Apple's Director of Machine Learning Resigns Due to Return to Office Work

[PsykX]

Absolutely no reason for anyone to work in the office. Zoom/Teams is perfectly fine, and likely more efficient than being in an office. I mean, you at least save the hour or 2 you waste commuting every day.

At home, we're more productive individually.
At the office, we're more productive as teams.

Concrete example :
We're a few thousand employees where I work, and when I was at the office, I overheard quite a lot of conversations of people starting projects or analysis that had already partially or completely been done before. I could get into the conversation and share it and save different teams hours, sometimes even weeks of work. Working remotely, I can't do that anymore. But I work alone much faster than ever before.

 

[Rafterman]

Thessalonians 3:10, if he will not work, he will not eat. I think hungry people are stupid people, and stupid hungry people give rise to dictators. They become the Mob. So, pretty much, yeah, I'm in the lets do what has worked for thousands of years camp and not pretend we are soooo much smarter than everyone else who ever lived.

So, don't try to find a better way? Experience adds to knowledge, so yes, we should be smarter than those before us.

 

[JM]

Commuting stress, road rage, less sleep, less time for yourself, less time for your family, social interactions you don't care for, uncomfortable clothes, exposing yourself to potential health hazard, less productive, more stressed. Working in the office is ********. Period.

I really had to laugh at the order of your words: “uncomfortable clothes, exposing yourself”. I thought you were going in a very different direction before reading what followed them. ?

I think I should get some sleep…

 

[JM]

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.

I would like to adapt into a larger paycheck.

 

[pshufd]

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change."

In the modern parlance, it's convincing the most people to work for you for far less than it is worth to the marketplace.

 

[JM]

I'm surprised MacRumors hasn't shut down cimments yet.

It’s a weekend. They’ll deal with the dumpster fire on Monday.

I wonder if they WFH? ?

Just kidding just kidding ? it sounded funny.

I’m surprised there was even a post on the weekend at all! Usually there aren’t any new posts, except for the weekly roundup.

There’s a lot of interesting comments, but I’m only on page two…. I haven’t reached the inner circles of hell, yet.

 

[George Dawes]

It's the infrastructure that suffers with wfh ; restaurants , cafes etc all closing as nobody's using them as they're all at home sat on the sofa 'working'

 

[eTip]

There are times in your life when you want stability. Maybe you're putting your kids through college or they are in high-school preparing to leave the nest. Or you have other obligations like caring for elderly parents where you need some stability in life. I turned down a dream job to take care of a sick relative (this was back in 2008 and it would have been remote work). There are places where you are in a WFH or work at an office when you start and then they change their policy. We bought out a company many years ago and told them to just keep doing what they were doing where they were doing it. It was a typical office environment where people commuted an hour or less. Then we decided to consolidate buildings and closed theirs down and said that they had to come to our building which added 30 minutes for a lot of workers. Many did quit as their skills were in demand.

I’m with you through much of that and have lived much of that. But there are plenty of companies at least as “stable” as Apple that allow wfh permanently. I happen to work for one of them. I’m actually one to nearly always choose stability over …well, most other things. I tend to stay at a company longer than most but for me (and many others) making the choice to take a role wasn’t risky in any way and unless you’re someone that actually prefers going into the office (have a few friends that fall in that category) it’s usually a no-brainer. It’s really not that different from people changing jobs to something closer to their home which has been happening as long as there have been jobs. It’s just that for obvious reasons a whole bunch of us realized how much happier we are wfh at the same time.

 

[fishkorp]

People can hate all they want. Numerous studies have shown there is zero nagative impact to work productivity working remote. In many cases it improves. The most recent one comes from Texas A&M University School of Public Health. Most (not all, most) engineers working at the FAANG companies can be 100% remote. If you literally need to babysit your engineers, you hired the wrong people to begin with. There’s a reason many of the companies don’t “clock” hours and have unlimited PTO. Workers will work and get the job done. It’s much easier to sort the good the from the bad and move on. If your particular company has people not being productive, that’s on your company. It’s proven, over and over again, WFH is just as if not more productive for many industries. And cheaper for the employer (not to mention the huge decrease in work related/workplace injuries).

As someone who’s now more than 20 years into a software development career, I’d never take another in-office job unless it was something super secret that it required it. But most jobs (yes, even at your almighty Apple) so not require that level of secrecy. Even US government jobs that used to require high level security clearances and working in SCIFs are moving to remote work for developers, because they realized almost none of the code itself needs to be protected (again, there are exceptions). There is zero reason for a vast majority of software engineers to ever set foot in an office. As long as everyone pulls their weight and meets deadlines, no one cares who’s working when or from where. It all comes down to the people you hire. Hire crap, expect crap results.

 

[eTip]

People can hate all they want. Numerous studies have shown there is zero nagative impact to work productivity working remote. In many cases it improves. The most recent one comes from Texas A&M University School of Public Health. Most (not all, most) engineers working at the FAANG companies can be 100% remote. If you literally need to babysit your engineers, you hired the wrong people to begin with. There’s a reason many of the companies don’t “clock” hours and have unlimited PTO. Workers will work and get the job done. It’s much easier to sort the good the from the bad and move on. If your particular company has people not being productive, that’s on your company. It’s proven, over and over again, WFH is just as if not more productive for many industries. And cheaper for the employer (not to mention the huge decrease in work related/workplace injuries).

