If you send an email out to your group, there's no expectation of privacy. Even Tim Cooks private emails to employees get leaked.
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Apple's Director of Machine Learning Resigns Due to Return to Office Work
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If you send an email out to your group, there's no expectation of privacy. Even Tim Cooks private emails to employees get leaked.
Yikes, I can't agree with that at all. In fact, you said it yourself - "private" and "leaked" - in other words, it shouldn't have been made public. As an analogy, you'd expect privacy in your home - that doesn't mean someone can't break into your home, but you still expect privacy.
You're right that no one is irreplaceable; even in the United States you can find people with his skillset (his mentors for example worked at Google and Meta).
However, it's still difficult finding someone with a particular skillset who also exhibits the behaviors that a certain organization is looking for.
I've met many brilliant engineers who have had mediocre careers because they lacked in soft skills that others take for granted like... Knowing how to lead a team, knowing how to resolve conflict, knowing how to speak in public, knowing how to work well with others etc.
When you find good talent, it's usually cheaper to keep it around.
But my point is there IS an expectation of privacy. Anyone who leaks an internal email to the public ought to be fired. That's an egregious breach of privacy.
Here's a sample from a goodbye email to your group:
Hi Alex,
I am leaving my position as Project Lead at XYZ Corporation on 31st July 2021. I am moving to XYZ in (city or town).
I would like to thank you for the great time working together and your support was a great encouragement to me and the team. I’ve learned a lot from you and will leave with great memories of all the fun times.
Thanks again, it was a pleasure working with you.
My personal email is:
My Linkedin profile is:
Yours sincerely
THE BEST GOODBYE EMAIL MESSAGE TO COLLEAGUES SAMPLES
Check out these best "Goodbye email message" samples to send to colleagues, teammates and co-workers when leaving a job or role >>
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It's an email that you send to your people that is not company business but a courtesy to others. There is no assumption of privacy when you send an email. If I want to convey something confidentially, I go to their office and we have a private conversation. Part of being an engineer is CYA and sometimes that means that there's no written record.
Goodbye mails - no expectation of privacy.
No, we're not going to agree on this. Private correspondence is just that - private. It doesn't matter what the contents are. If I wanted it to be public, I'd publish it as an open letter, not send it by email or regular mail to an individual. While I understand that there are unscrupulous people who would violate trust by making private correspondence public, that doesn't mean that privacy wasn't expected. I'm not even sure why I'm having to explain this. But I guess I won't ever send you a PM on this forum or any other private correspondence, that's for sure! 😯 That's my final comment on the matter (<< @Adamantoise I meant this last sentence. Good day).
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If you send any form of written or electronic communications, you have no expectation of privacy. Not my opinion. Just fact.
No offense intended here, but have you worked a corporate job before?
Typically, companies employ a category for each correspondence indicating whether or not it is to be shared (even within the company).
For example, if you worked at XYZ, these categories could be XYZ public, XYZ internal, XYZ secret each with guidelines as to how the information contained within can be shared.
It is the responsibility of the author of an email (or document) to indicate its category. Goodbye emails go out to people outside the company (contractors you've worked with, suppliers that contracted for the company etc.). There is no reasonable expectation that such an email cannot be forwarded or shared.
Sounds to me like you just enjoy making claims without any real-world experience as to how things work, and when you get corrected you double down based on nothing.
Well, this guy is obviously does not have the skillset Apple is looking for. One of the skills they are lookin for is someone they can find and work with in the Office not from his home.
Are you saying that if this guy didn't exist human development would stagnate ? Even Newton died and we are much advanced after his existence. Nothing stagnated, if anything things having been in extremely rapid development since about 1900 until today.
Was there an ultimatum not mentioned in the article? All I see is a letter explaining why he left, sent to a lot of people who might at least want to know why.
Edit: In the full letter, he's very much telling Apple what to do, but there's no threat. He's just leaving cause he disagrees too strongly with them. Idk how he felt in the past, but some employees have been questioning in-office work well before the pandemic, or maybe now he realized he works better at home, and there's nothing childish about that.
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Firing over leaking a director's farewell letter may be considered retaliation against employees discussing working conditions, which the NLRB might not like. Not worth the risk for something he'll probably publicly announce later anyway.
