A beautiful, private and peaceful office, I hope, and without any of the distractions of home.
One complaint clearly expressed in the letter is about exactly this:
"What is also required for creativity and excellent work for many of us is time for deep thought. But being in an office often does not enable this, especially not many of our newer offices, with their open floor plans, which make it hard to concentrate on anything for an extended amount of time."
I'm lucky to have a closed office at home, and I'm way more productive and less distracted here than I am at the office, surrounded by a bunch of people clattering, yammering, and coughing all day. Small talk destroys my focus, and I've never solved a problem by having an inspirational chat with a colleague over coffee.
It might just be possible – hear me out – that different people work better in different environments.
And having employees who sit at a computer and code all day going into an office, no matter how nice, is idiotic. These jobs could be done from home decades ago, there's absolutely no reason to force people back into offices ever again, let alone when the pandemic is not over.
That might be true if all everyone did was code. But Apple is comprised of people with many different skill sets. Software engineers need to work with mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, test engineers, graphic designers, and industrial designers, to name a few. Zoom calls can’t replicate the face-to-face needed to create the next compelling product.
"The Hybrid Working Pilot is not an increase in flexibility," says the letter, "it is a smokescreen and often a step back in flexibility for many of our teams... [Requiring] everyone to relocate to the office their team happens to be based in, and being in the office at least 3 fixed days of the week, will change the makeup of our workforce."
... "We tell all of our customers how great our products are for remote work, yet, we ourselves, cannot use them to work remotely?" says the letter. "How can we expect our customers to take that seriously? How can we understand what problems of remote work need solving in our products, if we don't live it?"
It is a good point about being able to use Apple products remotely, since they are promoted for that. But the employees seem to ignore the fact that Hybrid Working includes some number of days of remote work, so that remote use will always be tested.
Personally, as much as I would like to continue WFH every day of the week, I do have to acknowledge the ease of collaboration that in-person provides, and the benefit of those accidental hallway conversations to gain knowledge and perspective of the work at hand.
A beautiful, private and peaceful office, I hope, and without any of the distractions of home.
One complaint clearly expressed in the letter is about exactly this:
"What is also required for creativity and excellent work for many of us is time for deep thought. But being in an office often does not enable this, especially not many of our newer offices, with their open floor plans, which make it hard to concentrate on anything for an extended amount of time."
I'm lucky to have a closed office at home, and I'm way more productive and less distracted here than I am at the office, surrounded by a bunch of people clattering, yammering, and coughing all day. Small talk destroys my focus, and I've never solved a problem by having an inspirational chat with a colleague over coffee.
It might just be possible – hear me out – that different people work better in different environments.
I hear you and totally agree that different people have different needs when it comes to maximizingindividualproductivity. However, if you’re working on a team, which is very often the case when you are doing the kind of product development work that Apple is doing, then you must also work towards maximizing team productivity. I could go on and on with examples that illustrate the immediate value of being able to collaborate - in real time - with colleagues from many diverse disciplines who are physically accessible because of a shared workplace.
Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all model that is perfect for satisfying all individual, team, and project needs so companies try to strike a reasonable balance by creating a workplace that offers an opportunity for real time collaboration while still offering up some level of individual space for immersion into individual tasks and reflection. Sometimes the balance works and sometimes it doesn’t.
The balance is also dependent on the nature of the work itself. When I worked on military systems development there was no way in hell that I could bring home the system prototypes i needed to work on my part of the system. I had to physically be in the lab where the system was located. Same with factory automation systems and networking systems where physical proximity to the product/system under development was pretty much required. Some things like testing could be done remotely, even with prototypes deployed at-sea or in remote locations, but nothing was quite like having physical access to not only the system but the various people that were also part of the team, like UX designers, hardware engineers, firmware engineers, security specialists, product owners, etc.
Over many years of working I’ve seen the pendulum swing back and forth between placing more focus on meeting needs of the individual versus placing more focus on the needs of the team. In the past decade the software development community has become much more team focused, moving away from isolated cubes and offices to open office plans where you can hear your colleagues bodily functions playing out within earshot - all of the time, and with the product owner glaring at you with the “Is it done yet?” look on his/her face. To survive all these wild swings in focus you have to develop a thick skin and level of tolerance and just focus on doing your job. Having spent several years in the Navy, where you are literally inches away from your colleagues 24x7x365 tempers your tolerance level, so my perspective is somewhat different. But the reality is that we live in a world with lots and lots of other people so you can’t hide in your own little cave forever waiting for the food pellets and paychecks to come popping out of the feed chute.
