Apple employees will return to the office this February, leaked Cook email says

Employees will have to work from the office most days by spring.

Read the whole story

 

[Jedakiah]

It makes sense to tackle this on a department by department basis. Most software engineers have considerably less need for an office/lab than hardware engineers.

But still, 3 days in office every week seems to be an unnecessarily high minimum bar. Likely a sign that much of management is desperately clinging to the traditional way of doing things, without giving due credit to the advantages of remote work.

 

[Messy]

control-freaks gotta control-freak!

 

[Digital Dud]

Declaring a specific day of week (i.e. Wednesday and Friday) as WFH days makes more sense than just some arbitrary 50/50 thing. Otherwise people will just come in on random days and you potentially lose the ability to meet face-to-face, it just turns into a mess. Half of your co-workers are gone on any given day.

 

[King Kay]

Just stop working at Apple. Problem solved.

 

[wrosecrans]

I can't help but think this is gonna free up a lot of great talent for smaller companies.

Seriously, Apple is shooting themselves in the foot trying to work like it's still the 1900's, while a lot of other orgs are just carrying on with doing work in 2021 and doing fine. Over the next few years, working in big corporate offices is going to seem increasingly archaic. Lots of people don't want to deal with long commutes. And most offices were just cube farms anyway, so they weren't actually all that great as places to work.

The future is clearly going to be more distributed. Smaller offices, flexible shared spaces, etc., and a minority of people choosing to work in the office because it's convenient for the *worker* because they have noisy room mates or whatever.

 

[ERIFNOMI]

The article says MTW in person and ThF remote, but the email from Cook says WF remote.

Either way is bullshit, but having that Thursday in office flanked by WFH days strikes me as really awkward.

 

[Chemical Tribe]

Lol, did you crop that particular thumbnail for the story on purpose?

 

[lp0_on_fire]

I was dragged against my will to a management retreat recently and I think a lot of people would be pretty alarmed if they knew the conversations that were occurring. The basic direction the discussions went was that some roles might be well suited to a remote workforce but not necessarily the person in that role today. There are people in the cross-hairs who are completely oblivious to that fact.

Arstechnica is naturally self-selecting for people well equipped for the digital nomad lifestyle but a lot of people really, really suck at this. We spent an enormous amount of time in people's homes troubleshooting extremely basic connectivity issues.

We also have some internal tension on teams because we have a lot of people who simply never left the office or returned as soon as possible and they're getting cranky.

 

[tshort]

It makes sense to tackle this on a department by department basis. Most software engineers have considerably less need for an office/lab than hardware engineers.

But still, 3 days in office every week seems to be an unnecessarily high minimum bar. Likely a sign that much of management is desperately clinging to the traditional way of doing things, without giving due credit to the advantages of remote work.

I know of places that will have flexible WFH, but if you want a permanent workspace, you have to work in the office 4-days-a-week. Less than that, you get hotelling space.

 

[A_Very_Tired_Geek]

I think people that have only recently started working from home don't quite realize how much bandwidth is lost in the collaborative team bandwidth by only telecommuting. Cameras can only do so much to change that. And frankly, most people don't know HOW to properly telecommute because their equipment or environment they work in frankly sucks for the rest of those listening in. I have a guy that can't seem to figure out that breathing into his mic is driving everyone else mad and don't want him in on the calls. Or his shirt brushes them mic. Then there's others with awful lighting in their visual pick up. Or they're blurry. Or as likely as not, our ISPs can't keep up with the bandwidth either.

That doesn't include the issues with the collab platforms themselves which I could list pages worth.

Even as an avowed introvert I have to admit that sometimes, you just have to meet your team over coffee a couple of times a week even if it's in the cantina. You can't do that if everyone is scattered all over the world without spending a bundle on airfare.

 

[Ryan B.]

Cynically, one is brought to wonder how much the spaceship campus figures into this. "What do you mean you don't want to come into work? We spent billions on a wonderland campus, the like of which is unequaled in all the world, and you don't even want to work here?"

 

[chaos215bar2]

Then there's others with awful lighting in their visual pick up. Or they're blurry.

How does the quality of someone’s video arrangement, let alone whether they’re even using a camera, affect your ability to collaborate with them?

 

[Deleted member 823177]

Just stop working at Apple. Problem solved.

i hope one day i can move to this magical land where anyone can easily change jobs on a whim any time they don’t like something.

 

[unequivocal]

I can't help but think this is gonna free up a lot of great talent for smaller companies.

