Apple still planning return to in-person work despite complaints
macrumors.com
macrumors.com
Apple just built the most expensive on-site campus in history prior to the pandemic. It's a 40 year old company led by 50+ year old executives who have built their entire social and family lives around their offices. Obviously they're going to force everybody back to the way it was.
This means nothing for the big shift to remote however. The economic incentives for both companies and employees are just too strong for it not to happen.
It was never going to be led by gray haired execs at legacy companies like Apple. When you're currently the most profitable company in the history of earth, you can ignore otherwise rational incentives. But the key word in that sentence was "currently."
Instead of talking about what the winners of the past are doing, we should be thinking about what the winners of the future will do.
It's important to remember, no company has stayed at the top of the S&P500 for very long.
Apple is also notoriously paranoid/secretive even within the company.
Apple Park is beautiful, but it's also an awful, productivity- and privacy-killing open plan office space. Give me the old-school Infinite Loop with actual walled offices, even if they're closet-sized.
You can make the argument that software engineering won’t suffer as much with everyone being remote, but Apple probably doesn’t want to segment their engineers and give some more perks than others.
Also, for people like myself who can only afford a tiny, messy shared 1 bedroom apartment, having an office to go to is a blessing. Even with the 40 minute commute each way, I’m still more productive in the office than I am at home.
this has been true historically, but nothing makes it inherently so if you think in the context of a human's lifespan.
100 years ago, the world wasn't a continuously connected marked. If a company got "too large" for comfort, a government could intervene and force a split. This is no longer a viable action, as companies cater to literally the whole world at the same time, so splitting them in one jurisdiction would just end up making that particular market less attractive to companies... effectively harming the government economically.
There is only so much you can deduct from our history considering that the base premises is so different nowadays, especially if you constrain it to the time we've got to experience this world. Microsoft and Apple at least have been around since before the 90th, so they're already 30yrs in... thats almost a full professional life of the average employee before they retire.
I'm sure I made some sort of grammatical error in this comment.
Microsoft, Google, ExxonMobil etc. seem to have done OK.
People who don't like remote work are not out there making noise, because we're still living in a world where most jobs at least have the option of in-person work. But there's plenty of us who want to leave home on weekday mornings.
It can feel like an "pro-office" person is threatening to consign you to half your waking life in jail if you work in the former.
My hope for the WFH movement is that actual thought is put into office floor plans and setup. Open space offices are hopefully the first casualty of the next few years.
I'm a bit worried that things will accidentally go the other direction: if employees are partially remote it will be hard to justify giving them their own piece of the office. You'll have to lug everything with you every day and won't feel any ownership of anything there. It will feel like working out of a hotel room instead of your own domain.
Even within Apple I am sure there is huge variation in "quality-of-office". It's not like every Apple employee gets to work in the Starship, even in Cupertino. But for those that do, they probably are looking forward to returning.
I'm 100% the opposite of you. If I never stepped foot in an office, never saw a coworker in person, never had in-person social interactions for work again, for the rest of my life, I'd be one step closer to my dream life. Thankfully people like you have the vast majority of jobs available. Hopefully the rest of us will have more options moving forward.
But just as I wouldn’t impose on someone to force them to be in the office, I think some people definitely value the separation.
Whether you see these as a distraction or an asset (and more generally, whether you see work as a place to do work or a holistic pile of things) seems to be the dividing line for people.
Who cares about WFH when you get to live in California and work with some of the brightest minds? Only privileged person wouldn't value that.
Living in California and getting paid a high salary to work with smart people is great, but it’s not the ultimate goal for many people. Calling people who value those things differently than you privileged is unfair.
Yes they have it good, and many people would love to be on their shoes, but that doesn’t mean they need to stop advocating for themselves. I’m sure someone would love to trade places with you, and I’m guessing that doesn’t stop you from trying to improve your working conditions.
This to me is in the same vein as the "it's a privilege to work here" nonsense. I think a lot of FAANG companies and their associated fan clubs don't realize that some people genuinely don't care about working at <insert famous company here> and instead are just happy doing work they like in an environment that makes them happy. To me at least, that's far more important than having "Google Software Engineer 2012-2020" stamped on my Resume.
