Hacker News Reader

Comment by thr0wawayf00 | Hacker News Reader

Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do...

...as long as it's done from the office.

View on HN

In a talk Craig Federighi gave, he said some of his most inventive work was done remotely with his NeXT Cube in a cabin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43sjym5ZS68&t=677s.

This sounds great. Maybe Apple thinks it can find someone else can do the same job in office. Also they can't just make exceptions for "talented" people, I guess.

No, Apple has a proud tradition of firing talented people, running the company into the ground, then rehiring the same people via acquisition.

Um, > running the company into the ground

how so?

By putting the former head of Pepsi in charge, letting him push out Jobs, and then putting the company in such a dire financial situation that when they rehired Jobs, he had to go to Microsoft for a bailout.

Jobs hired that guy to be CEO.

Jobs hired Sculley as CEO, then disagreed with him, attempted to have the board kick him out, instead had the board turn against Jobs himself, was stripped of his roles, and quit.

They were running Apple to the ground in the 80s and then kicked Steve Jobs out in 1985.

Jobs starter Next which was acquired by Apple in 1997, bringing Jobs back home.

Hence gp’s comment about Apple’s long history of doing this…

I'm not sure doing it once counts as a tradition or long history, but zinger I guess.

"Since 1985!"

> Also they can't just make exceptions for "talented" people, I guess.

Why not though?

> Also they can't just make exceptions for "talented" people, I guess.

They already do. It requires SVP approval.

The story about porting OS X to Intel revolves around working from home: https://www.quora.com/How-does-Apple-keep-secrets-so-well/an...

I'm one of those misfits/troublemakers/etc. I've done my life mostly on my terms, and I've had it really tough. Conformists generally get it much easier. I'm all for more independent thought and fuck-you-ness but never forget that for most people that comes at a high price, so take off the rose-tinted specs.

That was a direct quote from Steve Jobs, except the last bit at the bottom. The whole point of the comment, I think, is how this goes against the old Apple ethos of encouraging non-conformity (to an extent).

Is that a quote from Jobs, or ad copy, or both?

It's ad copy, AFAIK.

By the Chubb ad agency, I believe. There’s an old video of Jobs introducing the ad where he briefly mentions it.

It was ad copy, written by Rob Siltanen for that campaign[1].

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/onmarketing/2011/12/14/the-real...

My mistake. I should've been more diligent. I knew it was associated with Apple and the first result on DDG associated it with Jobs.

Yep, I was just about to comment that this kind of decision is a lot easier to make when you have the fuck-you money that Goodfellow doubtless has.

I wouldn’t say he has FYM yet. Enough to maybe FIRE but more than cash, he’s in a position where almost any tech or related company would hire him, pay him a ton, and let him work on what he wants to do. Essentially, tenure at a university but paid 10X as much.

I certainly don't have "fuck you money", but these days I think most competent tech workers can easily get jobs elsewhere, so I don't think it's a big, risky move to quit your job.

here's to you, good luck in your journey. make it worth it

"If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is."

- Charles Bukowski

I don't know if it's worth it. It's the way I am and I seem to have as much choice over it as ivy chooses growing up a wall.

I've never been hungry by choice and I've always had a roof over my head, and I'm grateful for both of those things, but let's look at something I do know: "..could mean losing ... maybe even your mind"

Yeah, BTDT. A lifetime of mental health problems culminating in a complete ... I dunno, breakdown? ... where I was barely able to function for 2 years and became a risk to others (should have been hospitalised but wasn't), and another 2 years recovering. 4 years of my life wasted. Any projected glamour of mental illness is purely done by those who've never had it. Mental illness is fucking shit and has no redeeming value.

Edit: oh yes, and "Isolation is the gift" - Never is loneliness a gift, ever.

> and has no redeeming value

Hmm, the one redeeming value of my anxiety (and the accompanying fear of imminent death) is that it makes it much easier to contemplate things I wouldn’t otherwise contemplate.

I’d still rather do without that, but I guess it’s interesting enough I can call it redeeming?

I suppose it depends. A redeeming feature of death is you never again wake up with a stinking hangover. You can find a positive everywhere I suppose. I don't know.

I am curious at the number of downvotes to this which I take as disagreement, but with what? Have others had years of mental health crashes and found it a great positive in the end, or what? Genuinely would like to know.

TIA

"Elegant, inspiring, soaring prose often makes for incredibly shitty real-world advice."

