next: Apple puts bunkbeds in its offices
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Employees Continue to Fight Return to Campuses and Push for Better Remote Working Options
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Getting hired on at one of the most desirable tech companies to work for in the first place would have me believe that they’re probably largely quality employees. Wanting to work from home doesn’t make them slackers anymore than wanting to go into work magically makes someone a good employee.
easily? I don’t remember typing that word so that must be your criteria. Life isn’t easy. No change like that should expected to be easy.
If you haven't worked in the jungle, you don't know what it's like in the jungle. Nothing is free except the promise that you are available 24/7 for work. Work for HQ? You support customers in Europe who schedule calls at 5am, work the usual 9 hr day and the start support China when they start work at 6PM. WFH is perfect for that type of work but is generally frowned upon.
Even if you elect to pay for the gym & other things, there is very little time to do anything. Sure, nice menus available if you can break for lunch but most likely you grab a coffee and snack and be late for the next meeting. The spaceship has some employees in it. The other office buildings are constantly being reconfigured to fit in more employees. No cube walls, no space between people, no conference rooms to use.
The pay is possibly comparable for some positions in the market but for the amount of juice squeezed out, it's not. When you calculate the $/hr 18-20 hrs days, it's laughable. However very easy to find out salary for the same position is higher for married employees, bonuses/bumps for new babies and other antiquated standards. Unofficial WFH policies do exist for parents because that is a cultural value. They do not for illness or life events. The 'culture' includes toxic work environments that are hard to extend when you don't have butts in seats at 8 am every morning under your watchful, egotistical eye.
As mentioned in previous article responses, expanded WFH policies mean the elimination of several layers of middle management who are just there to watch you.
Working in the chaos can get you caught up in driving for the goals and deliverables. There is no life outside of work - no dates, dinners, doctor appointments, workouts, Costco runs (who's run a meeting from there?), etc until you're out of it.
And the pandemic did just that. It stopped the cycle of being locked in rooms all day & night to sitting in your house and seeing the sun shine. People have been allowed to breathe and fresh air gives you perspective. There is a life to be had even in a pandemic and removing the toll of being in the office but still delivering high quality work, is much more desirable as a capable, responsible adult that got the job in the first place.
Who knows where this will land but for those who don't comply, their assignments and environment will become more difficult so there won't need to be a reason to stay.
Even if you elect to pay for the gym & other things, there is very little time to do anything. Sure, nice menus available if you can break for lunch but most likely you grab a coffee and snack and be late for the next meeting. The spaceship has some employees in it. The other office buildings are constantly being reconfigured to fit in more employees. No cube walls, no space between people, no conference rooms to use.
The pay is possibly comparable for some positions in the market but for the amount of juice squeezed out, it's not. When you calculate the $/hr 18-20 hrs days, it's laughable. However very easy to find out salary for the same position is higher for married employees, bonuses/bumps for new babies and other antiquated standards. Unofficial WFH policies do exist for parents because that is a cultural value. They do not for illness or life events. The 'culture' includes toxic work environments that are hard to extend when you don't have butts in seats at 8 am every morning under your watchful, egotistical eye.
As mentioned in previous article responses, expanded WFH policies mean the elimination of several layers of middle management who are just there to watch you.
Working in the chaos can get you caught up in driving for the goals and deliverables. There is no life outside of work - no dates, dinners, doctor appointments, workouts, Costco runs (who's run a meeting from there?), etc until you're out of it.
And the pandemic did just that. It stopped the cycle of being locked in rooms all day & night to sitting in your house and seeing the sun shine. People have been allowed to breathe and fresh air gives you perspective. There is a life to be had even in a pandemic and removing the toll of being in the office but still delivering high quality work, is much more desirable as a capable, responsible adult that got the job in the first place.
Who knows where this will land but for those who don't comply, their assignments and environment will become more difficult so there won't need to be a reason to stay.
A lot of ancient relics in here. Some of corporate America has learned absolutely nothing over the past 18 months apparently. Let’s get back to the wasteful and unnecessary commuting to an office building everyday. WFH employees kept your businesses running and profitable during the last year and a half! 
A lot of ancient relics in here. Some of corporate America has learned absolutely nothing over the past 18 months apparently. Let’s get back to the wasteful and unnecessary commuting to an office building everyday. WFH employees kept your businesses running and profitable during the last year and a half!
People keep posting comments like this in the WFH threads, and then I see them in the other threads talking about how they fell asleep during the WWDC keynote because it was such a snoozefest. Which is it?
Yes, there’s something so wrong that they can’t house all the people who want to live there…. To paraphrase Yogi Berra, “Nobody lives in Cupertino anymore, it’s too crowded.”
If you really had an argument, you’d stop intentionally biasing your numbers. It’s not a $1.6M starter home, or a $1M 1 bedroom condo. Expensive, yes, but you can’t exaggerate and hide data but somehow pretend you‘re right. What you are saying is wrong, even if your underlying point might have merit if presented honestly.