Seriously, Apple is shooting themselves in the foot trying to work like it's still the 1900's, while a lot of other orgs are just carrying on with doing work in 2021 and doing fine. Over the next few years, working in big corporate offices is going to seem increasingly archaic. Lots of people don't want to deal with long commutes. And most offices were just cube farms anyway, so they weren't actually all that great as places to work.

The future is clearly going to be more distributed. Smaller offices, flexible shared spaces, etc., and a minority of people choosing to work in the office because it's convenient for the *worker* because they have noisy room mates or whatever.

There has long been a brain drain flowing into these big tech companies, so it'll be refreshing to start seeing iconoclasts and other creative/inventive people start bailing on these companies for more worker-friendly environments. I agree Apple is shooting themselves in the foot, but from the perspective of middle management, they are probably going to be able squeeze out the "hard to manage" staff with these policies. The fact that those people are often the most creative and valuable staff will only become apparent after they are gone.

 

[s73v3r]

Companies need to adopt far more flexibility in letting people choose whether they want to go into an office on a regular basis or not. People are usually pretty good at choosing the setup that makes them more productive. And I say this as someone who hates working at home, mainly because I don't have a good setup for it, don't really have the space for it, and can't stand having to be around my roommate all day like that.

 

[Ryan B.]

I think people that have only recently started working from home don't quite realize how much bandwidth is lost in the collaborative team bandwidth by only telecommuting. Cameras can only do so much to change that. And frankly, most people don't know HOW to properly telecommute because their equipment or environment they work in frankly sucks for the rest of those listening in. I have a guy that can't seem to figure out that breathing into his mic is driving everyone else mad and don't want him in on the calls. Or his shirt brushes them mic. Then there's others with awful lighting in their visual pick up. Or they're blurry. Or as likely as not, our ISPs can't keep up with the bandwidth either.

That doesn't include the issues with the collab platforms themselves which I could list pages worth.

Even as an avowed introvert I have to admit that sometimes, you just have to meet your team over coffee a couple of times a week even if it's in the cantina. You can't do that if everyone is scattered all over the world without spending a bundle on airfare.

Text-based communication has none of these problems. Though low in bandwidth compared to face-to-face, it has advantages, such as the ability to easily share code snippets or URLs, and a built-in transcript. IMO any remote work arrangement that tries to replicate face to face is doomed to failure. Embrace the text, supplemented by very occasional low-participation-count calls. This is the way.

 

[Jackattak]

This seems like such an odd thing coming from Apple. This and the kiddie porn scanner deal have made me really question who I thought Apple was as a company. I've never been an Apple fan (I chose the MS route decades ago) but I guess I had this idea of them being a progressive company.

This is some draconian, conservative (notice the lower-case) shit that I wouldn't expect coming from them.

 

[GeoSixPack]

Am I the only one that sees this, in part, as a case of:

Look motherf*****s, just before the pandemic, we finished spending $5 Billion on our new HQ building, that we have no hope of ever renting out to anyone else. Therefore, you're coming into the office, even if it kills you.

Yeah. It's probably just me.

EDIT: Oh...I see that Ryan B. also had the same thought while I was taking too long to type up my reply. Ninja'd!

 

[A_Very_Tired_Geek]

Then there's others with awful lighting in their visual pick up. Or they're blurry.

How does the quality of someone’s video arrangement, let alone whether they’re even using a camera, affect your ability to collaborate with them?

If you've ever had to deal with this kind of problem you wouldn't have to ask. A person's body language tells you more than what they're saying. If you can't at least see their face, you have no real clue if they're following your explanations, openly hostile, grokking what you're saying, or what. Text only conversations, or even voice only conversations don't convey enough information to prevent much misunderstanding. Hell, we as humans often fail at communications when we're face to face, let alone missing a large part of our communications bandwidth.

If you have to watch someone day in and day out with a blurry setup or poorly lit for cameras work space you eventually get fatigued with them. It becomes a source of annoyance and tension.

 

[mmiller7]

Just stop working at Apple. Problem solved.

i hope one day i can move to this magical land where anyone can easily change jobs on a whim any time they don’t like something.

I mean...you can? Put in some resumes to places you may like and pick someplace else. Then put in your notice.

 

[A_Very_Tired_Geek]

Just stop working at Apple. Problem solved.

i hope one day i can move to this magical land where anyone can easily change jobs on a whim any time they don’t like something.

I mean...you can? Put in some resumes to places you may like and pick someplace else. Then put in your notice.

Employers will pass you over in career path jobs if they notice you've never stayed any one place for more than 6 months to a year.

