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

[Artemis70]

You're definitely a rarity. That's not to discount your experience. If it works for you, that's great. Congratulations. The thing is, not everyone is like you in this way. The issue at stake is choice. If you WANT to do what you do, that's great. Not everyone does or can.

I don't think that @dysamoria is a rarity. In my office, we have 50% of the people who are of their own accord coming back to the office 100% of the time, and 50% of the people are trying to find a new balance between 100% WFH and 80% WFH. Only about 1% of our people want 100% WFH. 50% want to work 100% in the office. Who is the rarity in my company?

 

[pshufd]

I was thinking about IT oversight for sure, but also stuff like the ability of the company to monitor who physically is in a room while talking about a certain product and what kinds of recording devices or cameras they have on them at the time. I would think in a WFH scenario it’s a little harder to monitor who might also be listening on a remote meeting (out of camera view), or whether or not someone is recording the whole thing on a phone or camera (the employee or a family member). It seems to me that in the case of product secrecy they have more control over an actual onsite location…where they can pat people down, dampen cell signals with graphite wall panels, and at least have a better understanding of who has access to what information and how it’s been transmitted, etc. etc.

One thing that you see in TV shows from time to time is a construction work office in a building resembling a mobile home. They are cheaply made with thin insulation. Work environments vary widely. It is assumed that your product plans will leak. You just have to innovate at a pace ahead of your competitors, even with leaks.

There's been a long history of leaks with Apple products despite their draconian attempts to prevent them.

 

[dysamoria]

Again, not for everyone. But, if you needed that kind of job. You should have requested it or been in that position to begin with.

This assumes that every employee or potential employee thinks they have the OPTION, when they initially got the job. The world changed because of a pandemic. It revealed the lie of the office workplace as a necessity for every job. If companies aren't willing to change with culture, they might win or they might lose. This specific situation looks like a loss for Apple, if they thought this employee was worth hiring in the first place.

 

[Compile 'em all]

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.

So you don’t work at Apple yet telling a guy who ACTUALLY WORKED AT APPLE what they do at the company and how to be productive?

This forum has gone down hill in the past few years.

 

[dysamoria]

Yet members of the over-educated classes still selfishly disregard the human lives behind the coffee counter and those delivering their 1-hour Whole Foods/Amazon orders, because they’re self-important, soft, narcissistic, and privileged. Sorry you can’t always “work” in your jammies while mommy brings you Hot Pockets.

Get over yourselves and stop lowering the rest of society to your perverse standards.

I have a VERY VERBOSE AND LENGTHY post on here that addresses this a bit. The short version is: I support this employee (per the article), AND I ALSO support the human lives behind the coffee counter, and those delivering Whole Foods/Amazon orders. Why? Because I realize anti-worker rhetoric is a loaded gun handed out by our Wall Street overlords who don't give a damn about ANY employee.

You're subscribing to a culture war between the middle-class and the poor, so that you don't spend too hard a think about the executive class that rules over all of us.

 

[0924487]

I work in a big tech company that went remote and I can definitely tell you that our productivity went down massively. Even after our infrastructure was tuned in to support this, we’re not close to precovid levels of productivity. There’s also a big time loss of collaboration and team building. It’s doable sure but at the lack of similar output. People are getting paid more to produce less right now, while in their PJs.

To most people outside of the USA, this is bloodily obvious. Pretty much no one would argue otherwise.

 

[dysamoria]

Not if these entitled idiots have anything to say about it.

Congratulations on playing the game of hijacked freedom rhetoric, as suits our corporate overlords. You're literally attacking the people you should be aligned with... unless YOU are part of the executive class...

 

[0924487]

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.

Which requires intelligence

 

[0924487]

That sounds more like a fault of your company than anything else. Entire production studios are working from home in my industry, the people putting movies and tv shows together, and it's been perfectly fine. Deadlines are still hit.

Working from home, inevitably, you will be distracted by families, dentist appointments, and things at home.

 

[dysamoria]

I work in a big tech company that went remote and I can definitely tell you that our productivity went down massively. Even after our infrastructure was tuned in to support this, we’re not close to precovid levels of productivity. There’s also a big time loss of collaboration and team building. It’s doable sure but at the lack of similar output. People are getting paid more to produce less right now, while in their PJs.

No two jobs are identical. Maybe your infrastructure wasn't tuned in as much as you think it was, or maybe your workplace culture resisted the change (or was enabling the wrong kind of workers in the first place). Or maybe your specific company DOES work better locally, for some reason. Even if that's the case, it's unlikely that your workplace is THE model to apply to every other workplace.

 

[slineaudi]

Everyone who says they don’t like working in the office due to interruptions from coworkers are severely undervaluing the positive role those interruptions actually have in the long term - IMO.

That said, I think a hybrid work model works well where you can realize the benefits of WFH and in office.

 

[dysamoria]

I have several people who WFM and they are total crap. I can track them and see how little they work. They’ll be laid off in the next few weeks ?

By all means, use this scenario to paint EVERYONE with the same brush... ?

 

[dysamoria]

Not whining at all. Just pointing out that these lazy freeloaders need to get back to work or lose their job

... you're still doing it. Why are you acting like this employee's choices are personally offensive to YOU?

 

[dysamoria]

Which is just what these losers want sadly

How curious that you characterize as "losers" such people as those who have the self-actualization to request a better working model from their employer and then to exercise their free agency and resign from the job when refused the request...

 

[aneftp]

There are some places working from home makes sense. But there are simply some lazy people as well. The government work from home are one of the most abused work situations during Covid.

