Apple Employees Asked to Return to Offices for Three Days a Week Starting in September

[jahutch2]

Keep in mind, many companies already were allowing occasional WFH on an as-needed basis (plumber is coming, whatever). My feeling is that policy wouldn't change, so layer that on top the 3-2 hybrid model, and you've got a good bit of flexibility here. Regarding the 2 weeks -- that seems low, the culture where I work was already that people would work remotely (for example, from their family home) during holidays and such, or before and after actual vacations. That was always an informal allowance though, so Apple could be the same depending on role.

Some people seem to really want permanent WFH... or more likely, the ability to arbitrage SF Bay Area salaries into Kansas cost of living. But I think allowance for permanent WFH will be somewhat rare in large companies long term. And if they do allow it, you can bet they'll do cost of living adjustments for pay, and you can bet, humans being humans, the WFH folks will have less lateral and advancement opportunities than folks in the office.

Yes, Apple may lose some folks who hate going to the office, just like Google may lose some folks for the same reason. There are plenty of people though who don't really even like working from home, and plenty more who are ambivalent and are willing to work in an office if it means a better job and more advancement opportunity. So I really doubt long term the likes of Apple and Google will have trouble attracting talent. For some people, a thriving office culture with good perks may even be a plus as compared to other companies with remote-only or office-lite policies.

And for all the people who hate commuting -- no one forced them to live so far from work. Certainly at companies like Google and Apple, while I feel for the contractor workforce, the full time employees can afford to live close to work. They may not be able to get as big a home as they prefer, but those are tradeoffs. It drives me nuts when people move 2 hours away, then complain that the company makes them commute 2 hours every day. Hello... YOU moved there.

 

[cmaier]

Lol 😆 ! Apple paid billions for that campus and now Timmy is forcing his minions to do his bidding! Get back to work plebs! I must micromanage you to death!

hey Timmy, you want your time as ceo to end soon? Force them to come to the office and watch how many people quit.

How silly of an employer to expect employees to come to the office a few days a week. Quite unreasonable, right?

 

[9927036]

Yeah, the underground parking, meditation room, cafeteria, gym, literal park, killer benefits, there's not a damn team that could make that a bad place to work. Hell 99% of the workforce in the US would take Tim Cook personally screaming at at them everyday and still work there over where we all work currently.

Perhaps you should apply and see if you still feel the same way after a year or two.

 

[ThisBougieLife]

It's kind of funny that companies like Apple and Facebook and Google have spent millions building these massive extravagant "resort" campuses and now they're going to be hardly using them compared with what they were intended for. People who spent hours commuting and in high-pressure workplaces got a taste of what it was like without all that and they're not going to want to go back to it so easily.

 

[4jasontv]

You are going to sell your house and move every time you change your job? What about your spouse? She must change her job too? Retire already.

Ignore them. They are just trying to demonstrate the problem with unions.

 

[haruhiko]

According to Merriam-Webster dictionary:

forum
noun
fo·rum
| \ ˈfȯr-əm \
plural forums also fora \ ˈfȯr-ə \

Collegiate Definition​

• a: the marketplace or public place of an ancient Roman city forming the center of judicial and public business
• b: a public meeting place for open discussion
  The club provides a forum for people interested in local history.

So everyone should go back to that public place to continue your discussion. How come people are ‘discussing from home’? It’s not the norm. MR forums should be closed down. If you want to discuss, you go to that public place! Simple!

😂😂😂

 

[Abazigal]

Lol 2 weeks work from anywhere? Isn’t google offering 4 weeks of the same thing? And Facebook is allowing full remote.

apple is lagging behind.

This is one of the many areas I am happy to let the competition have the lead.

Like I said, I am not convinced that WFH'ing will work out well for the company in the long run and if everything being able to meet in person to collaborate on products is what will result in the best products by Apple, then I see little reason to allow employees to continue working from home any longer than they absolutely have to just because.