 

[unequivocal]

I think people that have only recently started working from home don't quite realize how much bandwidth is lost in the collaborative team bandwidth by only telecommuting. Cameras can only do so much to change that. And frankly, most people don't know HOW to properly telecommute because their equipment or environment they work in frankly sucks for the rest of those listening in. I have a guy that can't seem to figure out that breathing into his mic is driving everyone else mad and don't want him in on the calls. Or his shirt brushes them mic. Then there's others with awful lighting in their visual pick up. Or they're blurry. Or as likely as not, our ISPs can't keep up with the bandwidth either.

That doesn't include the issues with the collab platforms themselves which I could list pages worth.

Even as an avowed introvert I have to admit that sometimes, you just have to meet your team over coffee a couple of times a week even if it's in the cantina. You can't do that if everyone is scattered all over the world without spending a bundle on airfare.

You can have ineffective work environments in-person or remote. You're accurately describing an ineffective virtual environment. And there are definite benefits to in-person work.

BUT, there are also really significant downsides to in-person work. And there are a gigantic pile of benefits when remote work is conducted effectively: with the right skills/training, right hardware, bandwidth, and systems/tools.

I would never voluntarily go back into an office, having been remote for most of my career, even prior to the pandemic. But some people really want and benefit from in-person work. But to conclude that those people represent the vast majority of all workers, would be a mistake, in my opinion.

Overall, in my view, the benefits of fully remote work far outweigh the downsides - recognizing that the benefits to in-person work are material and unique. They just, IMO, don't outweigh the significant downsides of in-person work (commuting, for one, but also the limited diversity of staff who all come from one region, the systems/management that depend on in-person work, etc).

 

[jdale]

Declaring a specific day of week (i.e. Wednesday and Friday) as WFH days makes more sense than just some arbitrary 50/50 thing. Otherwise people will just come in on random days and you potentially lose the ability to meet face-to-face, it just turns into a mess. Half of your co-workers are gone on any given day.

But conversely, setting days when everyone must be in removes any advantage for contagion reduction, parking, and traffic.

I can see the advantage of being in the office the same time as your team. It seems more rational to make those decisions at the team level rather than declaring them for all people from on high.

 

[NopeNopeNope]

I was dragged against my will to a management retreat recently and I think a lot of people would be pretty alarmed if they knew the conversations that were occurring. The basic direction the discussions went was that some roles might be well suited to a remote workforce but not necessarily the person in that role today. There are people in the cross-hairs who are completely oblivious to that fact.

Arstechnica is naturally self-selecting for people well equipped for the digital nomad lifestyle but a lot of people really, really suck at this. We spent an enormous amount of time in people's homes troubleshooting extremely basic connectivity issues.

We also have some internal tension on teams because we have a lot of people who simply never left the office or returned as soon as possible and they're getting cranky.

Similar at my place. One of my bows is supporting the team (50 give or take). I've had people demanding I kit out their home office (including desk and chair) when they live 15 minutes from the office which is fully open (there's basically zero covid restrictions in the UK -edit: England - currently). Others spending £50 a day on commuting were outraged when I suggested they spend a week's travel saving on a 2nd screen if they don't like the one I provided.

I'm currently bumping heads with team leads. I refuse to support 50 home offices, but they are demanding I do (nothing to do with us not having a cost recharge mechanism in place, of course).

Working from home is a choice, you're saving a ton on commuting, spend some of it on getting your setup right. I did.

 

[Shenmage]

This comes across as a bit tonedeaf. More and more companies fill my inbox with "fully remote positions" and you'd be hard pressed to get me to waste 1 1/2 - 2 hours in commuting a day to work adjacent to teammates.

There are costs to working remotely with regards to being able to grab people for a quick brainstorming session or just grab coffee and chat to reset your brain. But I don't think going back to how we used to do things is the right move. It feels like people learned one way to manage and then just... decided to stop learning and adjusting.

 

[chaos215bar2]

Then there's others with awful lighting in their visual pick up. Or they're blurry.

How does the quality of someone’s video arrangement, let alone whether they’re even using a camera, affect your ability to collaborate with them?

Are you seriously asking this? Either you do not talk to anybody or you are feeling particularly trollish today. But i will bite. Lack of eye contacts, at least for those who used to rely on it, renders collaboration in 3+ groups almost impossible.

I talk to people all the time without seeing their face, and it seems to work just fine.

It might be the platforms I’m using, but I haven’t seen any video chat where you’d be able to tell who's looking at who even when you can see their eyes. But I’ve also never noticed that being a problem.

