Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
It’s shocking how so many people in this thread are equating working from home with laziness. Feels like there’s a lot of projecting going on.

I work for a Fortune 50 company that was — pre-COVID — working to slowly in-house the ~30% of WFH associates. During COVID when everyone — including call center — was at home, productivity was so high that the company is largely changing course. The teams that were 100% in the office are going hybrid.

I changed jobs (in the company) in 2019, where my team was fully remote and I asked my boss to find me space in one of our local offices. There was no one in the building I worked with regularly. There was no one in the three other offices I worked with regularly. There was no one in my state that I worked with regularly. The camaraderie around the office would have been nice, but I didn’t know them and never really got the chance to. I moved to working from home at the end of the year.
It’s bitterness cos they can’t flip Big Macs from home.
 
Goodfellow reportedly broke the news to staff in an email, saying his resignation is in part due to Apple's plan to return to in-person work, [...] "I believe strongly that more flexibility would have been the best policy for my team," Goodfellow said in the email.
I call BS on this. If he cares that much about his team, then why go? Is his leaving the best thing for his team?

He's already had 3 jobs in 8 years. He wasn't motivated to leave by some policy affecting his team, he wanted to leave and either wanted to to look like a hero or wanted to cause as much trouble for Apple as he could in his wake.

Absolutely no reason for anyone to work in the office. Zoom/Teams is perfectly fine
If your job is clearing Jira tickets all day, and that's all you ever want it to be, then maybe so.

Offices have little to do with productivity, and more to do with collaboration and innovation. If your job is just turning the crank on some task, cold calls or lines of code per hour, then home work is probably fine. If you want your company to innovate and find those new ideas that are hiding between individual people's expertise then there's no substitute for being in the same room. If your personal goals are to make an impression, have influence over the company direction and advance, then it's the conversations between the zoom calls that matter.

Different roles will benefit from different mixes of in and out of office, but the fact that so much of this discussion is an argument about what generates the most work per hour is missing most of the point.
 
  • Haha
  • Love
Reactions: Sikh and sorgo †
I agree with you on working from home but have a bit of class. I know for a fact that I and all of the other office clowns in here couldn’t hack a single shift flipping burgers, especially for the peanuts they get paid.
Sorry I was taking it down to a level the angry dudes were posting at. Plenty of appalling comments from them you could have quoted before you got to this one.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Pezimak
Apple has the right to ask their employees to come to work, and employees have the right to find companies that suit their needs best. I like going to work and am better suited to that environment, I prefer being able to have in-person interactions and collaborations that - in my personal experience - don’t translate as well to video meetings, email and phone calls.

This all depends on many factors like the type of work you do, your office structure, teammates, etc.

I do see it as yet another issue that could cause headaches for employers though, as there will be lots of people who feel burned if they have to come into the office while scores of their other co-workers get to enjoy the benefits of working from home.

He calls for “more flexibility”, and yet Apple is only requiring up to 3 days per week in office — flexibility should come from both sides, not just one.

Amen.
 
I agree with you on working from home but have a bit of class. I know for a fact that I and all of the other office clowns in here couldn’t hack a single shift flipping burgers, especially for the peanuts they get paid.

Speak for yourself.. I've worked from flipping burgers, to operating cash registers, to retail sales.. all the way to being an executive at a large health care org.
 
It is called freedom of choice. I understand that not many believe in freedom to choose your own path in this country anymore. We have to do what the millionaires tells us to do, after all. It is surprising so many are like the mindless drone followers in Apple's 1984 commercial.



In the organization I work for, we invested in technology that made us smarter as an organization, no matter what life throws at us and we have a hybrid TW policy now. Being adaptable is a win-win for both employer and employee as it reduces costs in many areas (on both sides) as make work-life situation better for most.

How many in total is employed by your organization?
What is their global reach / impact / availability to consumers or are they B2B?
Does your company focus on hardware sales as well as services and have major AI work to complete?

Many corporations implemented technology for the pandemic. In fact the ability to work remotely has been there for over a DECADE: VPNs + laptops or VMs + VPNs.

The only MAJOR thing corporations implemented was a huge switch to Slack/MS Teams or similar collaborative chat software (away from Skype for Business) and also going to Zoom, when Polycom and Tandberg owned by Cisco for a few years now. Mostly because major corporations didn’t and would not implement either former big tech for video conferencing in DZ or outside of firewall and traditionally wouldn’t allow outside connections in, nor pay for a fleet of licenses for software for Polycom on laptops. Androids and iPhones existed for a long time so its not that we’re more mobile, again this has been there for over a decade now. its the ease of use of Zoom that once they encrypted traffics corporations flocked to it since you COULD use it on laptops, tablets and smartphones. You didn’t need hardware infrastructure and dedicated or knowledgeable team(s) members to support it (such as myself). Hardware companies partnered with Cisco and Zoom for great cameras and software to be implemented into existing infrastructure and the cost was negligible and cheaper than the old systems aforementioned.