Just don't work at Apple.
If you value work from home, then Apple is probably not the place for you. It's well known in this industry that Apple will go to extraordinary lengths to ensure their corporate privacy and secrets. What makes anyone believe that a company like that would allow a person access to those secrets from home? I don't work for Apple, never have, but given what I've heard about them, work from home would be the last benefit I would expect from them.
"Most employees would be expected to come in on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, and it would be up to them whether they work from home on Wednesdays and Fridays, Cook said."
Most != All
My guess is those that require physical access to prototypes get to come in on Wednesday and Friday too.
I care about wfh more than pretty much anything, even slightly more than compensation.
> when you get to live in California
you'd have to pay me to live in California
> work with some of the brightest minds?
couldn't care less who I work with, I just want an easy job with a good paycheck where I can work remotely until I retire early.
> Only privileged person wouldn't value that.
Not everybody likes California or cares about programming. For many of us it's just a job
They could not care less for that. It's busywork theater to show you're subservient.
> Only privileged person wouldn't value that [being in california, etc]
Privilege has nothing to do with not valuing california, bright minds, etc
Living in California today means signing up for multiple months of smoke inhalation, which is a problem that only seems to be getting worse. Not to mention that the Apple of today isn’t the Apple of 10 years ago either.
This is coming from someone who worked at Apple ~10 years ago (14 years ago to be exact), and would have agreed with your statement ~10 years ago. I recently moved away from the West Coast because I have no interest in being part of the cohort analysis on the effects of prolonged smoke exposure over multiple months per year.
Also, just to throw this out there, 10 years ago you had a high likelihood of having your own office at Apple. Now it’s an open office layout like anywhere else. Looks pretty from the outside I hear though.
Edit: One additional point I find fascinating. When referred to in the aggregate, Apple employees are the “best and the brightest.” However, when they express their opinions of what they want, they’re immediately dismissed as “privileged.” I understand that these aren’t mutually exclusive, but I am always surprised how unwilling we are to listen to these people that we in theory hold up as paragons of the industry. It’s a bizarre infantilization of people we hypothetically respect.
No thank you, I prefer working for a Silicon Valley company while still living in my home country, with a very high standard of living (given the income/expenses ratio).
This means:
- If you lose your job, all your coverage goes away at the end of the month. COBRA is completely unaffordable for most workers. You have to ask yourself: "if I end up with a three-month period of unemployment, will I be able to afford the meds I need to stay alive?"
- Just because you have coverage doesn't mean you have afforable coverage. You could be stuck with a sky-high deductible, your insurance could pay for such a low percentage of your medical costs, or your company could only pay for a tiny percentage of your premiums, and any of those mean you end up having to choose between medicine and rent.
- Just because you have coverage on paper doesn't mean your stuff is actually covered in practice. Getting medications and surgeries approved is often a colossal pain. It's not uncommon for someone to switch insurance carriers because they got a new job and immediately get told their new insurance won't cover the meds they've been on for years unless they try three other medications first and their doctor determines those other medications all don't work. This is especially dangerous because if the other meds don't work, you could die. Also, a lot of supposedly qualified doctors have no idea how to work with a large number of chronic conditions. People with autoimmune disorders often go without a diagnosis for decades because most doctors don't know what to look for. Imagine if the only doctor in your metro area that knows how to handle your chronic condition is out of your carrier's network (and remember you don't choose your carrier, your employer does). Now you're having premiums deducted from your paycheck and you have to pay out the nose to see the only doctor in town who can treat you. The best-case scenario is that the out-of-network rate is still high enough to take the edge off, but that's still going to be expensive. Worse is if you're on an HMO or EPO where out-of-network doctors aren't covered at all. Then you might as well not even have insurance! And it can get worse: many doctors only let patients self-pay if they don't have insurance at all, which means being on the wrong carrier (which, again, your company decides for you) means you're completely blocked from accessing care.
