Apple Employees Continue to Fight Return to Campuses and Push for Better Remote Working Options

[E-MO-TION]

do people not see that if they get apple to bend a very important precedent will be set? remote is the future and studies have literally proved it to increase productivity, plus it is better for us workers to have a choice. we can be jealous of their cushy jobs under apple but this fight is a fight for workers, one that should be taking place in every major company. in-person collaboration being essential is a myth tied to old tradition. it's time to adapt.

 

[Steve Adams]

My wife signed her agreement for working from home a month ago. She's in her nice office at home, comfortable, quiet (unless I am there) and enjoying it. I have my office in another area of the home where I do all my work and it's great.

 

[arvinsim]

How about Apple let anyone who wants to WFH stay at home and use that to develop useful features for WFH for the next WWDC?

 

[Steve Adams]

How about Apple let anyone who wants to WFH stay at home and use that to develop useful features for WFH for the next WWDC?

That means apple loses face, that won't happen. They are only the happy rainbow sunshine and baby farts company when they want you to enter their ecosystem. They are actually not that at all! That would be the logical thing to do however, but it won't happen.

 

[Abazigal]

Most if not all those employees are smarter than you. They will move on for better opportunities whereas you have no choice but to return to work….heck I’m sure you’re lucky you even have a job right? Anyone who got hired at Apple can work anywhere else. This pandemic change peoples view on life…..and lifestyle.

To each their own.

 

[ruka.snow]

I wonder how many people here know how developers work. You can Slack me in the office sitting next to me or you can Slack me from the comfort of your own home office. Ether way, you are not and will never get to speak to me directly when it is more efficient to Slack me. You will not speak to another developer verbally, the headphones on everyone in the office is no for show. You may be able to engage in conversation with another developer in the kitchen when you are getting tea and biscuits if they do not have their headphones on.

This is the normal from Scotland, to mainland Europe, Japan, and undoubtedly the USA as well. Why on earth do people think that working in an office is going to result in better code than working from home? We'll Slack or Team's each other regardless, but at least at home there is less chance of disturbing others.

 

[ReddJive]

Apple didn't build that spaceship for it to sit empty. Actually, many large companies are facing the same dilemma. They have all these huge campuses and EEs are working from home very successfully. Also, since EEs can/are allowed to work from home, they are taking their Bay Area salary to lower cost of living states elsewhere.

This definitely happened in my industry. They discovered employees sold their homes and moved to either their summer homes in other states or hours away from the city. Some even bought new homes.

 

[swester]

Employer: Here are the job requirements, do you agree and want this job?

Candidate: Yes please! And thank you! Yay! I get to work for an awesome company!

later…

Company: It’s time to start transitioning back to the original agreement.

Candidate/now employee: I don’t like the original agreement anymore. You temporarily modified it for necessary reasons, and although you told me it was temporary and expect the modification to end and go back to initial employment agreement, you need to change the modification to a permanent one because it suits me better. AND I’LL SCREAM LOUDER THAN YOU AND THROW A TANTRUM UNTIL I GET MY WAY!!!!

Have you ever gotten a raise at your job? Or transitioned to a different role at your company? Or asked for anything, ever, that wasn't exactly as originally stated in your contract?

Maybe not - you're probably just happy to have a job. But believe it or not, there are smarter, highly successful people out there who know how to improve their own standing by actually asking and not accepting "no" for answer after the first time. And guess what? Good companies actually listen!

 

[rpmurray]

Wanting to work from home doesn’t make them slackers anymore than wanting to go into work magically makes someone a good employee.

Wanting your employees to come into work doesn't make you a villain any more than wanting to work from home makes you a good employee.

 

[TonyC28]

I have to re-think my opinion here. My employer just sent out a flex work policy. My industry is VERY old fashioned and resistant to change. So seeing that makes me think maybe employers are listening and know what they need to do to keep talent. Perhaps this change will happen faster than I thought.

 

[urnotl33t]

Apple didn't build that spaceship for it to sit empty. Actually, many large companies are facing the same dilemma. They have all these huge campuses and EEs are working from home very successfully. Also, since EEs can/are allowed to work from home, they are taking their Bay Area salary to lower cost of living states elsewhere.

yep, and that will shift/spread the higher cost of living to wherever the higher earners go. Not entirely solving the problem.

 

[ruka.snow]

I have to re-think my opinion here. My employer just sent out a flex work policy. My industry is VERY old fashioned and resistant to change. So seeing that makes me think maybe employers are listening and know what they need to do to keep talent. Perhaps this change will happen faster than I thought.

