Apple Machine Learning Director Who Left Over Office Return Policy Joins Google

[alFR]

Here you say:

Earlier this month, former Apple director of machine learning Ian Goodfellow made headlines when he resigned from his position due to Apple's refusal to allow employees to continue to work remotely full time.

<snip>

In an emailed letter to fellow Apple employees, Goodfellow explained that he was leaving the company because of Apple's plan to return to in person work. "I believe strongly that more flexibility would have been the best policy for my team," he wrote.

(emphasis mine)

In the earlier article you linked above, you said:

Goodfellow reportedly broke the news to staff in an email, saying his resignation is in part due to Apple's plan to return to in-person work

(emphasis mine)

These two statements imply quite different things about why he left: this article implies it's entirely due to the policy, the earlier article implies it was one of several reasons (and maybe not even the most important one - we don't know as we don't get the full text of the email). Which is correct?

 

[Born2Run]

I’m assuming before covid, he would work from home everyday and complain if he had to come back to the office?|
I work from home and I hate it… I can’t stand working in the same place I live!

If he used to work from home full time previously and has now been forced into working at the office, I could understand the complaint, but if he used to work at an office full time and i now crying because he got used to working from home temporarily during the pandemic and now has to go back to the office for a few days… Then he’s a moron!

 

[TonnyM]

You can’t compare Twitter or Google to Apple, which is a product company with very unique structure and DNA. You can’t be a part of a team working on products like iPhone and work from home, not with Apple secrecy culture. I’m sure they implemented some temporary protocols for pandemic, but it’s not how Apple operates. If someone is not a good fit for Apple working culture, it’s better him to leave for both sides.

 

[msp3]

Good riddance to bad rubbish

 

[Minxy]

I get that the pandemic has changed people’s attitudes to working from home and people see the great work-life balance benefits. But this guy just seems like he was having a privileged man’s tantrum to leave so acrimoniously. However I credit his decision as the real reason Apple has temporarily reversed its WFH policy.

 

[44267547]

I work from home and I hate it… I can’t stand working in the same place I live!

This is why I prefer the hybrid model of working from home and traveling. (Literally a 50-50 split.)

I know people who have turned their home into their workplace, and they can’t differentiate where the lines are blurred between home and work anymore. The problem is, if your work life is suffering for whatever reason, and you work from home, your personal life will be directly affected, because you work in an environment that’s not optimal, which ultimately affects your outlook. That’s not a way to live.

 

[orbital~debris]

Not sure why, but that DeepMind logo symbol is creepy… I guess it's on-brand, at least.

 

[skippermonkey]

So much unwarranted hate for some chap who wanted more flexibility in his working lfe. None of you know his personal situation – sick wife, troubled kids, mental illness… no, no-one ever considered that? – so why don't you all just reel it in a bit? Jeez, Apple fanboys.

 

[BellSystem]

My company pre-pandemic was very anti work from home. Then we found out only a small handful of people couldn’t manage it. We rented a much smaller office in a way nicer spot for people who have no choice and folks like me that need a place for in person collaboration and project work. We dumped the unproductive people and it’s worked out nice. The company culture does take a hit, but it’s nice to have a choice. I also found my people that hated afterhours work now don’t care about doing it. I have seen more positives than negatives.

Apples campus of the future looks like a dinosaur now. They should probably dump all of their other properties and rented space in Cali and just use the new place for work that has to be done in person with places for people that want to work at the office. The future is probably going to be more fluid I would imagine. The unfortunate truth is not everyone is capable of working remotely…some need to be watched and kept focused.

That being said I do think Apple has a collection of the whiniest zoomers I’ve ever seen. They like to combat things they don’t want to do by turning it into a social movement to justify it. But that’s what college teaches them I guess so ok. I’m all for pushing back on dumb policies, but shouting going back to the office is racist….that’s a bit over the top. Maybe just use the truth….”we like our lives now being at home”. I would counter that diversity suffers more at remote companies because it’s harder to see it. But who knows. Maybe they are right. I’m glad the dude found a new job that lets him work how he wants. Working for Apple sucks so he was probably looking for a reason.

