Apple Staff Complain About Plans for Return to Office Work in Letter to Tim Cook

[Silverstring]

You’re not even trying.

Oooh, got me again! BOOM! ZAP! MIC DROP!

If you have nothing substantive to say, no motivation to support your own points
…then why not leave the thread?

That would give you more time to micromanage your employees and/or colleagues unnecessarily, which you’ve shown to be very motivated by.

 

[jk73]

Bringing up concerns and asking for them to be addressed:

“extortion”, “bashing boss” and “indecent”.

…taking these things personally and having such an emotional read on things…inhibits one’s ability to make a good business decision. If I was on Apple’s board, I wouldn’t want Cook acting so rashly!

…and once again, you have no insight into what happened privately before the letter.

Nothing happened privately before the letter, or the letter would have referenced it.

Tim Cook was 72 hours from WWDC. He wasn’t spending his day on June 4 negotiating with people who wanted to keep WFH after September.

 

[jk73]

Oooh, got me again! BOOM! ZAP! MIC DROP!

If you have nothing substantive to say, no motivation to support your own points
…then why not leave the thread?

That would give you more time to micromanage your employees and/or colleagues unnecessarily, which you’ve shown to be very motivated by.

I don’t have to do any of that, because I weed out whiny, self-entitled types.

That’s the point.

 

[Abazigal]

…taking these things personally and having such an emotional read on things…inhibits one’s ability to make a good business decision. If I was on Apple’s board, I wouldn’t want Cook acting so rashly!

I see it as "punish one to warn a hundred".

In that I am willing to look bad in this one situation, and risk all the criticism and scrutiny, in order to minimise similar situations happening in the future.

But I think it's also worth some introspection here. Are my employees running to the press because my middle management layer is so terrible and inept that they have zero faith in the system, or do these employees just want their way and see complaining to the press as the most expedient means of attaining their goals?

In the former, there is definitely a lot of room for improvement, and improve I should.

But for the latter, I don't really want such maverick employees working for me, because it suggests that they are thinking only for themselves first and foremost and incapable of grasping the bigger picture, and I would gladly show them the door, however competent they may be.

 

[Silverstring]

I see it as "punish one to warn a hundred".

In that I am willing to look bad in this one situation, and risk all the criticism and scrutiny, in order to minimise similar situations happening in the future.

But I think it's also worth some introspection here. Are my employees running to the press because my middle management layer is so terrible and inept that they have zero faith in the system, or do these employees just want their way and see complaining to the press as the most expedient means of attaining their goals?

In the former, there is definitely a lot of room for improvement, and improve I should.

But for the latter, I don't really want such maverick employees working for me, because it suggests that they are thinking only for themselves first and foremost and incapable of grasping the bigger picture, and I would gladly show them the door, however competent they may be.

We agree!

You’re saying that the situation requires more investigation, more consideration, more introspection, more thought.

You’re not taking it as a GIVEN that these employees are lazy, whiny, entitled, grifters BY DEFAULT, and convinced of your own certainty before you take a closer look. The very letter itself contains reference to the employees feeling “unheard”, which—although I am not *certain* of it and can’t be with the information on hand—suggests that they tried the internal mechanisms…and those efforts have been unfruitful.

I’m fully willing to allow that Apple may take that closer look and decide to stick to the original policy, or that the workers, given exposure to a different paradigm, will choose to seek work elsewhere…and both outcomes would be just fine. At point have I maintained to bend to all of these requests or accused either side of “bad faith”

A good CEO/leader understands that effective management is about a two-way *engagement* (not automatic dismissal OR capitulation), a relationship of mutual respect. Not that employees are dogs to be disciplined.

To take a step like the letter, I think it stands to reason that these employees care about their work, and are genuinely looking to make their workplace function more effectively. As people with Apple Corporate on their resumes, they’re likely to be highly skilled, and in demand if they chose to leave or were fired.

So they’re giving this a shot, and if it doesn’t work, they’ll look for opportunities elsewhere.

If I understand you correctly, you’re saying “ok, let’s look into it”…if the requests would negatively impact work output and the work environment, then we’ll have to deal with that, and negative consequences will be administered. If, however, there was a blind spot in my previous thinking/information, then that’s something I would like to know. Let’s find out.”