If Facebook is able to redesign its corporate structure to thrive under a WFH paradigm, good for them. I don't think it will work for Apple, and I see no reason why Apple has to match the competition in this regard. Let each company do what ultimately works best for them, and the consumer benefits from a better product design process and better products overall.

 

[Isengardtom]

It’s mostly been the other way around for me. We’re still not allowed to go into the office here in Belgium but in my company they made an exception for me as I live in a small flat and it’s not ideal to work from. No air conditioning for example (not very common here in homes). I take my electric scooter to work so its about 20-25 min one way which is perfect. I like they way of commuting so much I’m getting rid of my company car, take the salary increase instead and take a car share for when I really need a car.

For me personally, If I can focus on something that has to be finished, then I can be very productive from home, but otherwise I get distracted easily And then I compensate that with working ridiculous hours (like until 22h or something)

 

[PlutoMac]

Makes sense for a company like Apple, which relies heavily on close collaboration between various departments for its products. Most companies are not built to succeed with the decentralised employee structure found when work is done at home, and Apple isn't one of them either.

I am also not convinced that WFH is all it's cracked up to be. I am still a firm believer of face to face communication, and I find that for many people, there are just too many distractions at home. As a teacher, I too enjoy being able to wake up later, not needing to commute to work (though I live like 15 minutes walk from school), and being able to zoom on my iMac (some of my colleagues are already facing screen burnout issues on their work laptops from excessive zooming). But home-based learning hasn't really been all that effective for the students, and I am under no illusion that I will have a fair amount of catching up to do when we go back to school.

But I still find it easier to meet up with my superiors in school to discuss workplans and ideas, which I find to be easier than trying to coordinate things over zoom or FaceTime (which I did too, but by then, the agenda was already like 90% done and we were just touching up the final details).

To the people who feel that they are getting alone fine WFH'ing, I would say to look at the overall bigger picture. It's not just about how much code you can churn out when left to your own devices. It's about a decline in the product innovation process, brought about by a decline in team communication and idea exchange, which may in turn lead to subpar products and services. In the end, it's the company and the consumer who suffers ultimately.

Such a phenomenon will probably take a few years to manifest; the ramifications won't be apparent right away, but that doesn't mean harm hasn't already been done. Just like when you get sweet drinks, you don't start getting diabetes right away. And some even claim that the immediate sugar rush helped them clock better timings in their runs.

I believe that in time and with hindsight, this whole work from home phenomenon will end up proving to be a head fake that was more about combatting the pandemic than it is about a dramatic revolution in the way the corporate world does business.

That is such a well crafted outline about the WFH crowd. I have several California State Employee friends who have been "working from home" for the past 15 months. with full pay and benefits, and they are LOVING it. They freely admit (to me) that they are about 20% efficient in their workload, but their homes and landscaping and other home related chores and projects are 100% IMPROVED. They just hang around and check in a couple of times during the day or make sure they are available to answer a phone call, without interrupting something special on television or Netflix or Hulu or Youtube or................They are not returning to their respective offices right away because their Labor Unions are quite strong and demanding the right to "work from home" due to the COVID Pandemic. Yet every business they deal with has their employees there at all times, such as grocery stores, drug stores, home improvement stores, "big box" stores, medical and dental offices, take-out restaurants and fast food, gas stations, banks, post office, Fed-Ex, etc., etc. This game has to end and people either get back to work or become unemployed and let others have their jobs. The COVID scare is no longer an excuse, anyone wanting to be vaccinated has already done so. It is time to get back to work, period.

 

[magicschoolbus]

in my company if your not doing your job, it is well known your not. Everyone does their part. We actually launched the entire business remote And have been operating ever since. I’m proud of my team. we will go back into the office soon but we will have flexible schedules. if You can only work in the office until 1 amd have to leave to finish up from home who cares?

