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

https://www.engadget.com/apple-criticized-by-employees-over-working-from-home-policy-in-open-letter-123027735.html

255 584 4 years ago

Perhaps the most compelling argument was that Apple was being hypocritical in the way it markets its own products. "We tell all of our customers how great our products are for remote work, yet, we ourselves, cannot use them to work remotely?" the letter states.

dominotw2• 4 years ago

i don't see how thats hypocritical though.

capableweb2• 4 years ago

The full quote:

We tell all of our customers how great our products are for remote work, yet, we ourselves, cannot use them to work remotely? How can we expect our customers to take that seriously? How can we understand what problems of remote work need solving in our products if we don't live it?

I'd have to agree. If you're building products and market them for "remote working", then you better have figured out remote working yourself in your own environment, otherwise I won't trust that you've actually gotten it right.

Of course, there is also a difference between different job functions. If you're in the hardware team, I can see how it's hard to actually collaborate remotely on a bunch of stuff. But for the pencil pushers in corporate? Definitely should have figured out how to make that work.

fortran77• 4 years ago

There’s a big difference between what’s needed to design and build something and what’s needed to use something. I hope Tim Cook fires all these whiners.

sofixa2• 4 years ago

What products do they market for remote work? The Apple Studio Display that has an integrated camera with the quality of a late 2000s flip phone?

bckr8• 4 years ago

They have created a series of epic comedy-advertisements for their productivity suite:

https://youtu.be/GC5Gmkn92Bg

Cuuugi3• 4 years ago

and will lead to a "younger, whiter, more male-dominated, more neuro-normative, more able-bodied"

I mean, they're just asking you to come to the building 3 days a week.

TazeTSchnitzel• 4 years ago

Please think for a second about how a WFH policy might impact some groups more than others.

markovbot• 4 years ago

I don't think that's physically possible on HN

PabloRobles4• 4 years ago

Could you, please, give your point of view on it? This is something I never thought about.

docdeek• 4 years ago

Weren’t a lot of these people already working from the office before COVID? Do you know if Apple’s workforce change significantly in composition to include more of the grouops you refer to during the WFH period?

0daystock2• 4 years ago

Please think for a second about how a WFH policy might impact some groups more than others.

I'm curious why you think anyone needs to "think" about this. Some of us are perfectly happy with WFH and don't feel guilty for it, and there's really nothing to contemplate further and no moral crisis to spark.

golergka3• 4 years ago

I mean, they're just asking you to come to the building 3 days a week.

Which is only possible for people who live in the same hemisphere as the building and have citizenship or visa.

Remote work is international work.

warning263• 4 years ago

Remote work is international work.

Not at most companies; the legal implications of working from other countries mean that, unless you want to misrepresent yourself and create a fake "home" address, digital nomad lifestyles are explicitly forbidden.

thebean117• 4 years ago

What are you talking about? Is Apple asking people to go into offices in countries where they aren't employed..?

Cuuugi3• 4 years ago

I don't think you can "remotely" work for Apple without a work visa. If your paycheck comes from Apple US, and you don't have the right to work in America, that's a pretty clear violation of immigration law.

droopyEyelids• 4 years ago

It seems like every complaint or request is being rewritten to appear based in social justice.

I feel confident we'll begin to see HOAs justifying their grass-length rules because "longer lawns disproportionately affect historically oppressed, disabled, and neurodivergent persons"

This is not a great trend, if you care about equality in society, because shit is getting so watered down it's about meaningless.

twofornone• 4 years ago

Adding Apple to the list of companies I'd never work for. White men are just supposed to shut up and take the increasingly open discrimination? This isn't equality. And it won't actually lead to equity either, but we all will end up with less if this continues - except for the more equal animals among us.

Edit: just imagine if the text said "younger, blacker, more female-dominated, more neuro-normative, more able-bodied"

Or "younger, more Jewish, more male-dominated, more neuro-normative, more able-bodied"

jayd162• 4 years ago

Have these numbers improved significantly since covid? Have we seen increased diversity that this would roll back?

0daystock2• 4 years ago

Yet they fail to explain why that's a "bad" thing.

tharne• 4 years ago

Stop whining and vote with your feet. If you're talented enough to work for Apple, there are plenty of other wonderful companies out there that will happily let you work remotely.

Not every company needs to have the exact same policies on everything.

napolux• 4 years ago

If enough people will vote with their feet, Apple will be a full remote company by the end of the year :D

t-writescode2• 4 years ago

“The first time you have an argument with your spouse, you should get a divorce”

Is what you’re saying here.

They’re trying to make company changes to improve their relationship with someone they like to work for, without using the nuclear option.

dubya• 4 years ago

I wonder how many marriages have been saved by an open letter.

scarface749• 4 years ago

I go to work because I like exchanging labor for money. The marriage analogy is kind of crazy.

I’ve had eight jobs in my 25 years as an adult. It never took me more than two months to find a job I was happy with. It took me 15 years and one failed marriage to find a a spouse I was happy with.

When I have a disagreement with my wife, we compromise as equal partners. I’m not in any way an equal partner to the CEO of a 2 trillion+ dollar company.

Leaving my marriage necessitated lawyers, going to court, and giving up half of everything we accumulated together. Leaving a job required a form resignation letter with meaningless platitudes and a two week notice.

tofuahdude• 4 years ago

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

BitwiseFool3• 4 years ago

"Stop whining and vote with your feet."

If this is a deal breaker, yes. But this kind of approach is a last resort. Why shouldn't someone try to influence company policy before taking such a drastic step?

azemetre2• 4 years ago

Because if the CEO of a trillion dollar company wants people in the office, it's very likely that you will convince them otherwise. Tim Cook has tremendous influence over his company, these employees do not. Maybe if they had a union there would be some bargaining power but as it stands they can't do anything outside of leaving.

Happy to be proven wrong here, but labor doesn't have much power in the US; especially when it's labor against a trillion dollar company.

scarface749• 4 years ago

What’s drastic about leaving a job? The average tenure of a software engineer at any major tech company is 3 years. I never thought it was a “drastic” step to change jobs when one wasn’t what I like - 8 jobs and counting including six since 2008.

inerte• 4 years ago

I usually think along your lines, and recently I read an article that made me think different https://the.ink/p/as-goes-amazon-so-goes-the-nation?s=r - not always different, and I don't know when to apply one thinking or the other yet. But I see its value.

WithinReason2• 4 years ago

Some companies Apple poached engineers from now have fully remote working arrangements and are hiring. Just saying.

chekibreki• 4 years ago

You are right, I will apply to Apple, because I don't like working from home.

dehrmann2• 4 years ago

Also, you know Apple's stance. If they even respond to the open letter, expect that they'll want you back in a year or two, anyway.

BaseballPhysics14• 4 years ago

Honestly, at least Apple laid out their intentions. People can leave or stay, but the policy is clear.

At my workplace they keep nodding at "hybrid" without any specifics and the resulting fear due to uncertainty is far worse than a clear policy that some (many) people might not like...

mouzogu2• 4 years ago

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

BaseballPhysics14• 4 years ago

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 to lose ~30% of our staff.

But for the suspicious, it appears to be impossible to convince them otherwise, and even the slightest hint of asking people to come to the office even just one day a month elicits exactly this kind of response.

And the funny thing is, I absolutely understand the suspicion! It's just that, as a person in a leadership position, it makes me want to tear my hair out because I can shout from the rooftops that, no, we're never going to mandate a full return to office, but some folks will simply never believe it.

Hence why I admire what Apple has done, here. They laid out their policy, they've demonstrated their commitment to that policy, and now they're letting the staff make their decision about how they want to react to that policy. Whether you agree with the policy or not, that's far better than ambiguity or constant flip-flopping.

Spooky234• 4 years ago

And if hybrid is not mandatory you can expect to be making Cincinnati salaries in few years.

Nobody is going to pay Bay Area salaries so you can live in the woods of Idaho or whatever.

thenoblesunfish• 4 years ago

In general, glad to see people advocating for what they see as the most effective environment in which to work. Some of these points are a bit strained, though, especially the "serendipity" [1] point which they choose to lead with - one could just as easily argue that being siloed with a smaller group of people working on similar problems is good for serendipity - that's certainly the way that universities, labs, startups, etc. seem to work well.

[1] https://appletogether.org/hotnews/thoughts-on-office-bound-w...

post_break2• 4 years ago

The time theft of traffic, costs of fuel and wear and tear on your car, the cost of lunch if you don't pack a lunch. It all adds up when having to go back to the office. I hate that we had to return to the office because it was like getting a big pay cut. Even the 3 day a week thing, it's like what's the point? We can work from home obviously, what more does going in 3 times a week accomplish other than punish you, showing you how much it sucks to go to the office. All it really feels like is punishment forcing you to be under some managers thumb.

Invictus0• 4 years ago

Theft? Lol. Never get tired of hearing people making multiple 6 figures complain about their horrible life

turtledove5• 4 years ago

We're all workers, and we should be supporting one another. Everyone has different concerns, but if you have a boss you have more in common with others who have bosses.

Worker solidarity raises us all up. Support workers in improving their workplaces rather than blowing them off for making slightly more.

throwaway284534• 4 years ago

It’s just a fact: Anyone who has an easier life than my own is petty, and anyone that has it harder should be grateful that their life isn’t worse!

(Sarcasm)

anon2020dot00• 4 years ago

WFH is not just an issue for those who are working in Apple. I work in a country where-in the combined commute time going back and forth to the office is 3 to 4 hours a day.

It doesn't make sense to go back to the office for five days a week when we've been working productively during the pandemic already for two years.

post_break2• 4 years ago

I don't make 6 figures lol. If I made 6 figures I'd pay someone to drive my ass to work and back.

jsiepkes• 4 years ago

The time theft of traffic, costs of fuel and wear and tear on your car, the cost of lunch if you don't pack a lunch.

I'm all for remote work but calling it "time theft" feels a bit weird.

You knew these things were a requirement when you signed your contract, right? If you didn't want these things then why didn't you either made a point of them in contract negotiations or simply went to a company that allowed remote work from the start?

KerrAvon5• 4 years ago

You knew these things were a requirement when you signed your contract, right

This is not entirely fair. Pre-pandemic, remote work was much more difficult to find.

LosWochosWeek3• 4 years ago

It feels just as weird as calling things daylight robbery, i.e. not at all.

banannaise8• 4 years ago

It's a deliberate turn of the typical management canard that workers constantly commit "time theft" by not being on-task for the entirety of an eight-hour day.

superlopuh• 4 years ago

Coming over from Paris where I took a bus to work for 30-40 minutes on some days, I thought it would be more of the same, but a bit longer. Turns out that both highways through silicon valley are bumpier in places than Paris cobblestone, and that if you combine the variance in bus times, the walk from my place to bus stop, and the walk from bus stop to the office, it doubled my overall commute time. I didn't know how tired I would be at the end of each day when I signed the contract, was incredibly happy with the end of the commute when the pandemic started, and am glad to be back in Europe now.

cwilkes• 4 years ago

It’s time theft if you put in 40 hours of work a week while at home but then you’re told to do 8 hours a week of commuting and by the way you still have to do 40 hours of work. I think “time theft” sums it up nicely. You had something and then it was taken away.

randomsearch4• 4 years ago

Fair point for some people.

Something I don’t see on HN is how the ideal wfh works for people who can’t afford a study. What if you live with your parents and share with a sibling?

This might not be the case for established six figure programmers in the states. But there are lots of people with less money who might value having a separate space to work.

Might even be the silent majority outside of highly paid developers.

uberduper3• 4 years ago

If only employers provided a space dedicated to working?

buscoquadnary• 4 years ago

I'll just throw out there when I started developing all I had was one crappy laptop and headphones and the way I ended up working was by going to the Starbucks down the street getting a hot chocolate and a scone and going to town for hours at a time. Of course that wouldn't work as well for meetings but it was simpler times back then.

