It’s actually more common than as posted above. Let’s be honest, without revealing details best not to be discussed on the internet, we have two different reference points.
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Apple Staff Complain About Plans for Return to Office Work in Letter to Tim Cook
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Where are Apple's daily innovations then? Again, one innovation idea from one water cooler discussion for one year doesn't mean "water coolers bring innovation!". Nothing is preventing someone from calling someone on Teams if they want to discuss something. I have done this many times, have an idea of something and want to chat about it with a fellow engineer.
Imagine how bad is to work in Apple office, so no one of them want to go back. Imagine many people don't have the luxury to work remotely or from home, so they need to live with the fear of being unemployed. When you're called upon survival vs when you're being called upon compromise with safety. I see them as spoiled brats, but also Apple not flexible enough to encourage full remote control for their office work. Everyone needs to adjust, obviously.
100 years ago those replacements would burn inside the building they were locked in. Should we retain all conventions or just the ones you agree with?
Many years ago I worked at a globally-renowned medical center that was notorious for paying below market for just about any position in our city. They thought, and I found rightly, that the value not realized in salary is made up for in the long run by being able to list them as an employer on my resume.
I can only imagine how valuable a position at Apple is on one's resume. NDAs and non-compete agreements (although not enforceable in California) aside, I'd have to imagine tenure at a company like Apple can turbocharge a career.
Again, you are making the argument that innovations are happening daily or SO OFTEN that coming back to the office JUST for water cooler discussion to provide innovation is necessary. So where are Apple's daily innovations? They have only had a handful of innovations over the last 10 years or so.
These same people are eating out every week and will be attending events and going to church with far less protections and protocols in place. Apple didn’t lay them off during the pandemic like a lot of companies did and now they are spoiled and unappreciative.
For me, I get more "water cooler" time through chat. We just drop in on each other with one liners on the fly for instance. Plus, I can loop in anyone needed with a click if something evolves from offhand commentary. We solved endless problems this way over the last 1.5 years. And I don't have to shoo people out of the cube/office. Just speaking for my situation of course, ymmv.
As a preface, I deal with both technical (engineers) and non-technical (product/design/theory crafting) stakeholders.
Virtual whiteboarding for me just doesn't work as well with a marker in hand. Using the mouse doesn't work well when I'm trying to collaborate software design.
For the in-person interactions, it was easier to just go to the office and talk to a person. You can ignore Slack messages, but you can't really ignore physical contact. Obviously, it can be disrupting, but selfishly you can get your answers faster. Regarding body language as an example, many people have a deadpan facial expression, but they exhibit movements in their hands or body that are more foretelling.
There is a difference between taking risks on your own accord and having risk decided for you. Apple could have laid them off. They also could have paid them full salary without working until offices could be reopened.
Where are their daily innovations? We see them each year at WWDC, at each new product announcement, etc. Things as big as major new products, to as small as “hey, you can shave 2 picoseconds off the adder critical path if you do this.”
And if you think using “Teams” is a good idea (I just had to use it yesterday for the first time), you are obviously coming from a different place than most of Silicon Valley.
That notwithstanding, you are missing the point. When we came up with the idea for a major new ISA, we didn’t say “hey, I wonder if I should do some work on an ISA. Let me set a meeting with XXX to discuss it.” It arose from conversations in a hallway that started with how terrible things were going, and migrated organically to ”hey, did you see what Intel did?“ “actually, yeah. Hmm… that gives me an idea…”
That sort of interaction simply can’t happen on zoom or teams or webex or FaceTime.
That’s simply ********. There are hundreds of innovations in M1 alone. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not an innovation.
And you think that is IMPOSSIBLE without physically being next to a water cooler? General product enhancements if you want to call that true innovation. Guess what, our company is doing just fine with that without a physical water cooler. We just chat with Teams or Slack and we are good to go.
I take it you are not in silicon valley. Not a lot of people attending events. Everyone still wearing masks outdoors. And, honestly, not that many going to church (and if they are going to church, services are outdoors).
M1 might have some enhancements, but it is just a better version of iPhone and iPad processors. That can certainly be discussed in general meetings with 10+ people instead of just two people next to a physical water cooler. You think the processor would NOT have been made at all unless there is a physical water cooler? 10 people in a conference room could not have brainstormed to create the M1, but just two people having a general "chat" came up with the idea?
Interesting you say that, considering every market they enter the transform it significantly and everyone else copies them. From the original Mac, to laptops, to iPods, to iPhones, to iPads and Apple Watch, to AirPods, Apple has transformed markets no less than 7 times. I’d love to hear another company that made that type of market transformation even twice.
