Apple is a private company and allowed to enforce employment participation measures.

Apple is the most inefficient company in the world.

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Gotta love the USA, one of the worst countries in the world for workers rights…

https://aflcio.org/2014/5/22/us-rated-alarmingly-high-global-survey-worst-places-workers-rights

Just another reason why you should join a Union.

That's why I get triggered anytime someone talks shit about European Union. Your country is trash and these corporations can get away with just about anything.

When you build an office like that you gotta put it to use.

And we're allowed to not work for them.

Employees: We did our jobs for three years remote/hybrid. What do we get?

Apple: To come back to the office.

Employees: Surprised Pikachu face.

It’s called lobbying. The lobbyists pump insane amounts of money to make sure workers rights are not protected. Congress loves their money.

It’s called lobbying bribing

Of course, and they may even succeed in the short term. In the long term, this is a lost cause and basic market forces will force the issue:

1. Huge savings on overhead

2. Competitive advantage when it comes to attracting talent

You can't put the genie back in the bottle and the number 1 hurdle to business adopting major changes like this was blown to bits by covid. The, "this is the way we've always done it", excuse.

We built an expensive spaceship. We want our aliens working in it damn it!

Idk I love WFH for most jobs but apple's software has gotten buggy and flatlined as hell, I have to wonder if WFH had any impact on that end

Indeed, let them reap what they sow = losing top tech talent

You're right they are one in the same.

>apple's software has gotten buggy

Always has been...

By what metric?

Those Apple employees ( not executives )in the Bay Area are making over 200,000 USD in total compensation, many make a lot more.

3x a week. Not 2. Not 4. Every week.

Clearly nothing arbitrary about that. /s

Stop trying to pit labor against labor.

1. Good talent
2. Normal "market" wages (not overpaying)
3. On-site workers

Pick 2.

Sorry, that’s ridiculous. You should have no problem taking responsibility for the shitty parts of your countries, and the same should apply to those of us in the US. When it comes to politics, rubbing your tummy doesn’t necessarily mean you have an excuse to stop patting your head.

Tim Cook seems to have a management style where he wants to overlord on everyone in the building and let them know he's the boss.

Hybrid is the better system. You can work from home on the one day you don’t want to come in (Monday), and the one day you’re practically checked out (Friday). Any extra WFH days are a nice bonus. Sorry, no f***ing sympathy for them since I’ve never really worked a true remote job even during the pandemic.

If you fire them they definitely won't return to office

That office looks amazing… I would rather be there than at home…

Edit: during work hours….

Tough crowd.

My manager recently told me that our company has to insure me no matter where I work during the designated work hours.

Don't upset the pajama people

I still have nightmares about iTunes and that question that popped up which if you clicked the wrong answer you’d end up deleting all you music and podcasts!

And so many voters allow gerrymandering and keep voting the same people in

My situation is like this so your situation must be like this is tired and oversimplifies things, no sympathy for you blah blah blah, this the better system because this is all I’ve experienced lol cmon… I’m moving from remote to hybrid and am fine with that but different things work for different people, I think a good balance can be found, trust from employers is key I believe.

And the most profitable. Go figure.

Apple is one of the few big tech companies that has managed to avoid layoffs since the pandemic. I wonder if fortunes are changing for them.

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good luck affording a place to live within a 1 hr commute. there's a 2br townhouse in Cupertino, CA listed for about $1.4 million USD>

Their own thoughts

I’d love to work at a place like that. The employees complaining about being forced to go back are just ungrateful pieces of shit tbh.

So?

Not so ‘trash’ is it?

I'd argue 1/3 are harder than ever before, you're basically banking on grabbing the selection of good engineers that like being in the office and that does seem to be a minority of engineers as a whole. That isn't to say there aren't some, the best engineer I've ever met loves going into the office BUT in my experience it is the minority for sure.

Layoffs are short term stock gain, long term losses. You lose talent, have to pay tons of severance, and lots of efficiency loses due to distractions.