As someone who’s now more than 20 years into a software development career, I’d never take another in-office job unless it was something super secret that it required it. But most jobs (yes, even at your almighty Apple) so not require that level of secrecy. Even US government jobs that used to require high level security clearances and working in SCIFs are moving to remote work for developers, because they realized almost none of the code itself needs to be protected (again, there are exceptions). There is zero reason for a vast majority of software engineers to ever set foot in an office. As long as everyone pulls their weight and meets deadlines, no one cares who’s working when or from where. It all comes down to the people you hire. Hire crap, expect crap results.

?accurate and well stated.

 

[Schismz]

Long thread to skim, but interesting... It just seems like people who have to show up at a physical office due to the nature of their work or culture of their company, are cranky about those of us who don't have to.

1. I'm strongly guessing the ML guy from start of thread is doing just fine, and can go on permanent vacation, or get another job in 5 minutes. His life's choices are his life choices, it's not possible to extrapolate someone else's priorities to what any individual feels they should be doing.

2. Unless you've been there a long time, or your skillset is super-important ... Apple doesn't really pay that well. It could be said they're not very competitive. If you work at Apple as an engineer on iOS then that's something cool, because you're working on what's arguably the most important and profitable piece of tech on Earth. If you work for Apple doing 99 other things, then you're either replaceable, haven't been there longer than a few years, or odds are you're grinding along in a "high paying, dead-end job." I know quite a few people who work at Apple, and... it's just a job, "growing old, watching 20 person teams become 300 person teams making a mess, waiting for my options to vest." And quite often, you can go do a variant of exactly the same thing, at another co, while making more money and sitting around in your pajamas all day ... so why wouldn't you?

The people with all the enthusiasm often lack the skillset to replace the people whose lives they're judging.

3. IDK, it's the big shiny Uber-expensive mothership, finished right before COVID hit, so... they need to fill it up with something. Perhaps they can get some holograms of people walking around, grow goats, open an upscale homeless shelter, ya know, stuff that demonstrates how committed to ESG Apple is and their great love of all humanity.

I wouldn't ever show up at an office, because... I don't have to I've worked from home for over a decade, long before COVID hit. Post-COVID it just means I don't have to drive to an airport, grow old and die standing in lines, get on a plane, fly to some other location, often located in another country, just to have a stupid in person meeting that lasts for 1-3 hours, followed by dinner, followed by the after-party (where 95%+ of all business actually occurs), followed by... I mean, I don't care, just open Zoom. Please wake me up when we get teleport.app and I can go straight to the after-party, can't be bothered before that.

 

[fishkorp]

It's the infrastructure that suffers with wfh ; restaurants , cafes etc all closing as nobody's using them as they're all at home sat on the sofa 'working'

If someone’s at an office working they wouldn’t be there either. What’s your point? If they’re at the cafe, they’re not working. Are they? And if a restaurant’s entire business revolves around the dependency of a nearby office, that’s asking for trouble anyway. Not the other company’s fault. They chose to open a shop there, knowing full well the tenants could be gone tomorrow. They can adapt, or move locations. I’d the food is good enough, people will come back. The only ones suffering would be the mega corporate office park landlords. Because they have potentially completely useless buildings zoned for a very specific thing.

 

[pshufd]

I’m with you through much of that and have lived much of that. But there are plenty of companies at least as “stable” as Apple that allow wfh permanently. I happen to work for one of them. I’m actually one to nearly always choose stability over …well, most other things. I tend to stay at a company longer than most but for me (and many others) making the choice to take a role wasn’t risky in any way and unless you’re someone that actually prefers going into the office (have a few friends that fall in that category) it’s usually a no-brainer. It’s really not that different from people changing jobs to something closer to their home which has been happening as long as there have been jobs. It’s just that for obvious reasons a whole bunch of us realized how much happier we are wfh at the same time.

Just changing jobs can be destabilizing. If you have someone in your family with a major medical problem, you don't want to change jobs as their health insurance may not cover the doctors you're using. Or a move might be required.

I received my 35th anniversary award a couple of years ago so I stayed around with one organization for a long time. The organization was bought by another company so it was the same organization but different companies.

I wonder if WFH is more common in some areas than others. We've taken it for granted for 35 years, even if we didn't use it.

 

[Wanted797]

If my work place tried to push a more than what they are of a 1 day in the office per week. I’d probably considering looking around as well.

 

[msp3]

The “work from home” rot for people who want to do no work at all starts from the top. Good riddance to bad rubbish

 

[StudioMacs]

This is such a silly reply. Retail and service are obviously jobs that can't be done from home. No one expects the dude washing your car to be able to work from home. But those who can easily do so, should be allowed to. It's 2022, stop simping for corporations and holding onto ancient ways of doing something just because that's how it was done in the past. What an absolutely ridiculous reply.