People don’t get to demand to live in a certain home in a certain zip code. You can always find work in Iowa:
Less traffic too…
The spaceship is not going to fly itself … yet. Get back to the office folks!!
How about a work-from-Apple program, where you never leave? Zero commutes. Live on one half of the campus and work on the other side. Turn empty office space into livable space. Give people who would like desks the ability to come into work when necessary.
Hello Apple Employee. You have two options. 1) come to the office to work and continue to get paid. 2) Don't.
Everyone keeps talking about their own WFH experiences like every company is the same as theirs. If it works for you and your company that's fine. But not every company is the same.
Apple has made their decision. They are doing whats best for them. The employees can do what's best for them. If that means leaving for another position that is WFH then so be it.
At the end of the day both parties will do what's in their best interest.
Apple has made their decision. They are doing whats best for them. The employees can do what's best for them. If that means leaving for another position that is WFH then so be it.
At the end of the day both parties will do what's in their best interest.
Why is it either/or? I WFH and didn’t fall asleep. But I didn’t watch it live either because well.. I was working. Had to watch it the next evening. But still didn’t fall asleep.
Sure as heck a lot of Middle Management Energy in this thread.
My employer has tried off-shoring employees and consultants several times and they’ve always backed off because the quality has always been crap.
Our IT shop is not small (several hundred) but even before COVID we’ve had trouble attracting enough IT help simply because we’re not in big tech area. I hate to see how it will be going forward.
Yeah, now that everyone knows that many of these tech jobs can be done BETTER from home, and those workers get to spend hours a day with their families that used to be spent commuting, there’s no going back.
I kind of (oddly) feel bad for the corporations, because they don’t understand the profound change that just happened, and they’re trying to return to what they KNOW, which is understandable. But that ship has sailed.
As you say, the Brain Drain will kill this attempt to turn back the clock. If Apple won’t let you work from home, Microsoft will.
Sure, but WWDC is like that since many years.
There is a reason why Schiller once said “Can’t innovate anymore my ass!“, but they still can’t innovate anymore.
Ooohhh, very interesting. Kind of like University professors who live on campus. 😁 Or… Foxconn. 😳
If your position allows you to work remotely, it may be easily filled by someone in another country, for less.
The US doesn’t have a monopoly on educated, intelligent tech workers. If your position can be 100% remote, you are replaceable.
The US doesn’t have a monopoly on educated, intelligent tech workers. If your position can be 100% remote, you are replaceable.
And older generations were generally raised to repress feelings, deny others of their rights, and "cope" with the difficulties of life through substance abuse / self-denial / [insert toxic behavior here] rather than work to fix them.
That approach really got us to a great place, right? A world literally falling apart. Kudos to younger generations for actually caring enough to speak up for individual and collective respect!
next: Apple puts bunkbeds in its offices
Given the "open offices" they insisted on installing, that little rolling chair and desk under the bunk bed might be a very peaceful place to be!
I will argue that it's still too early to conclude whether Apple kept running during the pandemic thanks to WFH, or despite it. To use an analogy, say I am able to still complete running a marathon despite not having trained for half a year. That doesn't mean that I don't need to train for a marathon ever. It just means that I am fit enough that I can go for a while without training and still maintain my peak. Any more, and the drop in performance still start to become more apparent.A lot of ancient relics in here. Some of corporate America has learned absolutely nothing over the past 18 months apparently. Let’s get back to the wasteful and unnecessary commuting to an office building everyday. WFH employees kept your businesses running and profitable during the last year and a half!
Personally, I am still of the opinion that Apple is right to be cautious when it comes to embracing a WFH paradigm, especially when its product design process relies heavily on close collaboration between all parties. I am also mindful of the various shortcomings and limitations of working from home as highlighted in this article, which is also a strong proponent of the "work 3 days in the office, 2 days at home" hybrid model.
What research says about how to make hybrid work succeed
Stanford's Nicholas Bloom says companies should adopt centralized hybrid work approaches.
www.charterworks.com
It's easy to point to companies like Facebook and Google, but they are (1) primarily in the business of software, which may lend itself better to not needing everyone to be present in a physical location and (2) we really don't know whether this arrangement will work out for them in the long run or not. For all we know, the downsides of working from home only start to manifest years down the road and by the time it's evident to the company in the form of a slower / inferior product release cycle, it's too late to put that genie back in the bottle because your workforce is now scattered all across the globe and it's not feasible for them to return to a centralised office even if they wanted to.
Sort of a hilarious quote given what a total turd in the toilet that "innovative" MacPro ended up being over the long term.
It was a completely wrong move.
Nobody really wanted that product.
Apple appeared to do no research, ask no actual customers/users...and just decided to "innovate" and make something cool looking with little regard for market fit of future upgrades to it, etc