Now we’re seeing silly expensive hardware again for 3D zooming where someone stands in a box or uses their smartphone for 4K 3D Video conferencing - which is a complete waste of bandwidth - would not work for those working at home.

Again its one good thing if you can work for a company in your field to work from home but in comparing to a global corporation - you gotta state what the comparison level for level is else its not ‘apples to apples’ or ‘oranges to oranges’ but smaller 1 offs here and there.

Don’t get me wrong:
I’d love for corporations to reduce expensive rental or owned property footprint and USE that money for higher pay and bonuses.

But think of the other side of the scale … many corporations would reduce your benefits since you’re at home now the majority of the time, don’t need to travel into the office, no need to support your dental since that is on your now since again you’re home more, and any child care fees subsidized would likely be taken away as you can pickup your kids from day care after business hours MUCH sooner than travelling from work. Your ask for a pay raise would also not be as strong.

Moreover major cities wouldn’t have so many people living there anymore and thus could affect major corporations not needing to have HQ in major cities- that means less taxes for roads, schools, electrical infrastructure or need for emergency services etc.

An example: Toronto, ON had just over 65K people move out of the GTA in 2021, the most ever on record in history! The city spent their entire budget in 2021 before May 3rd, 2021 and budge renewal was June 4th, 2021 - the provincial government had to bolster the city. People that live in Toronto have 12% of their property taxes paying to public transit (TTC) whether they want to or not - no choice (which makes absolutely no freaking sense when the Federal & Provincial Gov’t pays TTC yearly huge $$$ when the TTC has been running bankrupt every year. MetroLynx using taxpayer dollars for an East/West hybrid rail (subway/streetcar) across the city : East is pretty much complete except for Kennedy (end of the line) and Yonge (central) while the west is in chambers. Nobody needed the billions of dollars expense when a dedicated 2 way lane for electric buses would’ve sufficed at 1/40th the cost (like in Thornhill/RichmondHill). We all know the provincial and munipical leaders get a HUGE kickback for such infrastructure and now another is planned without any community input which is law - and the community in the east end is not needed. I live by the new MetroLynx rail and it’s a complete joke : for 4 months I see workers putting grass, yes SOD grass in-between the each rail track - for what purpose? There is not need for green here.

What I’m saying is a lot of cities would have a bad backlash not planned for with all major corporations saying no need to work in office, lets reduce office footprint and also lets reduce annual salary, benefits, etc.

Sry if that came across a rant but it’s a lot more than what a lot of people are thinking about.
 
Speak for yourself.. I've worked from flipping burgers, to operating cash registers, to retail sales.. all the way to being a Director at a large health care org.
Yeah but would you work a grill job again, for that much money and all of the stupid stresses it brings?

Sorry I was taking it down to a level the angry dudes were posting at. Plenty of appalling comments from them you could have quoted before you got to this one.
Nah no worries bud, it’s a bugbear of mine. Also, something about getting covered in sh*t and the pig enjoying it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: dysamoria
This delusional thought-process of virtual-everything being good for society is just that: delusional. A recent study just came out and concluded what most of us already knew. Creativity plummets when you're not face-to-face... which is bad for business, and will prove a disadvantage to those who want to try the virtual route.

If people want to run for the exit because they're not "fit" enough, let them run. There are a whole slew of hungry grads fresh out of college that will gladly take those jobs.
I don‘t think we need the network engineer to have their creative juices appropriately stimulated by seeing a bunch of people their employer picked for him to be around in an office. They just need to correctly apply the configuration on the network appliance through expertise.

Some jobs probably have a legitimate argument on the limitations of collaboration by distance but information technology and software engineering is probably the most resilient against those limitations. Not because of the skill set alone but also the tools. Due to outsourcing, contracting, etc this field has built far more robust tools and processes for remotely managing resources both technological and human.

Everything has to be evaluated job by job. There is no One True Answer and anyone trying to argue that has some other agenda going on whether they realize it or not.
 
This is going to keep happening. It has nothing to do with Covid, either. People learned they can do their job effectively from home, and many feel downright insulted to have to come back to the office to work after getting into a comfortable work from home routine.