 

[PlutoMac]

My company tracks metrics. When we went home, all of our metrics went up, most significantly, and the worst of the metrics staying pretty much the same. My CEO is talking about "When we return to work", and "When we all come back into the office", but the director of my division has already told us that as long as our numbers remain where they are, he sees no reason for us to ever come back to the office.

And for the record, I do watch Netflix while I work. And keep Amphetamine running so I always show as "online". Why wouldn't I? And how else would I manage my midday nap? It sure beats hitting the wall at 3pm and goofing off until 5.

Maybe you should just be let go so someone who wants to WORK and be PRODUCTIVE and contribute to the company or organization's SUCCESS can fill the void you have created. I guess that is human nature but the new Work From Home crowd has soundly established yet another form of WELFARE that the rest of us are paying for. Either go back to work or quit and let someone else take your handout job. You must have no PRIDE or SELF ESTEEM.

 

[Hog Milanese]

I guess they don’t care that much about sustainability and the environment. Apple is just another mega corporation with Boomer-era policies. This will cost them when competing with more forward-thinking businesses.

 

[fishkorp]

The companies who still don’t get it even after the pandemic will be losing their best talent, and they won’t even know what hit them.

No they won’t. Because all of the companies with the best talent and hiring the best talent are all doing the same thing. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc are all sending developers back to offices at least part time. People aren’t going to quite those jobs to work for some random dev shop. Most of the time the overall compensation package won’t even come close.

Part of it is a power move by the companies, but part of it comes down to money. They’re paying a lot of money for empty buildings all over the world, some with very long term leases. They’ll be damn sure butts are in seats.

(literal question asked to me in the 2nd round of my interview with AWS: “we’re still 100% remote for now, but will eventually be going back at least a few days a week. With that said, any preference to where in the world you’d like to work and live?”)

 

[dukebound85]

Maybe you should just be let go so someone who wants to WORK and be PRODUCTIVE and contribute to the company or organization's SUCCESS can fill the void you have created. I guess that is human nature but the new Work From Home crowd has soundly established yet another form of WELFARE that the rest of us are paying for. Either go back to work or quit and let someone else take your handout job. You must have no PRIDE or SELF ESTEEM.

now what if I am more productive working from home? your argument falls apart.

Pros from working at home as opposed to office:
-more productive
-less time "wasted" by commuting and more time in your day that isn't "unpaid work time"
-greener by not driving pointless miles
-mental health
-better food
-more flexibility dealing with "life"...ie needing to be home for a delivery, etc

Pros for working at office as opposed to home:
-meeting people in office face to face when needed
-leaving work at work
-can't really think of any other "pros"

This is why a hybrid model is ideal imo

 

[Isengardtom]

Maybe you should just be let go so someone who wants to WORK and be PRODUCTIVE and contribute to the company or organization's SUCCESS can fill the void you have created. I guess that is human nature but the new Work From Home crowd has soundly established yet another form of WELFARE that the rest of us are paying for. Either go back to work or quit and let someone else take your handout job. You must have no PRIDE or SELF ESTEEM.

Ultimately it’s about being flexible as an employer and being flexible as an employee.

And probably the best is some sort of balance between the two
I’m not a big believer in a 100% WFH except when you have a job that doesn’t involve much team cooperation. But I’m also sure that the occasional switch makes people more productive.

 

[Schismz]

This is one of the many areas I am happy to let the competition have the lead.

Like I said, I am not convinced that WFH'ing will work out well for the company in the long run and if everything being able to meet in person to collaborate on products is what will result in the best products by Apple, then I see little reason to allow employees to continue working from home any longer than they absolutely have to just because.

If Facebook is able to redesign its corporate structure to thrive under a WFH paradigm, good for them. I don't think it will work for Apple, and I see no reason why Apple has to match the competition in this regard. Let each company do what ultimately works best for them, and the consumer benefits from a better product design process and better products overall.

I think it depends a lot upon what you actually do at Apple. Their software engineering workforce has been largely work from home for many, many years (we're talking 15+). Probably 2/3rds of developers at Apple, aren't actually anywhere near Cupertino, the Mothership or Infinite Loop.