Rent on a shitty studio apartment in Cupertino is like 2200/mo at the low end, you can double or even triple that if you want multiple bedrooms for a family, and that’s not counting utilities or necessitates.

200 grand is not a poverty wage by any definition but there are many places in the US where it is also not a lot, especially when rent can easily be more than half your take home

So why not let these people move to towns that are cheaper to live in if they can completely and efficiently do their jobs from home with an occasional commute

A significant portion of the voting population will vote against their own interests as long as their preferred politician caters to their identity politics.

Or they can’t afford to live anywhere within a 2 hour commute to the office

Do you actually work in the tech industry?

No joke. There's two big reasons why these companies are obsessed with returning to the office.

1 - The managers are dinosaurs. They do not understand and do not want to understand the potential of emerging technologies for enhancing WFH efficiency, such as Augmented Reality. They barely understand Zoom.
2 - They invested a lot into office real estate and if working from home becomes the new normal, it has no resale value.

This has nothing to do with productivity and everything to do with stubbornness, incompetency, and greed.

Soon enough new emerging companies will be started by younger generations that will embrace new technology and WFH will be the normal. Older companies that choose to not adapt will lose their talent, and either change their thinking or slowly fade into financial obscurity.

Yes, and I have for a long while. Why?

It’s almost like a 40 year campaign to make sure the population is uneducated, docile, and easily influenced by propaganda did exactly as it was intended to do.🤬🤯🤬

Did you not see the immense wealth generated by technology for the last 30 years. You can argue about the share that went to employees but at this scale you’re quibbling about how to fairly slice a pie when 10 new ones are being cranked out of the oven.

It’s similar to how the Soviet Union fell. They were equally miserable standing in line for bread but they literally abandoned their decades-old way of life when it was impossible to censor images of overflowing Western supermarkets.

Probably making unpopular decisions in the hope people quit instead

Labor fighting against labor is why we keep fucking losing. This is pure distraction.

Labor needs to all be on the same side regardless of race, religion, sex, etc. These idiotic minor differences do nothing to change the fact that you and I have a lot more common interests than either of us do with Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. The fact that I write code for a living does nothing to change that.

Have to agree to disagree. I have friends whose houses were built on options from Amazon and Tesla. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest that Jeff and Elon got Billions out of the same rise in share price. Envy is a poor substitute for actual material benefit.

I honestly have no idea what your point is. You’ve completely lost me.

Traffic is terrible in the area. Even with taking an Apple bus to work, you can face a five hour commute to go 30 miles. And you have to swipe your access card to get in the bus.

They work for apple pretty sure they can

My point is that instead of raging at Apple ( or other Tech companies) for changing the WFH policies , maybe see all the other benefits they’re giving. The main benefit is a massive paycheck. If that’s not worth it, find another company that offers WFH or employs you in your preferred location. Related , I honestly don’t think that a college-educated staff engineer making 250k+ has the same interests and can be lumped into the same ‘Labor’ bucket as the guy picking Strawberries in Salinas.

>They invested a lot into office real estate and if working from home becomes the new normal, it has no resale value.

This is the big one that I see. I work with several tech companies throughout Nor. Cal. The ones that have big, grand offices (and are also not able to downsize/sell/lease) are all the one hammering on employees to return to work. Other companies that have many offices, so combo buildings are the ones reducing their real-estate footprints and promoting hybrid. It's becoming a "we're screwed, so you're also screwed." Whereas others are, "hell yea, lets shed some buildings, save costs."

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Ah, I see. You’re one of those petite bourgeoise who thinks that you’re somehow special. We’re not. The fact that I’m a high income earning software developer involved a series of lucky breaks (and admittedly many years of very hard work). But if we replayed my life with a different random seed then it’s just as likely that I never would have made it into this field.

We’re just people. You’re not special, and I’m not special. We are fundamentally still part of the labor class because we exchange our labor for money. If your labor stops being useful then you will be discarded.

Our labor laws give far too much power to the capital class, and you’re deluded if you think they care about you. Rights for workers benefit us just like everyone else.