Not, “the very existence of the letter merits a firing, and all of its contents are “woke” “PC” “entitled” BS with zero merit whatsoever.

That is a reasonable approach, and prudent.

Edit: typo

 

[jk73]

The idea that allegedly high-skilled Apple employees can’t somehow get a private message to Tim Cook, and that they needed to embarrass him in the media as anti-diversity and anti-inclusivity, is utterly laughable.

 

[pdoherty]

I see it as "punish one to warn a hundred".

Wasn’t that a favorite tactic of Sun Tzu, who would randomly pick out a soldier and kill them on the spot, then let the rest of the soldiers wonder why, which would improve obedience as they worked harder to avoid whatever had gotten the first one killed?

 

[Realityck]

Related story today

Morgan Stanley CEO to NYC workers: Be back in the office by September or else | CNN Business

The CEO of one of Wall Street’s top investment banks has a message for employees in its New York offices. You need to come back to work this fall.

www.cnn.com

Morgan Stanley (MS) chief James Gorman said at an investing conference earlier this week that it's time for the bank's New York workers to head back to the office now that more people are getting vaccinated for Covid-19 and life is slowly returning to normal.
"If you can go to a restaurant in New York City, you can come into the office. And we want you in the office," Gorman said.
Gorman made the comments Monday at an annual conference about financial payments and commercial real estate. He joked that he was doing so from the company's New York office — and while wearing a suit and tie to boot.
"By Labor Day, I'll be very disappointed if people haven't found their way into the office and then we'll have a different kind of conversation," he said, adding that workers can't expect to get their New York salaries if they continue to work remotely.
"If you want to get paid New York rates, you work in New York," Gorman said. "None of this 'I'm in Colorado...and getting paid like I'm sitting in New York City.' Sorry. That doesn't work."

 

[Ubuntu]

Whole lotta middle managers whining how they miss standing over their staff and badgering them about TPS reports and such... Reconnecting with colleagues? We're more connected than ever, and without the 10 minutes of cube small talk for each encounter.

Are we, though? Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed working remotely for the most part. But no matter how much we’ve tried the connection between colleagues has taken a hit. We saw each other for the first time in a year yesterday and it was instantly much better. Not saying I want to go back to the office but I think this is why remote companies often have meet-ups etc - digital just isn’t good enough.

 

[Ubuntu]

I imagine the days when they have to back at the workplace typically coincide with meetings with other people. So what I am guessing will happen is that all the meetings will be scheduled during these few days, and they can then use the rest of the time to get their work done.

So people may not really have that much of a say in when they want to come back.

I think you’re right. It’s a shame because while I’d prefer to do the actual work at home where I can focus I don’t look forward to days full of meetings.

 

[Silverstring]

if I could put a camera in my employees home monitoring their workstation, I might allow it! I'm paying you money to work, not play with your dog! or mowing your grass! even if you get the work done, in which case I would need to put a heavier workload on you, or pay you less!

Right, that’s the thing. I assume the WFH people would object to any type of monitoring of their work space. The people I know who are most passionate about WFH are exploiting management inefficiencies — i.e., people who have jobs that pay them for 40 hours per week but can be completed in 20 or 30.

People with this mindset might want to look into opportunities at Canon, since they seem to be building the ideal workspace for similar preferences, and I thought passing the info along could be welcome.

Seems like a great fit for bonafide "team players" and "hard workers":

Canon put AI cameras in its Chinese offices that only let smiling workers inside: The latest example of dystopian workplace surveillance

If not Canon, perhaps a company called Pragli could be of interest for some?

Managers turn to surveillance software, always-on webcams to ensure employees are (really) working from home

Anyone checking out those links—please be careful to take them with a huge grain of salt, though, because it has totally laughable, disgruntled and whiny observations from long-time successful grifters in the field, who say totally made up things with no merit like this baseless ridiculousness that can't hold a candle to personal, anecdotal, small-scale evidence:

“It’s really demoralizing to feel like you’ve done good work for a company, maybe for years, and have a solid, reliable track record, and they’re treating you as if you’re going to spend your day drinking beer and watching YouTube,” Green said. “People don’t work well under that kind of scrutiny, even in the best of times.”

“You don’t end up extracting better, deeper, more creative work by subjecting people to ever harsher measures of surveillance.”