No, it doesn't.
I get the metaphor but living in California spending 12-14h/week commuting and paying 30% more for real estate does make a difference compared to living in California and spending these 40-60h/month with family or on yourself.
My colleagues’ zoom rooms are 1-click away during work hours.
The factory floor model does not apply when all you process is information. I know managers probably still want to see their workers in their seats but trust beats micromanagement.
- Gas is the most expensive in the nation, right now a gallon in my town is $4.60 for 87.
- State taxes are highest in the nation, for most professional incomes taxes are above 10%.
- Sales tax is also very high, around 9% for most purchases, some states have no sales tax.
- Food is extremely expensive, I recently traveled to Arizona and food was about 30-40% cheaper than CA.
- Professional services are also very expensive, think doctor, eye exam, etc.
- Construction costs are about 50% higher than most areas of the country.
- As for housing, I would say say CA and the bay area in particular are extremely expensive. A typical house in the bay area is around $1.4M now, in a good area look to spend $2M., An average house in California now costs $850k, the highest its ever been. Contrast that to the average cost of a house in the US as being $350k.
Hard disagree from me, it very much depends on what you value in life. While I have a lot of respect for people with that kind of technical ability and would no doubt be a better programmer for working with people like that, I find large corporate environments absolutely soul-crushing to the point I'd dread getting up in the morning and life is far too short to spend that much of it dreading something. I can't think of anything that would drive me to alcoholism and depression with more efficiency than working for a company like Apple, I'm simply not wired for the modern equivalent of the Calvinist work ethic such a job demands. I wouldn't dream of telling anybody else how to live their life but for me personally I'd infinitely rather live on the coast in rural Wales building straightforward backend stuff for the odd company than live in California and work for Apple! Some might accuse me of being unambitious, but it's more that my ambitions lie in areas other than what I'm paid for.
I love programming don't get me wrong, but I value my sanity and not hating myself even more than I value being a good programmer. If you look at something like Maslow's hierarchy of needs a job at a prestigious company might come near the top for some people, but it could well be the complete opposite for others. For some it's a vital plank of their identity, for others its simply paying the bills. Once you're making enough to fulfil your basic need to put bread on the table and a roof over your head then I don't think it's privileged to be choosy about what you want in a job.
There's a lot to unpack in this question. It's not guaranteed that FAANG = California, as campuses sprout up in cheaper places and there's an active shift among some of those companies towards hiring explicitly outside of California. California comes with its own sets of problems that you may not appreciate until you move here (huge drought, wildfire season is getting worse, climate change making heat waves more frequent, housing/commute crisis, etc). And if the "brightest minds" are the ones refusing to go back on site, then will you actually be working with the brightest minds?
We all do better when we all do better. It's hard when you have the "grass is greener" feeling, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't support each other as we strive for a more just work environment. WFH allows that. Just because you'd give your left toe to work at Apple doesn't mean you (or anybody else) should.
I'm not sure if you're fully in-the-loop about California. I've visited the state a few times, and it is absolutely miserable: everything costs 3x as much as it would elsewhere, pollution seems to be 4x worse, it's constantly hot and humid, and there's a housing crisis.
I'd probably reject a job offer from Apple solely based on how terrible the relocation would be.
Not to mention LA having slums that rival Cairo's and violent ghettos unworthy of a developed world country, or that San Francisco is increasingly a (literally) shit hole, with crappy social policies, homeless, and shit on the streets...
That's a weird flex when you have to be pretty privileged in order to have the background to even apply for a high paying FAANG job.
On the contrary, only a privileged person would specifically care about "work[ing] with some of the brightest minds". People who aren't privileged are just thankful to have a full-time job with benefits, and you can get that in any metro area with a significant population. On top of that, while California has some of the highest-living in the country, unemployment there doesn't pay any more than in any other state, which means if you lose your job you're hosed unless you're privileged enough to have a massive nest egg.
A couple more things...
