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posted by janrinok on Tuesday July 20 2021, @04:43PM   Printer-friendly

Apple employees threaten to quit as company takes hard line stance on remote work:

Apple employees claim the company is not budging on plans to institute a hybrid work model for corporate workers and is in some cases denying work-from-home exceptions, including one accommodation covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

In June, Apple announced a hybrid work schedule that will see employees return to the office for three days a week starting in September, a shift toward normal corporate operations after the pandemic forced a lengthy work-from-home period. Days later, participants of what is assumed to be the same remote work advocacy Slack channel cited by The Verge asked more flexibility, saying that working from home brings a number of benefits including greater diversity and inclusion in retention and hiring, tearing down previously existing communication barriers, better work life balance, better integration of existing remote / location-flexible workers, and reduced spread of pathogens.

That request was flatly denied. In a video to employees late last month, SVP of retail and people Deirdre O'Brien toed the company line on remote work policies, saying, "We believe that in-person collaboration is essential to our culture and our future. If we take a moment to reflect on our unbelievable product launches this past year, the products and the launch execution were built upon the base of years of work that we did when we were all together in-person."


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 20 2021, @05:52PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 20 2021, @05:52PM (#1158340)

    What is really going on here? I don't buy that it's that simple.

    For example, I completely believe that the employees want permanent work from home. For many people, it makes complete sense. Less time wasted in commutes, less money on commutes, less stupid crap with office dress and politics and window seats and fights over everything from thermostats to popcorn in microwaves. Their other arguments are plausible as well - but is that where it begins and ends? I don't think so. Here's why not: I think that this is a power struggle, and the people who want them back in the office want to do so because of cultural control elements.

    It stands to reason that the managers should be happy to ditch office space (budgets!), get work done wherever (cheaper employees!), and so on all down the line, with one exception: they don't get to micromanage half these people's waking lives without physical presence. The excuse is office culture. The need to do so is on the one hand the lust for power, and on the other hand extroversion gone wrong. It's been long observed that many good techies and related disciplines are introvert-friendly, but that the mentality involved in getting promoted and seeking managerial roles is extrovert-friendly. (I know one manager who, when the lockdowns started, was a sort of lost soul because even though everyone could see him on all the Zoom calls, he was tearing his hair out in what he perceived as total isolation.) Result: the people with a vested interest in management and cultural control are the people seeking returns to the office despite the objectively demonstrated superfluous nature of office presence.

    And the employees to whom this is most relevant, are on the verge of rebellion.

    OK, so that's the background.

    The other side of it is the observation that companies breathe employees. They take in a breath of employees, filling their roster with new faces ... and then they exhale, pushing out ones that they don't like. Which ones don't they like? Either unproductive ones, or ones that make management unhappy (not necessarily the same group). In this case we have a self-organising heuristic for finding ones that object to the management style in question - behold the octagonal pegs that hitherto had more-or-less fit into the square holes.

    The risk to Apple is that of no longer being a plum employer, of losing a lot of expertise and tribal knowledge and of course continuing to spend big money on floorspace. The hidden risk is what those employees might do for, or as competitors. Smart managers dedicated to Apple's welfare would care deeply about those concerns, but that's not what's going on here, so Apple would rather (as an organisation typified by the prejudices of management) push them out in the name of ideological purity.

    So far so good - it's a hypothesis. But is there any background that would support that hypothesis with regard to Apple's approach to my-way-or-the-highway?

    Yes. Their attitude to their users. It's a commonplace by now that Apple wants to tell users what to like, how to use it, and what to pay for it. When some users got too snotty as a group, Apple would simply ignore them, and the same applies to their developers. Apple's being run as a cult - always was, really. Do it Apple's way (evangelising their way of life and surrounding yourself with their emblems), or you're a filthy heathen only fit for buying handcrafted crap at elevated prices.

    It's a cult purging waverers.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday July 20 2021, @10:37PM (1 child)

    by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday July 20 2021, @10:37PM (#1158481)

    Which ones don't they like? Either unproductive ones, or ones that make management unhappy (not necessarily the same group).

    From what I've seen, unproductive employees who make management happy are not breathed out, at all. For example, at larger companies, it's pretty standard for managers to have reports whose real job (regardless of their title) is to engage in office politics on behalf of their patron. And Miss Suzy Longlegs who is always going in for private consultations to the CEO's office definitely doesn't have to worry about her productivity at her ostensible job.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday July 22 2021, @09:04PM

      by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Thursday July 22 2021, @09:04PM (#1159233)

      The trouble a large number of remote workers face is that the corporate people whose existence is justified by holding meetings are there alone in the office making these sort of decisions with no one to object. You know, because the potential objectors are all away from the office actually getting real work done.
      You also have the risk of management with nothing else to do but manage by spreadsheet, the sort that look at numbers that say they can hire remote workers in a distant country that are way cheaper than the remote workers that could be commuting to the office. They don't care about loss of quality, productivity, etc. Their bonuses depend on the most recent quarter's numbers, not satisfied customers. They can bail out (possibly with a nice golden parachute) when things are about to crash, having milked their current position for all they could.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 21 2021, @12:54AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 21 2021, @12:54AM (#1158535)

    "Apple is that of no longer being a plum employer"

    Apple stopped being one of the best companies to work for literally decades ago
    when sabbaticals, profit sharing, and binge/purge of employees started happening.
    They are also massive users of contract help now.