Apple's Corporate Employees Returning to Offices on Hybrid Schedule Starting Today

[mdkdue]

nobody who wants to work remotely wants to because of covid lmao. talk about tone deaf.

You can always count on Macrumors….

Maybe not, whether it’s covid or the sad fact that people simply can’t be bothered to go to the office and mix with colleagues and socialise, which in my opinion is just sad, I still agree with Apples stance. More need to follow them

 

[NMBob]

It’s an architecturally unique building but geez- having a desk in that giant ring seems like it would be so demoralizing

Weren't there reports of people complaining about the lack of privacy and not being able to concentrate and stuff like that in those big open "offices" just before everything started shutting down? I'd think it would be as much fun as having the middle seat in cattle class on a trans-Pacific flight.

 

[tedwill]

I hired a lot of developers who are not within driving distance of our offices over the last two year. They are as good as the local developers, feel part of the team and are able to get their work done. The difference between my company and Apple - we didn't spend billions of dollars building our home office. My team will always be partially remote no matter what. These last two years created an opportunity to save money on gas, wear and tear on your car and enable a workforce to feel empowered wherever they're located.

 

[BeefCake 15]

Apple’s software has been plenty buggy before the first lockdown.

They never got a full chance to develop software inside the building yet though.....

 

[hagar]

All their software got super buggy while they were home half-a$$ working, so I’m glad they are back at the office. Now they need to squash a record number of bugs or find a new job…

If there’s one job in the world you can do remotely it’s developing software.

 

[DesignTime]

I love how it alway seems the first posts on articles about Apple employees going back to the office are people saying “it’s time to get back to work”. Not sure about them, but I’ve been working the last two years.

 

[mdkdue]

I hired a lot of developers who are not within driving distance of our offices over the last two year. They are as good as the local developers, feel part of the team and are able to get their work done. The difference between my company and Apple - we didn't spend billions of dollars building our home office. My team will always be partially remote no matter what. These last two years created an opportunity to save money on gas, wear and tear on your car and enable a workforce to feel empowered wherever they're located.

Whilst I understand what you are saying, its still rather depressing to hear.

I really feel for the youth of today who may never hear the hustle and bustle of an office, never have a laugh or joke over a coffee, or never go for lunch with a colleague. It’s just really really sad to me.

All they will know is a person on the end of a Teams or Zoom call. And until they can afford to move out from home they will probably do all that sat in their bedroom for 8 hours a day.

Thats hell in my opinion.

 

[nylonsteel]

aapl office return plans seem generous. it would be sad if the expensive spaceship was not occupied

 

[spartan1967]

Have fun wearing masks again, especially in Cali.

Philadelphia becomes first major US city to reinstate its indoor mask mandate as cases rise | CNN

Philadelphia will reinstate indoor mask mandates Monday, April 18, as its Covid-19 cases quickly rise, the city's Public Health Commissioner Dr. Cheryl Bettigole announced Monday.

www.cnn.com

 

[mdkdue]

Have fun wearing masks again, especially in Cali.

Philadelphia becomes first major US city to reinstate its indoor mask mandate as cases rise | CNN

Philadelphia will reinstate indoor mask mandates Monday, April 18, as its Covid-19 cases quickly rise, the city's Public Health Commissioner Dr. Cheryl Bettigole announced Monday.

www.cnn.com

Wow this is just crazy. It will just be an endless cycle of masks off masks on for the rest of time…Covid is never going, cases will always rise and fall. Mask wearing won’t cure anything, just delay it.

 

[ZipZap]

RTO was inevitable, and honestly if I wasn't a high-earning exec working at Apple and had to drive or commute to the Apple campus in SoCal (where I lived for 15 years), I'd probably say "no", too. I dislike remote work personally as I believe there's an aspect of "out of sight, out of mind" when attempting to move up in certain companies, but commuting seems to take a lot out of people, and there is merit to both sides of the coin. Sucks that it's becoming this big battle between work and worker, apparently.

