Maybe Apple should consider offering affordable housing very close to their offices or even on campus as part of a contract deal that makes employees return to their workplace three or four days a week.
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Apple Employees Reportedly Petitioning Against Plan to Return to Office 3x Per Week
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Some people can work from home and be just as productive. But the rest....they can not. I've seen first hand why Apple wants people back. The quality of work and overall moral has dropped since 2020. Tensions are off the scale, people don't know each other (new hires). It's taken a toll. The people refusing to return to the office are also causing a huge divide. It's not all about the productivity.
And yet thousand of Apple employees would rather not have to be dragged there. The nightmare of 3 hours of commute is only appealing to a select few.
You have to understand - for going career it’s not sufficient to simply deliver good work. Instead, you have to show off, have lunch with the “right” people and produce lots of hot air in many personal talks and in front of bigger audiences. That’s hard work already - and much harder to accomplish when working from home.
Also, understanding the differences between introverts and extroverts (and the different working environments making them shine) would unnecessarily complicate things. A black-and-white one-size-fits-all approach is a way better fit for the single-page PowerPoint presentation shown to the deciders by consulting companies.
The only way housing can be “affordable” for those making well into 6-figure salaries is for the Silicon Valley companies to cancel their mandates to work from the office. In this case, 2/3s of Silicon Valey employees will move to other places in the country, and the hosing will return to “still unreasonable” prices but those that are at least within reach to the upper-middle class. Otherwise, this insanity will continue. People who work in the Silicon Valley can barely afford apartment living. There is no way to buy a decent family housing for anyone below the VP level. Back in 2007, a 1200 sq house an hour away from the Silicon Valley cost $1 million. I toured one and was shocked at the prices and the small size. I’ve declined multiple offers from different Silicon Valley tech companies because the level of compensation (even though high) was not even close for me to afford the same lifestyle that enjoy where I live now.
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This is the perfect time Apple to clean house and get folks who want a job and are willing to work 3 days a week isn't going to kill them working from home means no supervision and the tendency to slack off more.
The problem there is that the workers end up trapped in subsidized company housing.
Feeling cornered isn’t conducive to good work. It’s bad enough that workers’ health insurance is tied to their employer (and look what a mess the US healthcare industry got into thanks to that pathological arrangement).
Imagine if the roof over your head was only there through your employer’s good graces.
Nope.
I have no doubt if an office job could be outsourced to a cheaper country it would have already happened by now which is why India seems to be the customer support captial of the worlds companies. Some coding jobs are already done by India workers. Back in the early 2000's I remember reading in a monthly computer magazine that Microsoft have coders for it's software in the US, India, Israel and Europe so that when one the coders in one country goes to sleep, coders in another time zone can pick up where they left off and so on and so on. I have no doubt Apple are in the same position when it comes to their software. Also I think that in some countries they have laws that state an x amount of percentage of employees must come from the country the company is in to prevent exploitive business practices (set up a company in one country where they can get massive profits but have the employees actually be in another country where they can pay for cheap labor.
The company I work for never used covid as an excuse we were in the office every single day and never followed any mask mandate boss said it was our choice and none of us were sick and we felt with the public. 6 days a week.
A compromise from employees could be they will go to the office as often as Tim does provided identical transport is provided. I’m guessing Tim isn’t driving himself.
Lol. This micromanager mentality that employees can’t be trusted to work without being watched is very weird. Believe it or not, regardless of if I’m working on site or from home, I get the most work done when all the middle managers and people trying to justify their roles just leave me alone.
The main draw of working in an office for me is that I like taking breaks and talking to coworkers. I slack off in the office far more than I do at home, but the work alway gets done because I’m an adult who understands responsibility.
That really sucks man, I’m sure you’ll find a better job soon.
These people also have the option of tendering their resignation as well. Then they can see how replaceable they are. If Apple backs off then ok, work from home. If not, see ya!
Why does it need to be one or the other? Working from home has MANY benefits - lower costs for the employee (not burning fuel/electricity on the commute, not putting wear on a personal vehicle, not having to eat out, not having to pay a dog sitter, etc) - no commute time so better work/life balance - no need to be as concerned with home location vs. work location, so not subject to overpriced real estate. Not catching COVID or even the common cold, is just icing on the cake. And the last 2 years have shown us, it works!
I’ve been work-at-home for over 10 years, I’d never want to go into “The Office” on a daily basis, or even 3-times-a-week basis. I get that there are some people who find that environment more stimulating, or have a hard time managing their schedule when at home, or find too many distractions at home. But that’s the purpose behind allowing employees to work with their “immediate manager” to find the best solution for THAT EMPLOYEE.
Apple Park looks nice. Perfectly designed. Immaculate. Polished. Instagrammable.
But to me it feels like big-bucks “show-off“ architecture. Designed to impress other architects, the media and campus visitors. For the creative people who have to live there, I can see it being rigid and overbearing. Oppressive. Stepford-esque.
Creative environments are messy. Emphasis must be on the product, not the factory. The factory is just a means to an end.
Here’s Picasso in his studio:
![arnold-newman-picasso-in-his-studio-villa-la-californie.jpg]()
You're comparing one man who painted to a company who sells hundreds of millions of technology devices a year?
Tiny bit of a stretch.
