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Apple's Director of Machine Learning Resigns Due to Return to Office Work
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I haven't seen the ratio of Apple Retail Employees compared to other Apple Employees recently but its a very large number comparably.
Retail are hourly not salaried.
Yes I have quite a job completely on my own terms - and when owed 3 pay checks and broke - not living well.
THAT is on my own terms, regardless of the outcome even told off the manager loudly in front of 300 people with a few words humbling the manager followed by loud cheers of colleagues. At that moment I didn’t care about financial security nor wealth and was very prepared to walk 30km home. At the end of that moment my 3 paycheques was immediately paid and I didn’t give a rats ass about a bridge I’d never wanted/needed/ever had walked across again.
notice your first reply is about leaving well paid jobs. I didn’t have that luxury but respect meant more to me than $. In the end I got it, deservedly and I was 100% in the right. 40 others walk off the job that same moment after I received my owed pay, I hoped they got theirs as well. That’s the difference between some people - their after the mighty dollar, I’m only after what I’m worth and my dignity isn’t ever for sale - and I never gamble with that!
As someone who has worked from home much of my career and has a good work ethic, the problem with working from home is the difficulty of dividing a work/home balance. No one here is talking about that. Sure, you can be more productive at home. But no one NOONE can argue that collaboration is better when you do. The natural discussion from dedicated employees just organically builds new and more creative products and ideas. If you do work that “just needs doing” then sure - work from home is ideal but that’s not what’s best for teams imo (and I have multiple teams).
As folks get into the WFH lifestyle, folks will begin to realize they either spend too much time on the job, have too many interruptions by checking emails and responding to requests from others that work from home all hours of the day and night, and get frustrated that their supervisors don’t recognize the amount of work they do or any extra effort that is put in.
Both styles of work have benefits and faults. Personally, if you have a family, want a strong work/life balance, and work in collaborative/creative fields, going into the office should be the norm with perhaps a few days at the end of the week to finish your menial, constructive tasks at home.
But that’s just from someone that works from home.
In my team the consensus is that we are much more focused and productive at home. The reason is that our office is a large open space with multiple teams working in the same area and since we almost always work in pairs or small groups, the discussions make the environment quite loud and distracting. At home it's much quieter and focused.
There are plans to re-organize the office areas, but so far none of the proposed previews is satisfying.
When I work remotely I am basically constantly collaborating with someone else and I almost never got distracted, nor experience the other party getting distracted. Most of us have a dedicated office area at home and have our time organized to achieve a relatively distraction-free working time.
I also disagree that there are less distractions in the office and even your own example supports this:
Which means you effectively distracted whoever you interrupted and potentially made them lose a significant amount of productivity due to bringing them out of focus, which will require time to achieve again.
There are places for synchronous communication and places where asynchronous communication is far better and you needing something does not mean it's always a good idea to interrupt someone else "right now".
In remote working asynchronous communication is incentivized and if you need something "right now" you can still issue a direct call, whereas in the office going directly to someone is incentivized which is much more disruptive for their work focus.
This is definitely a drawback, but there are IMHO also some positives actually:
- Some people are uncomfortable with personal contacts and are much more at ease communicating without visual contact.
- The camera is actually an additional distraction: I purposefully hide the other party's video in some situations when more focus on what we are doing is required and bring it back in view in other situations.
- Losing facial expression and body language shifts the focus to the actual words said, which need to be less ambiguous and more considerate.
Said all of that, there are multiple teams and different teams report massively different experiences with working from home depending on how they are organized and operate.
IMHO remote working is another tool in the toolbox and every team should decide based on its own situation how to deal with it: like any other tool it might not be the right tool for all, but it doesn't mean it's not the right tool for some.
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For the whole "WFH means people aren't working as many hours" part my experience is that the people who worry about hours worked are the ones with a low performance that need to justify their positions with how many hours they are working. The trend has been going towards performance metrics for a long time now and today many companies doesn't care at all about how much/when/where you are working.
Add to that the fact that the actual science we have on the subjects shows that productivity is unchanged or goes up by WFH so it is actually a good thing.
I have been WFH whenever I want for a long time, what is happening now is that everyone else is catching up to it and offices are built into smaller hybrid offices where the main focus is on creating spaces that invites less formal meetings with bigger lounge areas. I usually aim to get into the office for an in person meeting or two and a longer lunch with colleagues once a week on average but actual work takes place at home, if I didn't live close by to the office I would probably have this down to once a month like some colleagues do.