- I actively do not want to live in California, and I most certainly don't want to live in that part of California. NorCal has been on my list of places I dislike so much you couldn't pay me seven figures to move there. For a while, I considered possibly moving to the LA area before it finally sank in that I'd probably hate living there almost as much as NorCal, but LA at least has the advantage of being sunny all year round with gorgeous beaches (visiting LA still on my bucket list, I just don't want to live there). The Bay Area doesn't even have that.
- My "I'd be an idiot to turn this job down" criteria involve being able to travel all the time and constantly work out of different parts of the country. This requires both a position that's 100% remote with no strings attached and a salary that's high enough to afford to be able to buy lots of plane tickets and spend weeks upon weeks living out of a hotel room. In fact, I just started such a job last week, and I intend to start flying in 2022 (I'm fully vaccinated, but the Delta variant has me nervous for now).
- I genuinely couldn't care less about "work[ing] with some of the brightest minds". I work to fund my life, and that's it, I don't want anything out of my job other than a steady paycheck and benefits. As long as my coworkers have some base level of competency and I can have enjoyable conversations with, I'm good.
Everyone has a right to make their own decisions, but calling somebody out as privileged over a legitimate health concern seems counterproductive. What does Apple or some other big company lose from having their employees work from home a bit longer? Productivity. Money. Maybe some projects run long.
What does an employee have to lose? Their health. Possibly their life. Even if you're vaccinated, you can be a carrier, you can still catch COVID--you're just not likely to have a bad case of it. That does not mean it is no longer fatal or that you can't have complications from a mild case.
The rest of what you said, I agree with. The more salient point is people who are immunocompromised and cannot get the vaccine.
I agree with you on the point of the immunocompromised and that those with weak immune responses are the most at risk.
The AARP did a pretty good write up of the efficacy of a couple of COVID vaccines and what efficacy means[1]. They cite a number of studies and conclude that:
* Breakthrough cases—infections after vaccination are possible, but rare, with multiple studies citing rate of breakthrough cases at 0.05% in a healthcare setting (high rate of risk/exposure). Small, but not astronomically so if you’re working in an open office or interacting with the general public.
* Breakthrough cases typically result in mild symptoms or asymptomatic infections.
* A weak immune response can turn you into a carrier even if you have been vaccinated.
* New COVID variants may result in a rise in breakthrough cases.
1. https://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-2021/...
and then
> Millions of people would give their left toe to work at a company like Apple. Me included.
and finally
> Who cares about WFH when...
So apparently you don't care about WFH. Why did you start your comment with a lie?
It’s a real shame. I’ve been a big fan of Apple’s products for awhile now. I did my PhD work on a 2014 MacBook Pro, and I switched from Android to iPhone around the same time, and I’ve been very happy with both. That laptop in particular has lasted me longer than any other computer I’ve used. I’d love to apply for a job there, to spend some time seeing how the sausage is made, so to speak. But I have family obligations that make it very hard for me to move.
Obviously it’s the executives’ choice, but I definitely feel like they’re really cutting down on their potential candidate pool for very little potential upside. Especially considering they tend to pay less than the other big players.
But I’ve been working for awhile now for a faaaar older and much larger company than Apple (in terms of employee count and revenue), that not only handled the abrupt work-from-home change last year well, but by many metrics, is actually outperforming pre-pandemic metrics in many areas. And our supply chains and manufacturing processes are significantly more complicated than Apple’s. So I’d argue that if a dinosaur of a company can manage to suddenly create a ton of remote jobs and make it work, the only reason I can think of for Apple to not make it work is that they didn’t seriously try.
There are a lot of possible reasons this choice was made. Being ignorant of the business’ needs is likely not among them.
And yes, for Apple even more than most companies, we have very little idea of what happened inside the company. But if they are so inflexible that the last year ended up being a complete disaster internally, I’d think that would be a huge signal that something about the company culture is in need of a serious change anyways, wouldn’t you agree? Any company that wants to survive more than the next 20 years has to have some flexibility built into it at the foundations.
I think people need to remember this is going to take time to slide into, and that WFH being a default option (because many people won't change from the default, due to inertia) isn't actually great either.