You can tell yourself that you’re somehow part of the elite because you work in tech, and you can pretend that this means you’re somehow part of the aristocracy if that makes you feel special. But you’re not. You’re just like everyone else. The problem is that you think that’s an insult.

They certainly don’t care about me. I certainly don’t care about them.

However, at times our interests align. Silicon Valley does this via stock options ( previously never given to the rank and file) and the results over the last 30 years has been remarkable.

>some organizations within the company say failure to comply could result in termination

Absolutely insane of a policy. Apple has periodic employee review periods where each employee is rated and calibrated against their peers. You are judged on the impact you delivered; not necessarily how you delivered.

Forcing some teams to go to the office is absolutely insane. If some people are not efficient from home and decide to work form home, then deal with this as a performance problem. Otherwise, let people work.

I don't think this is about that.

They built a gorgeous office purpose built for people to bump into each other at random to collaborate.

Fine to disagree with their philosophy, but if they're paying you to do a job and expect you to be in the office and you say "no" then don't expect to keep your job. You're basically telling Apple that you aren't a good cultural fit for the company.

I think some roles can be remote, but I'm also a firm believer that people being in the office leads to better team work and innovation. There have been plenty of times in my life where I've struck up a conversation with someone outside of my circle and it ended up with something great. Had I been remote, it may not have occured to me to talk to that person because other than seeing them in an org chart, I may not even know they exist.

I say this as someone who has made a fair bit of money on stock options; they are generally a scam. I’ve seen plenty of people sell their company for options only for the value of the stock to remain below the strike price for years. I’ve known people who ended up selling their company to get a desk job they hated in exchange for options that were literally worthless.

Companies don’t do stock options because they’re a great idea for workers. They do them because they’re complex enough that most people don’t understand them and it sounds like a lot of money, when it might actually end up being nothing depending on the performance of the company’s stock.

Have you ever asked C-suite executives at a startup to show you their cap table when they start talking about their “generous” options? They usually shut up in a hurry when they realize that you actually understand what they’re talking about.

Your interests don’t align with theirs. They’ve pulled you in by stroking your ego and convincing you that they’ve given you something special. They haven’t. They gave you something of highly variable value because they figured you were too dumb to understand its worth.

When considering offers from companies I consider stock options to be worthless, because statistically speaking that’s usually what they are.

I would pay apple to hire me and work in that circle. /aj

Exactly, all of this!

Is it really long term losses though? We’ve witnessed how companies were raising prices for goods because of supply chain issues, and then the supply chain is solved but the companies didn’t lower prices because they were finding they could make more money by producing fewer widgets.

If your goal as CEO is to make fewer widgets at a high markup, you don’t need as many employees

I think some of that could be recreated by having "for fun" discord/teams/slack channels. Maybe throw in some company sponsored game servers or something.

Of course some managers would have to ruin it though. "You must share between 2 and 4 pet pictures a week, spend 1 hour exactly in the open voice channels and place/destroy a minimum of 10,000 blocks on minecraft a month."

That office is more of a showroom than where actual work gets done. Most of the important projects are built in generic offices with cubicles & fluorescent lights from the 1980s. Apple employees that are privileged enough to work on secret projects, get to work even even more drab conditions. No doughnut office for them.

imo being on slack or teams is a big distraction compared to being in the office

Perhaps, but that's not what's happening. Instead of being adults about it and finding a job which aligns better with their preferred work environment, they whine about it and hope that if they hold their breath and stamp their feet enough they'll get what they want. Maybe, if they're lucky, they'll even get a cookie.

I’ve heard they’ve been secretly doing quiet layoffs (or redundancy in positions on product team), but they’ve been under the radar

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So what company are you a middle manager at? Out of curiosity.

Depends on who you're firing haha. You can't assume 100% of employees are good at their job and mass layoffs are a good way to get rid of the not so stellar workers.

Makes me laugh a little bit every time I see one of these conversations discussing how bad it is to have to go back to the office.