- hn_throwaway_99

Yeah seriously, that comment is like the ultimate anti-advice.

Well, if you don't want your life to turn out Bukowski, don't take advice from Bukowski.

As Modest Mouse said, "God, who'd want to be / Such an asshole?"

Indeed, but it’s a little funny coming from Isaac Brock.

Well, he would know better than most, right?

Fair enough!

I think of that song every time I see Bukowski quoted.

Asshole he might be but he was right about Disney.

Who said anything about advice?

nobody cares about your opinion because no one knows who you are

Glorious, glorious loneliness...good one. Even introverts know that being alone sucks. Medical studies show a correlation between poorer health and loneliness.

I’d only take life advice from Bukowski if I wanted to end up like Bukowski. Doesn’t really sound like a great life tbh.

I do not think that Charles Bukowski is a good role model. I love his writing, some of it is very disturbing, and some I only read once - will not repeat the experience.

But to live like him? No thank you

Yeah. What are we trying that we should expect to lose the most important relationships in our lives? Unsaid but heavily implied is this person would be an atrocious parent, and a very real price is paid for that.

The office is where the very expensive labs are.

For at least parts of Apple engineering, very expensive equipment and prototypes are under lockdown and too expensive to duplicate for WFH.

(at least that's how it was during my several years there.)

I don't think anyone (or, at least not many people) is arguing against working in the office if you have a specific need to be there. What people have an issue with is requiring a return to the office for no other reason than "group synergy".

Ironically, "group synergy" was given as the reason for cramming people into the open plan offices that everybody was glad to get away from.

“Group synergy” where “group” means “reduced real estate cost” and “synergy” means “fnord.”

Synergy means multiplication instead of addition when things are put together, like male and female oxen. You put them together in an open office and more oxen are sure to be produced.

Oxen are commonly castrated adult male cattle. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Ox

That’s not what synergy means. That’s also not how oxen work.

Do you ever notice the guys pushing the group synergy, generally have big offices?

Average office size : average cube size

An underrated ratio for measuring corporate inequality.

Bold of you to assume they even have cubes

I like this a LOT.

I left a job over open office plans. I really hate it. And I am one of those tech + social people too. Like having people nearby.

But the distractions are everywhere. It is hard to flow. It is hard to have a phone call with a prospect or customer. Things get moved, borrowed, lost.

But mostly I hate it because everytime I have seen open plan, the people who set it up have big offices with windows looking out at the people they screwed over and seek to ultra micro manage. (And this is exactly what happened at the company I left)

"I saw you doing that, why?"

"How come you wander around several times a day?"

"Your desk is a mess"

And so it goes. Nope. Do not have time for that. Happy to work elsewhere or make less, whatever.

Anyway, they announced, I counter announced, and then was out before the move. They lost a few people, and that company was sold a while back.

Now pretty much everyone doing that work has a new email and works mostly from home! New owners saw no need for a group office scenario and has small teams all over the place. Given the nature of the work, that makes a ton of sense.

Funny how things can work.

Having talked with the old owner after all this went down, the real reasons were to save money and manage people and their relationships. Profound lack of trust.

This guy is doing machine learning though. All he needs is an internet connection.

I understand the idea that hardware WFH is going to be a no-go, but software? We already had the revolutionary moment where the internet is everywhere.

That's not established without knowing if they're working on neural engine hardware, for example.

We can probably infer from the fact that they've been remote for 2 years that it is possible to do their job remotely.

Could also be the other way.

It could be that he wasn’t doing his job well remotely and hence the push to get him in.

But why ML people have to be forced in the office ?

hard to say, perhaps access to future dev hardware accelerators (neural engines)

I think it’s fair to say that the people asking to be allowed to WFH know they can do their job properly while WFH.

He’s a director and is most likely supposed to be an example.

“If the director isn’t coming in then why should I?”

Per his phrasing, part of the reason he's quitting is to be an example.

> "I believe strongly that more flexibility would have been the best policy for my team," Goodfellow said in the email.

Well, why should you? Nobody in that department needs to be at the office.

Totally. Just trying to look at it from Apple’s return to office perspective, regardless of whether it’s appropriate or not.

People are smart enough ( I'm sure there is a hiding bar at these companies) to go to the office if they require access to certain equipment which they cannot take home. Why impose a rule that doesn't make sense.