Although now I've got an idea to make coffee shops produce more revenue I'm realizing if the CEO of Starbucks is reading this give me a call.

gedy• 4 years ago

I realize this won't fly with many companies, but at a previous role I treated commute time (~1.5 hours/day) as work time. Not 8.5 hours work with commute on top of that.

daniel-thompson• 4 years ago

CEO Tim Cook called in-person collaboration benefits "irreplaceable" and in an email, the executive team talked about the importance of "the serendipity that comes from bumping into colleagues" during in-person work.

Another extroverted MBA who doesn't understand why many engineers need big, unbroken chunks of silence & concentration to do great work.

arrakis2021• 4 years ago

Another engineer that doesn’t understand there are more jobs in a business than engineering.

I say this as someone who works from home and is a huge WFH advocate.

We need to stop assuming every role in an org revolves around “I stare at my screen for 9 hours do not interrupt me.”

enumjorge2• 4 years ago

Why not allow the flexibility to let both types of people do their best work though?

scarface749• 4 years ago

And those people are already in the office and were in the office during the height of Covid.

chc• 4 years ago

I don't think they're trying to forcd those people who work better in an office to work from home, are they?

LightG3• 4 years ago

Finance here: "big, unbroken chunks of silence & concentration to do great work. " sounds like an absolute dream ...

I'm with the engineer on this.

paxys4• 4 years ago

So then why does this policy apply to engineers as well?

ilamont• 4 years ago

Tim Cook received a degree in industrial engineering before getting an MBA.

Not sure I would call him an extrovert either.

snowwrestler• 4 years ago

Cook has an engineering degree and Apple did some pretty good engineering before COVID including the A series of microprocessors, Air Pods, Apple Watch, and most of the M1 development.

I understand that people like work from home, but implying engineering can’t be done in an office building is overselling the issue by quite a bit.

InitialLastName2• 4 years ago

There's a bit of a disconnect here in that many on this forum are software engineers, probably mostly working on systems that need no hands-on interaction (or on apps that can be tested easily locally).

The products you listed are hardware products (with integrated software) which are much more difficult to work on remotely, especially in a company that prioritizes secrecy as much as Apple does.

bmitc4• 4 years ago

It is my understanding that the team behind the hardware and chip developments refused to work at Apple Park and demanded that a more suitable work area was built for them.

https://www.macrumors.com/2017/08/09/apple-park-employees-op...

I think even office areas are not equatable and greatly depends on the team.

pavel_lishin• 4 years ago

I think engineers tend to under-estimate how much of their work is communicating with other engineers.

Yes, you need that focus time. But running into someone on another team can be very valuable - you might learn that they're solving the same problem, you might learn that they're consuming the same API you're trying to figure out, you might learn that they're planning on working with your team in a few weeks, etc.

KerrAvon5• 4 years ago

Sure, but if your company’s productivity depends on these accidental interactions, you’re in serious trouble if you’re as large as Apple is. Apple Park is so large you can roam the halls all day and not run into the people you’re working with on other teams. Many of the teams will be on other campuses anyway.

I would argue the benefits of having more of your state in Slack more than make up for “surprise productive watercooler meeting” thing that managers are so hot on. I think I’ve had that interaction maybe twice in 25+ years, and one of those times was just pointless gossip in the end.

jsiaajdsdaa• 4 years ago

I shouldn't need to run into another engineer to find out how the fuck to call their API successfully and what I can expect in return.

ryandrake2• 4 years ago

Yes, you need that focus time. But running into someone on another team can be very valuable - you might learn that they're solving the same problem, you might learn that they're consuming the same API you're trying to figure out, you might learn that they're planning on working with your team in a few weeks, etc.

Out of all the companies out there, I'd imagine Apple benefits from this the least. With all the badge-locked doors, literal curtains hiding projects from one another, and internal NDAs preventing one engineer from even disclosing what they are working on with another engineer, cross-pollination of ideas is going to be almost impossible. "Serendipitous conversations" is not something that comes to mind when one thinks about Apple's internal engineering culture.

bmitc4• 4 years ago

I think engineers tend to under-estimate how much of their work is communicating with other engineers.

That's a good point. I would go so far as to say that the majority of what engineers do is communicate with their future selves and other engineers, in that writing software is to use a communication medium. What code you write today will need to be read and understood later. What the code does on the computer is only a part of software.

ryandrake2• 4 years ago

Lots of companies' executive officers are relaying identical messages, even down to the same choice of words. "Serendipity." "Collaboration." "Magical hallway conversations." I've never seen all of Corporate America, including fierce competitors, so closely aligned on a very particular narrative, as I've seen them aligned on returning to physical offices. It's as if they all received the exact same memo with the same talking points and are all desperately following it. Never seen anything like it before.

SpicyLemonZest• 4 years ago

This isn't some artificial set of talking points, it's what business leaders genuinely believe and have believed for decades. (This isn't the first time that remote work has become a big public debate, although it was called "teleworking" last time.) That doesn't prove they're right, but it's not some kind of astroturfed conspiracy.

solenoidalslide4• 4 years ago

It's as if they all received the exact same memo with the same talking points and are all desperately following it.

But enough about the Wall Street Journal

paxys4• 4 years ago

Doubly so because "accidental" product launches because two engineers bumped heads in the cafeteria and came up with an idea is not how things work at Apple. That's Google culture.

At Apple employees in a hallway will not be allowed to talk about each other's projects at all. All the product directives are strictly top down. As an individual engineer you have zero say in the product and very little in broader engineering decisions.

washadjeffmad• 4 years ago

So, I get that. However, that doesn't make those engineers better at communicating, being communicated to, or understanding where they work. They're at risk for being underrepresented due to the siloed and likely insular nature of their work.

Most of my success has been because I'd spoken, independently and unofficially, to people in unrelated divisions who hadn't met who _really needed to talk_. I don't expect others to take this on because they're almost definitely busier than me. And I don't necessarily like taking to people, but I'm really good at this one stupidly simple thing, and I'd rather be the one getting dragged into the meetings instead of everyone else so they can focus.

It's why corporate org charts are so bullshit to me; the real work happens when people can form their best structures, which typically takes knowing who you're working with or being known by someone who can protect that for you. For some, that's churning out work while being with their families way the fuck away from everyone else. For others, it's being wherever they can get some perspective and inspiration digging in and deciding something about the trajectory of the org they're at, usually involving people. If it works, it's valid.

robertoandred• 4 years ago

And outside of those chunks you bump into colleagues after meetings, on the way to the bathroom, in the cafe, etc.

yibg• 4 years ago

As a software engineer I find I'm much more productive in the office. Probably because a lot of my work does involve talking to other people (other engineers, PMs etc) and really understanding what the problem space is. Sure I need focus time too, but I can get that in the office too.

ianbutler3• 4 years ago

Hi senior engineer here, I enjoy being with my co-workers and you can definitely make people understand you need your time in an office setting. This sounds like a communication issue that a lot of devs have but that's squarely our failing not other people in our orgs.

closedl00p2• 4 years ago

I'm more on the introversion end of the spectrum, and as someone who's been both an engineer and a manager I'm a big believer in big unbroken chunks of silence and concentration for focused engineering ("makers vs managers schedule", etc).

And... I would say a majority of the major project setbacks / failures I've seen over my career have not been due to engineering failures, but have been due to either:

1) Misalignment or lack of agility about priorities / goals and inter-team dependencies. Situations where people and teams put their heads down and do a lot of engineering... that ends up not being the right engineering.

2) Interpersonal conflicts that simmer, escalate, and aren't defused early enough and harm collaboration.

In theory, both of these could be addressed well in fully remote environments, with careful product, product, and people management.

In practice, I have personally seen it be much easier to head these problems off in environments where people are having regular informal face-to-face and non-transactional interactions. The lunch / coffee break / hallway-chat-after-the-meeting sort of discussions. Even being in separate buildings across a large tech campus has been a barrier to this.

Again, I would be personally happy to WFH, but I do feel I've multiple times seen significant project and company-level benefits from shared workspace interaction, so there are tradeoffs.

nimbius• 4 years ago

In other words:

We blew five billion dollars on Apple Park. its a monument and a testament to the ineffable power and glory of our babel made manifest. You will attend this church of man in blessed reverence or you will find the cold streets at your feet.

TigeriusKirk• 4 years ago

Happily, the streets are quite hot right now.

kcplate• 4 years ago

This is exactly the case. Its been my observation that companies with substantial (owned) brick and mortar facilities tend to be the ones promoting return to work programs now. Apple definitely falls into this group, perhaps more than any other company.

32454572• 4 years ago

https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/google-investments-office... "Google will spend $9.5 billion on offices and data centers this year"

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9764995/Facebook-de... "In addition to the housing and retail spaces, Facebook also plans to have 1.25 million square feet of new office, meeting and conference room space for the social media company."

https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/29/this-is-the-first-look-at-... "Nvidia is preparing a new, massive building in Santa Clara, CA and this is it. Called Voyager, it will be larger than the building Nvidia just finished constructing by 250,000 square feet."

I could go on...

ChadNauseam• 4 years ago

I'm fully remote and love it, but let's not pretend that Apple engineers are at risk of homelessness if they decide they don't want to work at apple anymore

belter• 4 years ago

We could make a little joke about Foxconn always being an option, but the joke punchline is sold separately...

curtastic2• 4 years ago

Exactly. Some companies will be fully remote and some won’t. It’s easy to switch tech jobs in the Bay Area and you can pick one that suits you. Apple was always in person.

kodah2• 4 years ago

Actually, I'd caution you there. There's roughly 25k Apple employees in the Bay area and Apple is a top payer in terms of salary. I've been shopping for homes in the Bay since I arrived and South Bay is easily 1M+ for a very tiny home. Oakland is about 600k+ and usually both markets require cash on top to get a home. That puts average mortgages (and rent) in the 3-5k range. If the average salary is limited by the number of companies that can pay more than 3-5k per paycheck (you want rent or mortgage to be 1/3 of your paycheck for risk purposes) then yes, Apple employees, depending on when they get their place to live, could already be over leveraged and at risk.

shuckles• 4 years ago

Are people who are convinced by this logic aware that the vast majority of Apple employees don’t work in Apple Park and instead in extremely unremarkable office buildings throughout suburban Bay Area?

BobbyJo• 4 years ago

If you accept that there is some marginal benefit in getting employees together physically, (and as someone with a remote position, I certainly do) then I think the logic of "we already spent the money, get in here" has a degree of truth to it.

bmitc4• 4 years ago

What are the percentages? Apple built Apple Park to not house the majority of employees?

RC_ITR3• 4 years ago

And do they ignore the fact that many of apple’s most important employees work in physically secured labs where physical device access is a major part of their job?

Like sure GitHub can be remote top to bottom, but an insane amount of Apples workflow is prototype driven and those prototypes cannot physically leave their secure facilities. Hard to argue (from a retention standpoint) that those people need to come in full time but the Apple Music people can do whatever they want.

uberduper3• 4 years ago

Our great computers fill the hallowed halls.

ethbr0• 4 years ago

I thought building Apple Park was just to keep Ives around a few more years.

kalleboo• 4 years ago

That's what I thought the Apple Car project was, so he had something to design that just wasn't a rounded rect with a black mirror

paulcole• 4 years ago

So? It's somebody's decision to make and making bad decisions isn't a crime. It's not even clear it's a bad decision for Apple.

renewiltord• 4 years ago

It’s doubtful that a company as well-run as Apple falls for the sunk cost fallacy at this scale.

32454572• 4 years ago

Keep in mind Apple just returned 27 billion to shareholders [1] because presumably there was no better use for it. I doubt the cost of a 5 billion office park is causing them to loose sleep.

[1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/04/apple-reports-second-...

yellow_lead• 4 years ago

And remember Apple offices are on top of toxic waste dumps / superfund sites!

