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Comment by tombert | Hacker News Reader

COVID made my situation worse at Apple. I worked in a satellite office (NYC), and while in the office, most folks in California were reluctant to schedule meetings later than ~2pm california time because they didn't want to keep people in the office late. When we went fully remote, suddenly it seems like any compunctions about that vanished; I would have meetings until 9pm 3 nights a week, I guess because the managers figured that we were already home.

> Having left, I forgot what it was like to be able to focus on something other than Apple

Definitely sympathize there; we weren't even allowed to leave Github issues without Legal's approval, and when I wanted to open source something (basically an HLS server I wrote to handle my home security system), I was told that a) it was too competitive with Apple because my project had to do with video, and b) there's no such thing as "my own time" with Apple, since I was salaried and well-compensated.

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> When we went fully remote, suddenly it seems like any compunctions about that vanished; I would have meetings until 9pm 3 nights a week

This is why there is a decline button next to the accept button. An outage or something disastrous, sure I'll stay online till midnight to help in anyway I can; a regular status update type meeting, no way.

This is unhelpful. Nobody gets total control of their time in employment, and some people get a lot less control than others.

Set boundaries.

Decide if someone violating them is worth quitting over. It's a competitive market, and frankly - Many of the FAANG companies are terrible to work for.

No one is saying you have total control of your schedule - but if I'm consistently asked to take a meeting at 9pm my time... I'll have a meeting with my manager, and it will consist of the following: "I will quit if they keep asking me to meet when I'd like to be reading bedtime stories to my kid".

So far - I have not had to quit, and I don't take 9pm meetings. I find your meek & bleak acquiescence unhelpful.

> Many of the FAANG companies are terrible to work for.

How’s F and G and N (Netflix right?)?

Friend works at G India. Sings paeans . He moved there after 6 months at Uber (where I resigned in a week).

I have always heard shitty things about AA though so I guess that kinda settles it.

All the FAANG companies have bad aspects to them. Some are more likely to have them than others. But those are averages, and I find that the biggest contributor to your workplace culture will be which specific team you’re on and not the company you’re at. (I know plenty of people at Apple and Amazon who are perfectly happy with their situation, and some at the others who aren’t. But I think the work/life balance on average tends to be worse there, yes.)

Netflix for some unknown reason. That's why I like GMAFIA.

What is the I?

I like MAGMA which requires using Meta but not Alphabet.

I do freely decline status update meetings at unreasonable hours, and most people reading this are probably in a position where they should too. The problem is with things like design reviews and planning meetings, where declining just means people are going to make decisions without you.

I didn't feel like that was really an option. It became recurring meetings three times a week, and I got the vibe of "if you don't go, it's gonna look bad".

It may or may not have been an option. If you never try it definitely wasn't an option.

I have never worked at a FAANG myself, so this might not be something that works in those places. But what I do is to simply put "Out of Office" on my calendar outside of my core working hours. I don't even have to decline. I can honestly say that it was automated and I never even saw their invite. If someone complained about it I would tell them that I can definitely make exceptions, just need to check w/ the SO as she might have a meeting she can't move and we have the kids to take care of. I also don't react well to invites over night. I have my calendar in my head well enough to know when to wake up/be home etc. for the first meeting. So something you put on my calendar "in between" will in most if not all cases not even be seen. I do not have notifications enabled on my cell. This has so far worked without fail and only a few people have ever asked me for a specific slot and moving something. Basically the OoO reply get them to rethink and at the very least they know they gotta talk to me first and can't just plug something on my calendar and I will show up.

That said, any regular meeting someone puts on my calendar in a free slot with enough notice I will simply accept, be there and do my best to contribute. Meetings someone puts in 5 minutes before (or worse, yes this has happened during the meeting) and then ping me "are you coming" will result in a very stubborn me. Yes I would quit over someone throwing a fit for my stubbornness. No it has never been necessary. They all backpaddled.

That no office communication on personal phone has worked wonders for me as well. And my personal numbers is for emergencies only.

Not turning up last minute meetings have also worked well. I mean I was shocked but people actually need to be told you’re not available at one ping and then they mend their ways. Start saying yes, it gets worse.

Back in the 90s, my father had a method of pre-vacation scheduling. He announced to all his colleagues that X day before he left was the last day he was accepting new work to finish before leaving.

Inevitably, someone would come by the day before he left, and ask him if he could do one more critical thing.

He reminded them what he said, explained he was finishing work others had asked of him, and didn't have the time for their work before he left, but he'd be happy to look at it when he got back.

Next vacation announcement, that person made their requests earlier.

Scheduling has its own cultural mores and Overton window, and there's no "right." If you're unhappy with its current coverage: push it in the direction you want. People will adjust.

You can say "No" nicely and without being an asshole.

