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Apple Employees Reportedly Petitioning Against Plan to Return to Office 3x Per Week
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Seriously, if you want to work from home, start your own company, make your income reliant on your own self, and see if the hours suit you for the compensation. Otherwise, respect the wishes of the employer whose terms you agreed to when you were hired. And yes, Seek3r, labor DOES sometimes have valid grievances…but these particular WFH ones are whiny baby grievances and dilute the entire point of organized labor.
I get that it's discussion, i guess i'm just surprised that if someone got a right to work from home and they want to hold on to it, how many people, unrelated to anything want to take it away even though it's not their company, not their employees and sure as hell not people they know. That's the point i'm trying to make. Americans want to make all other American lives as miserable as possible and if someone gets something, the rest of the crowd wants to take it away.
Why do you think they get paid at the levels they get paid at? These aren’t run of the mill minimum wage jobs.
Different jobs have different requirements, so it makes little sense to impose the same conditions to all. As example, jobs which require formal customer interaction might mandate a business suit, whereas jobs which require operating machinery might require wearing safety gear.
It would make no sense to require the machinery operators to wear a formal business suit as it would make little sense to make a financial consultant to wear safety gear to meet a client. It would also make little sense to make a back-office employee with no client contacts nor particular safety requirements to wear either instead of a more casual attire.
To the same extent, jobs which inherently require on-site presence are obviously going to have that as requirement no matter what, but this doesn't mean said requirement should apply to all other jobs where on-site presence is not a must for the nature of the job.
I say do it the other way. Let them work from home as independent contractors. They will lose all their benefits except working from home. And the biggest benefit they lose is the potential to move up the ladder to a better job by being a valuable part of a team. They could get rid of so much overhead and restructure these employees as contractors. This is the way by which health insurance, employment rights, matching employer contributions for taxes and 401K all go away.
I think Apple should give them the ultimatum at about this point. Work from home as a contractor with no employment at all, no employment benefits, and those people can continue to do so from home. For the people that come back to the office, the benefits keep flowing. This is how I trust Apple should play this game. Give employees the choice.
Okay you don’t want to come back to the office. You can resign, and Apple will permit you to work as an independent contractor doing the same work you did before on your own. Or if you want the benefits again, you agree to come at least three days per week or maybe more. Tuesday to Thursday in the office. If management/leadership you come back to the office now or hand in your resignation.
This way allows Apple to win and employees to be able to choose work from home. Win and win.
They really arent, my sister had to use a sick day recently because her employer wouldnt let her work from home because her kid was sick, even though she'd worked from home for 2 years with no problems. That's a legit grievance.
Gas and housing prices have skyrocketed and folks, yes even well paid Apple engineers, are struggling and that commute adds a lot of cost, in gas, in vehicle maintenance, in living closer in in much more expensive areas, etc. Those are real grievances.
People moved during the pandemic. People's lives changed. People's patterns changed. They want that recognized, they want the one silver lining we had - better flexibility for family, commutes that don't eat hours and cost a fortune, etc. Just because *you* don't value that doesnt mean a hell of a lot of other people dont.
And don't think this doesnt help employers, my wife recently had surgery and I was able to both stay home to help her get things done around the house while recovering *and* work, if I worked out of an office I would have just taken a week and change off (and, unlike my sister, I have a substantial amount of PTO). We're in crunch time for a couple big projects right now, I'm the domain expert, it would have cost the company a great deal to have me out.
It's like everything people have their opinions. I want low priced products made by underpaid workers but there's always someone complaining about how that's bad. Even so I'm not having a problem finding my good deals! People discussing stuff doesn't mean things will change. As to motives I don't think it's about taking what someone else has away. I don't think it's fair to generalize the inhabitants of an entire continent though. I think it's mostly about this is how it's been done for millenniums and now it's going to change. I think it will change for some jobs because remote work can save companies money. If I was Apple I would want this if the employee wasn't involved in anything confidential. Even though some employees feel it's going to be better for them I don't see that. I see it as a way for companies to pay them less money. Everything will balance out so if an employee has to have a one million dollar house to do a job the company has to pay him enough to afford it. If he can live in a small apartment in a low rent area then he'll get paid enough for that.
Exceptions for health or special needs for a short time are fine and always have been…
You know, coming back to this quote for a sec, I have to ask: what makes you the arbiter of what’s a reasonable ask, or who’s a whiny baby? Corps will take as much advantage of you as the law will allow, what exactly if your issue with employees wanting better job conditions? Even if you only see those conditions as nice perks what’s the problem?