It is not just about retaining employees. It helps them push environmental issues. You can’t be a forward thinking company that wants to reduce environmental impact and also have thousand of cars taking your employees into a huge purpose built building that requires an army of cleaners and suppliers.

 

[urnotl33t]

What did these people do before covid? It’s not like California housing prices just shot up in the last year. And why are they leaking this to the press? That doesn’t seem like a very good way to get Apple leadership to listen to their complaints. 🤷‍♀️

Well, prices DID "just shoot up in the past year". That's part of the problem. Press-leaking isn't wise, but it is an attempt at leverage to force the issue, to which Apple will not respond or will respond poorly (for those folks).

 

[pdoherty]

People think that Indians are geniuses in the entire IT world, but that's actually not the case. For the most part, software development is a joke in India. There's little to no originality, and mostly just plagiarism. There's no way that'd fly with Apple. Software engineers in India usually do crappy tech support work, or help desk jobs, but that's about it. If they get lucky, they get an H1B visa to do quality assurance testing. However, at my previous workplace, HR found out that most of them lied about work experience on their resume.

Yep - tired of seeing the “watch out - you work remote that means they can send your job to India” posts. Everyone who’s been paying attention knows that offshoring has been occurring where it could since the mid-1990s. There’s a reason those jobs still in the USA are still there and weren’t offshored already.

As you say, India doesn’t have a very good record when it comes to skill and education. For one, their colleges have no accreditation system, so literally anyone who wants to can open one and start granting degrees of dubious value.

Aspiring Minds reported on a study a few years ago and found that 80% of Indian engineering graduates weren’t fit to be hired…. for any IT job.

Over 80% Indian engineers are unemployable, lack new-age technology skills: Report

A recent employability report has found that over 80 percent of engineers in India are unemployable as they lack the technological skills required by employers now.

www.indiatoday.in

“The report stated that only 3.84 percent of engineers in the country have the technical, cognitive and linguistic skills required for software-related jobs in start-ups.”

A staggering 80% of engineers in India are unemployable: Report | Business Insider India

According to the report, Indian engineers still lag the relevant digital skills that companies nowadays are looking to hire forThis includes advanced tech skills such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science and wireless technologies among others Merely 2. 5 of engineers in...

www.businessinsider.in

“The ‘National Employability Report for Engineers 2019’ put out by a job assessment platform Aspiring Minds, has shown that over 80% of engineers in India are unfit to take up any job in the knowledge economy.
According to the report, Indian engineers still lag the relevant digital skills that companies nowadays are looking to hire for. This includes advanced tech skills such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science and wireless technologies among others. Merely 2.5% of engineers in India possess skills in artificial intelligence while only a handful of engineers (5.5%) are qualified with basic programming, the report assessed.”

 

[Ethosik]

As a former employee, I can tell you from experience that questions including “having reliable transportation or other commuting methods,” and “are there things that would prevent you from coming to the office,” are in the application/interview process. They are in fact job requirements.

Not for all jobs. You typically don’t see these for software development jobs or engineer jobs in general as these are salary, need to work nights and weekends if you get called.

 

[ruka.snow]

As a former employee, I can tell you from experience that questions including “having reliable transportation or other commuting methods,” and “are there things that would prevent you from coming to the office,” are in the application/interview process. They are in fact job requirements.

Never once seen such questions in an interview process. And in over a hundred interviews when growing my team, I have never asked these questions. I care if you are in the same timezone as me, that you can attend meetings on Slack, and that you are a developer. If you are a developer that needs me to hold your hand in an office and look over your back then you are better off going to one of those places that kick out a hundred websites a month.

 

[Ethosik]

Yep - tired of seeing the “watch out - you work remote that means they can send your job to India” posts. Everyone who’s been paying attention knows that offshoring has been occurring where it could since the mid-1990s. There’s a reason those jobs still in the USA are still there and weren’t offshored already.

As you say, India doesn’t have a very good record when it comes to skill and education. For one, their colleges have no accreditation system, so literally anyone who wants to can open one and start granting degrees of dubious value.

Aspiring Minds reported on a study a few years ago and found that 80% of Indian engineering graduates weren’t fit to be hired…. for any IT job.

Over 80% Indian engineers are unemployable, lack new-age technology skills: Report

A recent employability report has found that over 80 percent of engineers in India are unemployable as they lack the technological skills required by employers now.

www.indiatoday.in

“The report stated that only 3.84 percent of engineers in the country have the technical, cognitive and linguistic skills required for software-related jobs in start-ups.”

