We are talking about Apple. We aren’t talking about universities. These are exactly fcushy mid-level white-collar jobs.
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Tim Cook Offers Work From Home to Most Apple Staff Amid Coronavirus Concerns
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So you think Apple will let their engineers take home unreleased iPhone and other device prototypes? Because we've never heard anything about Apple's secrecy over unreleased products.
This coronavirus is nature's latest way of forcing change on people and society that refuse to change.
What Apple also need to address is the heavy in-store crowding at most of their locations. I haven't been in an Apple Store where crowding wasn't rampant. I understand they are doing that this time by canceling certain in-store events and so on at certain locations or in some countries.
Here in Japan, many of the stores are jam-packed with people during the weekends in particular. I can't count the number of times that I've visited a Genius Bar where it was standing-room only here.
Here in Japan, many of the stores are jam-packed with people during the weekends in particular. I can't count the number of times that I've visited a Genius Bar where it was standing-room only here.
Hysteria about Coronavirus is a joke.
Can we get outraged during flu season too?
Not everyone at Apple physically works with unreleased products. Why would anyone in the software department not be able to work from home? It seems like you’re using your own experience and trying to apply it to a company which you presumably never worked for?
That's not the point, if you actually went and read the thread. The point is that, like the vast majority of employers, approval by one's supervisor is needed to work at home and that not everybody will qualify.
Are you claiming that 100% of software engineers at Apple will be allowed to work at home? And that it is a unilateral decision by the employee with no input from management? If not, then you are supporting what I say.
And it's not just my experience. Again, if you went back and read the thread, literally everybody agrees except cmaier that working at home is contingent on your supervisor's approval.
America has been energy independent for the past few years.
Apple's new campus famously eschews private offices in favor of open offices. A pandemic is problematic for open offices for obvious reasons. People who have worked at home for many years have perfectly fine productivity because of self discipline, dedicated rooms outfitted with office furniture, etc. This will not be the case for Apple staff working at home for the first time.
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Exactly. Some employees are trusted more than others. Working from home means remote access to sensitive internal resources, and you can't just let anyone have that. Each person who has access provides multiple attack vectors for hackers to potentially exploit, and all it takes is one misconfigured laptop, and the hacker could potentially gain access to very lucrative information. Some employees don't have access to the most sensitive internal resources, and so the risk of allowing them to work from home is less. Combined with the risk of potentially spreading a disease throughout Apple's workforce, and it ends up making more sense to allow those employees to work from home.
Some extremely trusted employees might be allowed access to even the most sensitive resources remotely, but I kinda doubt it, knowing Apple. Regardless, the supervisor ends up making the final decision, and if you don't like it, you can find a new job. That's life.
This is very overblown, but the effects to markets are very real.
Tough situation, but we can’t go on like this forever.
Tough situation, but we can’t go on like this forever.
Agreed. No matter how nice they make the offices, my experience at work isn't great. People repeatedly interrupt me while I'm working. I'm glad to help others, but it's nicer if it's in a queue I can check when I want (email, IM, etc). If the goal is in-person collaboration, nobody really does that outside of meetings you can remote into anyway. Given all that, there's no reason to be there physically.
The outbreak has given me a chance to stay home for an extended period of time, and so far it's been great.
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Be outraged about whatever you’d like, but influenza vaccines and test kits are widely available and usually cheap or free. The flu also happens every year, so most people know what to expect and how to take precautions.
The coronavirus on the other hand is genuinely novel and unpredictable and shouldn’t be downplayed. In the US, test kits are currently not widely available [1], and a vaccine will not be available for at least a year [2]. Also, the mortality rate of the flu is roughly 0.1%, while the coronavirus mortality rate is estimated to be between 1-3% [3]. There are also anecdotal reports from China saying the coronavirus can be transmitted asymptomatically, which would be quite scary if proven true [4].
While panic is never helpful, concern is absolutely warranted and the precautions recommended by health authorities should be followed by everyone.
[1] https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/3/6/21168087/cdc-coronavirus-test-kits-covid-19
[2] https://www.wired.com/story/everything-you-need-to-know-about-coronavirus-vaccines/
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/04/coronavirus-flu-comparison/
[4] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/heal...pread-people-who-don-t-have-symptoms-n1140106
I think in this day and age most office jobs/IT jobs can be done from home. My job (cyber security analyst) might be approved this week to have the option to work 100% remote. Saves me time and money, saves the company money and I can be more productive.
Not just Apple, every big Silicon Valley tech company. Honestly I think it's just to prevent people from slacking off; every person walking by can see everyone's screens.
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If they're anything like the others, no. They have a VPN, and that's enough. The real problem is home internet being unreliable.
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Doesn't solve all security concerns. For example, somebody decides to work at a coffee shop or on a bus and somebody watches over their shoulder or accesses the computer when they leave it unattended. Or another example, somebody intentionally sets up a camera and in the privacy of their home, photographs data from the screen.
VPNs are considered more and more of a risk now because they allow introduction of tampered devices to a secure network. Companies like Google are going past that with "perimeterless security" and "zero trust architectures".
I think that it's good for Apple and other companies to address illnesses in the workplace.
I'm just confused why over 20K people in the US have died this flu season from the flu virus and there was no mention of it anywhere by the companies or the media.
Most people that I know have combine sick and vacation days.
They are always coming in sick because they don't want to use any days off sick that would take away from the days they could use on vacation.
They also end up getting everyone else sick.
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With the contacts that Apple has in China, I'm sure Huawei would be glad to help on security
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I'm just confused why over 20K people in the US have died this flu season from the flu virus and there was no mention of it anywhere by the companies or the media.
Most people that I know have combine sick and vacation days.
They are always coming in sick because they don't want to use any days off sick that would take away from the days they could use on vacation.
They also end up getting everyone else sick.
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With the contacts that Apple has in China, I'm sure Huawei would be glad to help on security
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That estimate is skewed. Since the symptoms are mild, people don't go to get tested. Also, as you said, test kits aren't available, so people can't get tested that would have contributed substantially to the statistic of "was infected, but not going to die". I wouldn't put too much weight on that statistic to make any comparison against the flu.
Personally I got a cough/sneeze/mild fever last week. I quarantined myself as I work from home so I never really went to the doctor to get tested since the symptoms weren't that bad.