Haha…. One of the best movies ever! 😂
But the “method of today” can change. And I believe it has due to the pandemic.
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Apple Staff Complain About Plans for Return to Office Work in Letter to Tim Cook
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Haha…. One of the best movies ever! 😂
But the “method of today” can change. And I believe it has due to the pandemic.
I’m a contractor and I couldn’t care less about any of those perks. I would much rather have control over my work.
Again it depends on the discipline and type of job you have. But there are some jobs that require close collaboration and require help from others to be successful.
I work in software development and it was amazing how much things improved in our satellite offices once we regularly visited onsite. Folks wanted to contribute not just because it was their job to do so, but because of the interpersonal relationships that were built.
And that’s my experience in the last 20 years.
I’ve been doing some variation of software dev and/or infra/ops the entire time I’ve been remote.
Ive almost always worked with colleagues and clients who were on the other side of the world to me.
I don’t know who you work with but I’ve very rarely worked with anyone who didn’t want to contribute. The only real slackers I can recall like that were when I worked in an office. People using phrases like (literally) “we have to do the stuff and the things” in meetings and constantly trying to look busy because as we all know people in offices never slack off so he must be working hard if he’s in the office right?
From my personal experience with a company that lauded itself about inclusion and diversity I would never go to HR with a problem with management.
It is if the employer says it is. The employee works for them and not the other way around. If the employer would rather their staff were present in the office, then that’s the way it is.
It really isn’t unless you take it personally and decide to apply it to yourself. If you’ve worked remotely completely for the last 15 years then you’ve probably not encountered these sorts of people. I work with at least 4 people who lack interpersonal skills and are difficult working in a team environment.
Quite the contrary, I’ve worked from home on and off since 2004. Prior to the pandemic I often worked in the Netherlands, Poland and Germany depending on the project. My official office is in the UK though but have worked via laptop all my professional working life.
We certainly do but not with cleaners as they are contracted. Factory floor staff often complain staff in the offices are paid more than them when all they do is ‘sit down all day’ as they say. You get that mentality in every company though.
It’s funny you should mention hardware as I had to justify recently why my Dell workstation cost £3.5k when many of the production computers only cost £600. That the problem with people not completely understanding what others actually do.
In my experience companies still operate face to face contact and even modern market leading companies. I think I’d get a rather confused reaction if I said we only ‘do Teams’ lol.
I’m a Senior Mechanical Design Engineer, whether that makes any difference or not? lol. Measuring output and perception are sadly things that go had in hand, especially when it’s Directors making calls without understanding the job requirements.
The pandemic has introduced working from home to many more people, so this has completely changed the landscape and working dynamic. If you remove the pandemic from the equation, employees have even less leverage to justify working from home.
People crying to go back to a normal life... and now that we are going back to a normal life, they want to go back into the quarantine life. ok then.
Try looking at it another way: people brainwashed into thinking adults need to babysit other adults on computers in a common location and that “perception” is more valuable to work being produced than actual output is “normal”.
New tools lead to new ways of working. I’m going to guess that you don’t churn the butter for your morning toast, nor do you ride to work by horseback?
Computers, the internet and video conferencing are the new tools. Work models need to evolve alongside that, and they’re painfully behind.
There may be some merit to the “incedental information” thing, but if there’s one modern industry that no one should be looking to for anything instructive about sensible work schedules it’s finance/investment banking/Wall Street.
That industry is ground zero to the mostly-for-appearances, quantity over quality, 100+ hour work week human grinder. I have plenty of friends and former colleagues who were/are in situations where they finish their models/report decks/projections/whatever, but then have to stay another 6 hours because the work culture is that you don’t leave the office until your boss does, from the CEO down.
Wall Street is workplace hazing at its worst. Hard to imagine them picking a worse representative example.
Those tools have been with us for many years and have their place. I just don’t understand why some would not want to go into a workplace and just work at home on their own? There’s a lot to be said for interacting with people whilst in their presence, getting to know them properly and sharing off topic communication once in a while. It’s very one dimensional just talking to people via video calls and email in my view. I couldn’t work like that all the time and enjoy the escape of not working in my home office. I’m probably more productive on individual tasks when working from home but know a lot of people who were not. I think working from home should be here to stay, but not 5 days a week.
No more disturbing than these sorts of in-person scenarios:Remember this disturbing video from Apple (2020)
Working in General Vicinity for 8 Hours Misinterpreted as Friendship
Company's Employees Spend Entire Day Touching Base
To be fair if someone works in a team with people they can’t work with or hate being in the company of, it’s usually time for a new challenge anyway lol.
True. That said, many would still rather save time commuting and spending those regained hours on their family and friends—even if they do work well with their colleagues in person and like them!
I find when I work from home I work longer anyway. Those periods where I’d be commuting ,I work on and beyond because I’m not worrying about packing up my computer to get in the traffic.
Working from home has its perks most definitely. I was saving £40 a week in fuel when I was home full time, although I spent more on electricity as I was paying for the kettle to be boiled and equipment plugged into my own sockets for 9 hours a day as opposed to my companies. This was offset again though with tax relief from HMRC. It’s nice to have the peace and quiet when on work that involves heavy concentration as you don’t have people coming into your office to ask questions. I did find at times Teams calls went on longer and were more frequent though when people were adjusting to the new way of working.
It’s nice to see faces again though and have that odd day where you can not go in and work in your own space. I like the freedom of both environments.
A problem with management IMO is not about them meeting some demands about WFH.
It is not unreasonable to request working from home.
I've let my team members decide what both best suits them and what enables them to be productive. Some want to return to the office, mainly because they either have short commutes from their homes or live in a small condo. Others want a hybrid, flexible schedule. Those are mainly individuals who have a family and children. A decent number want to work from home and come to the office maybe once per two to three months.
I trust my team. They wouldn't be on it if they couldn't deliver. They're competent enough to collaborate amongst each other where necessary.
As a technical manager, my role is to ensure that my team succeeds. I'm there to stop executive politics and other managers from interfering with my team's day-to-day work. Likewise, I'm there to ensure that the company succeeds. That means translating ideas into products that are rolled out on time. If working from home can facilitate both, then there's no reason to not support it.
Good point. My nephew got hired as a programmer by a US company which promised 30k usd a year salary - in the middle of the pandemic. This is a big salary in our part of the world.
It is likely many companies realized this and may hire more people from outside the US to save costs. No more complicated requirements for a work Visa, just a connected workstation.
There needs to be more managers like you in the world.
Too many of them think of themselves as drill sergeants, and their team as interchangeable cogs. From some of the replies, I think some of them might even be in this thread.
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It's really about siting out and holding on to the more desirable practices from each.
I see the allure of working from home, especially if you have to deal with long daily commutes but at the same time, there seems to be too much emphasis on "I want to WFH because it's good for me" and not enough discussion on whether Apple as a company is even built to thrive or operate under such a decentralised structure.
There's just too much "I I I I I".
Spoken like one who has never had to support production operations, or burn an 80 hour week to meet a product deadline. 🙄