This is going to take time. You can force that for yourself, by quitting, but forcing it on every company is a battle you aren't going to win. That is going to take time and concerted effort to show that WFH isn't a detriment long-term. This is especially true since the pandemic has left a lot of managers and employees basically hating WFH, because this is what they think it means.
I say this, incidentally, while having direct reports of both kinds; some who loved WFH, and some who can't wait to get back into the office. They are all incredible, and I'd like to keep them. :) Our company is luckily being flexible, and allowing folks to pick, but the default is 3 days in the office. Anything else has to be manager-approved, but shouldn't be difficult (1-2 days, vs 5 days; the latter gets you a perma-desk, the former is hoteling).
And management is terrified of this arrangement; it's going to take time.
It would be interesting to hear from someone who works at Apple how far they went in trying to make it happen. My guess is that Apple doesn't do anything half-assed, and if there was a way to save hundreds of millions of dollars, they would have done it.
I welcome your call for non-anecdotal evidence - here's one: the vast majority of companies are returning to the office. I don't think it would be fair to call all the executives of all those companies irresponsible and negligent. Again, the cheaper thing to do would have been not to come back to the office, so the negative impact of WFH must have been substantial.
As an employee, I am paid based on my deliverables, which are captured in my OKRs. My OKRs say nothing about the overall productivity of the company, and instead all that matters is my specific scope of work. Within that framework, I would get more done if I didn't have to commute, so that's a vote for WFH. Also, at home I am not as accountable as at the office, so there's another vote for WFH. Finally, I have a number of errands to run, and those would be all easier when WFH, so there we go => 3:0 for WFH.
The paragraph above will tell you a lot about the fall of the Soviet Union and the majority of other communist experiments (including the one that I grew up in). Marxist thinking sounds great in theory, but to this day we haven't had a single successful outcome, and you can't really say that people haven't tried.
We should add a new fallacy to the list, ad money. There are many companies get rich by playing to the powers that be. Has nothing to be smart, and a lot to be corrupt.
Money!=Morality
Money!=Intelligence
Money==Money
> There's gotta be something to it, don't you think?
By that reasoning Apple can't do wrong, they always have a hidden plan.
> WFH would have been actually cheaper in the short term, so what do you think could have made them go the other way?
That is answered in the article.
Along with that; less control (over leaks, for example), less reality to the feeling of being One Happy Family, or being a king, surveying their loyal subjects.
Leaks? Did we experience an extraordinary amount of leaks during the last 12 months?
Have you read any testimonials from Apple employees? It’s a horrible environment. There are no happy families there.
I mean that it’s a feeling the a leader might wish upon their subjects, but which can’t actually be fabricated merely using a building or a location.
In an unbiased fashion, does anybody have any evidence that proves executives are "right" to say being managed in an office is more productive delivery wise than working from home?
But distinguishing WFH from “work through pandemic” would likely be a lot more effective.
My opinion is that we are in a transient state. We need to come up with new processes, ala Agile but for remote teams. We need invent new forms of managements, of organizations that scale with a remote first policy.
Can you elaborate? when you say managing, do you mean like... it's harder to get ahold of people to be around to get stuff done?
Also, specifically because of the pandemic, "WFH" has left a bad taste in a lot of managers' mouths, because EVERYONE HAS GOT PROBLEMS right now. That has nothing to do with WFH, but everyone is calling it WFH, so that is now what WFH means - stuck at home, no ability to go out, miserable because your kids are at home and/or your SO and/or your family, no social interaction (or minimal) with your team or anyone else, etc.
That isn't what WFH means, but that is what a lot of people now think it means.
The hybrid in the office 3 days a week does not fix any of those three things. You’re still forced to live near your office, you’re still forced to commute, and you’re still forced to interact in person.
2. Your commute time is reduced by not having to commute twice a week.
3. This is a question for HR, and they will likely make accommodations for whatever your needs are.
The point is that those things haven't changed; companies are likely to offer more flexibility about WFH days, but it is going to be rare, at least for the short-term, for companies to go full remote. Expecting anything else is just a setup for disappointment, imho.