 

[RamboIT]

Cynically, one is brought to wonder how much the spaceship campus figures into this. "What do you mean you don't want to come into work? We spent billions on a wonderland campus, the like of which is unequaled in all the world, and you don't even want to work here?"

I wonder how long it takes to get to your desk when parking at the new campus. Added to long travel times, employees lose a lot of time that otherwise could have been spent doing anything else.

 

[jdale]

Then there's others with awful lighting in their visual pick up. Or they're blurry.

How does the quality of someone’s video arrangement, let alone whether they’re even using a camera, affect your ability to collaborate with them?

Are you seriously asking this? Either you do not talk to anybody or you are feeling particularly trollish today. But i will bite. Lack of eye contacts, at least for those who used to rely on it, renders collaboration in 3+ groups almost impossible.

I don't think anyone's remote setup handles eye contact correctly. At best you can set it up to give you fake eye contact. It's not a valid communication cue in a remote setting though.

I'll give you the one about the guy breathing into his microphone, but maybe you could just tell him. Still, it's an open question whether that guy is more creepy in a remote setting than in person.

 

[chaos215bar2]

If you have to watch someone day in and day out with a blurry setup or poorly lit for cameras work space you eventually get fatigued with them. It becomes a source of annoyance and tension.

It’s probably worth keeping in mind, this is mostly about you, not everyone else. It’s a perfectly valid stance, but I’ve never personally had any of the problems you’re describing.

 

[NopeNopeNope]

Cynically, one is brought to wonder how much the spaceship campus figures into this. "What do you mean you don't want to come into work? We spent billions on a wonderland campus, the like of which is unequaled in all the world, and you don't even want to work here?"

I wonder how long it takes to get to your desk when parking at the new campus. Added to long travel times, employees lose a lot of time that otherwise could have been spent doing anything else.

I commute by rail in the UK. That time is when I do a lot of good thinking, mostly via distraction-free daydreaming.

Depends on the nature of your role I guess, but much of my commute is not dead time. Even if I'm not thinking I'm reading, (properly) listening to podcasts, doing sudoku or writing quick hellos to friends i've not seen in a while.

 

[Tom Brokaw]

I can't help but think this is gonna free up a lot of great talent for smaller companies.

I can't help but think that Apple's going to get rid of a lot of immature employees through this.

I get that this is supposed to be derisive, but to provide a serious response to your comment: is that a good thing? Apple didn't get their start and keep their position by maintaining the status quo - kind of the opposite. Are the "mature" employees going to keep doing that?

 

[Deleted member 823177]

Then there's others with awful lighting in their visual pick up. Or they're blurry.

How does the quality of someone’s video arrangement, let alone whether they’re even using a camera, affect your ability to collaborate with them?

Are you seriously asking this? Either you do not talk to anybody or you are feeling particularly trollish today. But i will bite. Lack of eye contacts, at least for those who used to rely on it, renders collaboration in 3+ groups almost impossible.

while i can appreciate that you prefer to see people you're talking to, personally i don't even have a webcam (and don't want one), i usually minimise the Teams clients in remote meetings unless someone is doing a screen share, and i haven't had any issues communicating with people as a result.

the main problem i have with remote meeting is the lack of visual clues for someone wanting to talk, but i also don't find a video feed helps there. Teams has recently added a "raise hand" feature for this which seems to work quite well.

 

[Tom Brokaw]

I was dragged against my will to a management retreat recently and I think a lot of people would be pretty alarmed if they knew the conversations that were occurring. The basic direction the discussions went was that some roles might be well suited to a remote workforce but not necessarily the person in that role today. There are people in the cross-hairs who are completely oblivious to that fact.

Arstechnica is naturally self-selecting for people well equipped for the digital nomad lifestyle but a lot of people really, really suck at this. We spent an enormous amount of time in people's homes troubleshooting extremely basic connectivity issues.

We also have some internal tension on teams because we have a lot of people who simply never left the office or returned as soon as possible and they're getting cranky.

Similar at my place. One of my bows is supporting the team (50 give or take). I've had people demanding I kit out their home office (including desk and chair) when they live 15 minutes from the office which is fully open (there's basically zero covid restrictions in the UK -edit: England - currently). Others spending £50 a day on commuting were outraged when I suggested they spend a week's travel saving on a 2nd screen if they don't like the one I provided.

I'm currently bumping heads with team leads. I refuse to support 50 home offices, but they are demanding I do (nothing to do with us not having a cost recharge mechanism in place, of course).

Working from home is a choice, you're saving a ton on commuting, spend some of it on getting your setup right. I did.

