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Apple asks staff to return to office 3 days a week starting in early September

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Re: Apple asks staff to return to office 3 days a week starting in early September

#911

Post by recursive »

pezdeath wrote: post #108
andrei_says_ wrote: post #28

Why? Because of the already sunk cost into office space? Any other reasons? I know I can drive 40 min and stare at the same laptop and email/zoom with the same people. What’s in it for me? All I see is unnecessary agony, and a lot of it. I produce more from home. Why does an employer want me to suffer more, even if it will cost them? What’s in it for them?

Not everyone's an engineer. Lots of roles work better in person.

Even some engineers prefer to work in-person, although I'm now coming to understand it appears to be a minority. At least in this comment thread.

Re: Apple asks staff to return to office 3 days a week starting in early September

#912

Post by throwaway2037 »

lrvick wrote: post #637
wikibob wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus Christ. I eat well and spend maybe $400 a month on groceries and food. I’ve heard that Google recruiters attempt to con potential employees into some ridiculous assessment of the “free” food as a compensation benefit with numbers like those that you posited above. I can’t imagine valuing daily meals that highly.

My wife and I were spending maybe $1000/mo on takeout -and- we had free lunches at offices until the pandemic. Once I committed to WFH life, it became a logical next step to double down on the freedom aspects and start my own consulting firm. That meant I needed long term thinking. I learned to cook more often and turned my entire front yard into a garden. Overall I would say WFH has been net healthier on my mind and…

Wow. Thank you to share. How much garbage does this produce just from packaging? I cringe at packaging waste from takeaway. That is my number one reason to avoid it. (To be clear: I don't live in a place that uses remotely "eco-friendly" packaging like pressed recycled light cardboard and balsam[sp?] wood utensils!)

Re: Apple asks staff to return to office 3 days a week starting in early September

#913

Post by sam0x17 »

ripper1138 wrote: post #212
sam0x17 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny, all of the things you mention are things I would cite as perks of working remotely at my current org. I guess it depends on how you implement remote work. For example we typically have multiple departments running one or more "open calls" all day that anyone can wander into and hear what's going on. Engineering in particular makes heavy use of this, especially those who like pair programming.

Do people join the open calls just for specific reasons? Or do they join all day? An open call is a half decent alternative during forced WFH but it’s not the same. Random hallway conversations are just that: random. An open call wouldn’t be the same unless everyone was in the call all day.

To answer your question more specifically, they can be truly random conversations. The other day I talked for two hours with someone about neural networks (not related to our work) while coding.

Re: Apple asks staff to return to office 3 days a week starting in early September

#914

Post by dporter »

game_the0ry wrote: post #902

COVID forced the experiment of full time remote office work on corporations without managers having any influence over how long it would be implemented. So now we know the result of that experiment - just look at the S&P500 / Dow market caps. An over-simplification, I know, but hey, that's price of the stock is the CEO's score card. Corporate middle management and CEOs no longer have any excuse for maintaining the am…

> "I know I'm not alone in missing the hum of activity, the energy, creativity and collaboration of our in-person meetings and the sense of community we've all built"

Easy to say when you're not commuting an hour to and from work five days a week. I would bet Tim isn't too far from the Apple HQ. I say this as someone who does not like working from home but does live very close to the office.

Re: Apple asks staff to return to office 3 days a week starting in early September

#915

Post by throwaway2037 »

yawnxyz wrote: post #825
wikibob wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus Christ. I eat well and spend maybe $400 a month on groceries and food. I’ve heard that Google recruiters attempt to con potential employees into some ridiculous assessment of the “free” food as a compensation benefit with numbers like those that you posited above. I can’t imagine valuing daily meals that highly.

lol I'm doing a bootstrapped startup. I ate: a can of tuna, peanut butter, greek yogurt, protein powder-based shake, and watermelon yesterday... maybe at a total cost of $3-5??

You only missed ramen in that list! (Are you "ramen profitable" yet?)

Re: Apple asks staff to return to office 3 days a week starting in early September

#916

Post by throwaway2037 »

plantain wrote: post #497
gnicholas wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know Googlers who literally never buy groceries because they eat all of their big meals at the office, grab a bottled smoothie on their way out the door, and get restaurant food on the weekends. It is cheaper to get groceries than to buy prepared food, but there’s a lot of spoilage that happens when you’re only cooking 2 days/week.