Also, this isn't a 'plan for the decade'; this is a 'return to work plan.' The social contract pre-pandemic was that you were in office; I don't know why anyone expected large companies, who generally change direction as quickly as an ocean liner, to suddenly embrace remote work and give up on decades of hard-learned management techniques for in-office workers. That was never going to happen instantly.
People are welcome to (and should) advocate for themselves and their needs, but to expect suddenly for the world to go full remote immediately is, frankly, misguided.
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/06/04/apple-remote-wo...
Jason Snell has far more interesting and insightful takes these days anyway.
https://warzel.substack.com/p/this-is-the-awful-voice-inside...
If everyone refused to work from office tomorrow, that tim cook guy would bend in an instant. And they should refuse.
One of the things about this is that ... I don't trust my fellow employees much more than the CEO to make good choices.
The typical firebrand employees I've worked with, I want nothing to do with as far as their overall initiatives go. I might agree with them on one thing but not what to do about it and etc.
Second, For those who want to work remotely, this is a coordination problem. Nobody wants to be the first to give such an ultimatum to their manager, as they'd almost certainly be fired. Even if employees could all coordinate through some back channel, the reward for defecting is quite high. If half of your coworkers quit, you are suddenly a much more valuable member of the team. Anyone who stuck around would receive very high compensation.
I would prefer to rent a WeWork like space for myself in my own town (about $200 USD a month) if I needed a "distraction free work place" rather than moving all the way to California to spend 50% of my paycheck in cost-of-living.
"If everyone refused", that rocket man guy would bend in an instant. What an absurd idea.
I get that Apple does a lot of software these days, but one of the things they are also known for is tight integration between the hardware and software, which doesn't happen without them working side by side.
There may be a significant fraction of employees that can work remotely, but it would significantly change the culture of the company to split the workforce like that.
Sure, the remainder have to be physically present but that is the job/career they picked and even probably enjoy. Letting everyone else WFH means those remaining on-campus employees can have better offices & live closer to work. Seems like a win-win to me.
Apple has a horde of middle managers that need to get back to looking busy. If they can't watch every employee every second of the day how can they do their unofficial (but totally official) stack ranking come review time?
There's obviously legitimate reasons to get employees back in the office. At the same time their complete intransigence when it comes to remote work is just bull headed.
Tons of work at Apple is networked by nature. There's floods of e-mail (to the point it's almost useless), Slack chats galore, and tons of communication through Radar (Apple's issue tracker). The business need for in-person interaction for most engineers is actually pretty minimal. Many have to put a lot of effort into avoiding in-person distractions. Most in-person meetings would actually be better as e-mails.
I think their position is going to lose them some good talent. While on the whole those engineers can be replaced Apple runs lean engineering teams. Losing just one can hamstring that team for months. That can often mean a feature slips to the next OS release or a half-assed version lands. So an org losing even a dozen engineers all at once could screw it over for months.
The entire brand strategy hinges on that haunted building.
If they allowed remote work they could consolidate their far flung offices in Apple Park, which was the original intent of the damned building. Apple Park is like all of the form-over-function complaints about Apple crystallized into a single space.
So I will be going into the office to be on Google Meet.
If I worked for Apple I'd really feel like I was missing out on one of the big perks of working there if I was fully remote (and I'm not talking about the physical office - I'm talking about being surrounded by world class talent). At the same time I can understand how limiting the insane housing prices are in the area of Apple HQ, but I'd prefer satellite offices to full time remote.
Even if companies were democracies, which they aren’t, you don’t need 100% to make a decision for a reason - to be able to make any decisions.
=> Amazon/Apple/Big-Tech petitions a city for a super center for bunch of middle-class (and upper-class) awesome jobs.
=> Construction, development, small shops, homes, form around the area.
=> Small economy/city is built. Suddenly fitness trainer "Bob" can sell $100/hr lessons, open a gym, and provide for family on unskilled labor. Etc...