 

[Leon Ze Professional]

Some people just hate office policies. Therefore, He didn’t waste any time. Now we know why he left.

Looks like he found a vague excuse to leave Apple. I really hope Google is flexible enough for him to be creative. Next!

It's either:

A) It was apart of a grand plan?

OR

B) He simply got itchy feet?

 

[arobert3434]

If you think it's easy to replace software engineers that are at the Staff level then you're way off base. Apple lost out on someone great over a stupid policy other high level tech companies aren't enforcing. And they'll continue to lose talent. I made a similar move after my company wanted to return to office and ended up at a better place with significant pay raise and working with my teams remotely is problem free.

If a company chooses to value face-to-face interaction and direct collaboration that's their perogative. It doesn't surprise me that Apple is such a company. Whether that approach contributes positively, negatively, or neutrally to a company's fortunes is something to be found out, but there's probably no one-size-fits-all. Remote culture is going to work well for some companies and not for others. Certainly it's a better fit for pure software plays like Google than ones heavily involved in hardware like Apple. And it would probably contribute to divisiveness if Apple were to say OK, all software guys can work from home as much as you want, but you hardware guys need to be in here five days a week. This employee is being immature for making such a righteous fuss based on his own personal situation, especially since he seemed to have Google-envy anyway.

 

[femike]

Tim Cook spending his effort in subscriptions and services rather than AI. He probably told Tim that. Maybe Tim Cook wanted wanted him to wear a rainbow shirt, he said no way and Tim got stroppy (actually this is not far fetched, replace rainbow with pink, and you got what happened here). Who knows what the reason was. The working from home was a reason they agreed upon to tell the public.

 

[bmunge]

Why is everyone wishing the worse for him? People come and go, found a better fit. Great! The fact that Apple has to be changing their back to work policies does not make them look any better. Apple will
always be mediocre on some things and that includes AR and AI.

People are losers that hate people more successful than themselves.

 

[Mcckoe]

The idea that one guy, could help turn around DeepMind is the joke. Machine Learning’s advantage right now, is the assistance it gives to the main processing unit. Without a designated Arch that has been built to assist, ML doesn’t do a lot of good. So, a software company that deals with probably the largest amount of different ARM arches in the industry, just hired a guy who has spent the majority of his time, working on a single Arch design, most of which will be entirely useless for DeepMind… good pick-up google!!!

 

[genovelle]

Good for him. This old people mentality of working everyday at the office will die out soon enough.

That is great for a few companies, but most will suffer and be wiped away by companies with in person staff. The quality of work is greatly diminished for 80% of employees and innovation and productivity will never recover.

Zoom meeting and chats are horrible replacements for all hands on deck personal meetings. Remote workers doing customer support has always sucked. I have yet to have a great experience. The one time I thought I was I was wrong. It turns out they were back in the office. The woman on the phone was not able to resolve my problem when I asked to speak to her supervisor, she had been standing right next to her providing input. She didn’t have to start over from scratch because she was already involved and heard parts of the conversation.

My experience was much better than any I had with waiting for someone to call back because they are in different places.

Many times people who are supposed to be working remote are off doing other things. Most humans are far more effective when they can focus their minds on work related items for a certain period and not shift between priorities. While there are some who can multitask even then, neither is optimized.

 

[Mcckoe]

You can’t compare Twitter or Google to Apple, which is a product company with very unique structure and DNA. You can’t be a part of a team working on products like iPhone and work from home, not with Apple secrecy culture. I’m sure they implemented some temporary protocols for pandemic, but it’s not how Apple operates. If someone is not a good fit for Apple working culture, it’s better him to leave for both sides.

Apple is a company and has every right to request their employees to work “in office only”. But, Just like most projects, the majority of the real work is done by someone at a desk; which can be done from home. “Apple Secrecy Culture” is upheld by NDAs not “exclusively kept in lab” work. If this wasn’t the case, with the pandemic occurring you would have had the entire Apple Roadmap revealed to the public.