A few years ago, the same conversations were about how awful it was going to be to have to work from home.
Reference: I worked from home for my entire long career.
Not everyone can self-manage themselves, and others suffer because of it.

I work in logistics and manufacturing, so me and my entire team have to show up to the office anyways to do actual physical work.

Even when I was in engineering and managing a global team I still went into the office and walked the production floor.

Yes a big tech company like apple is run by people who barely understand zoom

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We're also allowed to make demands of the companies we work for. It's a two-way street. Companies only have power over us insofar as we allow them to have power over us

It’s humorous this comment of mine is getting downvoted enough though it’s 100% factual. Just goes to show thin-skinned butthurt people can’t handle the truth.

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You might be able to start a union if enough of your coworkers realize they're a good idea.

Why do people keep moving here then? Even europeans relocate to the US for work.

For anyone who has been praising Apple for not doing layoffs, this has been their workforce reduction strategy since the downturn began.

Lobbying is legalized corruption

I did some projects (I’m in HVAC) at a few of these Apple sites. Just random brown buildings scattered throughout San Jose. Seemed odd considering the size of their HQ.

If you voluntarily leave they don't owe you severance. Its in their best interest to get people to quit vs firing them.

Stop doing the extra work. They can't afford to fire you. If they did, it was a burning ship destined to crash.

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Don't give notice as punishment!

Just work as long as you feel is good days’ work and then stop. If deadlines are missed, they’re missed. Don’t fret. If they fire you, they fire you, but it sounds like they really need you, otherwise you wouldn’t have all this work.

Don’t be rude about it and don’t say “no” ever. Just say, “yes, I can have it done by [whenever you can have it done by] and leave it at that. If they say, “that’s not good enough”, repeat yourself: “I understand; I can definitely get it to you by [repeat time period].

Don’t internalize the stress. You’re looking to “get everything done” instead of “working a 40-50”. Do the latter; stop worrying about the former. You will miss deadlines. It happens. Just be positive and never say, “no”; always make it positive sounding.

> people being in the office leads to better team work and innovation

Not when you force people to be there and they know they they have the backs of their 29,999 peers; this is how you get your company sabotaged.... work slowwwww. Mess things up. Oopsies! Guess office work isn’t as efficient and now things are broken. Shucks.

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I was in the same place as you recently until this just clicked for me. We enjoy knocking shit off the list and doing things for the team. We’re good at it and the team knows it. A lot of times the team and middle managers are also inundated with crazy CEOs spouting ambitious visions and shit that they now have to provide a plan for, so they go dump a bunch of half assed ideas on “doer” teams who now have to make sense of the gobbledegook so middle manager cna make their PowerPoint. Society is manic af right now.

I seriously don't get this. The main buzz words I hear about return to office are "collaboration" and "socialization" and it's like.... We're a freaking tech company... It's literally what we do, virtually... As in online, not in front of people.

Productivity goes up with WFH.

Better work/life balance.

Less burnout/worker fatigue.

No commuting means less expenses, and less risk of accidents caused by fatigued drivers.

Apple: bUt CoLlAbOrAtIoN. BaCk To OfFiCe.

I don't care if they're Apple. If I was working for a company that mandated back to office, I'd be leaving. After working from home for three years straight, I see no value for me returning to the office.

Actually, I don't see any value for the company either, because my productivity will probably take a hit, and my flexibility to work outside my given hours would completely die.

I got downvoted when I said this before. Short term boost for the stock. But costs to rehire people are crazy. It could cost 6 figures to hire and train a knowledge worker.

Yup, this is my point. Don't take attendance like college. Measure accomplishments.

Also in the almost very top when it comes to wages, but health insurance and time off wise, it majorly sucks compared to most developed countries.

Exactly. My performance speaks for itself. What the hell do they care if I'm sat in my scivvies in my comfy gaming chair in my own home. Job gets done. I'm paid for the job, not for showing up. If it was the other way around, believe me I'd be there every day, showing up on time and getting exactly zero work done, lol.