Yes they existed and they were ignored because "that's the way it is, it wouldn't work another way." The the pandemic demonstrated it's was bs. I (was) an employee for a worldwide market leader tech company too, until 4 months ago, we worked remotely for over 2 years, everything worked very well, I left because they refused me to continue work that way for a more flexible company, with me hundreds of employees. It's not a bad thing to try and fight for improved conditions i right? It doesn't need to be necessarily something everyone consider "right", companies are not charitable entities that do employees a favour giving them a job, especially in cases like mine or the apple employees in questions, where the job is very specialised and requested.
The way I see it couldn't be more clear: it was always obvious that for certain jobs being in the office, or even in the same country wasn't necessary at all, (in my case once I decided to move to more flexible company I also moved back to my country after several years), asking people for no reasons to renounce to 2 hours of their life without a good reasons it's obnoxious, remember Jobs motivating his employee saying that if they saved seconds on a computer operation they would have saved hundreds of hours of life in total? Eh. Why not save hundreds of my hours per year then?
Oh I completely agree that companies take in all the money for their executives and shareholders first and foremost. I agree that employees are often just cogs in a system. But these aren’t those types of jobs. These aren’t store-level retail jobs. These are bright people who are making good money and getting stock options. If they are good enough, they can rise to the top. If they aren’t, they should go consult for inferior companies and make their own ways as entrepreneurs where they can write their own rules.
Companies absolutely don’t need this **** back. If they want to say, we will only come back to the office if you give us all 100% raise or xxxxx shares of stock. Then they’re negotiating. But what this is seems more like they’ve moved away and don’t want to live in San Francisco and deal with those problems.
Look, if it was working better for Apple they could save a fortune by not having corporate overhead. It’s obviously not working. If it was working, Timmy would say wow you’re more effective than ever from home stay there.
This is software and hardware development. Some stuff could probably be done remotely but would that be fair to allow some people to stay home and others report. It’s three days per week for what the hell. The average American family makes $52k per year. What does the minimum pay employee who’s coming to the office three days per week making here? Look at the reality. These aren’t the people being taken advantage of. Look else.
Or, hear me out, they could act like adults and tell their employer what works best for them rather jumping straight to threatening to resign.
Have you ever worked in an office before? Do you understand that not everything has to be a hostile standoff?
It's more about those same employees moved to cheaper locales and now have no way to come in than anything. You don't get to have your cake and eat it too. You knew what you signed up for when you applied. I do agree some jobs can be remote, some can be mixed. What's wrong with 3x a week? I would LOVE to do that. I say, cut them lose and find people willing to actually come in.
Uh, I was quoting someone who said that when they were told to return to work they tendered their resignation. I was simply replying that these people have that option as well. Maybe read into the context of the discussion before you jump in.
I’m fully caught up with the discussion and my point still stands. They can hand in resignations if it comes to that, but they’re not there yet.
As an employer, I have seen first hand the pros and cons of the shift to WFH. For some focus-intensive tasks, it is plainly obvious that WFH is more productive. The ability to craft or change your workspace to reduce distractions is valuable. But when it comes to culture-building, collaboration, individual buy-in, we have witnessed a decrease in alignment. I am quite sure this cultural erosion is precisely what Apple is concerned about. This petition proves that individual buy-in has changed drastically.
It is true that WFH saves you money, gives you time back in your day to devote to your life, family, etc. It can also be true that more work happens for certain tasks in a WFH scenario.
But it can ALSO be true that the QUALITY of that work suffers from a lack of social interaction, lack of group collaboration, lack of spontaneous questions or brainstorms that typically occur when people are together working on the same project. Individual development also slows when there is less shared learning happening, which occurs naturally in an in-person environment but is difficult to synthesize virtually.
All of these things are true. Apple is clearly trying to prevent those last points from becoming the norm. There is simply a difference between spontaneous on the fly in person collaboration and scheduled, structured virtual meetings. The stuff that happens when one person is working on a solution and can immediately get in-person feedback from various other project stakeholders or members of the company that otherwise would never be looped into a video conference SIMPLY because of proximity, is what Apple would refer to as the in-person “magic”
It’s hard to manufacture, bottle, and distribute that consistently in a virtual environment. And they have a LOOOOOOOOOT more employees than we do.
So I get it. But I also get that employees are now resistant to it.
It is true that WFH saves you money, gives you time back in your day to devote to your life, family, etc. It can also be true that more work happens for certain tasks in a WFH scenario.
But it can ALSO be true that the QUALITY of that work suffers from a lack of social interaction, lack of group collaboration, lack of spontaneous questions or brainstorms that typically occur when people are together working on the same project. Individual development also slows when there is less shared learning happening, which occurs naturally in an in-person environment but is difficult to synthesize virtually.
All of these things are true. Apple is clearly trying to prevent those last points from becoming the norm. There is simply a difference between spontaneous on the fly in person collaboration and scheduled, structured virtual meetings. The stuff that happens when one person is working on a solution and can immediately get in-person feedback from various other project stakeholders or members of the company that otherwise would never be looped into a video conference SIMPLY because of proximity, is what Apple would refer to as the in-person “magic”
It’s hard to manufacture, bottle, and distribute that consistently in a virtual environment. And they have a LOOOOOOOOOT more employees than we do.
So I get it. But I also get that employees are now resistant to it.
Lol clearly you weren't as your response to me makes no sense based on who I was replying to. But whatever, we can move on.