling work lives they would not be threatening resignation to preserve the work life they loathe, and they would def…

Why does having a fulfilling social life mean I can’t have a fulfilling work life too?

Everything is predicated on it being an either/or, but I feel lucky enough to have great relationships both in and out of work.

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

#644

Post by civilized »

coffeeblack wrote: post #535
justinclift wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, some of us (well, me at least) view "in the office" work as a way to help achieve work/personal-life separation. Saying this after many, many years of remote working, where the boundaries between work and personal life blurred so far they became practically indistinguishable. (yay 24/7 "DevOps" culture :/)

I close my work laptop and that’s it for the day. Simple.

Seriously! Why do people think that working remotely entitles their boss to 24/7 access? Come on, set some boundaries!

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

#645

Post by JadeNB »

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…

> 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.

It's a big generalization to say that, because one side of an ideological divide behaves one way, the other side must, too! I think rather the Democrats (we don't really have a Liberal party) are a party that takes some tentative steps in the direction that it's better for everyone to have something, even if there are some people who don't deserve it; that is, that the malady you diagnose is a Republican, not an American, preoccupation.

Of course you can look back in history and find instances where Democrats have embraced such positions, too, and you can find plenty of odious things even in today's Democratic platform, but I think that today's Democratic party is consciously, if very slowly, trying to distance itself from exactly the mindset that you describe. But maybe I'm blinding myself to this behaviour in an attempt to justify my adherence to the lesser of two evils. Do you have examples?

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

#646

Post by civilized »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #623
twayt wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly do you learn from your coworkers? It isn't like you are pair programming constantly with senior devs all the time. I've learnt way more reading papers and documentation than being in the same physical space as more senior colleagues. People sometimes bring this point up re: onboarding but I don't quite understand what people learn that they can't do otherwise remotely.

More chance to chat about random things or casually ask work-related questions. > I've learnt way more reading papers and documentation than being in the same physical space as more senior colleagues. People sometimes bring this point up re: onboarding but I don't quite understand what people learn that they can't do otherwise remotely It is much harder to gain tacit knowledge (The important stuff) when you're remote…

> I've found I generally have to explicitly ask if I want someone to explain what they're doing and why. There is very little 1:1 teaching/mentoring. In an office I think there is more informal mentoring.

Asking people questions and engaging in 1-1 conversations is no more difficult over Slack + voice + screen share than in person. In fact it gives you more options for how to conduct the conversation and remember the results.

It's really not hard, and some people are great at it. The problem is that people sleepwalk through their remote experience and don't spend any time thinking about how to make the small changes needed to fill the needs that in-office used to fill. For some reason, it only occurs to them to seek out information if they can walk to a person in a room rather than type in a box.

I constantly observe people excitedly blabbing in person, seemingly reaching all sorts of epiphanies, but at the end of the day, the conversation lacked specificity and no one really learned anything. It's a perfect medium for feeling like you learned something without actually doing so.

Figuring out how to make remote work produces better results when the team is willing to do it. It enhances all work, including in-person work, and there are lots of resources by now for how to do it well. But if the team is unwilling to do it, no surprise that remote doesn't work for them. They chose to make in-office the only possible way to work.

It's not an inherent thing to the environments, but a choice that particular team made.

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

#647

Post by peoplefromibiza »

ttarr wrote: post #618
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

If that's true, then you can't really complain about it.

But in my opinion if people are willing to resign or accept a (rather big) paycut to work from home, they could have found a lower paid job closer to home.

In my case it wasn't luck, I moved to another city to get the job, but I chose to live at 15 minutes walking distance from the office, because commuting for hours it's not what I want.

It's all about compromises, I believe anglophones say "you can't have your cake and eat it too"

> but remote work opens endless opportunities for me.

that's true also for companies.

Why should they hire someone from US and not someone somewhere else where the pay is lower?

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

#648

Post by hawksprite »

civilized wrote: post #642
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…

It's naive and a function of serious privilege to posit that your home and job location are generally just a choice you can simply make. If you want a nice environment and a short commute, that substantially limits your opportunities. If you have a family or other ties with their own geographic restrictions, vastly more so. You absolutely were lucky to find something you liked. Saying otherwise is a textbook example…

Maybe not simply. But a hard choice is still a choice.

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

#649

Post by interpol_p »

Closi wrote: post #536
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…

> 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 still go in to my office occasionally. Every time I do I get very little actual work done. I chat for hours with my colleagues, we play board games over lunch, and we generally just show each other our side projects and discuss pain-points about our work

This is great one day every couple of weeks, but I get way more done at home and in far less time. So that I have more than enough left over to exercise and appreciate my day

My experience with programming is that if it's not happening, staring at a screen in an office won't make it happen faster. Stepping outside to go for a run, enjoying nature for a bit, picking up my kids up early so I can spend time with them (and then working at night when they're back to sleep) feels far less wasteful of the time I have on this Earth than commuting to a building where I am essentially stuck for eight hours before I can do anything else

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

#650

Post by marricks »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #128
in_cahoots wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What power do you have as an individual in a company? Other than quitting, your leverage is extremely limited.

The problem with this question is there are people, like me, for whom the answer is "a lot". I have repeatedly gotten my employer to do things for me that they would not have done on their own. They need me more than I need them, and we both know it. This is also by the way the main dissenting opinion in the recent Amazon union vote. There were several people who were interviewed by the economist as voting no, who sa…

It’s a such a coincidence that those are the same talking points the employees were forced to here during the many mandatory meeting. Also interesting that the NLRB found those forced meetings illegal.
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