I did not own a fridge or any cooking appliances for my first year at Google. 3 meals a day at work + takeout on weekends.

In my apartment, the number one electricty cost comes from my fridge+freezer. (To be fair, I live in the sub-tropics.)

Re: Apple asks staff to return to office 3 days a week starting in early September

#917

Post by woutr_be »

dannyw wrote: post #885
woutr_be wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. And as an introvert, working from home has actually made work more fun. I never liked sitting in a room with other people, nor did I like going out for lunch with my colleagues or having to do small talk face to face. I hated having to walk up to colleagues that I didn't know, just to ask them a few questions. All these things are completely gone when working from home. I can focus on my work, get the job do…

What do you think an extrovert might say? They might miss the face to face interaction, the spontaneous discussions that may happen over lunch, or the gathering between colleagues that might happen over a weekend. I respect that those may not appeal to you, and they don't have to, but some people find work in-person more fun. If that's not you, there are plenty of forever-remote companies to get a job at.

I don’t disagree. Just sharing my opinion. I understand people might look forward to going back to the office, but I’m not.

Re: Apple asks staff to return to office 3 days a week starting in early September

#918

Post by PragmaticPulp »

matwood wrote: post #740
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think you’re an outlier. I think online comment sections in general attract people whose preferred communication and socialization style is digital. That’s why at times HN comment sections feel like everyone unanimously agrees that in-person work universally bad. It’s great that we have more remote work opportunity post COVID, but it was never realistic to expect every company or even most company to abandon…

> Maintaining a remote team is significantly more management and communication overhead than simply having people in one place. You mean it actually requires management. Office work is easy to manage with butts in seats. I had someone ask me once, if we were remote, how would we know people are working. I asked, how do we know they are working now? Communication overhead with in person only appears lower. I've been a…

> You mean it actually requires management.

No, I mean it requires more management. It’s not about butts in seats, it’s about communicating and keeping people on the same page.

Anecdotally, when shifting to remote work we often saw managers struggle with a tendency to micromanage and check in too frequently with remote employees. I know “butts in seats” is a common trope but in practice it was easier for people to get away with doing nothing at the office because managers assumed that in office meant they were working.

Communication overhead is absolutely higher in remote companies. It sounds more like you were describing a broken company culture that you managed to distance yourself from by going remote, but the culture is still broken.

A team that communicates properly in person will have more overhead to communicate remotely.

Re: Apple asks staff to return to office 3 days a week starting in early September

#919

Post by greedo »

jseban wrote: post #803
Nbox9 wrote: post #51

I work for another company that is going to do a partial return to office. I will be looking at options for companies that offer full in person office (or 90% in person office) after things settle down. I have worked full remote for a total of 5 years of my career, and I believe working in the office is a competitive advantage. * Overhearing hallway conversations (and joining them) helps spawn invocation. * I often d…

Yeah and also to mention the elephant in the room: people work much more when they are stuck in a room with others, and have eyes on them. And they work way less if they are at home and nobody is watching. This is just the truth, regardless of how little it applies to myself, of course! I'm also annoyed by the amount of housework/cooking/preparation/cleaning I have to do when I'm at home all day, when half of that ha…

Sounds like an anecdote.

I've worked with people who have made it a fine art to appear busy, to hold earnest conversations in hallways, to comment in IM frequently, yet do 10% of the work of the good performers. And we all knew who the good performers were.

Managing employees in an office doesn't depend on having butts in the seat, or "eyes on them." It depends on understanding what needs to be done, communicating/delegating, and then getting out of the way.

Re: Apple asks staff to return to office 3 days a week starting in early September

#920

Post by twobitshifter »

DrBenCarson wrote: post #755
benrbray wrote: post #725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is yet to be determined, but even if you're right, it still promotes a different kind of inequality. Remote work is strongly biased in favor of those with the resources to have a nice, distraction-free office setup at home, and towards those who are already established in their careers.

Not to mention how it advantages people who can afford after school child care. An all-remote workforce is on its way to being an all-male workforce. Female employment is already decades behind where it was pre-pandemic. The single male echo chamber on here is unnerving.

Childcare can still be used with wfh post pandemic. And having a parent at home benefits both children and parents. It’s not a great thing that we’ve ended up in a situation where children are raised by strangers in day-care. I think WFH is great for parenting in general - it may not be the best for worker efficiency and lack of distractions (although that can be argued) but it is good for children and I think most parents would pick their kids over the office.
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