=> Schools in area get better. Crime goes down.
=> And so on...
If remote becomes a thing and all these "super jobs" can be done from anywhere in the world, I just can't shake a dead-end for booming neighborhoods that aren't gigantic mansions is coming.
When I was a naive kid, I moved to a highly populated city just to find work (no plan in place). I'm saying that same take-a-chance opportunity that I had, may become just that much harder for others now.
That creates upward pressure on housing prices (with more demand). Landlords and developers also renovate or build new construction (e.g. Vara on 15th and Mission) that are considered "luxury", with rent prices higher than what previous residents of the neighborhood can afford. Developers generally have an incentive to build for the luxury price range, because the price of construction isn't substantially higher (and it makes the lifetime ROI of the building much higher).
This means that if more people work remotely (especially high-earners), there's a less concentrated effect on land value in specific neighborhoods. People who previously lived in neighborhoods are less likely to be priced out, which is ultimately a symptom of wealth inequality.
Will folks from SF really move to the middle of Oklahoma?
How are the schools?
If remote work is advantageous for the majority of parties involved, I don't think we should force people into a specific geography just to allow the local Taco Bell to charge $6 for a Beefy 5-layer Burrito.
As it is, high-earners in the Bay Area are struggling very hard to try to buy a home, so I'm all for opening up the opportunities to move to some more affordable areas.
That's kind of my point.
HCOL extends past housing and actually empowers your less fortunate blue-collar neighbors when things are more expensive.
If the people at the top take their money and run (rightfully so), it just is not contributing back to local economies -- those people, those schools, those kids, those families.
Rent/Housing is definitely a whole separate problem.
I wouldn't budge on not relocating, and so the idea kind of fizzled out. People with a remote-first mindset were more rare a few years ago. Today, you're going to miss out on a lot of ideal job candidates (and lose good talent) if you can't open up to not forcing employees to congregate around managers in-person all the time.
Don't like it leave. Or consider doing a trade - reduced salary to be able to live in a low cost of living area and no commute.
Very few if any outside of these companies pay a mid level engineer 700k (yes, this number is real, can we please stop debating this fact?). So, if all FAANG force their companies back to the office, the employees have effectively no leverage.
This is similar to how the top cos colluded to keep engineer wages low in the 2000s, except they don’t need to explicitly make such a pact.
I think from now on there will be two types of companies: remote and non remote friendly. In the same way there are different kinds of people: those who prefer an office and those who prefer to work from home.
That's perfect!! We just need to switch jobs, which isn't a difficult thing for most of us. Everyone can be happy.
Personally, I'm not going back to an office for as long as I can get a remote job.
I did that, and don't regret it even 1 bit.
Unhappy Apple employees have the power here to attempt to change the company culture or simply accept what they have been ordered to do.
Only time will tell.
I'd argue that companies like Apple are probably one of the places in the tech industry where the employer really has all the power. I can't really think of any skill that an employee could bring to a place like Apple that would make that person worth a culture change. Maybe some of the guys and gals in design? Probably transcendent design eyes don't come along very often. But even then, I don't know? Probably not.
Instead of politely asking though a letter, I think these employees should organize into a labor union with actual bargaining power.
I would never say anything against unionizing, and more power to them if they wish to unionize, but I think they have plenty of power compared to the vast majority of workers.
Although worth keeping in mind that organising enough to agree on a demand is part of how unions are formed. Also sending a unified demand is part of how unions negotiate.
From personal experience with so called "professionals" at gov level that worked from home, they think it's a vacation not work. No observation of decorum, protocol, or consistency.
Your environment orients how you interpret and interact with the tasks at hand. If you have to pick between stirring the sauce before it burns or taking the time to type cohesive notes during a videoconference/call, your sense of urgency will have a bias towards saving the sauce. Because after all, you are home.
If anything, we all noticed that more work gets done at home, and people are more responsive than when office.
Start-up employees, in my experience, are more like government workers, but they are still living pretty well comparatively, and, in my sample, are significantly less likely to have kids, so the dollars go quite a bit further.