A staggering 80% of engineers in India are unemployable: Report | Business Insider India

According to the report, Indian engineers still lag the relevant digital skills that companies nowadays are looking to hire forThis includes advanced tech skills such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science and wireless technologies among others Merely 2. 5 of engineers in...

www.businessinsider.in

“The ‘National Employability Report for Engineers 2019’ put out by a job assessment platform Aspiring Minds, has shown that over 80% of engineers in India are unfit to take up any job in the knowledge economy.
According to the report, Indian engineers still lag the relevant digital skills that companies nowadays are looking to hire for. This includes advanced tech skills such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science and wireless technologies among others. Merely 2.5% of engineers in India possess skills in artificial intelligence while only a handful of engineers (5.5%) are qualified with basic programming, the report assessed.”

Also, companies that rely too much on India are suffering now. A certain company I know 5 people working there, they are FORCING all US workers to work overtime because of India’s COVID issues. This has been forced for a FULL YEAR. I do NOT agree with this. I’m an engineer, I get paged and work nights and weekends, but there is still that work/life balance. If I work 8 hours on Sunday due to a call, I can take Monday off.

 

[Blackstick]

Bunch of average people here, *myself in that average group too*, thinking that the usual rules of business apply to the smartest technology workers on the planet. They simply don't. Apple isn't Burger King or Foot Locker... there's not 10,000 people ready to step in and do the work, they simply can't.

Remember, there are people at Apple who are inventing new power management schemes and battery technologies, and creating new programming languages. As a recruiter, you simply won't find their counterpart on LinkedIn who can just fill in and come with their own terms, which might include twice the salary, and working full-time from their beach home in Hawaii. In short, lose a dedicated employee, lose years of highly specific, esoteric knowledge that they'll share with their next employer.

In many cases these are the best people in their field, or they'd not be at Apple. They'll take all the secret sauce they know to a competitor, and Apple (and us as their customers) will ultimately lose because of it.

Flexibility matters in a post Covid world. Things have changed; the rules have changed.

There are plenty of jobs at Apple where there's less than 50 people on earth who can capably do the job. Most of them will want more money than the current engineer, and won't want to move to Cupertino.

This isn't just a typical Business Analyst or Project Manager position where people are easily replaced by whatever college grad.

 

[Blackstick]

What these kiddos need to realize, is that the workplace isn’t a democracy, and that they are not special or unique, despite what their mommies and teachers led them to believe as children.

Spoken like my grandfather. This isn't a factory production line... there's a half dozen people who can replace some of these highly specific, key employees - and they're smart enough to know it.

You and I have no leverage. A lot of Apple employees are actively pursued in the Valley and can be employed the very next day at a competitor, sharing all of Apple's secret sauce.

 

[tgara]

I’ve been warning people for 16 months now: If you can work from home, then someone else can do your job from Budapest or Bangalore. The WFH zealots are playing with fire.

This exactly. The Worker Rights folks here have to realize that everyone is replaceable. Everyone. If the disgruntled employees want to work from home, let them quit and work for another company. Apple will replace them. They are not as valuable as they (or some people here) think.

 

[tgara]

I wonder how many people here know how developers work. You can Slack me in the office sitting next to me or you can Slack me from the comfort of your own home office. Ether way, you are not and will never get to speak to me directly when it is more efficient to Slack me. You will not speak to another developer verbally, the headphones on everyone in the office is no for show. You may be able to engage in conversation with another developer in the kitchen when you are getting tea and biscuits if they do not have their headphones on.

This is the normal from Scotland, to mainland Europe, Japan, and undoubtedly the USA as well. Why on earth do people think that working in an office is going to result in better code than working from home? We'll Slack or Team's each other regardless, but at least at home there is less chance of disturbing others.

How do you know the people complaining are all developers? Like someone mentioned earlier, Apple hires a lot more people than just developers. Lots of folks in HR, accounting, marketing, legal, etc.

 

[Runs For Fun]

Man, so many people seem to not understand that not every position needs to be in the office. Yes there are some jobs that are difficult to do remotely and need in office time, but there are also jobs that can be done remotely just as effectively as in the office. Having a blanket "everyone needs to be in the office" policy is just stupid.

 

[ruka.snow]

How do you know the people complaining are all developers? Like someone mentioned earlier, Apple hires a lot more people than just developers. Lots of folks in HR, accounting, marketing, legal, etc.

All people that can all work from home and be more productive at home. People that can't work from home wont be asking to work from home. A lot of workers and companies have woken up and realised that working in an office is a stupid idea now that we have fast home internet connections, secure VPN, remote machines, and no productivity losses.

 

[djstile]

Time to get back to work or get a new job. As we always hear these days, they are a private company - they can do whatever they want!

 

[I7guy]

[…], and no productivity losses.

There are a number of companies who are recalling workers to the office (albeit some with a hybrid environment). Certainly some of them see productivity losses at their respective companies.