[1] https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2021/12/apple-poisoned-me-...

[2] https://disasterarea.home.blog/2019/07/12/apple-headquarters...

chadash• 4 years ago

People want to have their cake and eat it too. Silicon Valley companies pay very well because cost of living is very high in the area and they _need_ to pay well to attract talent in that area. If remote work becomes the norm, pay will start to even out across the country. If you live in a place that didn't pay well before, you'll be better off, but if you live in a high cost of work area, you'll probably be worse off. It's just an inevitable truth of how the market functions.... maybe your company says they'll keep salaries the same no matter where you work, but let's see how that plays out in ten years from now.

To that end, 2 days a week in office seems like a great compromise. Personally, I wouldn't want a long commute to work, so I'd pay a lot to be near my office if I'm going in 5 days a week, but for 2 days a week, I'd have much less problem with say a 1 to 1.5 hour-each-way commute, which drastically opens up options for where I can live. And by requiring people to live in the area, these companies will still need to pay competitive salaries for that area, so this seems like a pretty good compromise.

turtledove5• 4 years ago

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.

dhdkdbehsgsv• 4 years ago

Its a cycle. It’s undeniable that Bay Area salaries are higher than elsewhere. They pay what they need to pay to get good engineers _in that location_. I’d venture to guess that Apple employees in other countries (or even other parts of the US) make less.

r00fus2• 4 years ago

You are completely missing out on the market impact of large corporate (Blackrock) and overseas investors.

asdfasgasdgasdg2• 4 years ago

If they find that it's hard to attract talent, they'll also pay well for remote. But if they don't, angrily worded letters are not going to be the thing that makes the difference. People are going to have to start voting with their feet before Apple will see the supposed error of their compensation formula.

paxys4• 4 years ago

There's no forward or backward. It's a feedback loop.

ensan3• 4 years ago

"They pay well because demand for engineers is high"

Do they pay their teams in Canada, India, China, etc. as much as SV? No.

kurupt213• 4 years ago

They are already starting adjust salaries for cost of living in the zip codes where remote workers live. They still pay more because the field is competitive, but companies (including Facebook and Google) aren’t paying Palo Alto salaries to remote workers in low cost of living areas.

indecisive_user• 4 years ago

Silicon Valley companies pay very well because _other_ Silicon Valley companies pay very well. Fast food companies don't pay anywhere near as well even though the cost of living is the same for those employees.

The demand for good engineers far outstrips the supply, so companies are forced to compete with each other, which is why you get lots of other perks other than salary (free gym, free lunch, free dry cleaning, etc). Any big tech co that decide to pay the same regardless of location will have a huge advantage recruiting and maintaining remote employees. If a remote employee's only option is to jump to another FAANG company for a 15% salary decrease, what motivation will there be to leave?

bobro• 4 years ago

Silicon Valley companies pay very well because cost of living is very high in the area

Isnt this backwards? Isnt the cost of living high because the companies pay so much?

loudthing2• 4 years ago

Unfortunately the folks that get to make these decisions are so removed from the reality of their company's every day tasks that all they can think is "if I don't see butts in the seats I bought, then obviously no work is getting done".

scarface749• 4 years ago

I worked for a small company in 2020 that wanted to get people back in the office by June of that year to “foster better communication” while Covid was still going strong.

That next week, a recruiter from BigTech sent me a message about applying for a software engineering position. I asked them would it be permanently remote. They said “no”. I was about to end the conversation. But then we kept talking and they suggested I talk to another department that was always designed to be remote. I got a job there.

There are way too many opportunities for software engineers to be begging a company to WFH.

randomsearch4• 4 years ago

The problem is, for many people and jobs that heuristic is accurate. I’ve heard of countless examples of people spending their time gaming at home instead of working.

Humans need extrinsic motivation. Outside of overheated labour markets, this is going to be a real problem. Expect intrusive monitoring to become widespread if wfh persists.

paxys4• 4 years ago

So has no work happened at Apple the last 2+ years?

If a company can't evaluate an employee's performance while they are out of sight, that sounds like a management problem.

rsanek2• 4 years ago

It's so interesting to me that we still struggle to get out of the 'hours worked' mindset when considering how valuable someone is to a company. I would argue it's completely irrelevant if someone is gaming, even if it's almost all their time. The question to answer is, what value are they actually bringing to the organization? Would you rather have someone that's useless but working hard 10 hours a day over someone who's brilliant but only works 2 hours a day? I certainly wouldn't.

I think competent organizations will actually do the counter and embrace trusting their employees. IME, it is basically already impossible not to -- there's just way too much work and complexity for someone to accurately know exactly what all of their reports are doing.

micromacrofoot• 4 years ago

Hopefully they're putting effort into unionizing behind the scenes, because otherwise there's 0 chance Apple is going to say "sure everyone can choose to not show up to our brand new $5bn HQ"

dncornholio3• 4 years ago

Ignorant European here, I fail to see any connections..

They said that Apple's reasons for implementing the policy don't stand up, and that the policy is wasteful, inflexible and will lead to a "younger, whiter, more male-dominated, more neuro-normative, more able-bodied" workforce

How does this even work?

Fomite3• 4 years ago

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 the kids up from school, etc. when that's a 15 minute trip, rather than having to commute back home. This burden often falls disproportionately on women, and workers with families (who are likely slightly older than those who don't).

Removing the constraint of "You have to have the capital to move to SV to work here" allows hiring from a broader and more diverse pool of groups with less generational wealth, which means likely a more diverse body of job candidates.

Whether you agree with this or not, there is a logic behind it. Heck, I think they actually missed a couple axes of workers Apple is going to miss out on.

dncornholio3• 4 years ago

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?

larrysalibra• 4 years ago

Apple knows what form of work is best for Apple. If it turns out they are wrong, they'll eventually suffer in the market as the result of making the wrong choice.

That said, being remote or hybrid first seems like it would be a huge competitive advantage for a least some teams in Apple...like the Facetime team.

I tried using their "new" like zoom Facetime meeting with a URL feature for a work-related meeting. The lack of basic functionality like a text chat to share links and other notes in shows that Apple either doesn't actually use Facetime for their own remote meetings or they have no idea how most people use these types of tools to collaborate.

vxNsr2• 4 years ago

I feel like this is true for many apple tools with robust competition. Apple’s offering always only seems to scratch the surface of what’s necessary to be competitive, plus their unique apple-y take. Which, tbf, I often find refreshing, if only it had all the other features I need too.

Instead I’m often felt feeling like someone at apple said “we can do this better” but gets distracted shortly after deploying the MVP.

banannaise8• 4 years ago

This is an anti-worker move.

If Apple suffers in the market as a result, their executives will be gently kicked out with substantial severance packages, and workers will be laid off en masse. That's an anti-worker result.

Win-win for executives, lose-lose for workers.

api• 4 years ago

Best solution is to insist on a salary sufficient to purchase a home in the Bay Area while spending no more than 33% of your income on housing. If they want to pay that much, maybe that's not a bad deal. Otherwise it's a bad deal.

azth• 4 years ago

and that the policy is wasteful, inflexible and will lead to a "younger, whiter, more male-dominated, more neuro-normative, more able-bodied" workforce.

Does anyone take tossing around words like this seriously anymore?

I am pro working remotely, but this is just ridiculous.

newsclues4• 4 years ago

Not without presenting any facts or sources.

In this case it seems like lazy people throwing everything at the wall, including prejudice, to prevent going to work.

Octoth0rpe2• 4 years ago

Yes. I don't see how at a minimum "more able-bodied" should be controversial. Someone who requires a wheelchair has a much easier experience when WFH. "Younger" is a likely extension of that given how age affects mobility.

thebean117• 4 years ago

People in wheelchairs leave their homes all the time. Apple has buses and offices that I'm sure are wheelchair accessible. Apple probably offers pretty good insurance to get a motorized wheelchair if needed. If someone really can't make it to the office physically, I'm sure the policies are somewhat more nuanced.

I understand it may be more difficult for certain people, but I guess to me it's a non sequitur. Doing different things is varying levels of difficult for different people. Is the conclusion that nobody should ask you to do anything inconvenient?

hbosch• 4 years ago

It might seem exhausting, or annoying, or overly descriptive... but it is true and I find it hard to dispute.

richwater• 4 years ago

how exactly does making people come to the office result in a more white workforce?

lghh6• 4 years ago

Why is it ridiculous? It seems very, very obvious to me.

Younger = less likely to have a family so commutes are not as big of an issue + the many responsibilities of having a kid that are easier to manage wfh

Whiter = this is the one that I have the least contextual evidence for off the top of my head, but feel safe assuming it's at least partially true given the other factors

Male-Dominated = the kid issues raised above certainly affect women more than men

Neuro-normative = designing your own wfh space + not requiring travel to an office seems pretty clearly better for neuro-divergent people, especially when the office still exists for those that need to utilize it

Able-bodied = much easier to wfh when you're in a wheelchair, don't have to commute with eyesight impairments, etc

systemvoltage2• 4 years ago

Citations requested.

rastignack• 4 years ago

This is downright racist.

sterlind• 4 years ago

Listing privileges like that is a progressive millennial/zoomer thing that gets people's hackles up, but in its defense:

I'm physically disabled. I use a wheelchair, which makes commuting hard, and a reclining desk which is too big to fit in an open office. I can't type much, so I sometimes rely on dictation and eye tracking. I definitely can't do that in an open office. I have a bunch of doctor's appointments, weekly PT etc. and sometimes I'm too fatigued to work, so I have to crash, so I end up with weird schedules.

despite this, I've invented several critical algorithms for extremely hard problems that helped our company scale, along with singlehandedly writing tons of formally-verified distributed systems infrastructure. I'm valuable enough to keep around despite being damaged goods. hence I have permanent WFH. still miss the office sometimes though.

noelsusman• 4 years ago

I'm more tired of people who can't see any type of diversity-related language without getting triggered.

dainiusse• 4 years ago

I think a bit differently - there are choices. If you don't like apple or it's policies - vote with your head - pick another employer.

newsclues4• 4 years ago

“It will make Apple younger, whiter, more male-dominated, more neuro-normative, more able-bodied”

Love to see the source of data that supports every single one of these issues.

I remember the Google memo from James Demore was backed by sources unlike this letter.

the_only_law• 4 years ago

I would expect more neuro-divergent people to prefer having the option to WFH

newsclues4• 4 years ago

Depends on how you define neuro-divergent.

So why do white people love the office but non whited are comfortable only at home?

seneca3• 4 years ago

You won't see citations for these for the same reason the citations in Demore's memo didn't matter. Facts have no relation to articles of faith.

dboreham• 4 years ago

Remote work is an existential threat to large knowledge-work-based corporations or at least to their management hierarchies. Having spent $$ on fancy buildings that are now empty is just one aspect of this. Problem for them is: the genie is out of the bottle now. We've spent 2y proving that things are humming along just fine without everyone on a campus, commuting for 2h every day.

dehrmann2• 4 years ago

It's actually the other way, and employees should be worried. If working remotely is really just as effective, why pay a premium for Bay Area talent?

bckr8• 4 years ago

Then again, maybe that would bring the prices down in a place that you want to live anyway.

kyleblarson• 4 years ago

When people keep calling literally everything racist it begins to drown out true instances of racism.

zefcfd• 4 years ago

it makes them feel good.

chrsig3• 4 years ago

alternative theory: the world is much more racist than you seem to think.

TYPE_FASTER• 4 years ago

It's going to be fascinating to watch this play out over the next few years. Google will have 3.1 million sqft of space in Manhattan when it's done building out its most recent acquisition [0].

This may be an opportunity for companies who need technical teams, but aren't able to compensate at FAANG levels, to compete.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/21/nyregion/google-buys-buil...

jasonthorsness• 4 years ago

I have to think real estate investments, employment laws, and other factors beyond what company leadership states openly must be involved. The employee objections here are written out clearly, but the policies from big companies that require more than 50% of time in the office seem like such a tragic compromise that I can't believe they've been fully explained.