My company provided a docking station, mouse, keyboard, and dual monitors to all our employees, as well as laptops for those employees who were still using desktops. They did this in March 2020.

Why do you seem to feel it's incumbent upon the employee to ensure a good WFH experience?

 

[lewax00]

Then there's others with awful lighting in their visual pick up. Or they're blurry.

How does the quality of someone’s video arrangement, let alone whether they’re even using a camera, affect your ability to collaborate with them?

Are you seriously asking this? Either you do not talk to anybody or you are feeling particularly trollish today. But i will bite. Lack of eye contacts, at least for those who used to rely on it, renders collaboration in 3+ groups almost impossible.

I am struggling to think of when eye contact has ever been necessary in my job...like, when you want to address someone directly within a group it helps, but you can just as easily prefix what you're about to say with their name (which is no where near the level of "almost impossible", it's already a perfectly normal way to communicate). I really do not understand what you mean...to the point where I think if anyone's "feeling particularly trollish today", my money would be on you...

 

[A_Very_Tired_Geek]

I think people that have only recently started working from home don't quite realize how much bandwidth is lost in the collaborative team bandwidth by only telecommuting. Cameras can only do so much to change that. And frankly, most people don't know HOW to properly telecommute because their equipment or environment they work in frankly sucks for the rest of those listening in. I have a guy that can't seem to figure out that breathing into his mic is driving everyone else mad and don't want him in on the calls. Or his shirt brushes them mic. Then there's others with awful lighting in their visual pick up. Or they're blurry. Or as likely as not, our ISPs can't keep up with the bandwidth either.

That doesn't include the issues with the collab platforms themselves which I could list pages worth.

Even as an avowed introvert I have to admit that sometimes, you just have to meet your team over coffee a couple of times a week even if it's in the cantina. You can't do that if everyone is scattered all over the world without spending a bundle on airfare.

You can have ineffective work environments in-person or remote. You're accurately describing an ineffective virtual environment. And there are definite benefits to in-person work.

BUT, there are also really significant downsides to in-person work. And there are a gigantic pile of benefits when remote work is conducted effectively: with the right skills/training, right hardware, bandwidth, and systems/tools.

I would never voluntarily go back into an office, having been remote for most of my career, even prior to the pandemic. But some people really want and benefit from in-person work. But to conclude that those people represent the vast majority of all workers, would be a mistake, in my opinion.

Overall, in my view, the benefits of fully remote work far outweigh the downsides - recognizing that the benefits to in-person work are material and unique. They just, IMO, don't outweigh the significant downsides of in-person work (commuting, for one, but also the limited diversity of staff who all come from one region, the systems/management that depend on in-person work, etc).

I think the mistake is immediately suggesting one side or the other has the most benefits to be had. Works for you, that's great. I can manage in-person and telecommute fine. I like a hybrid of the two. But only when the environment is correct for either environment. The biggest mistake with the all-or-nothing crowd is the tendency to believe it's all my way or the highway, for me and everyone else. The truth is in between the two. Work environments are poor and the pandemic laid that bare. It's not that we MUST have telecommute or we MUST all be going into our jobs. The problem is creating an environment that best suits the job at hand. Like trying to use a Philips screwdriver to drive home a flat head screw. Work environments need to be less toxic. They need to protect both the mental and physical health of the workers that must use them. We need to stop being so much "Fuck you, I got mine." on both sides of the argument. Proper equipment for both in and out of the office work places. Proper protocols. ENFORCED protocols. Health checks... "Hey, I haven't heard from you recently, you ok?" Less "OMG I think he's unvaccinated, I hope he dies in a fire!" This BS needs to end.

 

[Daniel]

Cynically, one is brought to wonder how much the spaceship campus figures into this. "What do you mean you don't want to come into work? We spent billions on a wonderland campus, the like of which is unequaled in all the world, and you don't even want to work here?"

I wonder how long it takes to get to your desk when parking at the new campus. Added to long travel times, employees lose a lot of time that otherwise could have been spent doing anything else.

I commute by rail in the UK. That time is when I do a lot of good thinking, mostly via distraction-free daydreaming.

Depends on the nature of your role I guess, but much of my commute is not dead time. Even if I'm not thinking I'm reading, (properly) listening to podcasts, doing sudoku or writing quick hellos to friends i've not seen in a while.

If I wanted an extra hour a day of reading, podcasts, puzzles ,etc, I'd much rather do that at home than have to sit in a car or train just to use that time. I realize for some people the house might be chaotic and the commute is the only personal time, but for me, I'm much happier not having to go into the office. If my biggest complaint is I have less podcast time, I'm OK with that.