Add to that the fact that the actual science we have on the subjects shows that productivity is unchanged or goes up by WFH so it is actually a good thing.
I have been WFH whenever I want for a long time, what is happening now is that everyone else is catching up to it and offices are built into smaller hybrid offices where the main focus is on creating spaces that invites less formal meetings with bigger lounge areas. I usually aim to get into the office for an in person meeting or two and a longer lunch with colleagues once a week on average but actual work takes place at home, if I didn't live close by to the office I would probably have this down to once a month like some colleagues do.
If he is one of the many people who live in Silicon Valley and moved to Central Valley to live more affordably, he would have to drive 3 hours each way to work. It was his choice to move.
They made our housing expenses much higher.
If he just wants it all his way, he might just run out of companies to accommodate his attitude.
They made our housing expenses much higher.
If he just wants it all his way, he might just run out of companies to accommodate his attitude.
He’s within his rights to find a different job with the flexibility he wants, Apple is also within theirs to require people to work from the office. I’m not sure why certain groups of people seem to suddenly think it’s a right to work from home when pre-pandemic they didn’t as to be blunt it isn’t your business. With that said I hope employers recognise the benefits of remote working such as less need for office space and happier staff and do become more flexible.
I agree Apple should do this. The 50% snowflakes will take Apple to court claiming unfair dismissal.
Even though Apple would be in the right, the anti Apple crowd will use it as an excuse to hate on Apple in the media. PR nightmare for Apple.
"choose between either a combination of our families, our well-being, and being empowered to do our best work, or being a part of Apple." - well, it says it all. Life is too short to spend it at a job that eats all of your time - more power to them!
There's only so much slacking off you can do stuck at a computer before it's more fun to just do your work. Coupled with the open office layouts making your screens visible to everyone walking by, I think it really makes less motivated employees work more. Our team and department were undeniably way less productive during WFH.
But if you actually care about your work and so does your team, none of that is necessary, and working remotely is better. I'm leaving Silicon Valley in 3 months and probably never working in a designated office again, which may come with a team change or a new job.
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If you believe the unions actually help workers, well . .
Unions of today only care about fattening the money their executive gets, disruptive harmful protesting and political lobbying.
The unions of today are not the solution, they are part of the problem.
Same, but I concluded that this is only because very few people truly care about their work here. They're just coasting and taking the big paychecks. I used to WFH all the time before covid at a startup, and stuff got done. Anyway yeah I'm interviewing elsewhere now, after having my job for almost 4 years.
Apple and other tech companies don't even have unions, at least not for these full-time engineering employees. Lo and behold, we're paid above min wage to say the least.
All people that I know are more productive from home. But that's just anecdotal evidence.
They can do that, lose some great employees, and replace them with less great ones who are willing to move. They lose a bit one way or another, and the execs are probably still deciding which is worse. FB went for no restrictions, and Goog tried to keep everyone from going remote but ultimately gave up.
Interesting…. So maybe the cursed autocorrect on my iPhone will now start working properly?
Working in a large company I can say that in short term WfH works, but it’s barely enough to steer the ship. No Zoom/Webex can replace proper interactions, brainstorming and random chat that leads to new ideas or problem solving.
So as someone above already said, good riddance to him
Working in a large company I can say that in short term WfH works, but it’s barely enough to steer the ship. No Zoom/Webex can replace proper interactions, brainstorming and random chat that leads to new ideas or problem solving.
So as someone above already said, good riddance to him
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This might be what they end up doing. I suspect the companies that let you work remotely are doing this anyway. Already you get a 5-25% pay cut depending on which employer and where you move to, but it somewhat correlates with cost of living.
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A big group of engineers don't get anything done in front of a whiteboard. Whoever is the most detail-obsessed ends up wasting the entire meeting time drawing a chart. A whiteboard is useful with 2 people, maybe 3, not more.
I work in a field which is far more secretive than Apple has any need to be. Before covid, wfh was unthinkable and off the table. Post covid, well we’ve been wfh for two years and will continue to be going forward. The amount of work delivered during this time I don’t think would have actually been possible in office. It’s been an absolute blessing.
Apple has no need for what they’re doing, and they’ll lose good people because of it.
Apple has no need for what they’re doing, and they’ll lose good people because of it.
Wonder how his next employer reacts when he asks why he quit Apple and his answer is “I wasn’t allowed to work from home anymore”