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Comment by robertwt7 | Hacker News Reader

So pre-pandemic, they're all hired to go to the office 5 days a week, now after pandemic, they don't even want to go back 3 days a week?

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Or, if you prefer, pre-pandemic they didn't know how happy and productive they would be not having to go into the office five days a week, and post-pandemic, they do know.

Strikes me as an internal matter, frankly, I don't have a dog in this fight. I'm cynical enough to think that sunk costs on their enormous (and admittedly impressive) space donut is playing a role here, but it's their company to run, and it's the employee's jobs to negotiate.

I decided years before the pandemic that I didn't want to go into the office anymore, and plan to stick with it for as long as I can.

Yeah that's also true. What I don't understand is, if it bothers them that much, then quit and find flexible jobs. Instead of taking legal action, talking to lawyer lol.

Its company's policy, they wanted to work there in the first place.

Nowadays people are complaining about everything

It is difficult to go back to a worse status quo ante once an improvement in quality of life has been experienced.

Post-pandemic, almost all FAANGs adopted a full remote work policy. Apple competes with these companies for talent.

Which ones specifically?

The ones I know of are Facebook, Twitter and Netflix.

Netflix's CEO has been vocally anti-WFH since the beginning.

F, A, N, and G.

Apple does not need to compete. it is not as if FAANG guys can suddenly absorb 1000s of employees trying to switch. it will create even more selective hiring.

Perhaps they experienced WFH for the first time and they don’t want to lose it.

Pre-pandemic they were told the only way to be a productive well oiled org with apple's values was to be in the same place together...and then for almost a year and a half...Wanting a new deal doesn't seem anywhere near as flippant as your comment makes it out to be.

Maybe were missing a larger point here. Perhaps Apple looked at the past year working from home and found that it did not work. Employees are happier, but the company has found that the situation was not tenable for their desired level of workflow.

At this point, we have two competing pieces of information:

(1) Some workers say they are just as effective at home

(2) Some higher ups believe employees are noticeably more productive in the office

Comparing the veracity of these two opposing statement, both from groups that have some claim to authority on the matter is hard. I, as an external observer, can only really judge with the aid of some secondary information. Both claims seem, on the surface, plausible.

However, if we are indeed missing some larger point, there must some data to backup claim (2). That data does not seem to be made public, as reported quarterly profits during the pandemic were up. Not releasing that information is up to Apple, they don't need to let outsiders know how the sausage is made.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/gross-p...

More importantly, if a non-trivial # of employees believe (1), regardless of its veracity, then Apple isn't correctly communicating their reasons for (2) internally. So at this point, we, as outside observers, don't know the reasons, many of the employees don't seem to know/believe the reasons, but we should take Apple Management's word for it?

You may trust the word of one group of the other, I'm not here to question that. Such value judgements are how we navigate life. However, expecting me to believe Apple's Management on face value, when their formerly happy-to-come-in employees don't is a tough sell.

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