Not really, because the other half or more don’t have to, which wasn’t your point.
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Apple Still Planning Return to In-Person Work in September, Despite Employee Complaints
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Collective disobedience? How is leaving to join a startup disobedient? That’s how NeXT started.
That poor introverted engineer is probably the only one on the “team” doing any real work but he/she has to be called in to four meetings a week so everyone can “interact”.
Your company mad a proposal that you evaluated and you knew about traveling to the office, and if you accepted you were aware of the travel expenses.
Not saying they pay you to go from and to work, but I know very well when I accept a better paying job that if it is farther from me, part of that extra income will eventually end up being eaten by the higher travel expenses.
May be you don't and as I said earlier it varies from job to job, as an example you definetly pay a grocery store employee to be at the store.
Now in this case (Apple) I do not know how they work and their needs so it might very well be that they pay you to be at the office.
There are some job that you can do far away from the company seat, there are other that still will be better than in person, and it is up to the company to decide wich way they see fit.
I am all for smartworking, and I am ok with people asking, another thing is pretending, at the end of the day I work for a company and I can ask, but I also have to follow rules.
Also making exception as in group A get to stay home and group B needs to be at works opens up another huge can of worms.
I'm just saying its really unlikely en masse an entire team that is paid extremely well by Apple would up and leave because they want employees in office 60% of the time after what used to be 100% of the time and was only situationally temporarily 0%.
Engineers are typically smarter than the outraged by oxygen brigade, when rubber meets road
I love WFH and have fought against coming back to the office anytime soon (I am the Ops Manager in a marketing agency, so have a big say), but the CEO was insistent on just me and a couple of the senior managers meeting up once a week in person. Reluctantly I agreed.
Having done that now for 2 months, absolutely nothing beats face to face, important meetings.
The meeting has to have an objective, otherwise it can be a waste, but ours do and yep, that ebb and flow of conversation is 10x better face to face.
I can't deny it anymore. F2F collaboration is far better.
Still sticking to 2-3 days at home per week though.
Having done that now for 2 months, absolutely nothing beats face to face, important meetings.
The meeting has to have an objective, otherwise it can be a waste, but ours do and yep, that ebb and flow of conversation is 10x better face to face.
I can't deny it anymore. F2F collaboration is far better.
Still sticking to 2-3 days at home per week though.
Different scenario though, as people followed a "leader" Steve Jobs, wonder if the same would have happened without him...
People severely overstate the whole whiteboard, watercooler, coffee discussion. You don’t change the world every coffee break. If you have such a brilliant idea and need to talk to someone, it’s just as effective on Zoom. I have done this. It’s faster. No “hey can we get coffee, I need to talk to you about something”. In a very large company, the chances of those two employees meeting at the coffee station and can talk about business are very low.
Feel free to. It’s a job seekers market right despite higher unemployment form now. Too many jobs. Not so many willing to work after being conditioned by covid.
Obviously there’s good things to working at home but it does feel isolated and it’s far from being optimal. I try to create a good atmosphere at office. I take the staff out to lunch frequently. Sports leagues.
In your opinion.
Never said you did, but working from home eliminates that avenue of innovation...1000%.
It's not about brilliant ideas, it's about unintended collaboration fostering innovation.
Based on the above, your company doesn't seem like it fosters a environment of collaboration and is missing out on a range of techniques for elevating the productivity and innovation of it's employees. I've worked for a company with 80,000 employees and can tell you that last sentence is about as false as it gets.
You and Apple employees didn't need to a job in the first place that was a job in an office, but ya did.
No validity to people who bitch about getting exactly what they signed up for.
Something tells me most of their employees are well compensated for that commute.
I am really amazed, how many just want to keep the status-quo and refuse to evolve, especially taking into account, that this is a tech forum...
I guess you never ask for a raise, additional training or change in the work you are doing? I am just asking, because otherwise you would change the contract you originally signed up for.
I guess you never ask for a raise, additional training or change in the work you are doing? I am just asking, because otherwise you would change the contract you originally signed up for.
I work for a very large company, you don’t know me. At any given time, there were on average 20 employees in the break room. Getting coffee, chatting and just taking a break. Having such a critical innovative conversation when 18 other people are talking is not as easy as you guys make it sound. I have actually tried, had to ask people to repeat what they said since two other people were excited about a football game.
Again, this is seriously overstated that innovation ONLY can possibly occur if there is a coffee station. In the past year, we have innovated a great deal over Zoom, online whiteboard software and more collaborative tools.
Ditto. As I said I worked for a very large company also with thousands of IT staff scattered across the globe.
My overarching point is that your anecdotal experience doesn't trump mine...and vice versa. They are all anecdotal experiences. Having a year++ of zoom vs being in the office I have found that being able to talk to colleagues, next to me at the water cooler, in the cafe, gym or where ever breeds a culture of knowledge sharing that is far and away missing from zoom.
In your opinion, this is a "seriously overstated", not mine. I've been around the block a few times and that is my observation.
It's not about status-quo or evolving...it's about what the management of the company deems best for the company.