The longer companies waffle on these policies the more likely it is they will hamper recruitment and face attrition to companies with more consistent policies.

In-office is much less effective when your team is distributed across multiple sites/time zones anyway which seems to be the new normal.

kirykl• 4 years ago

Find a new place to work. Support companies that trust and value their employees.

I personally don't plan to commute to an open office just to use software tools designed for remote work at a desk there instead of my more comfortable, quieter one at home. If I had a private office at work then maybe I'd reconsider.

paul7986• 4 years ago

Think with Air BnB's recent promotion of work from anywhere the big tech firms are going to have to follow or lose employees.

Majority of ppl do not want to work in an office after working from anywhere past two years. We want our freedom as all have shown to do our jobs successfully remotely no need to go back to an office ever!

Work life is forever changed.

Cities whose economies are hurting and will continue to hurt I say need to turn that commercial real estate into remote worker fully furnished and temporary apartments. Place for remote workers who can...city hop every 3 to 6 to 9 month to 12 months. I'd enjoy city hop remote working as nothing really is tying me down .. those Im dating and or in a relationship can join me or visit me and I can experience living in different cities like Chicago, Honolulu, Seattle, Miami, Austin, etc

ineedasername2• 4 years ago

I should preface my comment by saying that I generally agree that full WFH is a very reasonable request, but I can only partly follow their reasoning on the diversity factor:

"... will change the makeup of our workforce [to] younger, whiter, more male-dominated, more neuro-normative, more able-bodied"

Was this an issue before COVID? I can see how this policy might help shape the workforce, but not how it would change the workforce from what it already is unless it became more diverse during COVID as a result of flexible WFH options.

I also understand their justification for how these might limit candidates except "whiter" and "neuro-normative", which their letter didn't seem to provide direct reasoning for. I suppose "whiter" might be the result of drawing more from the local population, but again they seem to be arguing that a policy that's still more flexible than pre-COVID will make things worse, which I don't follow.

*"requiring everyone to relocate to the office their team

Again this shouldn't make things any worse than pre-COVID. Given that full WFH was stated as temporary then no one should need to relocate to accommodate a partial in-person requirement. Not unless they unwisely moved away during the lockdown despite things being temporary or are new hires who also failed to take the temporary status into account.

To reiterate, I'm very sympathetic to their overall complaint, but it appears that they might be doing their case a disservice by implying that this will make some things worse than they already are or were before.

not2b2• 4 years ago

Yes, it was an issue before COVID, but people who are disabled, or people who have processing differences that make dealing with the distractions of an open plan office extremely difficult (that's the "neuro-normative" part), or people who have to juggle children and a job, or people who can't afford to live close enough to have a short commute, had it much better when working from home and naturally don't want to give that up.

And for some people it's the other way around. I have a colleague who has two young children and a small apartment, and it was very tough for him when work from home and school from home was mandatory.

ineedasername2• 4 years ago

Thanks, that clarifies things a bit. And I can understand not wanting to give up an improvement over pre-COVID times-- I agree it shouldn't be necessary. I guess I was just confused that they seem to be implying that a partial return to in-person would make things worse than pre-covid.

anonymoushn3• 4 years ago

Was this an issue before COVID? I can see how this policy might help shape the workforce, but not how it would change the workforce from what it already is unless it became more diverse during COVID as a result of flexible WFH options.
I also understand their justification for how these might limit candidates except "whiter" and "neuro-normative", which their letter didn't seem to provide direct reasoning for. I suppose "whiter" might be the result of drawing more from the local population, but again they seem to be arguing that a policy that's still more flexible than pre-COVID will make things worse, which I don't follow.

I suspect race, gender, and height biases are a big deal and substantially mitigated by various kinds of remote work, but I don't have much more to add about these things.

About "neuro-normative," I have ADHD. Open plan offices, while they are a blight upon the productivity of every worker, are substantially worse for me than for other people. Apple literally prevents teams from communicating with other teams. The combination of open plan offices, secrecy, and demands to come to the office and listen to salespeople on calls all day but not discuss your work with more than a few other people is truly mind-blowing.

skue• 4 years ago

>"... will change the makeup of our workforce [to] younger, whiter, more male-dominated, more neuro-normative, more able-bodied"
Was this an issue before COVID? I can see how this policy might help shape the workforce, but not how it would change the workforce from what it already is…

Don’t disagree with you, but I interpreted their point of comparison to be what would be if there were more WFH flexibility, rather than what is/was.

I am also sympathetic to that line of thinking because while I support diversity efforts, it strikes me that they are often framed around how to make more individuals who are underrepresented in an industry join a company (where they will be still be underrepresented) by relocating to a new community (where they will also be underrepresented), while losing the support of their previously local friends & family. Large companies that care about diversity could instead focus more on opening offices in diverse parts of the country in order create more attractive jobs within those communities, rather than simply bemoaning the challenge of getting underrepresented people to uproot their lives for them. Hopefully increased WFH opportunities will help address this issue.

lolsal20• 4 years ago

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 will never work from an office again, but there are some things you just cannot replicate online or with video calls.

CalRobert• 4 years ago

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

lolsal20• 4 years ago

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.

ianbutler3• 4 years ago

Most people are not forced to have lunch with their colleagues, a lot of people enjoy doing so however.

I always went out by myself when I wanted to eat alone, or sat at my desk with headphones in watching Youtube and eating.

You can communicate with people to help them understand you'd like your break to be a solitary one.

spiffytech• 4 years ago

I fully agree, though this is highly team-specific. I've been on teams where I'm delighted to socialize with my coworkers for an hour most days, but I've also been on teams where I desperately needed 'me' time.

cryptonector2• 4 years ago

Yes, however, even if you're not talking shop, you might build relationships at lunch time that pay off later.

We're a social species. Building relationships is something we do. Is it work? Yes. But it's also something we need to do.

thrower1232• 4 years ago

Working remotely is better than all of those things, iff you commit to doing things correctly and writing things down.

Doing things correctly would help if you were in the office too, but you can paper over the inefficiencies of doing things incorrectly by wasting more time on the backchannel communication face-to-face.

lolsal20• 4 years ago

This sounds a bit like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

Having lunch with colleagues has nothing to do with 'backchannel communication'. Sometimes it's nice to hear about where we like to go camping, or what cities are nice to visit in their home countries, or ... nothing to do with work or shipping products.

No matter how 'correctly' you think you're doing things, you still haven't convinced me after over a decade of shipping products that online whiteboards are useful, or refuted any of my other points.

balaji1• 4 years ago

Companies being paranoid about "losing control of employees" seems overblown. People (at these tech cos anyway) (on average) are very responsible as individuals and motivated to work and grow their careers.

It not obvious what carrot or stick motivates people to deliver. But there has to be a way to achieve what the team|org|company wants even with remote workers. As a company - clearly specify and quantify goals, regularly share metrics of progress, provide better tools for working and focus on the long-term.

0x500x79• 4 years ago

I think that a lot of those things can be replaced with new techniques as time goes on. Just because this is how we did things yesterday doesn't mean there aren't better ways to do this it just requires some thinking and investment, IMO.

The tooling that has been developed during the pandemic has taken this space forward by leaps and bounds and I expect this to continue.

Instead of focusing on the how, I would focus on the outcomes you are looking for and lets investigate paths forward for those outcomes.

My two cents: There is still body language over video calls, Miro and other whiteboarding solutions work pretty well, not every day needs intense whiteboarding sessions so have onsites when those are required, and good riddance to the lunches with colleagues. If we wanna have lunch let's get on a call and/or have some one-on-one time setup instead of thinking that lunch is somehow a team building exercise.

Not to mention the IMMENSE benefits you get from remote work. Having those tradeoffs and changing the way we work: I am all in.

lolsal20• 4 years ago

I think that a lot of those things can be replaced with new techniques as time goes on. Just because this is how we did things yesterday doesn't mean there aren't better ways to do this ...

This is a totally fair point, but multi-cursor online whiteboards are not the same as standing in front of a whiteboard and brainstorming with a colleague. "Zoom happy hour" or whatever cannot replace spontaneous lunches, after-work drinks, pre-work coffees, etc.

... it just requires some thinking and investment, IMO.

I agree and understand, but let's not pretend we're not asking everyone to essentially "beta test" WFH and endure the friction of finding these new techniques. There are tradeoffs here and it's not a seamless transition. Remote work is a skill that needs honing, whereas office work is 'the standard'.

Not to mention the IMMENSE benefits you get from remote work. Having those tradeoffs and changing the way we work: I am all in.

Working remotely has immense benefits, I agree. I agree so whole-heartedly that I will never work in an office again. That being said, despite all its benefits, there are tradeoffs that don't have equivalents in the WFH world. Anyone that dismisses working from an office entirely is either ignorant or being dishonest, in my opinion.

shlurpy• 4 years ago

I think if commuting time was fully paid work hours, then companies would quickly agree that minor optimizations like this aren't worth it.

lolsal20• 4 years ago

I think if commuting time was fully paid work hours, then companies would quickly agree that minor optimizations like this aren't worth it.

I would argue that you have priced in your commute to your market value when you take a job that requires you to commute, especially since knowledge workers tend to be salary, not hourly.

skeeter20204• 4 years ago

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.

asoneth• 4 years ago

Commuting time may not be officially factored into working hours but companies already pay for it in domains like tech where they must compete against each other for employees.

Given the number of companies that offer fully remote or hybrid work, a comparable company that wants their employees in the office five days a week has to provide higher compensation and/or lower standards to meet their staffing needs.

The important question for companies is not whether they want to be in-person/hybrid/remote in abstract, the question is how much they're willing to pay.

MattGaiser• 4 years ago

Depends on who you are. I cannot really process non-explicit communication all that well nor do I like to whiteboard without access to research, so I prefer a playing field where everything is explicit/where I am researching as we work.

In person I am socially clueless and add next to nothing to the whiteboard.

lolsal20• 4 years ago

I hear you and see you. Fully remote sounds like a boon to you!

sam0x175• 4 years ago

Unapologetically, yes, and I'd take it a step further. Often the online version is more fun and more interactive than a bunch of people uncomfortably thrust into the same room. There are things people suddenly become comfortable saying and doing that they wouldn't normally say or do in person. If you've grown up with gamer friends you know exactly what I'm talking about -- seeing someone's silly avatar light up when they talk versus being in the room with them is sometimes just more fun and more open and more preferable. It gives them the ability to express themselves exactly how they want to express themselves, not limited by their appearance which they only have so much control over. 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 just more fun to be around in a Discord call than in person. Furthermore, he is able to socialize a LOT more than my peers were able to at that age--they'll do 4-5 hour discord calls every night.

For very extroverted people, the in-person experience might be superior, but I'd be willing to bet they just haven't put effort into connecting in online spaces. Until you've spent thousands of hours doing so, it's hard to knock it legitimately. On the flip side I've seen introverts really open up in these online scenarios in ways they never normally would, and I'm not about to design my entire life around something my team doesn't even want.

lampshades2• 4 years ago

This is me. I find it much easier to converse online. I also am content staying in my house for years on end (as COVID has shown) and getting my social interaction from text on a computer screen.

The internet has been my main source of social contact since I was 12 (at which point I just stopped going outside and spent all my time building websites), so I guess I've adapted to this way of living.

unethical_ban3• 4 years ago

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 games - the desire to be away from people in person, the desire not to interact with others, the disdain for in-person contact, are all symptoms of a problem in my view.

I don't mean it to say I think less of people who are like this, or that they are worthy of derision. I simply think it is bad for the individual and the community.

scottLobster• 4 years ago

Coddling social anxiety is not a good argument for WFH. There's a difference between introversion (needing time away from people to recharge) and social anxiety (not speaking up or interacting differently in person vs online). Unless you're banking on some cyberpunk future where people only ever interact online, social anxiety is a maladaptive disorder to be confronted, not a personality quirk.