That said, there are a lot of boomer-sounding opinions here that appear to be trying to blame a perceived degradation in product quality on "lazy and entitled" employees or something. Weird. WFH works for some people, sorry your perception of "normal" has been upended and you're uncomfortable with it.

The only way up is out.

 

[Deasnutz]

Covid may go on in some form or another far into the indefinite future. Maybe for decades. Who knows. People need to stop living in fear and hiding and live their lives again. That includes going to work.

If they can make the case that they are in particular risk, or are around family/friends who are, then that should be considered. But otherwise, get over the extreme fear and get on with your life.

Sorry, but this “extreme fear’ bs is a concept you’ve made up in your head. People in I.T and related jobs have always been proponents of wfh. This isn’t China.

 

[ericg301]

i just started going into my office two days a week. i started this job during the pandemic and had never spent more than a few minutes with my co-workers. and after a few weeks back now, you know what? i actually enjoy being around other people that I'm not related to.

 

[chrisdazzo]

The only way up is out.

Unfortunately true in many cases. Loyalty doesn't count for much anymore.

 

[DesignTime]

Whilst I understand what you are saying, its still rather depressing to hear.

I really feel for the youth of today who may never hear the hustle and bustle of an office, never have a laugh or joke over a coffee, or never go for lunch with a colleague. It’s just really really sad to me.

All they will know is a person on the end of a Teams or Zoom call. And until they can afford to move out from home they will probably do all that sat in their bedroom for 8 hours a day.

Thats hell in my opinion.

I understand what you’re saying, but I disagree with your doom and gloom of remote workers.

Two years ago I worked in a building with the “next” generation of workers. These people were either about to graduate from college or right out of college. They weren’t hearing office conversations. They weren’t going to lunch with others. They came in at 8, put on headphones and worked until 5-6. If they ate it was at their desk while watching YouTube or Netflix. All their conversations were through Slack. For these types of jobs/workers/companies, having an office is a wasted of time, money and resources.

For some, times have changed. For others, it hasn’t. The future will always be different. Some want to go back to “how things were”, but that’s not possible. Things change and will continue to change. Tim Cook is a man of the 1980-2010s. His time will come to an end and the next generation will take over with their viewpoints and ideas. For a number of these it will be remote work and that’s great.

People remember the past better than it was at the time and some see the future as scary because it’s unknown. The future is bright. Remote work is great for some jobs. Some it doesn’t work for. We should all be excited that the number of remote workers are expanding. This frees up resources, locations, roads and more for more important things that benefit more than having Apple employees drive to a building to stare at a computer for 8 hours.

 

[mdkdue]

I understand what you’re saying, but I disagree with your doom and gloom of remote workers.

Two years ago I worked in a building with the “next” generation of workers. These people were either about to graduate from college or right out of college. They weren’t hearing office conversations. They weren’t going to lunch with others. They came in at 8, put on headphones and worked until 5-6. If they ate it was at their desk while watching YouTube or Netflix. All their conversations were through Slack. For these types of jobs/workers/companies, having an office is a wasted of time, money and resources.

For some, times have changed. For others, it hasn’t. The future will always be different. Some want to go back to “how things were”, but that’s not possible. Things change and will continue to change. Tim Cook is a man of the 1980-2010s. His time will come to an end and the next generation will take over with their viewpoints and ideas. For a number of these it will be remote work and that’s great.

People remember the past better than it was at the time and some see the future as scary because it’s unknown. The future is bright. Remote work is great for some jobs. Some it doesn’t work for. We should all be excited that the number of remote workers are expanding. This frees up resources, locations, roads and more for more important things that benefit more than having Apple employees drive to a building to stare at a computer for 8 hours.

I guess we all have our opinion.

One thing it will definitely do is affect the economy, the number of coffee shops, food outlets, cafes etc going out of business all over the world because they have lost 80% of trade is very sad.

 

[jonnyb098]

It's kind of funny that they spent the GDP of a small nation on an office building and nobody wants to work in it.

Millions would love to work there. Its just small subset of really loud snowflakes that are melting there, thats all.