In large, structured, multinational corporations that employs 50,000+ people, what is the percentage of those requesting a raise vs getting the raise. It may be different in small startup situations, but from I have seen asking for raise usually doesn't work.
A company usually will invest time and money into valued employees to make them more valued.
Depends. From my experience corporate politics tend to interfere. Again, it may be different in startup situations.
Well it sounds like you work for old school companies that did not provide dozens of digital collaboration tools to use to be just as innovative, if not more, being remote. If your company is as massive as you state, it’s probably next to impossible to have such critical meetings in an open space. With 20 other people chatting around us, it was quite difficult to talk about a deep work conversation.
Maybe you actually work at a startup? That I can understand. If it’s just you and one other person by the coffee machine, it’s a lot easier to have such a deep work conversation to innovate the company. But if 20 other people are around you? No, it’s not easy. And 99.9999% of the time, it’s small talk - weather, football, kids whatever. Not a deep innovative conversation.
Well you would be wrong with that opinion...those collaboration tools enhance the human interaction, not replace it.
That's not the scenario I'm painting, but again a conversation among three people can happen in an open space.
Nope.
This is not binary. Every conversation does not have to be critical, thought provoking or innovative. The point is if one runs into a senior manager, for example, one may ask him/her/they about some project/initiative or current business issue that needs addressing and have a conversation about it...an opportunity that may not happen otherwise. While you could say, well I could schedule a meeting, sure you can, but the dynamics are totally different and typically one would not schedule a one on one meeting with someone the likes of Phil Schiller. But again, it sounds like we come from different worlds and my comments stand about my perception of your company's approach to resource management based on your posts.
Again, that is completely false. What is preventing anyone from messaging or emailing that senior manager? I can ask the same thing in a Teams chat. And I would have a better chance at talking to them anyway. With such a large company, the chance of me walking down the same hall or going to get coffee at the same time as that senior manager is very very low. What if he is in a rush? What then? There are a lot of variables here. Brining up teams, messaging the person, and them getting back is just as effective.
In fact, I have more success, even pre COVID, of talking to the CTO about something over teams/call than randomly running into him in the hall or at the coffee station.
You're missing the point, which is an opportunistic conversation. Generally, for me for example, I won't message the CEO of the company with a question, but meeting him/her/they at the water cooler I would engage in conversation.
It seems to me you are justifying your position by using examples that allow you to justify your position and using tech as a substitute for human interaction. It just doesn't work that way. I fully agree that when people aren't in the same location tech has to be used. However, one project I was working on, I spent a month in Asia and Europe getting to know the people there. When I came back to the states, using tech for the conferences was much easier. So, imo, human interaction is what is missing from zoom and teams.
No I’m saying people are putting too much weight on a chance meeting scenario and businesses will not function as effectively if it’s not the perfect situation that lets you see a CEO in a break room at the same day as you are thinking about an issue. And that the CEO will not be busy or in a rush.
As I said, trying to meet the CTO in person is impossible. You realize how busy these people are? But I have discussed some issues with the CTO with Teams even though we are in the same building.
I'm not surprised very few want that stupid 90-min each way commute back unless they live in Cupertino. You're literally stuck in traffic for 30-40 min on a 2-mile stretch of highway and you still have to drive another 40-50 min, you're wasting 3 hours daily just wasting gas and your time.
You are saying YOU are putting too much weight on human interactions. There may be some that agree with that sentiment, but clearly Tim Cook does not agree.
Yes, I know. I sat feet from him/her/them prior to lockdown.
And we have been in meetings in zoom with the CTO and managers above the CTO...that is not the point.
Deirdre O'Brien faces her first major hurdle with employees. Let’s see how time and results remember this move.
Agreed until it comes to employees personal safety and health. This is a strange move by Apple, I’d had thought they‘ve embraces a mix of in office/home working environment choices by their employees more than a few other Silicon Valley companies, then I thought about it like this …
envision this stated like Underworld: Rise of the Lycans Get Back to Work scene lol
Agreed until it comes to employees personal safety and health. This is a strange move by Apple, I’d had thought they‘ve embraces a mix of in office/home working environment choices by their employees more than a few other Silicon Valley companies, then I thought about it like this …
LMAO … exactly what I was thinking.
envision this stated like Underworld: Rise of the Lycans Get Back to Work scene lol
I think you are misunderstanding me. I’m not the one that brought up how amazingly important water cooler or coffee breaks are to be innovative. Someone else did. I am NOT putting too much weight on it, others are. I’m simply stating it’s not as uber critical to have like some here are suggesting.
Do you honestly work for a large company? The smaller the company, obviously the better the chances are to speak to the CEO/CTO/Upper leadership in the halls than a very very large company. Even if I wanted to, unless I sit outside my CTO’s door and wait, I cannot just “run into him” in the halls and discuss business.
The water cooler is a euphemism for human interaction...it could be anywhere or anytime. I'm stating that this human interaction is a necessary part of many companies cultures.
I used to work for the largest company in it's space, tens of thousands of employee across the globe. The management was colocated in the office we were at. I don't think it is a secret, the bigger the company, the more spread out it is geographically it's not so easy to "bump" into management. Currently, in the office I'm in management is readily available for those water cooler conversations.