And FYI there are plenty of extroverted engineers. Some of us actually enjoy team sports as well as technical problems.

jasonlotito2• 4 years ago

Can anyone honestly and sincerely tell me that online whiteboards are exactly equivalent to in-person whiteboard sessions?

No. Online whiteboards have benefits that in-person whiteboard sessions do not, obviously.

There is no value in having lunches together with your colleagues?

No, obviously there is value in having lunches together with your colleagues, just as there are downsides.

There is no value in body language when communicating?

There is value in body language, just as there is probably more value in well-written communication.

I think it's a bit naive or dishonest to say that it's exactly the same work experience

Many people who oppose returning to the office would agree with you. It's a much-improved work experience.

but there are some things you just cannot replicate online or with video calls.

Exactly, and I agree with you. It is much safer.

A predominantly WFH experience is, in pretty much all your examples, a better experience than working every day from the office. Suggesting it's merely as good as working form the office does it a great disservice.

lolsal20• 4 years ago

No. Online whiteboards have benefits that in-person whiteboard sessions do not, obviously.

Is it obvious though? They're garbage for most of the teams I've worked with. They're tolerable to the rest.

No, obviously there is value in having lunches together with your colleagues, just as there are downsides.

Ok, but I'm asserting some valuable things being lost by going fully remote only, it doesn't do either side of the argument any good to be so ambiguous and non-committal to a point.

There is value in body language, just as there is probably more value in well-written communication.

Fair point! I don't know that I have ever, anywhere, read any informal text or technical document that could communicate the nuances of body language effectively and entirely though. I'm jealous that you work with such perfect communicators!

Many people who oppose returning to the office would agree with you. It's a much-improved work experience.

I totally agree, it is much improved, even if we lost a lot of valuable things in the transition.

A predominantly WFH experience is, in pretty much all your examples, a better experience than working every day from the office. Suggesting it's merely as good as working form the office does it a great disservice.

I did not do any such thing. I'm saying fully remote work is great, but we're losing a lot, so let's not pretend that we aren't. There are facets to in-person work that are completely lost and not translatable to fully remote work.

jedberg5• 4 years ago

Have you ever done a white boarding session where more than one person was writing on the board at a time?

The online whiteboard works great when one person is adding to it and it's easier to read (you don't have to deal with people's terrible handwriting) and you can save it.

In most cases I've found that only one person is usually writing on the whiteboard, everyone else is just pointing at it and making suggestions. So the one person with an iPad that is sharing it's screen is usually more than sufficient for online white boarding.

The rest of it you're right, seeing body language is helpful, getting a chance to hang out socially is helpful. But not helpful enough to outweigh working from home given that I already have a social circle.

If work were my social circle, like it was when I was younger, it would be a whole different story.

lolsal20• 4 years ago

Have you ever done a white boarding session where more than one person was writing on the board at a time?

Very often back when I worked in an office.

The online whiteboard works great when one person is adding to it and it's easier to read (you don't have to deal with people's terrible handwriting) and you can save it.

We took pictures of our whiteboards when we needed to save state, it worked great!

In most cases I've found that only one person is usually writing on the whiteboard, everyone else is just pointing at it and making suggestions. So the one person with an iPad that is sharing it's screen is usually more than sufficient for online white boarding.

I'm glad you are able to make it work for you!

But not helpful enough to outweigh working from home

I'm with you on this! I'll never go back to an office full time.

onesafari• 4 years ago

This is a rift between digital only natives and digital hybrids. The hybrids know the tradeoffs of both. Digital only don't have the lived experience to know what they're missing.

lolsal20• 4 years ago

I hadn't thought of this distinction before; thank you for enunciating this point!

kbelder2• 4 years ago

I think for completeness, you should have three categories, and include the offline-onlys. They, similarly, don't understand all that they're missing.

(Btw, this took me on a tangent trying to figure out the proper way to pluralize 'only'.)

lowbloodsugar5• 4 years ago

"There is no value in body-language when communicating?"

Not for me, no. I'm neurodiverse, and that shit is just lost on me.

You might as well complain that you are missing out on being able to tell racist jokes with your same-race buddies, because you're missing out on the benefits of social bonding.

Sure. single-cis-straight-white-neurotypical-abletypical-male can be super optimized, or the equivalent in what ever is the dominant race (looking at salarymen in Japan).

Feel free to continue to argue that position.

unethical_ban3• 4 years ago

It's despicable that you equate "neuro-normative" with "racist".

lolsal20• 4 years ago

Not for me, no. I'm neurodiverse, and that shit is just lost on me.

I hear you and understand. Lots of people are neuro-normative though, and that stuff is valuable. Let's not assert that remote-only is the Best® though, because for a lot of folks, there is a loss of fidelity in communication going fully remote only.

You might as well complain that you are missing out on being able to tell racist jokes with your same-race buddies, because you're missing out on the benefits of social bonding.

Believe it or not, some people bond over things they have in common that don't have anything to do with racism. You probably have some prejudices or biases leaking through your comment that you might want to explore privately.

Sure. single-cis-straight-white-male can be super optimized, or the equivalent in what ever is the dominant race (looking at salarymen in Japan).

When I go to lunch and talk to my colleague about her favorite places to snorkel, my sexuality, gender, relationship status or race never come up in the conversation. Have you tried having conversations with folks without making it about you?

bckr8• 4 years ago

You might as well complain that you are missing out on being able to tell racist jokes with your same-race buddies,

I sympathize with your point, but object strongly to this analogy on the grounds that being racist is a choice, while benefiting from body language is not a choice. It's also very offensive, but that is a secondary issue.

fullshark• 4 years ago

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 like they are being spied on all the time, in part cause they maybe do 4 hours of work a day anyway. That's what's driving this. The rest is noise.

217233• 4 years ago

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 the kind of thing that happens at least once in a career do not, in general, do well in it.

Clubber• 4 years ago

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 like they are being spied on all the time, in part cause they maybe do 4 hours of work a day anyway. That's what's driving this. The rest is noise.

This is probably the most honest take I've read. Also, it's been proven WFH on a grand scale is effective over the past 2 years, so many arguments against the efficacy of WFH crumbled over Covid. Bottom line is employers who don't want to allow WFH will have a smaller and more expensive pool than they are accustomed to. There are enough WFH opportunities that going to the office is no longer a given. The current debate is employees who want to WFH that are currently employed by companies who don't want employees to WFH. It will iron itself out in a year or two one way or the other.

FWIW, I've gone to the office 100% of the time maybe 1/2 of my 20+ year career, mostly early on. I've managed to negotiate work from home days, both in the 90s, 00s, and 10s. I WFH full time today. I meet the guys for lunch every week. It's nice and it gets me out of the house. We're a small team though.

maccard2• 4 years ago

I'm a remote work advocate.

Can anyone honestly and sincerely tell me that online whiteboards are exactly equivalent to in-person whiteboard sessions?

Of course it's not an exact equivalent, but it doesn't need to be. Anecdotally speaking, the number of whiteboard meetings I had that I wanted to have were about 1 per year. Remote workers use tools like Notion, Miro, Jetbrains Code With me which have many/more of the advantages of a whiteboard.

There is no value in having lunches together with your colleagues?

This one is company specific, but I don't need to be in the office to go to lunch with my colleagues. In my last office job, I had lunch with 2-3 colleagues maybe twice a week. In my current all remote job, I meet my colleagues once every other week for lunch, and I _still_ meet my previous job colleagues for lunch once a week or so.

There is no value in body-language when communicating?

Honestly in a business setting with "trusted" coworkers, less so. I tend to take what my colleagues say at face value. With remote work, webcams do a reasonable job of picking up the "I'mn really uncomfortable with something you've just said" and "holy crap they've hit it out of the park". Again, in previous office job, a non-trivial amount of communication _in_ meetings happened in private slack groups that were messaging during the meeting - that still happens today. The big advantage now is that people who would have been steamrolled in meetings have a chance to get their thoughts heard, as most remote teams tend to practice async communciation practices (which are not required but are often combined with remote work)

BaseballPhysics14• 4 years ago

Honestly in a business setting with "trusted" coworkers, less so. I tend to take what my colleagues say at face value.

That's... not all that body language conveys?

Body language helps with basic things like "Oh, Amy is trying to break in and is struggling to make her point", or "Hmm, Doug looks like he's concerned about something, I should ask him his opinion".

Digital A/V communication tools also bring with them a whole host of other sources of friction, including poor audio and video, latency issues, and so forth. They are, at best a weak by tolerable substitute for face-to-face conversations, and quite frankly, IMO anyone who tries to suggest otherwise is not being honest.

You might feel that the tradeoffs are justifiable, but let's not pretend there aren't tradeoffs.

The big advantage now is that people who would have been steamrolled in meetings have a chance to get their thoughts heard

And conversely, people who type slower or struggle with written communication for various reasons, are significantly disadvantaged.

And that's ignoring the fact that written communication lacks critical nuance (which ends up being poorly filled in with things like emojis) that can lead to confusion and misunderstandings.

EricE11• 4 years ago

The value for being in the office for me was in the spontaneous connections with folks that weren't in my immediate work unit. Those connections have lead to every job I have had. The best kinds of jobs are the ones that come to you and you don't have to interview for; and you just aren't going to get anywhere near the numbers of those opportunities without "pressing the flesh".

If that's not a concern for you then have at it. But if you are at the start or mid way through your career, are motivated and still hungry for advancement I'd be VERY careful of spending too much time full time remote.

greggman3• 4 years ago

Not that I think this is a solution for everyone but my personal experience is VR can provide many of these things. It's surprising how much body language comes across just from seeing head tracking in a shared environment and facial expressions are likely shipping this year.

Also, unlike Meet/Zoom, in VR you share everyone's screens at the same time (show a virtual monitor/laptop for each persion, have multiple shared whiteboards, have different people virtually standing in front of different whiteboards, etc....

mehphp3• 4 years ago

There is value in working in-office… just not enough for me to give up remote work.

I, personally, get just as much work done working from home. While I do miss the social aspect of the office, it’s just not worth giving up the hours of commute time or dealing with a lot of the in-person bs that work entails.

I realize this is a very privileged position but I’ll keep doing it as long as it’s an option.

ensignavenger• 4 years ago

Is anyone trying to argue it is "exactly the same experience"? Most of the arguments I have heard in favor of remote work is that it is superior experience, on the whole.

217233• 4 years ago

Can anyone honestly and sincerely tell me that online whiteboards are exactly equivalent to in-person whiteboard sessions?

Of course not. They're an ersatz replacement for the in-person thing. They do the job about 90% as well. Is that a problem? In the corporate world, most things are ersatz, if you're not an executive. Mediocre supplies, mediocre management, mediocre training, mediocre pay... why should we force people to shlep just to pretend their jobs aren't mediocre? A standard-issue corporate job can be done from anywhere.

There is no value in having lunches together with your colleagues?

Again, of course not; but if a company is going to expect or require people to do it, it should foot the bill for the inconveniences caused.

lolsal20• 4 years ago

Again, of course not; but if a company is going to expect or require people to do it, it should foot the bill for the inconveniences caused.

Sorry if I wasn't clear - these lunches have nothing to do with work. I eat lunch sometimes, my colleagues eat lunch sometimes. Sometimes we go out to eat together and socialize. Work doesn't enter into the equation. We lose that benefit when going fully remote.

There is value to me in having lunch with my current colleagues. I also get value out of having lunch with my ex-colleagues who are now just my friends in the same city. We still have lunches together. I am thankful that I used to work in the same city as my colleagues so that this is still possible!

conjecTech2• 4 years ago

Insisting on a new solution being "exactly the same" to adopt it pretty much ensures you will never leave the status quo.

