Apple Still Planning Return to In-Person Work in September, Despite Employee Complaints

[Euroamerican]

Did thhey ever fix the issue with the clear glass walls inside the UFO, the ones that people were getting injured walking into? I imagine that there will be an increase in that same behavior as people return! ;-0

 

[MozMan68]

Did thhey ever fix the issue with the clear glass walls inside the UFO, the ones that people were getting injured walking into? I imagine that there will be an increase in that same behavior as people return! ;-0

Those windows are amazing.

The perfect curvature to provide practically no reflection from the inside looking out.

 

[ghanwani]

 

[MobiusStrip]

Apple be like: "We didn't built this 5 billion dollars spaceship for you guys to just stay at home working naked"

Sure, homie. Meanwhile, literates comport themselves thusly: You're a ****ing retard. And Apple managed to build a giant spaceship that can't even accommodate its local employees, who still lurk in beige rental office space and have never even been to the doughnut.

 

[I7guy]

Did thhey ever fix the issue with the clear glass walls inside the UFO, the ones that people were getting injured walking into? I imagine that there will be an increase in that same behavior as people return! ;-0

Think they established a free eye care program.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

Did thhey ever fix the issue with the clear glass walls inside the UFO, the ones that people were getting injured walking into? I imagine that there will be an increase in that same behavior as people return! ;-0

 

[stevet]

I can echo that sentiment. I work as a software engineer at a company that's remote friendly. There's about 15000 employees total. About 60% of our employees are designated as 100% remote. We have both software and hardware products.

During this pandemic, we've transitioned everyone to remote and banned people from going to the offices unless there's no other option. There's literally ZERO impact to timelines and release schedules. In some cases people are MORE productive than they were in the office.

A lot of the commenters here who are having a hard time grasping how remote work functions, and not understanding how time is wasted at the office:

• You spend time 'getting coffee' with coworkers.
• Commute time of 30mins - 1 hour each day.
• Time spent in hallways 'waiting for the meeting room to free up'. Waiting for the elevator, etc.
• People with kids that they needed to leave at certain time to pick up from school.

^ All this 'office' activity adds up to nearly 1 hour or more every day. In remote work, all that time is now work time.

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To that point, my company has actually CLOSED several of our smaller offices permanently. It saved money and some of the savings went to salary increases instead. Additionally, being remote first let us hire better people. We're not longer limited to hiring engineers near our offices: we can hire anyone in a similar timezone as the rest of the team. I now have new coworkers that span 3 timezones across US. Many of them no where near our offices.

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On Hiring and finding new jobs:

At this point in time in the tech industry: If your company doesn't offer 100% remote or majority remote option, you'll have a tough time hiring qualified, knowledgable people with tons of industry experience. Why?

-> Because those highly qualified people have tons of options. Other companies like mine are ready to hire those people and give them 100% remote work. Companies that insist on majority work in office will need to offer a lot more in pay and benefits to attract people.

I have friends who work at companies that are transitioning back to a 4-day in office schedule in September. They're growing and trying to hire senior / lead software engineers and couldn't hire anyone qualified for almost 2 months now. Why?

As soon as the qualified candidate hear 4-days in office a week, it's basically end of the phone screen with a 'not interested'. Good people with tons of experience have options. Lots of options. Especially if you have a place like Apple on your resume.

The way the tech job market is right now, the onus is on the company to attract best talent. Not the other way around.

I like how having kids and being at home suddenly isn’t a factor or distraction. I get that jobs for most people can be done at home. Hardware like Apple does cannot really be done at home, the lab equipment, the expertise of other teammates etc is totally being undervalued in your post.

 

[Realityck]

A update to this today per verge article

In a new report from The Verge, it was revealed that Apple has been denying even more requests from employees who want to continue working from home instead of the new hybrid model. In a Slack channel with 6,000 members, employees argue that they will leave Apple if the company doesn’t change its decision.

In a company Slack channel where employees advocate for remote work, roughly 10 people said they were resigning due to the hybrid work policy or knew others who’d been forced to quit. The Slack channel currently has more than 6,000 members.

 

[kc9hzn]

A update to this today per verge article

In a new report from The Verge, it was revealed that Apple has been denying even more requests from employees who want to continue working from home instead of the new hybrid model. In a Slack channel with 6,000 members, employees argue that they will leave Apple if the company doesn’t change its decision.

“Roughly 10 people said they were resigning” out of a 6000 person channel, that’s about 0.1% of a channel that would be more motivated than the general employee base. Even if the figure of people who would leave but not vocalize it is 10x that, that’s not a lot of people.

Edit: I’m also weary of how many of the concerns the employees cited were COVID related. Ultimately, continuing to self isolate in fear of COVID is unhealthy, isolation usually isn’t good for people’s mental health. And the idea that we could contain and eradicate SARS-CoV2 is a ship that sailed over a year ago. Realistically, we’re going to have to learn to live our lives despite the risk of COVID. Now, generally diseases go down in lethality as they become more adapted to human hosts, even as infectiousness increases, so, at some point, COVID won’t really be anything more than another seasonal flu or cold (able to kill at risk people, sure, but generally not cause for concern for most people). There’s a lot of fear over the Delta variant’s infectivity and ability to cause illness in vaccinated persons (the latter isn’t cause for concern, the purpose of vaccines is to prevent infection AND to make infection less severe if it does occur), but I haven’t heard of an increase in the severity of COVID cases as the Delta variant has spread. But the fact that engineers are the world’s most valuable company can buy into these fears about the Delta variant to the point where they wish to cloister themselves away from the world concerns me, and the fact that people still seem to think we’re in the containment stage also worries me. SARS-CoV2 is endemic now