Why? Tim is following the guidance. Major companies are starting a return to office. While the pandemic isn’t over, not by a long shot, there is a push to balance safety with return to normalcy.
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Apple Employees Expected to Return to Offices in February
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The company I work for does this. We have about 80 employees and only one is working in the office (and that is because his wife works from home and their condo isn't big enough for two home offices). We shut down 3 of our 4 office locations and have one small office now with a conference room that sits almost empty all the time. We are recruiting and only looking for remote employees now.
You must be new. I have had FAR GREATER issues while Apple workers were in the office years ago than the last two years.
That’s not entirely true. I applied for a remote work position at Apple years ago. They do support remote work.
At my company, we are currently having an hybrid approach, some teams like mine come to the office 3 days per week, other 2. I think it is a reasonable compromise, although I'd reduce the days at office in winter as it is the time of the year when people are more likely to get a cold/flu, so less people having to move via public transportation would be better.
The only downside of the hybrid approach is that you need to live nearby the office, you have less day of commute each week but you can't relocate to a different region/state. Maybe you can have a little longer commute since is less frequent and you can find a better place to live, but being full remote is a different story.
Full remote has its downside as well, once your company can hire people from all over the world, it will be able to find candidates that can accept a low salary. It doesn't apply to all jobs of course, but for example many EU companies have their call center located in easter EU countries, or even in north Africa. It is just people answering to the phone, as long as they can speak English or another european language they can receive training and replace more expensive people to do the same job. I can see more jobs being moved abroad if they can be performed remotely.
The only downside of the hybrid approach is that you need to live nearby the office, you have less day of commute each week but you can't relocate to a different region/state. Maybe you can have a little longer commute since is less frequent and you can find a better place to live, but being full remote is a different story.
Full remote has its downside as well, once your company can hire people from all over the world, it will be able to find candidates that can accept a low salary. It doesn't apply to all jobs of course, but for example many EU companies have their call center located in easter EU countries, or even in north Africa. It is just people answering to the phone, as long as they can speak English or another european language they can receive training and replace more expensive people to do the same job. I can see more jobs being moved abroad if they can be performed remotely.
Yep we are seeing things all over the US. Things have essentially “opened up” to the point where I am able to get jobs in any state now way more easily than before.
And every single person at Apple Campus is all product design?
So Snow Leopard, Lion, Yosemite, Mojave, and Catalina issues are all due to work from home right?
Here’s to hoping this push to the suburbs holds.
SF has been reasonable in the last two years; regardless of the narrative being pushed on Fox News.
On second thought…
Apple employees. Take it from me. You do not want to move back here.
If you must, welcome back, and good news!
Timmy says you now only have to suffer with crappy commute shuttle Wi-Fi for three days a week!*
(That’s 4-6 hours time saved and 200 fewer shuttle miles sitting on the I-280 parking lot per week.)
Should still provide you ample time to plan your not-mandatory-but-mandatory Monday-Saturday 10 hour workdays, when you do ride in.
Oh, you say you bought a Tesla with autopilot and now you don’t have to take the shuttle? Fancy you! Hopefully Tesla’s QA Org hasn’t been asleep at the wheel, no pun intended, like some Santa Clara Valley companies have.
*but actually 6 days for most of you. You can thank iPhone-4-left-in-a-bar guy for that.
In my personal experience, collaboration is vastly overrated. Collaboration often means 3-4 useless people hanging out with 1-2 people doing the actual work.
If only Apple knew a hard- and software engineering company with some experience in messaging systems that could help them develop a bespoke solution...
False. You’ve clearly never worked in an environment with high level trade secrets and/or “top secret” level information.
Also, the ocean of software leaks the last year have absolutely not come out of the Asian supply base. This is the basic difference between hardware vs. software.
Apple stock hits all time high and record revenues. Who f cares where their employees work so long as their happy.
I suspect people will complain for a month or so and then it will stop. And if they want to move someplace else it is easier to do with a company relocation paying for temp housing, rental car, real estate assistance, etc. Apple has many offices in many places and campuses outside the Silicon Valley.
Also, out of sight is still out of mind at most companies. So if you want to move up you need to be seen and have face-to-face, not just virtual interactions.
Also, out of sight is still out of mind at most companies. So if you want to move up you need to be seen and have face-to-face, not just virtual interactions.
In my experience, people hang out at other’s cubicles talking about movies or sports leading to me being distracted sitting right next to that cubicle trying to do my work.
What crappy company do you work for?
That’s a sign of bad employees not work from home lol
Darth Tulhu
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I think that the biggest issue here is that blanket statements (that end up becoming policy due to PERSONAL bias) of "WFH is bad" or "WFH is the only way it should be" by Managers and Executives just don't make ANY sense.
You cannot apply the same paradigm to the entire company.
Some positions NECESSITATE in-person activities and/or collaboration. I cannot use the on-site labs from home.
Some thrive on it, even if it can be done remotely (as the last TWO YEARS have proven), like meetings, brainstorms, etc.
Other positions don't need in-person work AT ALL (like some software development/deployment, maintenance, etc).
Companies today need to start to take a good, hard look at the pros and cons of EACH scenario (or department) and see WFH as what it really is: an opportunity to reduce costs, increase morale and retention, and even reduce the impact we have on the environment, instead of falling back on Boomer-ish sentiments like: "Well, that's the way it was in my day" and "It's always been done this way, so suck it up, Snowflakes..."
You cannot apply the same paradigm to the entire company.
Some positions NECESSITATE in-person activities and/or collaboration. I cannot use the on-site labs from home.
Some thrive on it, even if it can be done remotely (as the last TWO YEARS have proven), like meetings, brainstorms, etc.
Other positions don't need in-person work AT ALL (like some software development/deployment, maintenance, etc).
Companies today need to start to take a good, hard look at the pros and cons of EACH scenario (or department) and see WFH as what it really is: an opportunity to reduce costs, increase morale and retention, and even reduce the impact we have on the environment, instead of falling back on Boomer-ish sentiments like: "Well, that's the way it was in my day" and "It's always been done this way, so suck it up, Snowflakes..."
I cannot express how much WEIRD is a company, that praises so much technology, rely on such an old way to work. Apple worked fine with all employees in remote locations. There was no increase in leaks or security compromise, nothing. Just give people more freedom to choose where to live. I guess its because they wasted billions in a office that has no purpose in a post-pandemic world.
if they managed to work an entire year remotely how can they "necessitate" that?