I work for a large semiconductor company and during the pandemic the test engineers in the lab and IT staff were the only ones allowed into the office for the first year. Even the test engineers were allowed to take a lot of lab equipment home with them. The CEO did an all hands where he shared pics of all the lab people testing and evaluating chips at home.

Having a home lab is awesome!

In my case it is hobby fun rapidly turning professional. The way to fund hobby / new work is to get your investment at home to pay for itself. Free tools and gear essentially.

Early on, as I picked up skills and scored deals on equipment, I ended up able to take side gigs and or take on special projects. Sometimes I would do these on a "keep the gear" basis. No money changes hands. Recommended.

Pros:

Picking up new skills

Research on ones interest and terms

Flex time working is possible

Reduced commute

Work when ideation is high tide, so to speak

Cons:

It can be expected to work more

Personal / company boundaries are less clear (IP and overwork)

Can be expensive

Need space

Summary:

Personally, I have always had a lab at home, and I rarely take company gear home. Sometimes I have, but I try to buy my own, or the gear from the company.

I have had to make a few career jumps and the next one has pretty much been made possible by what I had at home and what I could do with it.

Be very careful about IP. The reward for that caution can be a real opportunity for you.

It can be the place where you show young people stuff they would never see otherwise and or, until much later. This happened for me as a teen and it was a huge boost! And it was where home lab started for me. My bedroom was my shop.

Of course, you gotta sort this for your scene too. The CEO letting people take gear home is nice and maybe a non issue for people. Depends on what one is doing and or plans to do.

Overall though, I deffo recommend doing it.

>The office is where the very expensive labs are.

I know right. I mean to be able to test his his AI algorithms, instead of just walking into the supercomputer room with a briefcase full of punchcards he would either have to make a long distance trip or else FedEx in his punchcards(and expose Apple to the risk of losing them or having them leak).

Sorry, this is 2022 and we have high speed Internet and networked computers. And we don’t have to physically load punchcard into then supercomputer.

Does your snark apply if he was working on development hardware for upcoming "Neural Engine" in a lab?

You have to wear pajamas to live by those words!

Btw that quote is describing the potential customers of Apple, not employees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sMBhDv4sik

Is that why apple store employees are called "geniuses" ?

> Btw that quote is describing the potential customers of Apple, not employees

Why does that matter? Does Apple not want the most talented, world-changing people working on their products? If your marketing sounds good for customers but dumb for employees, particularly in knowledge-driven work, then maybe your marketing is just hypocritical?

Do marketers care whether their marketing is intellectually honest? Maybe that matters if the people you're marketing to are very discerning or cynical, but I'm not sure I'd put the typical Apple customer in that bucket. As long as the marketing gets people to consume the product, I don't think it matters if it's stupid or if it's lies.

My guess is that people who work for Apple do it more because of the giant FAANG salary and the social cachet than because of the product marketing.

Amen.

Corollary: all you conformists who like rules and structure, you are the useless peasantry.

"Also, be careful with that hammer, you might trip and fall and break the screen."

Not the same company anymore... not even close.

Rebels, but WITHIN REASON

Rebels with a pension scheme?

Rebels with a Costco member card!

Rebels with RSUs.

Touche. It's so silly- in the Marines we would say, "adapt and overcome."

Jarheads are smarter than all of you? Suck it up and get it done.

Yes, Apple management will have to suck it up. They set the policy, their employees vote with their feet.

>but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward,

Honestly such people are extremely rare. The quote doesn't apply to the vast majority of employees at Apple. There are always going to be other talented people willing to take their spot.

i think Steve Job said that, it may have been part of his clever marketing. He was very good at it.

He probably had to think differently when he got in charge of a big corporation...

That slogan was from 1997.

A quarter century later, Apple is a very different company. As it should be.

Their revenues and profits are in a historical low. Remote work is a scam. The company must return to the office, otherwise they'll go bankrupt in months.

Tim Cook is so wise to save Apple with this move.

How is remote work a scam? Engineers don’t need a schmuck like you bothering them in person to do great work. Work from home gives everyone a private office, focus and quiet.

Lol

I've found people's views on remote work say more about their personal ethics than universal truth.

People who would (or do) slack off without direct oversight think everyone is that way. They don't understand that the people in these positions are highly motivated, driven people.

These people aren't Homer Simpson.

Remote work allows lazy employees to stay unmonitored.

If you wanted to hear non-BS truth from me. Otherwise, we can all continue to pretend.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com