Good grief. I mean come on, am I right?!?! Comical on its face. We know this. The people quoted don't have more experience interacting with larger groups across industries and managing as many people as any given reader would—regardless of no evidence, I'm certain of that. Besides, any great leader knows this claptrap isn't true. Workers knowing that their company actively distrusts them and is willing to damage their morale is a fantastic way to engender worker commitment, loyalty, and better output.

Who wouldn't want to work at such a company? You know what they say: no better productivity motivators than fear and stress. Especially since there's no other possible way to better address management inefficiencies than installing a surveillance state, whether at an office or with remote work. Under those conditions, employees that a company has invested in, developed and trained, will definitely want to stay for the long term so said companies can reap positive ROI from what they've put into these people.

Feeling trusted and empowered? Everyone knows those things don't lead to improved performance and job satisfaction, that's just the narrative from Big Organizational Psychology, Big Industrial Research and the media—who got in cahoots decades ago to fabricate worker surveys and years of study to foster this con on the public.

All that said, I hope Apple doesn't go this route, though. Different strokes move the world, even when large-scale quantitative data supports some strokes, and others...are vaguely supported by some friends I know personally.

 

[Tech198]

People get used to working from home,, they don't wanna go back into the office..

I wouldn't exacly call that the 'new norm' just arrogance ....... imagine is everyone wanted to that... only "then" can you call it a change.

 

[seek3r]

if I could put a camera in my employees home monitoring their workstation, I might allow it! I'm paying you money to work, not play with your dog! or mowing your grass! even if you get the work done, in which case I would need to put a heavier workload on you, or pay you less!

The sheer invasion of privacy there that you would want is insane. If you think you need to constantly surveil your employees you’re a bad boss, full stop. You arent paying people to sit their asses in a chair in front of a screen for 8 hours, you’re paying them to get their tasks done. If you think someone can’t walk their dog during the day and still get their work done you’re insane. The idea of paying an empoyee isnt to simply stuff their day with as many things as you can cram into 8 hours, it’s to enable them to be productive. Your post is an example of the exact worst way to get productivity out of talented people.

 

[jk73]

The sheer invasion of privacy there that you would want is insane. If you think you need to constantly surveil your employees you’re a bad boss, full stop. You arent paying people to sit their asses in a chair in front of a screen for 8 hours, you’re paying them to get their tasks done. If you think someone can’t walk their dog during the day and still get their work done you’re insane. The idea of paying an empoyee isnt to simply stuff their day with as many things as you can cram into 8 hours, it’s to enable them to be productive. Your post is an example of the exact worst way to get productivity out of talented people.

This is hilarious. Are security cameras in the office also an invasion of privacy?

 

[Silverstring]

You arent paying people to sit their asses in a chair in front of a screen for 8 hours, you’re paying them to get their tasks done. If you think someone can’t walk their dog during the day and still get their work done you’re insane. The idea of paying an empoyee isnt to simply stuff their day with as many things as you can cram into 8 hours, it’s to enable them to be productive. Your post is an example of the exact worst way to get productivity out of talented people.

Yes!

Can you imagine the following scenario playing out in any given office anywhere, and anyone considering it an example of good management and/or leadership!?!?

*walks into CEO Arthur A. Tarian’s office*

“Hey Boss, have a sec?”

“Sure Susan, what’s up?”

“You know that weekly TPS report that usually takes me 2 hours to produce?”

“Yes, the board loves it, really useful.”

“Great! Well, I did some research, and found out that portions of it could be automated, and save some time! So I taught myself how to do that! Isn’t that great?!?”

“Hold on…what about the way Dave trained you?”

“What do you mean?!?”

“Well, Dave did that report before you, and Doris before him…and they always took 2 hours…that’s our standard. I know they worked really hard on that report before it was due, I could see them from my office every week, once the numbers came in.”

“Sorry, I think I might not be explaining this right. It’s the same report, but from what I’ve taken the initiative to learn and teach myself, it only takes me an hour now.”

“Hold on…what on earth did you do with that extra hour that you saved on the report this week?!?!? For that matter, where did you find the extra time to think through, research, and teach yourself a skill that led to a process improvement!?!? I don’t pay you to sit around day dreaming about process improvements.”

“What do you mean by ‘extra time’, this report is in my job description!”