If an employee plainly refuses to follow workplace policies, how is this not ground for termination?

your whole reply is based on a 1% thing that happened once in your life, lol. what a joke.

Yeah but when you get long covid from work Apple will drop you, and then your career is over.

Its really simple, If you value your job go to work as required.

You must return to the office for reasons that are definitely NOT that we spent an obscene amount of money on this office space, and you are making us look bad.

Don’t forget about nature: we strive to be green! Now, all of you get in to you cars and spend 2-3h / day burning diesel.

Good resources will quit and bad resources stay. Not a great move

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Employers can dictate if you need to show up to work or not I don’t know how this is a workers rights issue.

Yup. I interviewed at Apple about 10 years ago (or so - the donut was still under construction). Was all excited to visit Infinite Loop ... only to spend my day in some nondescript, beige, Initech-like building in Sunnyvale. Which is where I'd have been had gotten the gig.

Which I didn't. Wasn't all that mad about it TBH. REALLY didn't wanna move up there.

To be fair though, those “dinosaurs” have done some pretty impressive things. Their techniques must mean something. We will always work for ‘the man’. It’s a tough pill to swallow but if we don’t like it we can leave.

If I meet someone outside my circle in the office, I have to put on all the technical filters or else the conversation isn’t going to last very long. Can’t really innovate, but there is a value in those people knowing that I exist.

I’m actually in a pretty ideal scenario right now. I work in the office a few days of the week, and yeah, there’s usually office socializing that cuts into my productivity, but all the people that need to ask me for stuff are mostly remote so I still get the benefit of asynchronous communication instead of getting pulled out of ‘the zone’ all day long.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/02/11/apple-hides-job-titles-of-ex-employees-reclassifies-them-all-as-associates

Still true as of late 2022 iirc anecdotally. Company tried to verify a friend’s employment history and everything about their senior software engineer was changed to associate with a level similar to the sales associate at the Apple Store.

Oh god I hope not. That's not very much in that labor market.

I don't think that's a great way to compare countries. Half the time the US has negative migration with Mexico. Meaning more people are leaving US for Mexico than vice versa. Does that make Mexico better than the US?

That's just price discovery. But long term their goal is to make and sell more widgets at the higher markup.

Generally companies are expected to grow every single year. Whats your growth plan? How does firing employees help?

Its not even really a short term boost for the stock. Layoffs are seen as a massive red flag for the stock and news of them is usually followed by a drop in stock price.

That could be counteracted by funneling money to shareholders (dividends or buybacks), but since layoffs are expensive, you don't actually have more money to funnel to shareholders. You have to pay a ton of severance, and you will need the liquidity in a few months when you rehire anyway.

The managers have done impressive things? Like what?

Legally, sure. But it’s a stupid policy that doesn’t have any effect on performance.

Well, even if that's true, as a former Apple engineer, all you need to have is a coworker reference that can vouch for you. I'm not sure why another company would be able to search through an employee database of a different company in the first place.

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When I was working there you had to be on the company vpn to search the employee database but it's been a few years so I don't know what's changed.

I mean the person thankfully passed the tech interviews and had good references. It’s just a shitty practice

Why do people think they can just do whatever they want on someone else's dollar? You end up getting fired just to get replaced by someone who will be paid less but extremely happy because it's the most they ever made. Sounds dumb.

It blows me away how willing people are to just allow corporations to have unilateral power when they are the economic size of a decent sized country, especially in Apple’s case. But these same people would freak the fuck out if the government told them to do the same shit. The brainwashing is real in America. Suck the corporation’s dick and never complain. Don’t like it? Find another corporation, where you’ll checks notes have to suck their dick. Ah, the illusion of freedom in capitalist America.

how dare an employer demand attendance

We have the same culture where I work. What impact are you having? Not how did you make that impact. Just yesterday our CEO said in a town hall that failure to come in the 3-days a week without an approved exception would be reflected in performance reviews.

I meant you could recreate some of the "in person collaboration" crap by actually encouraging people to communicate while working from home.

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If you guys don't want to return to the office then I'll be glad to take your job

Not managers, its the investors/board.