Companies need to adjust and realize that allowing employees who can do their job effectively from home to do so will only benefit everyone. This is especially the case for companies in the Bay Area where housing prices and cost of living are so high, a six figure salary can feel like poverty. I'm sure this particular high level employee didn't have that problem but a lot of lower level ones do, having to live further and further from work to afford a decent home. They also do the real grunt work that makes companies like Apple shine, and losing them will be very detrimental to the company.

Apple needs to rethink this, and let people continue working from home. My guess is they want to justify that insane campus they built.
Imagine that, employees bragged and enjoyed the perks of working on the campus, They are free to explore greener pastures. Hopefully Apple will make it clear no rehires.
 
  • Like
Reactions: sorgo †
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.
Interesting. Yeah, I can imagine that's true. I think Apple is probably basically justified in wanting 3 days a week, or at least a certain amount of time in-office per week. It does seem like it should be flexible... though I do understand about meetings and face-to-face work requiring there to be more than 1 "face" in the office at once. Heh... So what can you do?

As to the real story here, it doesn't seem like the ML team has been particularly busy, to be honest. I'm hoping they'll announce something significant at WWDC, but thus far it's been pretty disappointing on the ML front for Apple. So much activity going on elsewhere, but Apple platforms just kind of stagnant.

But who knows, maybe we'll see something interesting at WWDC this year?... ?
 
  • Haha
Reactions: Sikh
I do see it as yet another issue that could cause headaches for employers though, as there will be lots of people who feel burned if they have to come into the office while scores of their other co-workers get to enjoy the benefits of working from home.

I have provided my entire team the option to WFH or come in if they so wish.. I'm fine either way, I do not care if my team works 10 hrs, or 6, as long as the deliverables and expectations are met. That is my ONLY ask.
 
Cool. How does Starbucks make your drinks?
And.........
How do police officers work at home
How do fire fighters fight fires at home
How do doctors treat their patients at home
How do Amazon employees deliver packages
How do the Mail couriers deliver mail
Etc. etc. etc. and etc.
 
  • Haha
  • Love
Reactions: Sikh and sorgo †
Nothing about Mr Goodfellow is good.


1 say a week abs he wants more flexibility after working in office daily for 2 out of 4 yrs?!

Lazy ass!

Let him go back to Google, and don’t let the door hit ‘em on the way out.

I work a LOT less money,
I take TTC in Toronto (bus and subway) across 40km to work = every job I’ve had for 30yrs been like this btw.
I was fired during the pandemic on CERB and got a job 8mths in working with a team of 6 which rotates 1wk in office while another 5wks at home.
Every day in we filled out symptom report which 3 guys played the (1/8 symptom check boxes I have) sniffles or a headache game so they didn’t have to come in. Management took severe notice of how frequent that was and when their contracts came to expire they were let go! Rightfully so!

In the last 5mths a push back to office had us in service desk come into the office daily to prepare and support other teams in 3 locations in the city which never happened. We’re back to 1week in 2 wks off (just 2 others and myself in-office support rotation).

I appreciate having a job and not free-loading on others taxes. I LOVE having a job and th ei dependence it gives me and ability to help support my mom. I come from a. Very hard working family that built everything we had from SCRATCH!

I have no pity for laziness! When this guy finds it difficult to get a lazy work at home job and has to dig into his savings to make ends meet he’ll realize how good he had it.
You do realize at his level he has probably already made all the money he will ever have to make to retire.
 
I'm in IT, and I just answered another poster about how horrible it was to be working remotely. We work better when we as a team, collaborate. Yes, I can get my work done from home. Most of us already remote into the office for maintenance work or other projects that can't be done during normal production hours. But, to work fully from home for us wasn't as cool as it sounded. Constant distraction from just the things that go on at home. Especially when your kid(s) can't go to school. Almost every call I'm on with someone that works from home. We hear all the things that go on in the background. Dogs, kids, other people. Sometimes its funny, other times it's annoying. You tend to not have this issue when you all in the office.

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.
I agree with this assessment. I had a few subordinates that seemed to be pretty excited to get out of the home for a change of context. I had a lot more coworkers, though, that seemed pretty unexcited about the dictation from on high and effed right off as soon as they could find the best landing space for them.

Realistically, an employer cannot be all things for all people. Ultimately my employer’s BIGGEST problem was very poor pay relative to job description for the in-state/local market. When you’re frog marching everyone back into the office and not paying competitively and there is someone in the next county over that will let you WFH 100% and pay more…the ones where WFH turned out to be a benefit that didn’t negatively affect their productivity went elsewhere.
 
  • Love
  • Like
Reactions: Sikh and 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.
So the definition of a snowflake is someone that lives life on his own terms? Sounds like freedom to me.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.