“Well, two hours on it is.”

“Yes, but I’ve automated it to the point where the process doesn’t die with me, and the future me, Dave or Doris can just plug things into the macro I’ve created, and save themselves that time, too…not to mention the training time on the old process…”

“You still haven’t told me what you did with the extra hour this week.”

“…um, I was feeling pretty good about the breakthrough on the report, so I took the dog for an extra long walk, and when I got back, I made myself a coffee. The whole time, I was thinking through some possible ways to make some of our other processes more efficient, so it was good to get away from the screen and some fresh air to do that thinking! Really energized me for the rest of the day and my other tasks.”

“Susan, I’m not paying you to go on dog walks and make yourself coffee for an hour, I pay you to work. If you had time to do all that, not to mention the research on this automation stuff, my concern is that I’m not giving you enough. I pay you for 40 hours, 8 hours per day. Simple.”

“Excuse me?!? Art, with all due respect, you emailed me past 8pm two days last week, and I spent easily more than an hour dealing with those. I’m not complaining, I know how important the Johnson account is, so I was/am happy to help, but along with my full regular schedule, that after-hours stuff easily put me over 40 hours for the week, which not only makes up for my dog walk/coffee this week, but would’ve covered me mowing my entire front and back lawn, too. In fact, the future time saved on training on the old process I replaced more than makes up for me taking extra-long dog walks once a week.”

“The Johnson account stuff is different.”

“Different how?”

“The fact is this Susan, I want you at your desk and/or in a meeting 8 hours a day, wall to wall…this is what I pay you for, not slacking off by not tasking. If we're paying you to walk the dog...you're stealing from the company. Basically, wage theft. Let’s set up a meeting next week to load you down with an extra hour of busy work.”

Congrats, leadership/boss/manager....all you've incentivized—unintentionally—Susan or any other motivated/talented/motiviated employee to do is to stop trying to find efficiencies, not share them when they do or artificially slow themselves down, lest they or their work method used to arrive at those breakthroughs be characterized as "slacking" or "taking advantage".

That kind of management method is truly "penny wise...and pound foolish."

 

[Silverstring]

This is hilarious. Are security cameras in the office also an invasion of privacy?

Tell us how security cameras at a company-owned location are in any plausible way comparable to potentially monitoring employees' private homes and/or personal workspaces? Do you point your "security cameras" at your employees to monitor their performance, of do you use them, for, you know...security purposes!?!?!

Also, if you do use them to monitor employees, tell us where you got the unreleased 24K cameras that provide the level of detail that you can actually tell what they're working on, see the detail on their screens, or the numbers on their office phones. At best you can probably see them at their desks...and nothing beyond that. ...but, given your past comments on the thread...just them sitting there is good enough "performance monitoring".

Let me guess...instead of answering and/or countering any point raised, you'll come up with a hollow attempt at a rejoinder, and throw in a false equivalency disguised as a question.

Something like:

Laugh-inducing. Are you saying that management has no right to monitor their workers?

I think I got it down!

 

[jk73]

Tell us how security cameras at a company-owned location are in any plausible way comparable to potentially monitoring employees' private homes and/or personal workspaces? Do you point your "security cameras" at your employees to monitor their performance, of do you use them, for, you know...security purposes!?!?!

Also, if you do use them to monitor employees, tell us where you got the unreleased 24K cameras that provide the level of detail that you can actually tell what they're working on, see the detail on their screens, or the numbers on their office phones. At best you can probably see them at their desks...and nothing beyond that. ...but, given your past comments on the thread...just them sitting there is good enough "performance monitoring".

Let me guess...instead of answering and/or countering any point raised, you'll come up with a hollow attempt at a rejoinder, and throw in a false equivalency disguised as a question.

Something like:

I think I got it down!

The WFH crowd sure seems scared of even the slightest amount of at-home oversight. Big mystery why that is.

 

[Silverstring]

The WFH crowd sure seems scared of even the slightest amount of at-home oversight. Big mystery why that is.

I knew I had that formula dialed in! Perfect!

Go ahead, tell us...what's the mystery?

"sure seems..." "big mystery..." no addressing of previous points made, specifics or detail whatsoever, baseless speculation, totally lacking in substance. I can set my watch to the pattern now.