Either the company will provide it, a compromise will be reached, or the employees will walk in the current market. Are you really so used to “at will employment” being a one way street that you’re ok with heavy demands from corps but not from labor? For the first time in a long time there’s an upswing in the power of the labor side of things, why does that bother you?
The average salary for an Apple employee likely to work at the spaceship campus seems to be ~150K according to a quick Google search. That's a lot if you live in the middle of nowhere but not in the Silicon Valley area. There are obviously people making far above that, but I'd assume they're the minority. High pay isn't really that helpful if half of it or more goes to rent.
First of all, why do you believe that working-from-home does preclude being a "valuable part of a team"? Sometimes I wonder which kind of dysfunctional working environment people must have experienced to state such things.
Furthermore... why do you think a qualified, experienced employee would accept such ridiculous conditions? Do you have any idea how starved is the marked of qualified, experienced employees? There is a reason companies offer benefits to these kinds of employees and that's because they want to retain their talent.
Your suggestion kinda defeats the idea of retaining talent and would actually cause talent to leave and mediocre employees with less appealing alternative opportunities to remain.
On top of everything, an employee cannot just label someone a contractor and refuse benefits because they say so: a contractor classification requires the work to have specific characteristics e.g. of independence. Working from home in itself is not enough for such classification, as there are employee jobs which can be performed from home and contractor jobs which need to be performed on-site.
The game you are suggesting Apple to play is actually very dangerous for the company.
Especially if someone moved 2 years ago and is potentially needing to move back at current housing, gas, and food prices
You were doing so well right up to there.
So you make the false equivalence that social behaviors are a direct comparison to productivity output. "Go back three spaces". Try again, and this time keep your swinging manhood in its nylon prison.
Seriously! If someone offered me that ultimatum I’d quit on the spot. Hell, I’d almost certainly quit on the spot if they did that to a coworker and left me alone, who wants to work somewhere where they’d do that? There’s no shortage of jobs in tech right now, I get pinged on linkedin constantly. Why stay somewhere that toxic?
People like staying at stable jobs they like, but push them too hard and they’ll bolt, especially in the current job market.
And not only is recruiting in tech tough right now but it takes a long time for a new engineer to ramp up on a project and even longer for a team to replace lost institutional knowledge. Making that kind of ultimatum is basically the company shooting itself in the foot.
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Go ahead and do it; it’s clearly your preference. But are you going to force your preference on someone else with a different preference?
My guess is they have gotten nice and cozy working remotely. No commuting, work in PJs, take breaks etc. Who wants to return to an office setting even if only for 3 days week? Well "snowflakes" if you want to keep working for Apple, times are about to change back reality. Quit being crybabies.
and we're calling you out cause like what on earth have you been doing prior to 3.12.2020 for years prior?
- you get a job that you can actually goto.
- you complete your interviews,
- you agree to the work, usually in office.
- you understand you have colleagues to bond with or work with or have to 'deal with' even if you dislike them, you show your professionalism and NOT hide behind a closed camera shutter.
- you understand side hustling is TikTok, YouTube etc but you make your bread and butter working for the man.
- you know you keep not showing up you may end up loosing your job.
Most corporations have multi-year leases on office space not fully owned.
NOBODY had the forsight that a Pandemic would last this long and change working locations and habits. Technology adjusted or was already there:
Polycom and Cisco/Tandberg Video Conferencing was stagnant and in office rooms only, along came Zoom - rushed at first fixed security issues and is now the standard. LogiTech, Poly, Cisco and others made hardware that works (mostly the same type of software from the old guard is used in the new: People+Presentation, Zoom, Mute, remote control etc).
Certificate based VPN authentication, some issue occur and mostly people would HAVE TO come into the office to resolve yet some work-arounds are there even if tedious.
But just like you can order clothes, kicks and underwear and food off of Amazon ... you STILL want to:
Have a guarantee that if you select a new brand of briefs they'll fit,
that food you order has the same freshness and temperature if you'd walk into the restaurant,
that shoes you ordered fit your feet as awesome as those Yeezy's or AJ's, right?
So those of you all for remote ... STILL:
cannot or would not have a vacation in your living room right? Multiple years worth.
still like going out to the bar, club, or whatever fulfills what the oldschool arcades did for me back in the 80's.
still like going out to eat at a restaurant when having a FaceTime chat over UberEats or Skip at home with friends on FaceTime right?!
just flip the mindset and focus and you'll see the other-side against your argument is just as sound as yours against mine
'I can't go back to work-I am scared for my health.'-Goes out every weekend clubbing and bar hopping and eating at fast food joints.