Apple's WFH experiment started in the late 90s/early 2000s when multiple key people became Apple millionaires (or 10s of millionaires), and just quit. "Going on permanent vacation, moving to the mountains, bye!" followed by, "OMG you can't quit! We'll pay you <some insane amount of cash + stock + options> and just work remotely!" ... and that turned out to work really well.

Apple uses FaceTime group checkins (which are sync'd for PT, so you have to wake up by noon on the east coast).

This isn't hardware engineering, and doubtlessly doesn't work great for everything, but for software development this has been how Apple functions for a very long time. Their offices in NYC aren't even "real" they're just rented space in someone else's building which is almost entirely empty most of the time and fills up mostly with salespeople for corporate accounts.

 

[Macaholic868]

It’s funny how ppl claim they are much more productive working from home…keep telling yourself that after you attend your one 30 minute meeting in the morning and then binge watch Netflix all day and occasionally tap your keyboard for “presence”

It’s funny how you are unaware that any company can track how often and in what ways you’re using company resources. They can do it when you’re in the office or accessing company resources remotely.

Here’s a funny idea. It’s called productivity. If you’re just as productive or more so from home and your job doesn’t require you to be there face to face all the time then maybe remote work should be allowed if you want to get the best employees on the market.

It’s ultimately up to the employer in terms of what they want to offer yet an employee isn’t a slave. As such an employee can also decide when they work, how they work and what they work for. It’s an agreement between two parties. Simple isn’t it?

Sure what an employee wants might not match reality but in a fair labor market what an employer wants might not match reality either.

It’s funny to read opinions like yours then juxtapose them against articles where employers are now whining about not having enough employees to work for what they are offering. Perhaps some of that deficiency is on their end? Maybe, just maybe, a fair labor market works both ways? Offer peanuts and you don’t get good employees. Offer fair market value and you do. Shocking I know.

 

[fishkorp]

Yeah, the underground parking, meditation room, cafeteria, gym, literal park, killer benefits, there's not a damn team that could make that a bad place to work. Hell 99% of the workforce in the US would take Tim Cook personally screaming at at them everyday and still work there over where we all work currently.

All of your responses about this make it very clear you’ve never worked in that type of environment. They have to provide those things to entice you to stay there and keep working. You don’t need to go home if campus has everything you need. The mental toll and stress put on developers at companies like that isn’t worth the campus perks to many people. Sanity and personal well being is way more important than having gourmet lunches and a world class gym. And if you’re good enough to make it through their screening and interview process, you’re good enough for just about anyone else (all the big dogs use similar processes and sometimes even have overlapping coding questions). Personally, I’d never, ever work at a campus like that. I don’t care what they paid me.

 

[jonnyb098]

That is such a well crafted outline about the WFH crowd. I have several California State Employee friends who have been "working from home" for the past 15 months. with full pay and benefits, and they are LOVING it. They freely admit (to me) that they are about 20% efficient in their workload, but their homes and landscaping and other home related chores and projects are 100% IMPROVED. They just hang around and check in a couple of times during the day or make sure they are available to answer a phone call, without interrupting something special on television or Netflix or Hulu or Youtube or................They are not returning to their respective offices right away because their Labor Unions are quite strong and demanding the right to "work from home" due to the COVID Pandemic. Yet every business they deal with has their employees there at all times, such as grocery stores, drug stores, home improvement stores, "big box" stores, medical and dental offices, take-out restaurants and fast food, gas stations, banks, post office, Fed-Ex, etc., etc. This game has to end and people either get back to work or become unemployed and let others have their jobs. The COVID scare is no longer an excuse, anyone wanting to be vaccinated has already done so. It is time to get back to work, period.

Exactly this…..people are more productive …..WITH THEIR PERSONAL STUFF. Like teaching their kids, taking an afternoon walk and morning run to Starbucks for breakfast. How productive. It’s a load of BS.