All changes in complex systems have tradeoffs. In-person whiteboard sessions can be exhilarating. They also tend to produce imprecise (or no) artifacts that rely heavily on the context of the meeting for interpretation.

I noticed that when our team went remote during COVID and ideation was done by async contributions to design docs, the completeness and reliability of our designs went way up. But again, it's never all positive. If there was a design that was underspecified or not fully understood by the team member leading it, the siloing could lead to analysis paralysis.

lolsal20• 4 years ago

Insisting on a new solution being "exactly the same" to adopt it pretty much ensures you will never leave the status quo.

I'm not sure where you got that I said that, if you read what I wrote you'll see that I've been fully remote for over a decade. I don't in any way insist that fully remote work needs to be exactly the same as in-office work.

ren_engineer• 4 years ago

can anyone honestly say trying to code in a open office is equivalent to being able to actually focus and write code without distraction in your own office?

There's tradeoffs to everything, the market is going to decide whether remote work is viable or not. Maybe the Apple tier companies can force office work, but startups that are remote are going to be able to snag some great talent who refuse to waste hours of their lives commuting

in my experience the people pushing for return to office are 95% managers who are feeling exposed that they don't really do much and potentially aren't needed. Also people who relied on office politics to survive rather than actually being good at their job

nathanaldensr2• 4 years ago

I don't think anyone is claiming that it's "exactly the same;" I think many people are claiming it's better after considering pros and cons.

ineptech• 4 years ago

I think in-office culture does work better in a lot of ways, but we as a society spent a century building and optimizing that. We've only been WingFH for a couple years, and it seems (to me) blazingly obvious that it won't take long to adapt to and improve the tools and culture of it to the point that the benefits outweigh what we've lost.

Apple choosing the office over WFH in 2022 feels a lot like the US choosing coal over solar in the early 2000s - a manifestation of the sunk cost fallacy that will look short-sighted embarrassingly soon.

EricE11• 4 years ago

Some of us have been teleworking/WFH to varying degrees for decades now. There are pro's and con's, but it's not all a bed of roses. The earlier on in your career - unless you don't care about advancing from where you are today - the more you should probably balance or lean more towards in office engagement. You simply aren't going to make the same impression on people virtually as you will in person. You're fighting millions of years of evolution/how our brains are wired. You can lie to yourself and tell you it doesn't really matter - and I can tell you from personal experience it's BS. In person interactions have far more impact and staying power - period. I've seen it happen and am convinced I have gotten jobs over others because of it.

If that's not important to you - like you are towards the end of your career and pretty much happy with where you are - then that's a trade off that might not have as big an impact. But it IS a trade off and people need to be honest about it and stop hiding behind ridiculous gobbledygook like the crap that was at the start of that employee letter.

hyperman12• 4 years ago

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 any noninvited ask anything, they all get very very very vague. Whatever happened on the retreat, stays on the retreat. Don't get me wrong, I don't think anything illegal or untoward happened.

It worked. They became a tight social network. Ask anyone anything, and the right person and info magically appears. Even 20 years later, in a very political corporation, the trust built that weekend still persists.

rsanek2• 4 years ago

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.

dleslie15• 4 years ago

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 understands or can engage in body language. Many people find it ancient inducing that their appearance and movements are under constant judgement. WFH is equalizing for them.

lolsal20• 4 years ago

Digital whiteboards are trivial to share, recover, modify and maintain. They're light-years beyond the limited physical variety. My team land heavily on Miro, for instance.

I use Mira too, it's great! But it's not the same as brainstorming on a whiteboard with your colleagues in the same room.

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.

That's cool and I fully support your desire to do whatever you want on your break. For a lot of my breaks when I worked in the office I ended up sharing them with colleagues and made several (hopefully) life-long friends out of the habit!

Not everyone understands or can engage in body language. Many people find it ancient inducing that their appearance and movements are under constant judgement. WFH is equalizing for them.

I understand! However I can understand body language and I find a lot of value in it. It's easier to empathize and relate to my colleagues when I can understand them better through body language when we're talking about life. If we worked in the same office you'd be free to have lunch (or whatever you want to do while I go have lunch) by yourself without judgement from me!

EricE11• 4 years ago

Not everyone understands or can engage in body language.

Well you sure as hell aren't going to get better at it by throwing up your hands and declaring it just isn't for you. I'm naturally introverted, but when I say that to co-workers they don't believe it - because over the years I have learned to adapt. I'm very extroverted at work - because it's necessary. Yup, I pay a price - it's exhausting and I need time to recharge. But the benefits of adapting to normal work environments instead of demanding the world adapt to me are immeasurable.

There are tons of things I can do now that I couldn't do before. Many of them are unpleasant. But they are necessary and without many of them I wouldn't be anywhere near where I am today. Good luck with waiting for the world to adapt to you. Let's get back together in 30 years and see how that attitude works for you. I'm sure the universe will have been incredibly unfair to you :p

This whole victim = anything hard/I just don't want to do is getting old. And it devalues people with legitimate issues.

engineeringwoke6• 4 years ago

Not everyone understands or can engage in body language. Many people find it ancient inducing that their appearance and movements are under constant judgement. WFH is equalizing for them.

I find that people actually give away more with their body language over whatever conferencing software you may use. When you have all the portraits up on your screen, the little micro things are much easier to spot. I hope I didn't give you even more anxiety! We are just trying to see how people feel in order to manage the situation :)

wink4• 4 years ago

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.

xornox• 4 years ago

Whiteboards can be replaced by digital tools, but as far as I know, companies do not invest to remote work tools enough currently.

There are great tools, which should be available for every worker in home, but that does not happen for some reason?

tethys• 4 years ago

it's a bit naive or dishonest to say that it's exactly the same work experience

No one even made that claim. From the open letter:

We definitely see the benefits of in-person collaboration; the kind of creative process that high bandwidth communication of being in the same room, not limited by technology, enables. But for many of us, this is not something we need every week, often not even every month, definitely not every day.

dmitrygr• 4 years ago

Can anyone honestly and sincerely tell me that online whiteboards are exactly equivalent to in-person whiteboard sessions?

I've worked in software for > 20 years. I've been a tech lead of a few projects that shipped and YOU likely use in your daily everyday life. Outside of interviews, i've had to use a real-life whiteboard ... twice ...

lolsal20• 4 years ago

I've worked in software for > 20 years. I've been a tech lead of a few projects that shipped and YOU likely use in your daily everyday life. Outside of interviews, i've had to use a real-life whiteboard ... twice ...

That's neat! I hope you don't think your anecdotal evidence discredits my own anecdotal evidence about how useful they are. People use different tools and I'm guessing you're not intending to say folks that have been productively using whiteboards for decades are somehow wrong.

mlboss• 4 years ago

Leaving job is so easy when you are WFH. You can just grind leetcode instead of commuting. I think thats why companies are worried. Employees can easily jump companies when WFH.

g42gregory• 4 years ago

Can somebody explain what “neuro-normative” is?

banannaise8• 4 years ago

Designed for minds that are not neurodivergent. Basically, a system that directly disadvantages people who are ADHD/autistic.

vxNsr2• 4 years ago

I always thought it meant like people without Asperger’s or other mental conditions. Which is odd bec many of us are on the spectrum, so who are they saying wouldn’t be hired?

jedberg5• 4 years ago

As a Cupertino resident, I'm pretty upset with their WFH policy. At the very least they should have let small teams choose their in office days.

Now I need to keep track of which days of the week they have to be in the office, because traffic in Cupertino will be 2x-3x worse on the days they are in the office.

Their choice of forcing everyone back on the same day is not only bad for their workers, but it's bad for all of their neighbors and the planet.

roflchoppa• 4 years ago

This work from office thing is really killing travel times in the Bay Area. 237/880 is almost back to pre-pandemic levels, the HOV lanes are making the problems worse.

jedberg5• 4 years ago

I'm willing to accept that most of that traffic is people who can't work from home.

That being said, I really do miss the traffic from those first few weeks of the pandemic, when I could get from Cupertino to the airport in 12 minutes at 6pm (a drive that now takes about 25 minutes, and pre-pandemic took 45+).

bentcorner• 4 years ago

Seattle area has the same issue. My job encouraged return to office end of March (and I suspect other employers in the area had similar timelines) and traffic has been steadily getting worse ever since.

jeffbee2• 4 years ago

Explain how the HOV lanes are making it worse?

uoaei• 4 years ago

BART and bike worked great for me today! Plenty of time to read and relax, no bullshit with other drivers cutting you off.

no_wizard2• 4 years ago

Even more frustrating: You can't just pick the campus you want to work from. When I worked at Apple most teams were distributed by seat availability not co-location, so you could be on the same campus or set of buildings but all work in different parts of the offices / campus so all meetings with exception of critical ones were held in a remote fashion in conference rooms anyway. So it wouldn't have mattered if I worked in Santa Clara, Apple Park, Infinite Loop, or Sacramento (yes, they have a campus there), or working from home, 80% of the time. They even had a shuttle that went from Sacramento to campuses every single day. It was so odd to me even to this day.

This was a common source of frustration for employees because they couldn't just work at the office closest to them or work from home. Very few people I knew there worked directly along side their team while I was there. I'm sure this wasn't true for everyone though, however I think it was at least at the time, the majority.

lokar• 4 years ago

At Google people routinely have VC meetings between adjacent buildings.

_fat_santa• 4 years ago

This makes their policy even more baffling. You're basically getting the worst of both worlds, you still have the commute and all the BS around working in person, yet once you get there it's essentially remote work.

sergiotapia• 4 years ago

Apple spend a morbillion dollars on their HQ, of course they want to force their staff to be on site. I hope the staff bands together and wins.

crypot• 4 years ago

I don't see how there can be any debate around WFH. The S&P 500 had record profitability during this completely unplanned WFH experience.

If WFH was so terrible for business there should be ample proof, but so far it has only be shown to be a success.

nerpderp823• 4 years ago

Because it is about status and control. They want to see all the busy-bee activity in their expensive buildings. Workers have been asking for WFH for years, the pandemic proved it could work even for the sudden and untrained.

ensan3• 4 years ago

"The S&P 500 had record profitability during this completely unplanned WFH experience."

Correlation != Causation

pbuzbee2• 4 years ago

True, but if a company wants to restrict something and cites productivity as the reason, I would hope they could provide concrete evidence. Most of the publicly stated reasons against remote work/WFH seem to be qualitative and only reflect the values of executives.

ianbutler3• 4 years ago

Personally I just want companies to settle on their policies so I can prioritize finding in person work. Everyone can have their opinions and now the chips need to settle so we can pick the places that are best for us.

thedangler• 4 years ago

I work for a university and they are hellbent on bringing us back to office full time. Currently we work in office 2 days a week. My office is in a cubical, ina concrete room with no windows. Meanwhile complaining about how much space is needed and how there is no parking but wont adjust policies to let us work from home, for those who can. Makes no sense. I am a web developer / analyst and have no contact with anyone outside of my developoment team.

Get this, our meetings are on zoom in the office anyways. lol

EricE11• 4 years ago

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 toward the end of my career so I now have enough contacts and informal interactions with folks where I can still force those kinds of engagements; if I need to. 10 years ago? No way would I be happy working remotely full time. You just can't get the connections and synergies unless you are in close proximity to other folks; especially those outside of your immediate work unit but still relevant to your work.