 

[nwcs]

This person has gotten far more than the 15 minutes of fame awarded him. It’s simply not newsworthy any longer. If this work at home thing becomes the norm across the industry, I imagine that there will follow a lot of salary corrections. If people won’t live in the super high priced area any longer then they should be paid by the standards of the community they reside in to some degree.

 

[genovelle]

People are losers that hate people more successful than themselves.

Some just don’t care for people who manipulate and distort reality to disguise their true intentions. He was returning to Google for a 3rd time. He was likely a plant to gather information and instead of just leaving, he writes a letter sent to his team basically telling them he leaving because he doesn’t think they should have to work where their employer that hired them to work in their office should have to do so. He is recruiting for Google and using this letter as a tool to get them to reach out to him. He is hot garbage!

Apple is a hardware company with heavily integrated software. They will never regain their quality with remote workers. We complain about the quality of the product slipping and people being separated is the primary issue. Remember the spaceship was built to solve that very problem.

Apple spent 5 Billion dollars building that office because having people spread out between multiple buildings across multiple campuses was limiting their ability to achieve their objectives effectively. Remotely working even from another office was not effective and required the different teams to actually do a quick meetup to literally put hands on the the devices for tactile feedback and user experience evaluation.

And then there’s the security issue. Every remote instance is a security breach waiting to happen. In just the last 3 months several former employees who were poached have been charged with corporate espionage. They accessed and transferred millions of proprietary files to external hard drives attached to their laptops in the hours and days leading up to their resignations.

Remote is unsustainable long term and the companies that fall for it will die a slow painful death.

 

[Tyler O'Bannon]

This most likely did not happen overnight.

 

[cocky jeremy]

be funny if google told him he can't WFH

I'm sure they didn't discuss that before offering/accepting the job, right?

 

[AndiG]

Apple spent 5 Billion dollars building that office because having people spread out between multiple buildings across multiple campuses was limiting their ability to achieve their objectives effectively. Remotely working even from another office was not effective and required the different teams to actually do a quick meetup to literally put hands on the the devices for tactile feedback and user experience evaluation.

What are you talking about? People working at Apple live and work in small micro bubbles. They do not know what other teams are involved in, thinking or planing. Everything is top secret.

They may work in the same building but they could also work in different galaxies. And this building is huge - you can work your whole lifetime in this building without seeing an other person that works 90 degrees (it's a circle) away from you.

 

[svish]

He might face the same problems at Google later on!!

 

[BC2009]

Which confirms my point that they are mediocre on AR. AR is not just the hardware. Its just like people who say whats the point of having an M1 in iPad when its crippled by iPadOS.

I don’t see anybody doing anything better in the AR space than Apple so I disagree that they are mediocre in that space. Maybe AR is a mediocre technology at present but ARKit is cutting edge for developers.

For AI, Apple has competitors who are exceeding them for sure. So i see the mediocre argument for AI.

 

[jlc1978]

It’s already funny, as the world turns Apple scaled back 3-days in office which is what he left after.

So he gave up 4yrs of seniority, possible bonus’ just to start again at 0 days to return to Google.

Given his credentials, I doubt he gave up anything that was not matched or exceeded by Google. He no doubt negotiated a package that was to his satisfaction; as any company will do if they want you bad enough.

This is why I prefer the hybrid model of working from home and traveling. (Literally a 50-50 split.)

I do that as well. Some stuff needs face to face; and I've had to say no to some jobs that just would not work remotely since teh client wanted to do it entirely over Zoom/Teams/etc. I'd rather forgo some cash than have a client who is not satisfied with the product.

I know people who have turned their home into their workplace, and they can’t differentiate where the lines are blurred between home and work anymore. The problem is, if your work life is suffering for whatever reason, and you work from home, your personal life will be directly affected, because you work in an environment that’s not optimal, which ultimately affects your outlook. That’s not a way to live.

Having worked from home for over 20 years, the boundaries have long since faded. The upside is when I can be on the deck at the beach whenever I want and still get work done.

 

[B4U]

It surprises me that Google would want anyone from Apple for AI.

Thought he was from Google before joining Apple. ?