These same people are sending emails at 11pm because they get nothing done during normal working hours for their jobs. Pretty hilarious too since people complain about living at their jobs yet now want to…….live at their job.

 

[TehFalcon]

Perhaps you should apply and see if you still feel the same way after a year or two.

What a joke. Apple is in the top 50 best places to work at. Do you realize the workplaces most people work in? A harsh/hard to work in environment.

 

[Cycom]

I do have to say that it highly amusing seeing all the wfh grovelers trying to convince its better. Ehh, no. It is great for the cowardly, though.

 

[TehFalcon]

It's kind of funny that companies like Apple and Facebook and Google have spent millions building these massive extravagant "resort" campuses and now they're going to be hardly using them compared with what they were intended for. People who spent hours commuting and in high-pressure workplaces got a taste of what it was like without all that and they're not going to want to go back to it so easily.

You wouldn’t want to go back to that? You’d rather sit at home all day, goto bed, and repeat? I suppose you doordash, and get your groceries delivered too so you don’t have to leave the house ever again?

come on people

 

[fishkorp]

Exactly this…..people are more productive …..WITH THEIR PERSONAL STUFF. Like teaching their kids, taking an afternoon walk and morning run to Starbucks for breakfast. How productive. It’s a load of BS.

These same people are sending emails at 11pm because they get nothing done during normal working hours for their jobs. Pretty hilarious too since people complain about living at their jobs yet now want to…….live at their job.

But what if that’s literally all they have to do for their job? Why is it wrong to work other things in between your work tasks? The flexibility is a perk of WFH? Here’s a perfect, real life example. My neighbor works help desk for a company. When she was in the office she’d respond to tickets if there were any. Of there were no tickets, she’d literally sit and do nothing. Sometimes for hours. Because the company network banned social media, YouTube, streaming music sites, etc. she’d get paid to sit and stare at her screen, doing nothing. Now, since working from home, she’ll answer tickets and if the queue is empty, she’ll work in the yard, run errands, play with her kids, etc. if a ticket comes in, she gets a notification on her phone and gets to it. A job like that has ZERO reason to ever have to go back to an office. It’s very obvious to management if she’s doing her job, because tickets get done or not. I’m n fact, she is “more productive” now because she can respond to 8:00pm tickets when submitted if she wants. Whereas before it had to wait until someone was in the office the next morning.

It is not one size fits all. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with people doing other things during the day, as long as they get their work done. I took my first WFH job 3 years ago after my kid was born. The primary reason was the hours were “we don’t care, just get your work done.” So I spent chunks of each day with him and my wife, then I’d work more after he’d go to bed. Some of my most productive work happened between 10pm and 2 am.

 

[jonnyb098]

Why would you assume people are less productive at home? That sounds more like a personal issue with being productive and less of an issue with remote workers.

Because we hear their screaming children in the background. Talk about workplace distractions! Also the amount of time wasted saying “sorry i was on mute” or “ can you see my screen” over the last year cost about 2 full weeks of productivity.

Now all that aside, yes some are more productive at home. And others are getting essentially paid to be babysitters for their children.

The amount of privilege on this thread is even more ironic given that your morning Starbucks latte requires in person work.

 

[TehFalcon]

All of your responses about this make it very clear you’ve never worked in that type of environment. They have to provide those things to entice you to stay there and keep working. You don’t need to go home if campus has everything you need. The mental toll and stress put on developers at companies like that isn’t worth the campus perks to many people. Sanity and personal well being is way more important than having gourmet lunches and a world class gym. And if you’re good enough to make it through their screening and interview process, you’re good enough for just about anyone else (all the big dogs use similar processes and sometimes even have overlapping coding questions). Personally, I’d never, ever work at a campus like that. I don’t care what they paid me.

I work in the complete opposite of what the Apple campus experience would be like.
Again, responses like this just show how ungrateful and spoiled people have become. Let’s never leave our houses, it’s better for us all! What a joke