A lot of these younger folks pushing for full time remote at the start of their career are putting themselves into a box I don't think they fully appreciate - and won't until it's too late. In a way I'm glad telework didn't become more accepted until later in my career - I absolutely wouldn't be where I am today if I had been full time remote - I wouldn't have had near the opportunities to connect and be noticed.

warning263• 4 years ago

A lot of these younger folks pushing for full time remote at the start of their career are putting themselves into a box I don't think they fully appreciate

This 100%—I worked remotely for my first 5 years after graduating college, and I thought it was great until I went into a real office and found out what I was missing. I vowed to never work a remote job again (of course, the pandemic forced a quick end to that vow, hah.)

lghh6• 4 years ago

And you still have that choice both under the model that the workers here are suggesting and in the greater economy.

agentdrtran2• 4 years ago

many (most?) neuro-atypical people absolutely have a much better experience wfh rather than in person and policies that force back to office ignore their needs.

lghh6• 4 years ago

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'm not sure what you're saying here. Do you not think neuro-normativity is a real thing? Or do you think that neuro-divergent people will be worse off with a truly flexible work-from-home policy?

I don't think they are requesting that the office cease to exist. It sounds like they want a hybrid approach that has no required office time.

A lot of these younger folks pushing for full time remote at the start of their career are putting themselves into a box I don't think they fully appreciate

This is condescending. It assumes that people who want full-time remote are not aware of the trade offs. I try to think better of people when they make an effort at self-determination. They know their lives better than I do, I imagine.

spullara• 4 years ago

There is no possible way for someone just out of college to actually understand the tradeoffs. Young people have little to no experience with building a career or what it entails.

specialist3• 4 years ago

From the OC:

"They said that Apple's reasons for implementing the policy don't stand up, and that the policy is wasteful, inflexible and will lead to a "younger, whiter, more male-dominated, more neuro-normative, more able-bodied" workforce."

I, for one, have no idea what neuro-normative means.

Anywho, u/EricE isn't agreeing or disagreeing. They're just advising that people can just state their preference plainly, no tortured nonsensical rationalizations necessary.

"If you're explaining, you're losing." -- Lee Atwater

Labor now has greater power. Wield it. Those who would take away your power don't bother to explain themselves. Why should Labor?

Unless, of course, you'd rather be right, over actually winning.

jimbokun2• 4 years ago

The eye rolling part is trying to tie a preference for working from home into the broader civil rights movements. You aren't just making people come into the office, you are systemically oppressing this list of marginalized people groups!

closedl00p2• 4 years ago

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 would have been the same as there was a lot of on and off collaboration and chatting over the course of a month sitting side by side. Especially with someone senior who worked on a parallel team where we might not have talked as much if we'd only been meeting through meetings.

And as someone who's managed teams during the pandemic, I'll say that I saw WFH be especially challenging for some earlier-career folks and new hires, who I've seen trying to learn everything "on their own" and feeling a bit adrift. I went out of my way to have more 1:1 check-ins with them, set them up with other senior peers for regular video "coffee chats" and mentorship opportunities, and so on. But it was challenging.

I've also seen Slack be a powerful force for new or junior people asking questions about how to use a tool or the history of some decision (once we built a culture of "it's fine to just ask questions to this channel, no question is dumb"), especially across teams or offices, so async digital collaboration is powerful as well, of course.

ghaff4• 4 years ago

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.

BlargMcLarg• 4 years ago

The opposite also exists, plenty of anecdotes where individuals felt isolated at work and/or after they quit their job, losing any connection they had. The workplace isn't the magical cure-all to a society where people are increasingly busier and more focused on themselves and the online world.

dont__panic• 4 years ago

There are tradeoffs in both directions. Your point about spontaneous interactions is a good one, but consider the other tradeoffs at play:

- open layout offices are awful places to work where many people struggle to focus at all, to the point where their work is negatively impacted

- separating home location from work location opens up opportunities to work places certain people would never have considered before, unless they wanted to leave their friends/family/social groups/etc. behind

- cutting out a commute every day saves folks time, money, stress, and likely cuts down on a lot of wasteful greenhouse gas emissions

I'm relatively early in my career, but I also love WFH compared to in-office work. Why? I hated the commute, I don't like socializing with my coworkers outside of actual work, and I struggle to focus with folks on calls around me and without decent thermostat control. I acknowledge that some people can deal with all of those things, still be productive, and reap the benefits of in-person work. But there are also those of us whose careers have skyrocketed in the past couple of years specifically because we have a working arrangement that works better for us now.

It's hard to say how much this will impact my career trajectory in the long term. But I'm also more concerned about my private social life and hobbies than I am about my career, and remote work works far better for that, too.

TL;DR: Different strokes for different folks. Young people are not doomed by remote work.

EricE11• 4 years ago

I'm not saying anyone is doomed - you are just going to have dramatically fewer opportunities for serendipitous interactions; that's just a plain fact any way you slice it. And maybe for your career path that isn't important - but for most people it's far more important than they likely realize. Your reputation is the greatest asset you have - it always saddens me at how carelessly many people today treat theirs. Social media doesn't help here either; heck it's a constant struggle for me too.

I also don't think it has to be 100% either way. The most productive time in my career was when I split time in the office and at home. Office time was for meetings, collaboration, strategizing with others, networking, pushing the corporate bureaucracy along, etc. At home time was focus time to actually get shit done.

It worked amazingly well and I consider myself fortunate to work for several organizations that did allow and respect at least some remote work.

Like most things in life, extremes in any direction are rarely healthy, especially over time.

What I think is most dangerous about moves like this is by pushing so hard to one extreme they risk convincing a company like Apple that the whole concept is more trouble than it's worth. I dunno, maybe there is enough of a labor shortage of smart people where Apple will really shoot themselves in the foot if they maintain a hard line - but I doubt it. We rarely are as essential to the organization as we like to think we are :)

It will be interesting to see how it plays out but I think there are better ways of making your case than resorting to race bating and victimhood right out the gate.

fartcannon8• 4 years ago

A lot of tech savvy younger folks are perfectly capable of making relationships entirely online. I'm not even young, and I've done it myself. 25 years ago, I made several friends on Yahoo Chat! who I have never seen in real life but speak with regularly. Many more over the years via builtin boards. These days discord exists and it's a primary social source for a number of kids.

These kids could enter a fully WFH workforce without blinking an eye and continue to develop life long relationships with their new colleagues if they desired. I've done both. But to be honest, the only friends I've maintained from previous in person jobs are the ones who I also connected with via a chat program.

dleslie15• 4 years ago

This is spot-on.

Nearly all of our younger hires have their social networks _entirely online_, and most of our older employees are in a similar situation albeit with a few token IRL friends.

That said, I work in game development and I suspect that causes some selection bias.

shrimp_emoji3• 4 years ago

My story is the same as yours, but I don't think online communications (especially "structured", formal, work ones, like a daily standup over Zoom) capture everything that spontaneous "hallway" conversations do, including with people not on even on your team who you'd never talk to otherwise.

I wish it were same, but, even as someone who grew up with more online relationships than meatspace ones, I'd be lying if I said it is. Maybe VR in some 15-minutes-after-tomorrow future can bridge the gap.

I experienced how "not the same" it is with in-person and then remote interactions with other young people in college classes and then with older people in work, and, in both cases, I felt things were lost once we went remote.

EricE11• 4 years ago

It's not just about making friends. It's about serendipity.

It's about spontaneous and unplanned interactions that provide new paths for you. Yes, you can still have those remotely - but they are no where nearly as frequent, nor anywhere near as impactful. They simply can't be - your fighting millions of years of social evolution if you think otherwise. Heck I doubt most of us remember a fraction of spontaneous in person interactions with others in our day to day life - but let me tell you there are a handful in my past that made all the difference in where I am today. None would have happened if I had been working remotely.

Not one of them.

You simply can't quantize the value of those interactions and I fear for those who are seemingly so willing to casually tossing those away. Yes, commuting sucks. Yes, committing to a schedule sucks. Yes, listening to the same story from Bob for the millionth time while you are trying to focus on something else sucks. But there are other benefits that are irreplaceable too.

Probably the best illustration I can think of in pop culture is the Star Trek:TNG episode where Picard's artificial heart dies and he has that whole near death experience with Q. It's a great analogy for this whole discussion. I'm too am glad I had the bloody nose early on and the much more interesting life overall.

BigHatLogan2• 4 years ago

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.

ryanmcbride• 4 years ago

You seem to be interpreting a lot of your personal experience as solid fact. It's fine that the way your career happened to shake out worked out for you but that doesn't mean it's the only way to work, and it certainly doesn't mean it's the best way for everybody to work.

People work differently, commuting is a nightmare and gets worse every year, if you want to be in an office I don't think you'll have trouble finding a job to accommodate. A few years before the pandemic I swore I'd never commute again and I intend to live out the rest of my career that way. You will never catch me commuting every day.

shrimp_emoji3• 4 years ago

I swore I'd never commute again and I intend to live out the rest of my career that way

s/commute/go to the grocery store ;)

passivate4• 4 years ago

It seems like there are ways to solve the commuting problem, by moving closer to work for example, in much the same way as you say others should find a job to satisfy their in-person work requirements. But opinions aside, what is true is that remote work is not common in the vast majority of workplaces around the world - and isn't a viable option for a number of of jobs. Saying "People work differently" doesn't change that reality.

simion3142• 4 years ago

But without going into a parallel universe where you always worked remote in a fully remote team you can't actually say for sure, you are just guessing with a giant and obvious bias. On top of that what worked for you might not work for other people in other life situation and other geographic locations.

EricE11• 4 years ago

Oh I 100% know - there are a handful of spontaneous hallway conversations that started as idle chit chat and veered off in unanticipated directions that altered my career path. I can see them clearly since they were literally life changing.

None of them - not one - would have happened virtually. There would never had been a reason for me to interact with those people other than I just happened to be in the same physical time/space as them and happened to stop and chat.

It's rather silly when you try to think about it rationally - that so much should ride on random chance; but it's also life. There's millions of years of social evolution favoring in person contact and to pretend otherwise is just silly.

odessacubbage2• 4 years ago

i can only speak for myself, but work from home has genuinely been life changing as an autistic person. i also think you are right that choosing to work remotely comes at the risk of limiting opportunities, but the difference in quality of life is significant enough that i am willing to take that risk [it's not like those of us with terrible interpersonal skills were going to be making many life-changing connections irl anyway]

EricE11• 4 years ago

That is awesome! Don't get me wrong, I'm all for having the choice. What I think is crazy is people want to act like there aren't trade off's. You clearly are aware of them and for you they still overwhelmingly work in your favor - that's win-win.

If there is one positive thing from the pandemic, it did force companies that would have never entertained remote work to at least do it - and many will probably keep at least some remote work as part of their employment package. However I don't see it staying at, of all companies, Apple. Their corporate culture, desire for information control/secrecy - at this point if you are an employee of Apple and surprised they want everyone back in the office - well, that's more your problem than theirs.

saiya-jin• 4 years ago

There is more in life than just career, I'd say based on site where we are most of our careers are largely meaningless if one steps back enough.

But trying to explain this to folks who consider their office careers as pinnacle of their lives with some numbers on account to back this up are relatively high is often futile. Something about strong resistance to admitting mistakes done / direction taken in life that can't be undone.

I don't get why things need to be strictly this or that. Some way in between is almost always best. My needs may be very different from next guy's needs, but as long as we deliver what is expected who cares about the details.

Or to summarize this for those in back seats - WFH gains are not in added work productivity for most (some achieve that, mainly due to crappy offices) but what we gained for our personal lives while still able to perform enough. Its not even only about commuting, for me its 20 mins each way, but overall amount of freedom I gained is massive. Life is damn too short. Don't do decisions that you will almost guaranteed regret later. Chasing career is frequently quoted as #1 regret by dying folks.

Spooky234• 4 years ago

If you’re appealing to corporate authority, at-will employment means that being irritating to management can get you fired or perhaps blacklisted.

Barring a union contract, seeking shelter via anti-discrimination laws is the best aircover. So you shift from complaining about work conditions to complaining about conditions that do not reasonably accommodate a protected condition.