How do you know how to recreate some of the in person collaboration if you are not seeing it yourself?

I have a lot of engineers reporting up through me that started their academic, and now professional careers post-covid. We are all still "partially remote", and will be for the foreseeable future - we still try to come in on Wednesdays for those of us that enjoy interacting with another adult live and in person.

In summer 2021 I was in office looking at (blue) prints in a common area, everyone for the most part was still working from home, and I saw a feature callout that seemed way too bogus/weird to be coming from the lead design engineer, so right there I picked up the phone and conference-called the lead engineer and hashed it out - to the conclusion that yeah it is a weird way of controlling things, but its nuances actually work better than the alternatives.

It wasn't until a bit after hanging up and going on with my business, that I realized one of my fresh college grads was sitting in a cubicle just next to the area I was sitting in... and while he has never mentioned it, that was likely the very first time in his professional life that he heard two senior level engineers parse through a difference of opinions toward a successful conclusion.

I'm a Director now days, and I see the difference between "pre-covid" employees and "post-covid" employees grow every single day, and it concerns me - and not from an "I'm their boss" perspective, but rather, from the perspective someone that genuinely loves the art of engineering. I am very open with my team that what I want is to progress our craft, and that our company has already outlasted 3 generations of employees and will long outlast us - how how we move the field of engineering forward will last forever... Melodramatic, I know.

So much engineering, and just corporate live in general, is learned through osmosis. You learn how to lead by watching others lead. You learn how to navigate healthy conflict (which at the core is what engineering is - we progress our craft by being proven wrong) by watching others model the appropriate behavior live and in-person. When we first went home for Covid March 2020, I missed being able to just speak questions out loud to my cube mates so much that a few other engineers and I would call each other at ~8:30 in the morning and mute ourselves, and whenever one of us had a question we'd just unmute and ask, have a short discourse, and then back to mute and eventually end our ~8 hour phone call at the end of the work day.

I don't see our post-covid people having buddies like that anymore. My cross-functional peers and I are having to teach and mentor concepts that were never even topics of discussion pre-covid. These fresh engineers are so smart, but they are lost - like a baby animal without a parent to imprint.

yeah you gotta remember, your health and well being is more important than their bottom line. When it’s lunchtime, you’re on lunch, you’re not helping the company with work. When it’s time to clock out, you don’t contemplate working overtime to finish projects, you clock out, go home, stop thinking about work, and leave it until tomorrow. Overtime pay is so heavily taxed anyway, it’s pretty much not worth it unless you’re hitting a certain threshold and stopping.

You aren’t their property, know your limits, and prioritize your life, time, and health first. When bosses start to realize employees post-pandemic care more about their time and health than their employers’ pockets and we won’t take their shit, they’ll eithe rhave to buckle, or learn to fully automate everytjing from the bottom up and eliminate the need for employees.

This country is so fucked.

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That fine line of being willing to accept the loss of some. Where's the line between some and too many? Such are the games of capitalism.

It's the company’s policy. Love it or leave it.

Completely agree. I remember the “going to the office” days. We’d talk about news in the morning, do some work, have a hour meeting where some work got done or was talked about. Then we’d all head off across town to some random lunch spot one of us picked. It definitely wasn’t a close spot, and always took over an hour. At 4 we were all ready to hit the door.

Fast forward, I wake up 15 minutes before work, work until lunch, play with my daughter for 30 minutes, then usually continue working until 5 or later.

Before wfh I was sitting in rush hour traffic for hours a day, not getting any work done during that, or any father-daughter lunch time. It was lose lose for everyone. It’s beyond me why companies are fighting to have people back, unless management just wants to feel important again checking on people at their desks.

It’s the companies policy that they just enacted, after years of it not being. Your statement would make sense if these employees didn’t just spend years at home keeping the company afloat, only to be told to comply with the new policy or leave.