I'm 96% convinced you're a Mad Libs-style AI bot, because a human tends to answer points in a discussion, you know, converse? Kudos to your programmer, you did have me for awhile. Have a great night (if you experience night)!

 

[jk73]

I knew I had that formula dialed in! Perfect!

Go ahead, tell us...what's the mystery?

"sure seems..." "big mystery..." no addressing of previous points made, specifics or detail whatsoever, baseless speculation, totally lacking in substance. I can set my watch to the pattern now.

I'm 96% convinced you're a Mad Libs-style AI bot, because a human tends to answer points in a discussion, you know, converse? Kudos to your programmer, you did have me for awhile. Have a great night (if you experience night)!

Thanks.

 

[The-Real-Deal82]

The sheer invasion of privacy there that you would want is insane. If you think you need to constantly surveil your employees you’re a bad boss, full stop. You arent paying people to sit their asses in a chair in front of a screen for 8 hours, you’re paying them to get their tasks done. If you think someone can’t walk their dog during the day and still get their work done you’re insane. The idea of paying an empoyee isnt to simply stuff their day with as many things as you can cram into 8 hours, it’s to enable them to be productive. Your post is an example of the exact worst way to get productivity out of talented people.

I’d have no issues with employees walking their dogs during their lunch break but when they are at home they are expected to be available during the working day. At my employer half an hour and two fifteen minute periods are assigned for breaks like they are when they are on work premises. If an employee decides to go missing for an hour in the middle of the afternoon without a valid excuse, I’d have an issue with that despite the fact they’d probably offer to work on after everybody else has switched off. We had a lot of issues during lockdown with people getting a bit too comfortable in their surroundings and a ‘working from home etiquette’ document had to be drawn up. The ages in our company range from about 20 to 55 though and the younger members often went missing on the sunnier days lol.

 

[Tech198]

The sheer invasion of privacy there that you would want is insane. If you think you need to constantly surveil your employees you’re a bad boss, full stop. You arent paying people to sit their asses in a chair in front of a screen for 8 hours, you’re paying them to get their tasks done. If you think someone can’t walk their dog during the day and still get their work done you’re insane. The idea of paying an empoyee isnt to simply stuff their day with as many things as you can cram into 8 hours, it’s to enable them to be productive. Your post is an example of the exact worst way to get productivity out of talented people.

Then its back to work for everyone.

 

[pdoherty]

The WFH crowd sure seems scared of even the slightest amount of at-home oversight. Big mystery why that is.

People using company-provided laptops are already subject to plenty of Big Brother oversight of everything they do on those computers.

 

[Stephen.R]

Wow. Sure are a lot of people worried about “productivity” that clearly have zero way to actually measure productivity.

if you think people sitting in an office don’t have any reason or capability to goof off and run out the clock, you’re basically incompetent as a manager.

fyi, someone ran an anonymous poll about this topic in April: https://www.techrepublic.com/articl...l-quit-if-wfh-ends-according-to-a-new-survey/

35% of respondents said they’d quit if WFH is abolished and 11% said they’d already secured permanent WFH allowance.

That doesn’t identify the specifics of “is limited wfh enough to not quit” obviously.

but it raises an interesting point: if you think people can’t be trusted to work remotely and be productive (and are naive enough to think they can’t goof off in the office) then you’re presumably going to tell them they need to work in the office all the time. So there goes 35% of your workforce.

but if you think they can be trusted and productive remotely, why wouldn’t you allow it all the time?

All the comments about “this is very generous” are just ignoring the elephant in the room. If it wasn’t productive they wouldn’t allow it to continue at all - and would have mountains of data to show as much.

if you’re willing to allow it some days, why not all?

 

[Realityck]

People using company-provided laptops are already subject to plenty of Big Brother oversight of everything they do on those computers.

Not what you think. Enterprise computers would be hardened to allow a fixed approved application environment to prevent security compromises. If something starts to act like malware it would be investigated (unusual port activity). Everything you create or receive on that business laptop is property of the enterprise. Most companies would use a intranet HTTP gateway to block specific site traffic when you are connected. The worse situation would be thinking that company-provided laptop is your own personal toy, it isn't. Utilize something else for that activity.

 

[pdoherty]

Some employers have spying software that can see everything on an employee’s screen. Others have key logging as well.