Honestly, I think we're over thinking this. Clearly Apple is calling their employees in to work live 3 days a week because the iSight camera on the current MacBooks is absolute crap, completely unsuitable for Zoom/Teams/Facetime
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Apple Staff Complain About Plans for Return to Office Work in Letter to Tim Cook
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Depends on the size of the company.
Based on my experience...if the company is small, and people collaborate in the same local area, yes. If it's large and geographically spread out, no.
The signal processing-based communications ASIC startup I was part of with 10 engineers in Silicon Valley was incredibly productive (to the extent of our capital and small number of people, anyway). When we were acquired by a large semiconductor manufacturer headquartered half a country away, it pretty much stopped. I left after my commitment was fullfiled out of frustration.
Exactly, its all based on the company. Our company still does the "whiteboard" thing, but we use online tools. The whiteboards are shown every couple of months. And yes it still has sparked enhancements even remotely. Companies need to utilize tools to incorporate new ways of doing business. Obviously, if you don't use such tools some will find in-person collaboration needed. But if you utilize the tools, and work properly in the at home environment, innovation can still happen remotely.
I just fail to buy in the fact that it NEEDS to be a physical water cool and that innovation next to said water cooler is so extremely popular that business suffer without it. There is nothing preventing me from reaching out to a co worker stating "Hey I have an idea I want to run by you, can we have a quick call?".
I think it's flawed to think it's better one way or another, which is why I think a hybrid approach is likely to be the most pragmatic way in most use cases.
In my company when it requires collaboration like whiteboarding, we previously flew in participants and figured things out together in a room. Likewise, when it didn't require physical activities or camaraderie, remote sessions were sufficient.
At my previous jobs, I could do that freely. I’ll just get my fix after work.😘Don't forget the other perk of being able to peruse MR.
They should consider themselves lucky to have a job. Actually just kidding, but that was said to us by a previous employer. Way to motivate and tell the employees they are valued. Magement by intimidation and derision 101
I agree on both sides. Every single Apple event we hear non stop "Apple is no longer innovating". I also do not think "fixed a bug that allowed the Finder window to expand randomly" is innovation. Extremely small bug as an example I know, but you get my point. iOS 15 next week I would not really consider innovation myself. Its just general enhancements. I reserve the innovation to truly amazing product enhancements - like the iPhone or Apple Watch or iPad.
With respect to the hardware, I actually have a 10900K with 64 gigabytes 10 TB disk, 2 27 inch 4k monitors and one 24 HD monitor. I have more than my fair share of hardware to be productive. But in my experience zoom is just not as effective as in-person as in the office, we are not limited to 27" monitors, but have entire walls of boards that we can use to draw things. Things that took hours, I find now take days to complete.
So we impose an artificial geographic limitation just because we think that’ll alone will prevent this? That’s pretty wishful thinking.
Things change. Blacksmiths, travel agents, milkmen and coal miners had/have to find new ways to contribute to society.
Crazy idea: if Americans want to be continued to be hired, then they/we should make sure we continue to have in-demand skills. Not expect that having to force people to confine themselves to physical locations will be the bulwark that stems that entire shift.
Also, that would also mean that American workers could be hired by Asian and/or European companies—for example—remotely as well. I’m sure many would LOVE European-style vacation and maternity/paternity policies as well.
I agree and I'm glad Tim is not the CEO jobs was. He does have the focus as evidenced where Apple is today.
Need to keep in mind some examples of remote working on complex team tasks. The more complex they are the more failures 👎
Best example….
CYBERPUNK 2077
Delayed before the pandemic anyway. Then delayed twice during the pandemic.
They had to work remotely on it. So bottlenecks developed. Communications can or cannot be reliable.
You send a message to say please fix this bug.
Coder is humping 🍆 his GF and says yeah yeah bug is fixed.
New build.
Bug is not fixed. 👎
Game comes out.
Floating people. 👨 👩 randomly walking side ways .
Cars 🚘 going through walls and sinking in the street.
Lighting and shadows flickering.
Guns disappearing in your hands.
Public apology to all the gamers.
We don’t want 💩 like this happening to macOS and iPadOS. Things like this and product development need to be hands out and brains together with no communication slowdowns or blind spots.
Best example….
CYBERPUNK 2077
Delayed before the pandemic anyway. Then delayed twice during the pandemic.
They had to work remotely on it. So bottlenecks developed. Communications can or cannot be reliable.
You send a message to say please fix this bug.
Coder is humping 🍆 his GF and says yeah yeah bug is fixed.
New build.
Bug is not fixed. 👎
Game comes out.
Floating people. 👨 👩 randomly walking side ways .
Cars 🚘 going through walls and sinking in the street.
Lighting and shadows flickering.
Guns disappearing in your hands.
Public apology to all the gamers.
We don’t want 💩 like this happening to macOS and iPadOS. Things like this and product development need to be hands out and brains together with no communication slowdowns or blind spots.
I think you're thinking too binary on this one. For you, it's clear that you can accomplish most, if not all, interactions over a call, and that is perfectly fine. Just understand that your situation doesn't apply to every (tech) company, which is why you're being presented with counterpoints. I personally enjoyed the physical water cooler experience because you can also meet and learn about other groups as well. You don't really get that opportunity to make acquaintances over Zoom.
I don't deny that a physical product might benefit from an in-person discussion. That way you can show them the product and what you think is wrong or what your idea is. But I don't think having amazing innovations all the time is only the result of an in person water cooler discussion. It can be accomplished just as well remotely, and our company has continued to do this all throughout the year.