Yep, just set boundaries. If your boundaries become a problem for someone higher up, they will raise it with you. Don't ask, just do.

Too many people assume they need to take meetings whenever and they'll put up with it quietly for years, never feeling confident enough to just assert themselves or set working hours in Google Calendar.

What does “look bad” mean exactly?

Never promoted? Fired?

It just means “fear and inertia”, mostly unfounded and even if not simply not worth it. It’s just that.

Suffered from it long. Then one day I did the opposite and never looked back.

Mostly the former, it's pretty hard to get fired at Apple. Still, if the managers don't like me they won't give me fun work, since my team was big on "you don't get to do satisfying work until you prove yourself with unsatisfying stuff".

Ugh, that sucks :(

I completely agree with and get what you’re saying. It does feel like that. And if you think you won’t be getting another job you’d feel that way strongly.

But it takes just once. At the new starup I am working I simply pressed “Decline” for “all events” that were out of my timezone except the ones that happen 3-4 times a month total.

Blocked my calendar after 6pm with an automated message clearly mentioning that it was night for me and ask the person to reach out about it and that if it’s a recurring meeting I simply won’t be able to attend.

It’s been 6 months since and it has worked fine. Some other people started doing it in my country after that. Also US colleagues now ask us, earlier they assumed we will just be there.

And yes, I was ready to resign if someone even someone above me in hierarchy even so much as questioned the autonomy of my personal time that’s other than those 8 hours on weekday.

It’s not like I have too much financial cushion, I don’t. But I realised it’s not worth it and when you start saying yes to it, it keeps increasing, keeps piling up. Never stops, never comes down. Saying no sooner is better than saying no late.

Just like dictators and autocrats such companies feed on our fears. The moment we lose them they either run into the ground or they fall in line.

> Blocked my calendar after 6pm with an automated message clearly mentioning that it was night for me and ask the person to reach out about it and that if it’s a recurring meeting I simply won’t be able to attend.

> It’s been 6 months since and it has worked fine. Some other people started doing it in my country after that. Also US colleagues now ask us, earlier they assumed we will just be there.

I work remotely, and did something similar while I was in Europe for a month. Worked a mostly overlapping schedule (so I could take advantage of the morning / early afternoons), and then blocked off the late evening on my calendar. Never really was a problem, and helped ensure everyone was on the same page.

> This is why there is a decline button next to the accept button.

Depends on your MacOS version.

In Mojave there’s actually no meaningful way to interact with an invite through a notification. There’s a dropdown but it’s not reachable. It only appears if you mouse over where the “x” button should be, which causes the button and dropdown to appear. If you move the mouse off this button both the button and the dropdown vanish.

Also, I’m afraid to click that “x” because I’m still not sure if it dismisses the notification or declines the invite.

And I still can’t figure out how to decline from the calendar with a message. I have to go to my deleted items in Mail and reply to the invite there.

In principle, I agree, but I should point out that "No meetings outside regular daylight hours" and "My employer shouldn't care where in the world I do my job" are not compatible with each other.

In the course of a week, I collaborate literally with people in the UK, California, China, and Saudia Arabia. People are occasionally have to take meetings outside daylight hours. Best we can do is to (a) minimize the number of meetings overall (a lot more things can be done asynchronously that is often acknowledged) and (b) spread the pain fairly so nobody has to always take meetings at awkward hours.

> In principle, I agree, but I should point out that "No meetings outside regular daylight hours" and "My employer shouldn't care where in the world I do my job" are not compatible with each other.

Not if you're all in North America. I've worked for two large, distributed companies in the last several years, where I reside in Eastern time zone. There's enough overlap between me and teammates in the Pacific time zone that evening meetings are never necessary.

Yeah, I don't get that one. You need to be in some really extreme timezones to not have any overlap. I worked with both UK and US from Australia (not Apple) and it was possible. Occasionally I'd do a meeting at night and start later the next day, but it was always my choice.

As I said, our team is literally spread evenly around the globe (though not nearly in equal numbers). Every hour of the day is bound to be awkward for someone.

In those cases we split the meeting and someone sent in the notes async. At the level where all those people absolutely must be present... I would hope they're paid enough and have enough agency in their roles to figure out the solution.

Try UTC+12/13 and having to regularly coordinate with Europe :)

Working with the US and Asia is fine though, always have a couple of hours of overlap.

I used to work with people from PST (-8), CET (+1) and KST (+9). The meeting planner [0] shows no "acceptable" overlap, but we made it work by doing meetings very rarely, planning them far in advance and essentially taking turns which timezone gets the late (22-23) or early (6-7) slots. This was despite the fact that there was a clear hierarchy - sometimes the boss got up at 4 or stayed up until 23 so we wouldn't have to.

[0] https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meetingtime.html?iso=...

India is 10.5 hours from both coasts of the US (for most of the year).