What I’ve experienced over my career, and especially with the advent of email, instant messaging, and video conferencing, is that all of this technology that is intended to improve communication actually creates new ways to keep us even more disconnected. Communication is not the same as connection. The very notion of emailing someone who is sitting 6 feet away from me seemed totally absurd to me when it first started happening. Getting up, walking over to the other person’s office/cube offered up a way to connect because it usually resulted in more back and forth discussion beyond simply getting a question answered in a text. Yeah, it could be somewhat disruptive and defocusing, but I believe it was ultimately more useful because the back and forth offered much more than words or emojis in a text. As long as you and your colleagues respected the “not right now” rule, it generally worked very well. By default, the boss and product owner had override on the “not right now” rule.
Sorry for the wordiness, but I thought that it’s important to recognize that companies like Apple aren’t just building these grand edifices to puff up their egos. They really do want to put emphasis on the notion that taking on big endeavors is a team sport. They see these facilities as a place where individuals, teams, and teams-of-teams can work together to tackle any size problem that they decide to go after. The size of the facility reflects the scope of the problems they feel that they can solve. Whether it plays out as they, and especially Steve Jobs himself, planned is yet to be determined. You can’t fault them for trying. The individuals who are content to stay hidden in their own little isolation chambers and focus only on their own needs must now decide whether they are going to give the one big team thing a try or remain as individual agents focused on what works for them. It’s their choice.
Comments
Personally, as much as I would like to continue WFH every day of the week, I do have to acknowledge the ease of collaboration that in-person provides, and the benefit of those accidental hallway conversations to gain knowledge and perspective of the work at hand.
Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all model that is perfect for satisfying all individual, team, and project needs so companies try to strike a reasonable balance by creating a workplace that offers an opportunity for real time collaboration while still offering up some level of individual space for immersion into individual tasks and reflection. Sometimes the balance works and sometimes it doesn’t.
The balance is also dependent on the nature of the work itself. When I worked on military systems development there was no way in hell that I could bring home the system prototypes i needed to work on my part of the system. I had to physically be in the lab where the system was located. Same with factory automation systems and networking systems where physical proximity to the product/system under development was pretty much required. Some things like testing could be done remotely, even with prototypes deployed at-sea or in remote locations, but nothing was quite like having physical access to not only the system but the various people that were also part of the team, like UX designers, hardware engineers, firmware engineers, security specialists, product owners, etc.
Over many years of working I’ve seen the pendulum swing back and forth between placing more focus on meeting needs of the individual versus placing more focus on the needs of the team. In the past decade the software development community has become much more team focused, moving away from isolated cubes and offices to open office plans where you can hear your colleagues bodily functions playing out within earshot - all of the time, and with the product owner glaring at you with the “Is it done yet?” look on his/her face. To survive all these wild swings in focus you have to develop a thick skin and level of tolerance and just focus on doing your job. Having spent several years in the Navy, where you are literally inches away from your colleagues 24x7x365 tempers your tolerance level, so my perspective is somewhat different. But the reality is that we live in a world with lots and lots of other people so you can’t hide in your own little cave forever waiting for the food pellets and paychecks to come popping out of the feed chute.
What I’ve experienced over my career, and especially with the advent of email, instant messaging, and video conferencing, is that all of this technology that is intended to improve communication actually creates new ways to keep us even more disconnected. Communication is not the same as connection. The very notion of emailing someone who is sitting 6 feet away from me seemed totally absurd to me when it first started happening. Getting up, walking over to the other person’s office/cube offered up a way to connect because it usually resulted in more back and forth discussion beyond simply getting a question answered in a text. Yeah, it could be somewhat disruptive and defocusing, but I believe it was ultimately more useful because the back and forth offered much more than words or emojis in a text. As long as you and your colleagues respected the “not right now” rule, it generally worked very well. By default, the boss and product owner had override on the “not right now” rule.
Sorry for the wordiness, but I thought that it’s important to recognize that companies like Apple aren’t just building these grand edifices to puff up their egos. They really do want to put emphasis on the notion that taking on big endeavors is a team sport. They see these facilities as a place where individuals, teams, and teams-of-teams can work together to tackle any size problem that they decide to go after. The size of the facility reflects the scope of the problems they feel that they can solve. Whether it plays out as they, and especially Steve Jobs himself, planned is yet to be determined. You can’t fault them for trying. The individuals who are content to stay hidden in their own little isolation chambers and focus only on their own needs must now decide whether they are going to give the one big team thing a try or remain as individual agents focused on what works for them. It’s their choice.