My stint at Apple was relatively brief, but I can say that for many groups, the whole chance meeting thing is mostly ********. Silicon Valley was having some serious quality of life issues before the pandemic, and they haven't gotten any better. SV is NYC's rents with LA's traffic, and none of the upsides. Even Apple has realized this and is expanding in Austin, NYC, Culver City, and other areas. I live less than ten miles from Apples' campuses, but some days it would take me over an hour to get home. Once I went to an event in Oakland after work - that trip took over two hours. A literal burned out husk of a house on a tiny patch of land sold for $800K in my neighborhood. Even with a six-figure salary, housing in the Bay Area is simply unaffordable - especially if you have a family. A meager mid-century that needs a lot of work will run seven figures. Forget about touching a decent condo for less than half a mil.
This is why people want remote work. They simply can't afford to live near work anymore, and don't want to spend hours every day commuting. Robert Reich put it best, people want to work, they no longer want to be exploited.
As for AP itself, it was neat walking through the campus with all the trees. But I am grateful I never had to work there. The interior colors are all the same bland beige, slate, and white, with the occasional green accent wall. The only "art" are high resolution photos of Apple products. The workstations are enclosed, but with glass so there is no privacy. Sound carries easily and conversations are often overheard, including ones that shouldn't be. Outside, the park is lovely, but actually working inside is not. Because of secrecy requirements, certain areas are closed off, making moving between sections difficult.
As an IC, I still had plenty of meetings. Problem was, the company is huge and everyone has meetings. Even if you could get a meeting room, often it wasn't large enough to accommodate everyone. I wound up using WebEx for most meetings anyway. Then of course there was the mad shuffle of people on the hour, every hour, as they rush from building to building, though TBH, it was the same **** as when I contracted at MS many years ago.
Some groups do work well in person, but not all do. Having a blanket policy for a company as large and diverse (in terms of teams, projects, requirements) as Apple is a really dumb idea. But Apple should not have kept expanding in Cupertino. Honesty, no new office space should be allowed in the Bay Area until housing catches up with demand. And housing near these campuses needs to be dense, urban housing with public transit. I can understand why the NIMBYs in Marin and San Mateo desperately want to cling to what they have, but their intransigence means that no new businesses should be allowed.
US workers need to learn from the French.