Worker output fell 7.5% in the first quarter, the biggest decline since 1947

​

 

[pshufd]

The “work from home” rot for people who want to do no work at all starts from the top. Good riddance to bad rubbish

If you hire people who don't want to work, then you need to fix your hiring process.

 

[Adamantoise]

Imagine being this bent out of shape over a man's choice to leave his job. Some of you need to reevaluate your life choices for real.

Ian Goodfellow is an author of the Deep Learning book, everyone in the field likely knows who he is; he is likely doing better than all of you getting an aneurysm over his choice to part ways with Apple.

 

[pshufd]

Worker output fell 7.5% in the first quarter, the biggest decline since 1947.

​

Worker productivity fell to start 2022 at its fastest pace in nearly 75 years while labor costs soared as the U.S. struggled with surging Covid cases, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday.

My former manager got COVID. She was out a solid month. No email, no work, no nothing. In general we work, even when we are sick or even recovering from surgery. You may have the flu but you still work. Usually in the office up until a few years ago. She wound up with long COVID but could work the second month. One guy I know had long COVID for 18 months and was essentially disabled.

I read somewhere that about half of the country has had COVID now. So no surprise that there was a hit to productivity in Q1.

If you think that's bad, take a look at productivity in Zhengzhou where Apple makes most of their iPhones. Or Shanghai. Or Hong Kong.

 

[Freyqq]

You're not a marriage counselor to work from home. You work at a company that builds products, some are life-changing products, products that require maximum focus, productivity, discipline, quality check, again and again. At-home productivity will never equal at-work productivity. At-home discipline will never equal at-school discipline.

Just like you'd never be comfortable with a home-schooled heart surgeon; or get on a rocket built by engineers who worked from home.

Anyway, that said, good riddance to him. There are no irreplaceable people.

Depends entirely on the job. A lot of office and coding jobs can be done remotely, arguably better and more efficiently at a lower cost for both the company and the employee. Hands-on jobs with hardware, of course, could be much more complicated to do remotely.

 

[pshufd]

Imagine being this bent out of shape over a man's choice to leave his job. Some of you need to reevaluate your life choices for real.

Ian Goodfellow is an author of the Deep Learning book, everyone in the field likely knows who he is; he is likely doing better than all of you getting an aneurysm over his choice to part ways with Apple.

I found his online book and will add it to my reading list. Very cool. He's apparently a very generous guy too.

 

[pshufd]

Worker output fell 7.5% in the first quarter, the biggest decline since 1947

​

 

[robinp]

Because they want you back in the office instead of taking numerous breaks? Slacking off? Running and doing errands while on the clock?

There are several posting similarly un-empthetic views. I’m not really picking on you, I just decided to reply to you.

But it’s clear that most people making statements like this have no experience of this kind of job. Because the actual reality is that for many people the reason they want to work from home is because they are more productive.

Work is just way more satisfying and envigorating when you have the time and energy to get stuff done without loads of distractions that occur in the office. Coding is hard and requires a lot of concentration. Distractions like other people chatting, or talking on the phone, or even walking past can affect your productivity.

So no, I don’t think it’s about slacking off at all. If these companies don’t trust their employees then there’s way bigger problems than whether they might nip out to do a quick errand.

Fwiw, where I work we have a completely flexible work policy. It works great. The trust shown by my employer shows respect and trust. That is reciprocated. It means people can do things like pick their kids up from school and make up the time later in the evening. It is humane and decent.

 

[TECK]

I think people should be given the choice to work how they feel the most comfortable. I work for a large software company and our campus always encouraged a 50% WFH/Office ratio. I totally understand a colleague who travels 2 hours to prefer working from home, that is 4 hours of your daily life you can use with your kids or your girlfriend.

It takes me literally 15min to go to work, taking the subway. I go to the office because the free lunch, snacks, drinks and perks we get. Yet, when I work late hours at the office, I enjoy WFH the next day.

That being said, I think Ian Goodfellow's resignation reason is bullshit. "Hey guys, I quit because Apple want us to go back to office three days out of five." Goodfellow, please. You make enough cheese to afford a driver taking you back and forward to work. Just admit you have some friction with someone or you just don't like that you don't have full veto on everything like you had at Google.

 

[eTip]

Just changing jobs can be destabilizing. If you have someone in your family with a major medical problem, you don't want to change jobs as their health insurance may not cover the doctors you're using. Or a move might be required.

I received my 35th anniversary award a couple of years ago so I stayed around with one organization for a long time. The organization was bought by another company so it was the same organization but different companies.

I wonder if WFH is more common in some areas than others. We've taken it for granted for 35 years, even if we didn't use it.

I think you and I are pretty close to 100% agreement tbh. And I *do* have someone in my family with a major medical problem plus I’m the sole income provider so that undoubtedly reduces my risk tolerance (though I’d already been more conservative about this than some of my peers). I’ve passed up opportunities to do some really cool things that I was passionate about not so much because of a salary reduction but due to inferior health insurance.

Some hard to fill roles even at companies (like my previous company) that are pretty strong-willed about getting everyone back in the office very often have to be offered as remote.