If two employees work at the same local times, they have to work an 11 hour day to have 30 minutes of overlap.

> spread the pain fairly so nobody has to always take meetings at awkward hours.

That was my biggest issue; obviously a late meeting or two occasionally is fine. It's a distributed team, that's a necessary evil. It just bothered me that, after COVID, they made zero attempt at even trying accommodate the satellite offices.

Absolutely agree. Also, if you expect people to be switched on at 9pm, be flexible about them not responding first thing the next morning.

I interviewed with a company who is on the west coast. I'm in Ireland. We overlap for a few hours during their morning. Every interview was scheduled during their afternoon. I always asked to move it to an earlier spot. Seems like this conscious awareness of other people isn't automatic.

My view: if you're a global company, you need to instill in your employees a respect for time zones. You need your employees to be aware of where their colleagues are and what their "normal" working hours are. You to be intentional about this and actually say it. At a previous company the CEO actually took a minute during an all-hands to say "Look everyone, we're a global company now and we're hiring like crazy in Europe. Be respectful of timezones. If you need to talk to a colleague in Europe, do it during your morning". That was enough to ensure that most of my meetings happened before 5pm local time, and when they didn't, you'd have at least one person during the meeting say things like "let's cover X first so @raffraffraff can get off the call early" or "guys, we're going off-topic and we've got colleagues from Europe on the call". It normalised consideration.

Put your work hours in your calendar and auto decline everything outside those hours. Refuse that nonsense.

thats how you get PIPed

Join a union

It depends heavily on the company and the specific team/org. Where I'm at, this behavior will more likely get the manager PIP'd for not being inclusive and fostering a healthy team dynamic.

Manager wants to hire across time zones to hit their headcount? Go for it, but be they'd better be ready to make accommodations for doing so.

I freely decline meetings too. Usually, add a note saying it is family time or unreasonable time for a meeting.

Never been a problem.

Just finished 13 months at my new startup employer from USA. Personal time imbalance has been a polite and cold confrontation often and I simply never budged. So much that I’ve got “that reputation” here. It’s just around 400 people across the world.

Delivered my work really well. Was rated 4 out of 5 - 5 being best. No one even mentioned that part of my decision. I am fiercely professional and diligent about my work and product I own in my work hours just like I am fiercely protective of my personal time.

And yes, maybe they need me, maybe they will aks me to leave, maybe they’ll PIP me (that’d ne ridiculous though), something else.

But I’ll not budge. That simple.

With that short incomplete sentence what you’re trying to say is - and I won’t point directly at you, I’ll just try to expand/translate - one is afraid of losing the job and actually more afraid of getting another one, one is afraid of not getting that high a salary, loans/EMIs, etc. You may be right. Or that it’s just like that everywhere (this is not true at all).

So like everything else in life nothing comes free and without risk.

Possibly but I've never encountered a company that felt they had control of my time after hours and wouldn't have stayed at one which did.

If you work for a company that toxic you should find a new job.

> b) there's no such thing as "my own time" with Apple, since I was salaried and well-compensated.

Is there 1 FAANG company that is the most friendly/accomodating to someone who wants to develop their own software/indiegames on the side?

I don't currently work there, so take this with a grain of salt, that said, it would seem Google is a lot more relaxed about this sort of thing than any other large company I've seen. Lots of ex-Google employees end up doing all sorts of things and lots of Googlers participate in open source

Not FAANG, but GitHub explicitly allows employees to work on side-projects while retaining the IP rights, and you get paid Microsoft stock.

Whats hilarious is that this is definitely not the case for regular MS employees

Which means it will eventually be the law.

The MS employees I've met/interviewed were literally not allowed to read open source code or sample code on Q&A websites. Of course that was mostly 5+ years ago and I don't exactly ask them if their policies have changed.

Im on StackOverflow all the time and we use OSS code all over the place. Either they were pulling your leg or you badly misunderstood something they said.

I did not. Talk to some MacBU people.

When at Microsoft I was expected to be on top of Stack Overflow for our product, and there's a whole program where if you contribute to open source you get to vote on where the monthly OSS sponsorship goes.

I've linked to WebKit source before in exec reviews and no one bats an eye. So, changed, I'd say.

It is in California at least - you can moonlight on whatever you want when you are not on company time or equipment.

Our vacation also doesn't expire and we also don't have non-compete clauses.

This is not how California law works, because you left out the (in this case very important) part where this is exclusive to things that don’t compete with your employer. If you work at a FAANG, the number of things they work on is very large and consequently they will claim large control over what you do.

Netflix. As long as you don't compete directly with the business, the company doesn't care (at least that's how I interpreted my contract when I joined a while ago).