Are the only people on this letter an engineer of physical product? Look I am not denying that working in the office is beneficial for some job titles. Does every product engineer have an entire lab in their home to work on the next Mac or something? No. But does a Senior Software Engineer just doing development need to be in the office? No.
You really cannot compare this to an actual work in home environment.
We essentially went from very small percent (maybe 0% for CD Projekt Red company not sure) working from home to nearly everyone working from home. There will obviously be growing pains. But AFTER you change things around, incorporate new tools and get a plan forward, it really wouldn't be much different. Once you learn and adapt to the growing pains - changing processes as you go will make working from home much better than it was day one.
That’s managers that know nothing about running a game development company. It has nothing to do with remote work. Remote coders are used all the time without a pandemic.
It reads like it could have been written by any of today’s college grads. But you already said that.
Does anyone commenting so negatively about this even personally know anyone who works at Apple Park or in a non-Apple Retail capacity?
I ask because I do know people that work at Apple Park. And while I haven’t actually asked them I am 99.999% confident they weren’t part of this organized effort to draft and send this letter. That being said I also know that they would prefer to continue working primarily WFH rather than return to Apple Park.
Why? They have been happier working remotely and just as productive. They have been able to work from various locations and visit family in other parts of the country while still meeting their job requirements and the expectations of their supervisors while doing so. Things they could rarely do while working on location at Apple Park.
In one case I know someone who has been able to spend time with their mother in one part of the country and their adult daughter in another part of the country during the pandemic while getting their work done at the same time. Something that would have rarely happened over the course of a normal work year for them working from their pod at Apple Park.
I’m not sure why there is such a backlash towards WFH in this forum. Maybe it’s from people who don’t have the flexibility to do so having sour grapes.
It is feasible for all types of roles at Apple? Most definitely not. The R&D teams working on new hardware and software for said hardware obviously aren’t going to be working from home. And the reality is they never actually stopped working at the R&D facilities at Apple Park when they were allowed to based on state restrictions.
But for the rest of the company many of them have been able to accomplish their work remotely without an issue.
Calling anyone a spoiled brat for wanting their employer to consider more flexibility in how the return to the office is handled (ie. Allowing teams within the organization to better determine what works best for their team) is silly. It isn’t an unreasonable request. Although it doesn’t mean management has to act on it. But it’s well within the rights of the employees to express their opinion and concerns.
This is coming from someone who runs a completely distributed software company that has both a physical office but a workforce who primarily works remotely. Including myself.
Something that I don’t think has been pointed out is the reason Apple implemented the Monday, Tuesday… Thursday office schedule is to limit the ability of the employees to travel when working remotely. Otherwise they would have scheduled the in office workdays as Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Which would have allowed employees more flexibility in where they worked from for the remainder of the week. But by doing Monday, Tuesday… Thursday they are keeping them close to the physical office. I think this also probably annoyed some of the Apple employees Who may have wanted to work remotely from locations that weren’t necessarily close to the office itself.
I ask because I do know people that work at Apple Park. And while I haven’t actually asked them I am 99.999% confident they weren’t part of this organized effort to draft and send this letter. That being said I also know that they would prefer to continue working primarily WFH rather than return to Apple Park.
Why? They have been happier working remotely and just as productive. They have been able to work from various locations and visit family in other parts of the country while still meeting their job requirements and the expectations of their supervisors while doing so. Things they could rarely do while working on location at Apple Park.
In one case I know someone who has been able to spend time with their mother in one part of the country and their adult daughter in another part of the country during the pandemic while getting their work done at the same time. Something that would have rarely happened over the course of a normal work year for them working from their pod at Apple Park.
I’m not sure why there is such a backlash towards WFH in this forum. Maybe it’s from people who don’t have the flexibility to do so having sour grapes.
It is feasible for all types of roles at Apple? Most definitely not. The R&D teams working on new hardware and software for said hardware obviously aren’t going to be working from home. And the reality is they never actually stopped working at the R&D facilities at Apple Park when they were allowed to based on state restrictions.
But for the rest of the company many of them have been able to accomplish their work remotely without an issue.
Calling anyone a spoiled brat for wanting their employer to consider more flexibility in how the return to the office is handled (ie. Allowing teams within the organization to better determine what works best for their team) is silly. It isn’t an unreasonable request. Although it doesn’t mean management has to act on it. But it’s well within the rights of the employees to express their opinion and concerns.
This is coming from someone who runs a completely distributed software company that has both a physical office but a workforce who primarily works remotely. Including myself.
Something that I don’t think has been pointed out is the reason Apple implemented the Monday, Tuesday… Thursday office schedule is to limit the ability of the employees to travel when working remotely. Otherwise they would have scheduled the in office workdays as Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Which would have allowed employees more flexibility in where they worked from for the remainder of the week. But by doing Monday, Tuesday… Thursday they are keeping them close to the physical office. I think this also probably annoyed some of the Apple employees Who may have wanted to work remotely from locations that weren’t necessarily close to the office itself.
Well the flipside is also true. Do not claim that EVERYONE must be in the office due to "collaboration is not working". That is the whole point on why we got on this water cooler discussion. Its not binary on the opposite side of things as well. And that is precisely the point I have been making all along. Its not JUST a physical water cooler that will solve all a company's problems.
Not to mention, meeting new employees, rubbing elbows with Senior Management, getting your good work and name out there etc.
I have met new people on Zoom. It was just as effective. Even if we are back in the office, I don't think I will be shaking hands all day long like we were before.
I agree that the quality of software has diminished. I don’t think that we can pin that to remote work. I think that’s a yearly deployment schedule + and how FUBAR the radar/feedback mechanism is for the teams.
Before the pandemic was even a gleam in the virus’s eye…iOS 11 came out. Did you use iOS 11? Or Catalina?