Also, idk about stuff like this, but companies are known in the past to have intentionally leaked new products to hype them up. We'll learn later if the Pixel Watch was left intentionally, and I'll bet it was.
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Then how can workers ever gain more influence over their working conditions? We have become so ingrained in the mindset that the employers are doing us a huge favour that we forget we also have a voice. The employees are providing their expertise, time and effort to the employer - in exchange for money. It should be a negotiated trade, not a one-sided relationship.
Although I'm not a member of one, I think unions are an important protection for workers for precisely that reason.
The workforce who has been successfully WFH for the last 2 years now has more influence than they ever had before to change the power balance between employer and employee, and it shouldn't be wasted. The silver lining of the pandemic is that it's been a gigantic trial of remote working, mostly with positive results - although not in all sectors or for all people.
I would definitely raise my eyebrows at any future employment offer if it didn't offer at least some flexibility for home working at mutually agreed times. Hybrid work is probably going to suit the majority in some form.
Strawman.
Show me someone who has done the work that he's done and has the accomplishments that he's done.
Discovering a new area of science requires background, experience, talent and interest. Intense interest.
Newton died but you're discounting his contributions.
This guy leaving coincides with an open letter to Apple management and I think that there were about 1,000 employees that signed it. I don't think that Goodfellow was part of that letter though. So some people may be confusing the two.
Similar to change in changes in dress clothes over the decades.
I used to wear a shirt and tie to work in the 1980s. Then polos. Then jeans. Then shorts in the summer. Then t-shirts. I was a bit surprised as I was playing tennis at a major financial institution and I saw employees dressed very casually. I asked my partner (who worked there), and he said that things had changed quite a bit over the decades. I visited that place in the 1990s and it was formal business dress.
That's another thing that saves money and time - casual work clothes.
Working conditions? Protection? He was being asked to come into the office THREE days a week. This isn't exactly the same as being asked to work ridiculously long hours or working in a building that's unsafe/unsanitary, lol! How soft society has become! Wow!
Besides, isn't 3 days flexible? He still has 2 days per week remote. Why is 100% remote the only "flexible" option? LOL! I also read that they have up to 4 weeks a year where they're allowed to work 100% remote. Forgive me if I find little room for sympathy.
Apple hired him, and his priorities evidently changed during the pandemic so he resigned.
I really don't see the problem here, people are allowed to leave their jobs once they feel it's no longer a good fit for them.
The only story here is the number of people upset at a stranger for making what he feels is the right choice for his career/life.
Are you talking about union workers who can potentially work in dangerous settings, or professional non-exempt employees? It makes a difference.
Yes, a favor of remuneration for services rendered. It's the employers paycheck.
Yes many companies listen to employees and implement successful policies that betters the business based on employee feedback. What, imo, the employers don't listen to is some type of hardball employee demands.
There is an option to not be employed, of course.
Sure and one will be treated as a member of union. Collective bargaining will rule, not compensation based on innovation and contribution.
Really? You are going to play hardball with your employer?
Correct. Some businesses thrived in spite of the pandemic, but that doesn't mean employee efficiency overall was operating at it's peak.
Sure, and that's the right way to approach this. Employment, at least here in the states, is mostly at-will.
I have to notice you keep imposing your views and feelings regarding someone other's job, and that's not ok.
It's perfectly ok. Im' not telling him or others what to do. He can do whatever he wants if he's not happy at Apple even though he was apparently quite happy when he was first hired and had to come into the office (same goes for others like him, of course). I can also point out how it's silly to imply that Apple is being unreasonable to ask employees to work 3 days a week on campus. If someone doesn't feel that's a great fit for them, then they can seek a job elsewhere. Just because one company operates one way and another operates another way doesn't mean one way is "good" and the other is "bad". They're simply different.
That's exactly what he did.
Of course you have legal rights to comment somebody else's decisions on the Internet. But this is some terrible reality show mentality. This guy doesn't owe you (or me, or anybody else on MR and further) anything. He's not even a celebrity, or Apple's CEO or spokesperson or whatever. He's just an employee who decided to leave for his own reasons.
Uh, yes, I know that's what he did. I'm responding to the idea that Apple is somehow a bad/unreasonable guy in all this. They're not.