> As long as you don't compete directly with the business, the company doesn't care

I've found, as long as you're not making money no one cares what you're doing. As soon as money starts coming in, a lot of people are very interested in what you're doing. My totally uninformed guess would be that one of the first questions Netflix (or really any company) has about your off-company-time product is 1) does it make money and 2) how much. The answers to those questions will determine how the conversation goes from there, and how many lawyers are involved.

Bingo. Not FAANG but it definitely works like that in Ubisoft.

Not FAANG but Red Hat employees can contribute to open source on their own time — even if it competes with something that Red Hat makes.

Is that still true, post-IBM?

Can confirm this is still true, yes.

Does Red Hat even make proprietary software? I thought the business model was to open source everything and charge for enterprise support and cloud services?

Right, it's all open source, but you could be making after-work contributions to open source projects that might not be in the interest of Red Hat, and that's perfectly fine.

The policy is public: https://www.redhat.com/licenses/RH_CoC-June_2020_Eng.pdf

"Participation in an open source community project, whether maintained by the Company or by another commercial or non-commercial entity or organization, does not constitute a conflict of interest even where you may make a determination in the interest of the project that is adverse to the Company’s interests."

A lot of employees were concerned about losing this after the IBM acquisition, but the former CEO made a lot of promises to us especially to protecting our autonomy, and (so far) IBM has kept those commitments to us.

I cannot imagine a more open source friendly place to work. I'm constantly surprised by how other companies operate open source projects or treat their employees who want to contribute to them (at work or otherwise). Unfortunately as Red Hat gets larger, we hire more people without that love of open source and they want to do things differently, but thankfully they don't get much traction.

Develop or sell? No one cares unless you want to be a big name or big money.

Google has a thing called "IARC" (https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/releasing#...) where you make an application with details about what you're done or have done, and if it's approved, you get to own the copyright.

If you want to release it as open source and don't care about owning the copyright, there's a process you can go through to release a new open source project. If you just want to send patches to an existing project, you can generally just do that, as long as the project has an approved open source license and is not on the (short) list of disallowed projects.

>there's no such thing as "my own time" with Apple

Companies that aren't nearly as "cool" and pay a fraction, can be just as possessive or more so.

I am well aware of the saying "better to ask for forgiveness than permission" and how some rules are broken by everyone with a tacit understanding.

However, once when I investigated volunteering for an extremely well known and mainstream nonprofit, they gave me some required paperwork, which said that any IP created during my volunteer work belonged to them.

I didn't have a firm intention to do IT work as a volunteer or not, but I was told I had to sign to volunteer regardless.

I thought I would ask my employer if I could sign the agreement; if it was compatible with the stuff I'd already signed, that asserted ownership of work outside of regular hours, if related to the business.

At a lower level, people had no idea. It was passed up the chain all the way to the chief corporate counsel or whoever, and eventually they said no, with an air of "WTF why are you wasting my time?".

I felt like the ultimate decisionmakers can live in a different reality, where things don't happen because nobody has an incentive to tell them.

I didn't particularly mind, since I wasn't set on that particular organization to volunteer with, and I learned something.

This is true globally.

Remote work became anytime work.

Most arent as blatant as setting up ridiculous times in the calendar, but the same goal is achieved by more insidious means. For example, a manager assigning a task that needs to be completed before the next day at 5pm.

Woz to HP management: "Hey, I know we already sell computers, want to have a look at this one? If not, can I sell it myself?"

HP to Woz: "Sure, go for it, good luck."

Apple to their own employees: "Uh, let's see here.... how about 'No.' Does 'No' work? Good, then we'll go with 'No.'"

Gotta love the Valley. You either flame out early, or you live long enough to become the face on the telescreen.

I don't understand what this is supposed to mean.

It's a reference to Apple's 1984 commercial

They have not only become exactly what they fought against, they've refined it to perfection.

But it is a non-sequitur because Apple hasn't let any world changing tech developed by there employees to be spun out with no financial interest.

Yeah, and that's the idea behind the complaint. After getting their start thanks in part to HP's generosity, Apple's management tries to do everything possible to make sure the same thing doesn't happen at their company. It's hypocrisy in action.

Ooooo yes that makes sense

“You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

To be fair, the modern Apple is all Steve Jobs and Jobs always had this mentality that you are bashing. Seems like any Wozniak related mentality left the building when they dumped Apple II. And well can you really argue with the results? Apple was near bankruptcy trying to compete on the same plane as other personal computers.

> Definitely sympathize there; we weren't even allowed to leave Github issues without Legal's approval...

This strongly anti-OSS policy makes me very sad, I occasionally see Apple employees in GitHub issues essentially saying they would fix this problem they're seeing themselves but are forbidden from participating by their employer (Apple). Seems like such a waste. Everyone has their price and priorities, definitely solving interesting problems at work and being paid well for it can outweigh satisfaction from OSS, but just seems so needless for the wealthiest organization in the world.

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