I agree with some points of your assessment. I was training some people pre-Covid, and things certainly changed after Covid wfh. You know what though, I also changed. Instead of getting up and writing on a whiteboard we hold Teams sessions, where I share my screen, or I produce how-to videos, or sometimes I have someone else share their screen while I instruct. Just because something was always done a certain way doesn’t mean that’s the way. We as mentors have to learn to adapt, and be inclusive in a virtual environment. Now instead of training one person at a time at their desk when they have a question, I reach the whole team if I need. While there are certain circumstances like you mentioned, that would not be an issue if you were discussing this in a group manner.

Holy shit people did not like your comment!

You should look into the inflation that's happened since a few years ago. Housing prices up, car prices up, everything is more expensive now. The last thing worker want to do is spend thousands of dollars commuting just to kiss their boss's ass in person.

See this is what you've got completely ass backwards. It's not their dollar. They're not paying you for your commute, they're telling you to use your own money to do that.

The only reason those employees stayed at home is because of COVID. With the pandemic behind us, each company is at will to adjust their WFH policies as they require it. Apple is asking employees to come to the office three days a week. If employees want to WFH exclusively, they are free to apply to other departments or companies.

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They aren’t asking anything, that’s the point. Employees all over the world stepped up and kept these companies afloat during mass shut downs, and in times when they would’ve otherwise gone under, or atleast not been profitable. The thanks they get is to be forced to come back it. When instead they should be enticing or at least only asking employees to come back in.

Working from home was awesome for like 3 years. I loved it. I felt like I won some sort pandemic lottery.

Now in it's 4th year, I'm dying to go back. Socializing with people from behind screens (no one even turns their camera on!) and owning equipment you can't hold or interface with, it's really lost its charm. Humans weren't meant to never leave their own house. We are social animals. I think this will have very long lasting negative effects, but I don't think there's a good path back because it's always all or nothing. It works when everyone is in the office, it works when everyone is at home, but it's really weird when it's everyone's choice on any given day.

I used to think WFH was a blessing, but now I think it's turning out to be a curse.

> They work for apple pretty sure they can

you realize housing and traffic affects everyone, right? not just the people working at Apple...

> Not so ‘trash’ is it?

it is when it costs $4k to rent an apartment or $2m to buy a house...

> Now in it's 4th year, I'm dying to go back. Socializing with people from behind screens (no one even turns their camera on!) and owning equipment you can't hold or interface with, it's really lost its charm.

I think people are having graduation glasses. everyone starts going back to the office 5 days a week and people will realize it wasn't as great as they remember...

Please tell me how AR has WFH applications

Entirely possible. I was in the office for 9 years prior to 2020, and like I said - I was super happy to leave it behind.

Bro u worked for apple ?

In a thread I saw someone say they were looking forward to everyone coming back to the office. But people pointed out traffic would be worse, the office would be loud, and other general annoyances. I’ve been mixed since it started and I can say when I start missing one reality hits and I realize I don’t. Home is just better for a lot of reasons, but for me it’s mostly sleeping in. And traffic just sucks.

There is a weird aspect of the human brain that we tend to forget minor nuisances. That doesn't take away from them sucking in the moment, but I commuted for 9 years and I can't recall any one specific commute, in the same way that I can't recall any one specific diaper I changed for my kids (and there were hundreds).

I think we gave up an experience which is better remembered, for an experience that feels better in the moment. The analogy of having kids comes to mind.

What do you mean?

as an European, te European Union IS FUCKING SHIT in a shitload of ways.
Not all of it, but a lot of it.
Stop thinking the grass is greener, it literally is not.

do come with the stats, this smells like bs.

Can confirm, my "doers" get a lot more work than the ones that need prodding and hand holding. As a manager I have limited time too. In the end though, I make sure they are rewarded with bonuses and promotions, but yeah, this is a thing.

they are not required to ask, only to announce.
If you don t like it, well at the very least you have an amazing resume.

These companies are cutting off their nose to spite their face.

Overtime pay is taxed like every other additional dollar you earn, at your marginal income tax rate. It’s withheld at a higher rate, but you’d get that back at the end of the year come tax day.

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