Being not “neuro-normative” is a great one to use as it feeds into tech stereotypes and is really difficult to disprove.

systemvoltage2• 4 years ago

Agree completely. There is a general malaise. It is going to create huge imbalances for people that want to work in office and together. Companies that are built from in-person collaboration will see different levels of productivity and innovation.

I say let the experiment run. It will soon become apparent.

thaway28392• 4 years ago

I honestly don't understand some of the ideas people have about remote work. Remote work may be great, but there will be challenges associated.

For example, so many people are going about saying that they should be paid the same whether they work in SF or Topeka. And the assumption is that means people in Topeka will be paid SF salaries. And that may be true for a few years while we are still inside an extremely tight labor market. However, once there is the slightest bit of slack, it's far more likely that employees in SF will be paid Topeka salaries.

A few years further it's even more likely that people in Topeka and SF will be paid Bangalore or Rio or Mexico City salaries.

If there's no benefit from being geographically co-located, then the market should drive everyone to locate themselves in the cheapest geographies possible.

Now, this may not actually be true, even in a looser labor market, and there may be other reasons that would lead to salaries across Topeka and SF remaining at SF levels, but a clear eyed discussion would start from the earlier assumption, that salaries would drop, and then justify why that wouldn't happen.

What I'm seeing instead is that everyone is assuming that salaries will rise, and then operating based entirely on that assumption, without any discussion about why this may or may not be true.

searchableguy• 4 years ago

I think what you are missing is cheaper places don't offer the same quality and standard of living.

Although this may force people to skip the overrated bubbles.

mattbrewsbytes• 4 years ago

Pay rising seems to be because of a labor shortage and if SF base pay is top of market in the US/world then other areas will incrementally move higher to attract/retain talent.

It seems like the software developer market has much more hiring activity than pre-pandemic so I don't think equalizing to the cheapest geography/salary for remote is going to happen. It appears the trend upwards with a labor shortage is more the case that "A rising tide lifts all boats" type of thing where other markets are also trending upwards.

What would be more interesting about remote work is a discussion about the labor shortage. Is it because more people are leaving for more pay and causing a ripple effect in the place they left (like a game of musical chairs)? Are there a lot more VC, therefore startups and just more open positions?

takklz• 4 years ago

For venture capital backed tech companies at least, isn't one of the largest expenses salaries? Doesn't it almost benefit companies to have more employees at a higher salary expense to bolster huge valuations?

twox2• 4 years ago

I don't think this take will age well. By all public accounts there's something like a 15%-20% engineering talent shortage in tech. That means pay will go up regardless if Topeka or SF until the current generation of engineers catch up and become hire-able.

_proofs• 4 years ago

your understanding of personal, spontanoeus, life-changing moments are viewed through a context specific lens: your behaviors, routines, and lifestyles which at the time created a specific interaction. and you seem to be recalling it with rose-colored glasses.

because then suddenly you draw a conclusion that all personal spontaneity which has life-changing implications must happen in person (and that only these kinds of interactions can be serendipitous) and must happen according to <whatever arbitrary rules you think governs (your personal, remember) interactions>.

however your lens fails to resolve the context for what it is: a set of circumstances around how you personally lived (and worked).

Nothing more, nothing less.

many moons ago i happened to accidentally click on a game server for a game i play which has quite a niche, but super competitive online gaming community (fps). i quickly found myself in a server where there were a handful of people spectating a couple of people playing. all very casually. sometimes taking turns.

i then discovered each person in the server was a professional player, who previously and currently for the time competed for money, and were to varying degrees successful. i spent the remainder of my night unexpectedly well, not playing, and just watching. hanging. getting pointers.

ultimately it led to me making some cool friends, but specifically finding a mentor -- one of them took me under their wing and taught me how to really play the game. that interaction alone pushed me to not only stick with the game and to become a better player -- which under this person's guidance was crazy because of the knowledge they possessed -- but it also left me with a life-long friend.

this friendship is one i very much so value, and it was formed totally accidentally, unexpectedly, serendipitously, and completely 100% virtual -- i have yet to meet this person, or any of the others (they are foreign) in person to this day.

that is one of many personal experiences i have had on the internet.

i have absolutely no idea how people arrive at a general conclusion that `office == only_vector_for_serendipity` other than this line of thinking being a direct consequence of drinking Steve Jobs'/Apple kool-aid (ie: designing bathroom layouts to favor random interactions), while also conflating personal experience with universal truth-ness.

that does not mean in-person interactions, random or otherwise, serve no purpose (ever work with someone who has valuable input but often self-censors? body language is hard to hide). i am just baffled as to how one can make such a sweeping statement about a thing being absolutely necessary.

stackedinserter2• 4 years ago

It will make Apple younger, whiter, more male-dominated, more neuro-normative, more able-bodied, in short

They are free to leave and enrich other companies.

zht2• 4 years ago

the same can be said for people living in States or cities where they don't agree with the current administration's policies.

should the response always be to leave? what about fighting to try to make the place you are currently in better?

stackedinserter2• 4 years ago

what about fighting to try to make the place you are currently in better?

Define "better"

Grustaf3• 4 years ago

Most of those complaining joined Apple when it was fully on-site, and very remote hostile. Even those that joined during the closure were aware of the company's stance on remote work, so what they are asking for is a favour.

BenFranklin100• 4 years ago

These WFH stories seem to preferentially solicit comments from WFH employees who enjoy the flexibility to comment on HN during the workday.

solenoidalslide4• 4 years ago

I would wager Apple employees, or in-office employees in general, tend not comment on threads like these in fear of publicly disagreeing with company leadership. So maybe there is some selection bias at play.

BaseballPhysics14• 4 years ago

LOL, I feel attacked...

chrsig3• 4 years ago

do you think that people in an office _don't_ slack off and browse HN/reddit/whatever?

At least at home I don't need to feel like there's someone standing over my shoulder.

yaya69• 4 years ago

become a drone from home or queen from home if you don't want to be a work from home

zht2• 4 years ago

I've always heard that Apple culture is secretive to the point where multiple people working on the same product can be talking about the same thing without realizing it (since each team has different codenames for the same product).

is this true?

jakenberg• 4 years ago

Apple is in a very tough spot. A $5bn headquarters sits relatively vacant with decreasing likelihood that there will be a return on investment. They ironically dug themselves into a hole by preaching how it would revolutionize the workplace while most feel this way about WFH. The paradigm shift seems obvious, especially when you account for the unrelenting rise in commercial real estate prices since Covid.

Perhaps Apple cannot acknowledge the foot in their mouth because it would contribute to a systemic collapse of the commercial real estate market... crazy times.

Tiktaalik• 4 years ago

Apple fucked themselves by embracing the status quo of silicon valley commuter car culture.

It's hard not to notice that so many of the complaints around return to work from SV area posters centre around commuting woes.

If SV cities were compact, walkable places where people could easily walk, bike and take transit to work returning to work wouldn't cause so much grief.

People are upset at the notion of a return to an hours long commute on the highway. If their commute was a 15 minute bike ride there'd be less opposition.

Apple built the wrong thing in the wrong place, and never became politically involved in trying to make life better for their employees.

dml21352• 4 years ago

While I don't think you are completely wrong, as a New Yorker I have to say that you'll find the same conversation going on here, except about the subway.

Commuting just sucks in general.

0xjmp• 4 years ago

I've worked remote on and off for 6 years. The first two years was pure bliss. I slowly started to realize that having no hobbies, partner, etc was not good for my mental health. It took about 6 months to fix that. That has been (in my experience) the only thing that would excite me enough to go into the office.

I walked to work in Los Angeles (can you believe it?) for 2 years in-between and it was great - i loved that job. It still didn't hold a candle to WFH for me. I think many have realized this same thing in recent years: it becomes very hard to want to go back for a multitude of reasons.

nottorp3• 4 years ago

Read somewhere that their famous 5Bn headquarters is also fully open plan office, as opposed to their previous buildings.

bhewes• 4 years ago

Any actual metrics on employee productivity with the full remote, full office, or hybrid model? No wonder our labor productivity has been stagnate over the last decade.

kisamoto• 4 years ago

Some people like work from home, some like being in the office.

Why force either?

But I understand it's far easier for companies to pick one and apply (especially Apple and other large companies who have invested heavily in expensive real estate that would otherwise sit empty).

wiradikusuma• 4 years ago

All these arguments against work-from-office/hybrid, not that I disagree with, but hasn't that been the case since forever, pre-Covid? I mean, how did working people live last time? How about people whose job can't be done WFH, like a surgeon or postman?

I'm almost 40, and most of my work life has been at the office (like most people who have experienced work pre-Covid). I also spent ~5 years WFH when running my small startup, although now I'm back in the corporate. In my opinion, and from asking around, what many people want is "choice". Hybrid seems to be that.

sssilver• 4 years ago

I would have run back to the office if only I was given a quiet room in there of my own, and not a public room full of distractions.

vondur• 4 years ago

The only way to get Apple to change is to have mass resignations of software developers across the company.

jwie• 4 years ago

I think a big missing dimension of the return to office campaigns of large companies is the other pressures these organizations are facing. The pressure to return to the office is not coming from management; it's coming from investors who own a bunch of commercial real estate and local political machines.

There is certainly some desire for controlling the workers. But for the most part this is about access to the cash flow commuting workers generate.

The Mayor of New York for instance has made many public declarations about everyone needing to get back to the office, but this is just one public example. Any city has these same pressures, they're simply more acute in NY. Unless you go back to the office you won't spend a ton of money you wouldn't need to otherwise. This is the crux of it.

zarkov99• 4 years ago

Of all the arguments against RTO the ones the signatories chose were racism, agism and sexism. Because everything, absolutely everything one does not like must somehow be linked back to white maleness. God, this stuff parodies itself.

chupkarkhotay• 4 years ago

If you had a heart condition and you went to a doctor with chest pain, it'd be a pretty reasonable guess that the underlying cause was the heart condition.

jnwatson• 4 years ago

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 of FAANG already. Because of their policy, they can only recruit from a narrow, already highly-paid pool of developers. I know an Apple manager that is leaving partly because he can’t recruit anyone to come work for him.

cryptonector2• 4 years ago

At Sun everyone had an office, either shared with at most two other people, or private. It was great.

bsder• 4 years ago

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.

xiphias2• 4 years ago

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.

ironman1478• 4 years ago

I just got an offer from Apple in a mixed HW/SW role (a role that I am allowed to perform remotely at my current company). They are offering me more money than my current employer, but their remote work policy is awful and their general benefits are meh (not many days off) so I am declining the offer. I know Apple would be amazing to work for especially for the team I interview for, but they are shooting themselves in the foot with these policies.

togaen• 4 years ago

Spoiled brats.

lvl102• 4 years ago

Of all the places, I actually wouldn’t mind going into Apple’s (relatively) new HQ…if I lived within 30 minutes. Otherwise, it’s a complete waste of my personal time sitting in traffic and waste of gas.

the_mar• 4 years ago

In March 2020 I hated WFH, the lack of interacting with people drove me up the wall.

Two years later, I onboarded many people on my team, figured out productive ways to collaborate remotely and developed very much real friendships with people I have never been in the same room with.

It takes effort to ensure people have a forum to ask questions, mentor people or just hang out online. But it's not impossible.

abridgett• 4 years ago

It's particularly silly when you consider the number of offices and timezones. Not only is a large amount of interaction via video call, when on site there'll be a shortage of rooms and the sound quality is usually pretty dire.

LightG3• 4 years ago

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.

Handytinge• 4 years ago

"In short, it will lead to privileges deciding who can work for Apple, not who’d be the best fit."

Doesn't forcing people to work with home lead to this more? Not everyone has an available, suitable work space at home, and those who don't or who have noisy families etc (generally less white, male, etc etc) are likely to miss opportunities they could have taken in an office.

Making this a social justice issue is a weird, speculative way to deal with this. Why bring gender and race into it, why not just argue the merits (which do seem to be in favour of remote work). Seems a silly letter to me.

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

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