 

[Rudy69]

Spot on! Covid is never going away…ever! So what is the alternative, everyone lives in fear forever more? Then there is the fact it’s no worse than a sniffle, cold, or a bad bout of flu for the vast majority of vaccinated people, so for people to still use it as an excuse for not going to work or anything else is just ridiculous.

Covid is just not relevant news anymore, it’s been and gone. I don’t even give it the time of day in my news feed.

As for the unvaccinated, don’t get me started…you make the choice you live with the consequences, the rest of civilisation should not be made to suffer to protect those selfish people who don’t give a damn about anyone but themselves.

Well done Apple for bringing some much needed normality back to life.

What makes you think that working from home is 'living in fear'? I've been working from home for a decade and I wouldn't go back to an office ever. I get to walk my kids to school and I'm here when they get back etc. Not sure why I would want to trade that for.....seeing coworkers I don't care about? I have friends I'm fine

 

[erikkfi]

Unless you work at Apple you shouldn't have an opinion about this.

 

[jonnyb098]

I understand what you’re saying, but I disagree with your doom and gloom of remote workers.

Two years ago I worked in a building with the “next” generation of workers. These people were either about to graduate from college or right out of college. They weren’t hearing office conversations. They weren’t going to lunch with others. They came in at 8, put on headphones and worked until 5-6. If they ate it was at their desk while watching YouTube or Netflix. All their conversations were through Slack. For these types of jobs/workers/companies, having an office is a wasted of time, money and resources.

For some, times have changed. For others, it hasn’t. The future will always be different. Some want to go back to “how things were”, but that’s not possible. Things change and will continue to change. Tim Cook is a man of the 1980-2010s. His time will come to an end and the next generation will take over with their viewpoints and ideas. For a number of these it will be remote work and that’s great.

People remember the past better than it was at the time and some see the future as scary because it’s unknown. The future is bright. Remote work is great for some jobs. Some it doesn’t work for. We should all be excited that the number of remote workers are expanding. This frees up resources, locations, roads and more for more important things that benefit more than having Apple employees drive to a building to stare at a computer for 8 hours.

Yeah except remote work only works in some cases and for some companies/departments. That’s becoming the harsh reality. The workplace needs to change in many ways, but keeping people on zoom meetings all day is not the way to do it.

 

[jontech]

it amazes me how we continue to use an outdated model of work that adds to climate change and robs people of precious hours they could be working or spending time with loved ones (commuting) but Apple is run like any other Fortune 500 company, progressive only in marketing materials.

 

[jonnyb098]

Unless you work at Apple you shouldn't have an opinion about this.

So unless we live in Ukraine we can’t have an opinion on that either? Got it...

 

[jonnyb098]

Nah.

It’s nice to have direct interaction with other employees, and although working from home is a nice advantage, some of us actually likeLike to have face-to-face contact with discussions on projects, collaborations, meetings, ect. So much more can be accomplished via in-person -versus- doing everything via Skype or group FaceTime.

And if there’s a day you want to work from home, then there’s that option too. But I prefer to have the method of not turning my home into my workplace, where you can’t ‘flip that switch off’. There should be that diversity of where you have both options to break up the monotony.

Exactly, companies simply need to be more open to having the option to work form home a couple days a week. Yahoo tried this experiment of remote work 10 years ago and it failed miserably. The quality of work was less, etc etc. There needs to be a happy medium. Flexibilty is key. But never interacting with people again (as many sadly are totally fine with for the rest of their lives) is not the answer. Plus it totally damages social skills. We all have the jerk co-worker and you need to know how to handle people like that in real life. Not sitting behind a webcam/keyboard. Because one day….sooner than later, people will be forced to come out of their self imposed shells

 

[MBAir2010]

at least the gas prices are reasonable were they can drive to work and pay for other essentials.
this facility seems to large to cycle to from one's abode.

PS
and makes a new Itouch, ya lazy slobs!

 

[mattnotis]

For folks that can't afford to live right next to their office/place of work, commuting is a huge time and money suck. WFH allows folks to take back a larger portion of their day and they don't waste money grabbing Chipotle for lunch and expending (likely expensive) gasoline.