My friend needs desktop work computer at hospital to chart. The comptuter is physically broken. Like hard drive failure. There is zero remote IT support that can fix a physically broken computer. Yet the lazy IT guys took them 2 weeks to come to the hospital to replace it. 2 freaking weeks. Cause only one IT guy visits the hospital (it probably has 1000 plus computers) each days. The other guys will not volunteer to come to face to face to the hospital.

These remote workers need to come to grip sometimes you gotta physically come in and fix the problem

Same with Human Resources. There are vital paper documents that need to be handed physically to processed.

So there has to be a balance.

I’m in the medical field. And you simply need face to face interactions for most visits. “Virtual ER visits” seriously. If u got a problem. Got to the hospital asap.

 

[throAU]

At-home productivity will never equal at-work productivity

On the contrary some work better without the distractions (and wasted hours of commute per day) of the office.

I save 10 hrs per week work from home in commute alone, that's more than an extra work day for either more work or better work/life balance with same output.

 

[dysamoria]

I agree with your post and thought this was pretty normal. This thread really changed this perspective ?

Learning to be aware of one's own privilege is a good thing. ??

 

[pshufd]

An example is the price of a barrel has dropped significantly compared to what it was 2 months or so ago, yet prices at the pump are still artificially kept extremely high. I’m in the U.K., I can go to a Shell or BP petrol station and still pay over 170 pence a litre, that’s about 2 dollars 22 I think, yet Shell and BP are the very companies who own all the gas and oil rigs digging it out the ground, they directly control the markets, they have both announced the biggest profits for a decade in the first quarter of this year, all due to massive increases in heating and fuel costs being paid to them all approved, and in the case of heating bills, enforced by the British government.

Working from home is very attractive if you don’t have to line the pockets of oil executives and share holders to do it. And control your own heating as the weather warms. I’m sure it’s more complicated then this, but record profits for a decade in the multi billions due to price increases is very black and white.

Where did you hear that BP reported the largest profits in a decade in Q1? Their website says that they lost $20.4 billion in Q1. Yahoo Finance reports the same thing at https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/BP/financials?p=BP

Yahoo Finance also reports that Shell earned $7.1 billion in Q1 but they reported $11.5 billion in Q42021 so Q1 was definitely not their biggest profit quarter in the past decade. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SHEL/financials?p=SHEL

 

[dysamoria]

No, softies with pandemic PTSD/Stockholm Syndrome do, though

Interesting that you characterize people who are choosing to NOT just mindlessly comply with undesirable employment situations as having "Stockholm syndrome" and being "soft". They're exercising agency and taking a stand. That's not remotely "soft".

So many people in here delivering rage and hate for workers who chose to try to exercise agency makes me feel like this place is inundated with paid corporate trolls. Are you guys working from home, or do you go into an office where you all sit in cubicles to spew corporate propaganda at people remotely in social forums? You might want to unionize and demand remote work options...

 

[dysamoria]

This isn’t about being “treated better” it’s about being a lazy snowflake wanting everything his way.

He can go look elsewhere. If he finds what he wants good for him. If not then it’s ON him not Apple to see where his priorities and laziness or lack of effort lies.

He LITERALLY left the job to look elsewhere. Why are you so angry at someone exercising their freedom this way?

 

[Premium1]

Cool. How does Starbucks make your drinks?

They will Zoom it to you lol.

 

[pshufd]

He LITERALLY left the job to look elsewhere. Why are you so angry at someone exercising their freedom this way?

Sounds like envy to me.

 

[dysamoria]

Companies are people so ... checks out.

No, companies are entities composed of people, in which the most antipathetic (and even downright sociopathic) people tend to brownnose, backstab, and cheat their way to the top, where they ensure that their own antisocial ideologies become company policy, resulting in the company behaving as a sociopathic entity.

 

[ocnitsa]

One thing that you see in TV shows from time to time is a construction work office in a building resembling a mobile home. They are cheaply made with thin insulation. Work environments vary widely. It is assumed that your product plans will leak. You just have to innovate at a pace ahead of your competitors, even with leaks.

There's been a long history of leaks with Apple products despite their draconian attempts to prevent them.

So, the alternative is don’t try to control information regarding your R and D at all?

I mean, Apple makes that decision…not the employees.

In addition, I’d say that there is no proof that Apple isn’t controlling those leaks (say, the majority of the time).

Yes, leaks will happen. My point is that Apple isn’t demanding people be on site every minute during the work week…but they appear to be looking for a compromise of half a work week on site at their HQ where a lot of this development goes down. If they do it that way, they can control what they need to control for sensitive conversations, add a little inter personality to collaboration, and then send people home to do their stuff the rest of the time.

 

[dysamoria]

Nothing in this guys reply says ANYTHING about:

Being the soul care provider for a dependent,
Mobility/Accessiblity restrictions (my mother at 69 chooses and still goes to work after 4yrs ago having a stroke - battling diabetes for 20yrs, loosing 93% mobility and gaining back 97% after the stroke in 7 months! Takes public transit uses a walker or a cane bro! In 15cm snow!)
No health issues.

Sorry this company like many others and other employees worked in office like everywhere else just 2yrs ago.

This guy is LAZY and being a snowflake and wants not to go back. That’s his choice. I feel no sympathy for laziness especially for 1-day


1 day a week!

And you think Apple is being ridiculous? Seriously?

Re-read the article. Apple policy is to increase in-office attendance to more than 1 day a week in coming weeks/months.

You say "that's his choice", and then continue to attack him for making his own choices. Did he kill your dog, or something?