Yeah at the end of the day it's about profit and growth for the business. For me, that's fine since I'm rewarded in compensation in stock/bonuses and challenged by innovating forward. I've realized throughout my career that if you don't deal with the stress and perform, there's always going to be someone else that will. No one is irreplaceable. Some people want no stress and rewarding incentives which I think is an unrealistic expectation.
Ok, but your company is not apple and does not have 150,000 employees, I bet.
And, yes, I don’t think it’s possible to do the types of things apple does, long term, without being physically together at least some of the time. I designed MANY CPUs. There is no way I could have done so from home. I wrote millions of lines of EDA code and supported hundreds of engineers. Some of that I could do remotely, and some I could not.
There are many jobs at Apple that can be remote, but many of the jobs related to their core product designs cannot be done that way long term. As Apple has publicly admitted, remote work has already impacted their timetables.
That is completely false. There is nothing to prevent a person in a Zoom meeting from bringing up Intel and sparking that conversation. Being physically there doesn't make much of a difference. We have done this time and time again at our work. Bring up something that happened during our meeting and sparked some ideas. No physical contact was needed.
Wow, you make a lot of assumptions.
I won't answer all of your questions to avoid giving away personal information, but I am in the CS field. You don't need to live near Cupertino to get a job there - Apple will give you a relocation bonus, which means they obviously see the value in employees working together in Apple Park.
Not all SWE jobs are created equal. You can be asked to perform very mentally taxing work in a poorly managed department where every day is hell and the pressure is on you to figure out everyone else's mistakes or face retaliation. In this type of job your career growth is non-existent as well - it is up to you to apply like crazy and find a way out.
On the other hand, being an SWE at a FAANG company can be an absolute dream job. You get paid tons of money, have amazing benefits, get promoted quickly, and work on a great team that cares about what they are working on. The thing is, once you get one of these jobs you are considered part of the "elite", and as long as you don't get fired you will have recruiters reaching out to you from other large companies the second you say you're looking for work on LinkedIn. Probably even if you do get fired this will still be true. So, these employees are not afraid to ask for more remote work because they are the most sought after people in their field.
But, there are many other SWEs who are talented but entered a bad organization unknowingly, and would love nothing more than to work 40 hrs. a week at Apple Park on amazing projects.
Is it really missing…or just different
Even in pre-pandemic times, when I happened to be working remote on days here and there, my version of a “watercooler” conversation was:
1. Have an idea/thought
2. Chat somebody on whatever tool: “Hey, do you have 5/whatever to talk about x?”
3. Then hopping on an impromptu video call to talk it out.
No meeting request, no pre-planning, no agenda.
It’s funny, my last position had a literal watercooler by the bathrooms. The only bathrooms, and the only watercooler. ~80 person office, all on one floor, plus I considered all of my colleagues very sociable, on average. You’d think the perfect recipe for all of these “serendipitous” conversations…
…but these spontaneous conversations rarely happened, either with me in them or observed. People overwhelmingly got their water, then headed off to the next meeting or back to their desk to get back to work.
Even in person, with those people—I had better luck initiating a quick conversation through the method above, just instead of a zoom call, we’d grab an un-booked room!
I doubt the employees responding to the emails are the upper executives. They are probably just junior or low level developers and that type of job.
If I come up with a paradigm shift of an idea, before I even pursue it I need to get my manager in the conversation, and the CTO and CEO. I am not upper management where I can just pivot to those crazy ideas. I have a job I do, and if something gets sparked from conversation it is a LOT of work and follow up meetings before something even starts. I think people are seriously over simplifying the simple "two random people next to a water cooler saves a company" type of discussion.
There are innovations, not “enhancements.” And 10 people discussing thing in a meeting never gets anywhere. I worked at Sun for a brief time. I literally told my manager I quit because there were two many meetings, and nothing ever got decided because there were too many cooks. He responded by scheduling a meeting with subject line “Meeting to discuss whether there are too many meetings.”
That chip was called millenium - it was supposed to tape out in 2000. Spoiler alert: it did not.
Then I went to AMD, where we had NO meetings, but would talk to each other over cubicle walls, or in the break room, or at team events/parties, and where things like x86-64 arose from a dinner at a french restaurant and not from some pre-set team meeting that could have been replaced by a zoom call.
Hell, how many great ideas happen every day in Silicon Valley on a white board, or the back of a napkin, due to random interactions between people with different expertise working on different problems?
It’s just silly to suggest that zoom calls with 10 people are a substitute for this.
I am not denying market forces exist. I am saying that employees like those here have an obligation to make the request they made.
Yes, I think people are over simplifying the water cooler concept a bit. I guarantee you 95 percent of the time it is ONLY about hobbies and "hey did you have fun at your party last night" type of talk. Not a daily "saving company, making us billions" talk.