Apple employees working from home stumble over confusing security guidelines
As Apple employees adjust to working from home, they discover that slow home network speeds and confusing security restrictions are impacting their ability to work effectively.
The COVID-19 disease is caused by a coronavirus
Apple CEO Tim Cook told employees on March 6th to work from home as necessary to combat the spread of the coronavirus. Now, a week later, those employees and developers that are able to work from home are feeling the strain of doing so.
Complaints to staffers include slow download speeds impacting workflows and still-changing rules surrounding secrecy and what work can actually be performed remotely. Apple's own internal networking and infrastructure is built to keep outsiders from breaking in, and this seems to include Apple employees as well.
As Apple adjusts its security guidelines, some employees still show up to the office to work. They have no other choice but to do so, since hardware cannot be removed from campus if it has not been released.
In a wide-ranging article that covers the state of all remote work in Silicon Valley, the Wall Street Journal asked some employees about their work conditions.
One Apple employee remarked, "It's all about lowering the density." Meaning that having less employees in a central location, like Apple Park, still matters during the outbreak.
Apple is conducting daily health screenings at the security desk. All of these efforts combined with the recent closure of all Apple Stores outside of China are a result of responding to CDC recommendations in fighting the spread of coronavirus.
The COVID-19 disease is caused by a coronavirus
Apple CEO Tim Cook told employees on March 6th to work from home as necessary to combat the spread of the coronavirus. Now, a week later, those employees and developers that are able to work from home are feeling the strain of doing so.
Complaints to staffers include slow download speeds impacting workflows and still-changing rules surrounding secrecy and what work can actually be performed remotely. Apple's own internal networking and infrastructure is built to keep outsiders from breaking in, and this seems to include Apple employees as well.
As Apple adjusts its security guidelines, some employees still show up to the office to work. They have no other choice but to do so, since hardware cannot be removed from campus if it has not been released.
In a wide-ranging article that covers the state of all remote work in Silicon Valley, the Wall Street Journal asked some employees about their work conditions.
One Apple employee remarked, "It's all about lowering the density." Meaning that having less employees in a central location, like Apple Park, still matters during the outbreak.
Apple is conducting daily health screenings at the security desk. All of these efforts combined with the recent closure of all Apple Stores outside of China are a result of responding to CDC recommendations in fighting the spread of coronavirus.
Comments
Not that I think this would happen but a place like Apple Park is probably well equipped to handle people basically living there. Get a few key people tested and cleared and the facilities probably make it fairly decent living. There's the cafeteria, the gym (and showers), throw in a cot and this sounds like something close to what I've done (though not for consecutive days).
I'm a bit glad that Apple's own employees now get to experience this, as I'm confident they've never really had to see how frustrating it is to be waiting for a simple download. (Sometimes it's even faster to download the file via the browser Files interface.)
People at Apple work at home quite frequently with little difficulty. But hey, "everything is fine" doesn't generate clicks, does it?
By the way, here's another tidbit that doesn't happen across the board at Apple: extensive user testing
Still if it clues them in the fact there is vast room for someone to do better than the current small, medium and team based business than any of the current offers which all want large monolithic entities then it still might be time for them to do something about it.
"one concern kept coming up for my single clients — as well as friends and colleagues who live alone — in particular: the isolation they expected to experience while working from home if (or more likely when) their offices closed for health reasons.
As one friend who lives alone said to me: “Of course I can work from home. But can I stay sane while I’m doing it?”
That was my problem when I worked at home for 3 months. By the third month I was going stir crazy!
Would love to see your data that backs up your claim that Apple employees haven’t WFH before now.
There is the element of needing "adult conversation" so I make sure to get out in the neighborhood, or to visit with the adults at my kids' practices, etc. or at church. That will be the hard part during this period where many are staying home -- not having enough "adult conversation" time. My boss in Indiana has a weekly 1-1 and the first 5 minutes are company related and then we spend 25 minutes shooting the breeze. He knows it is important for that water-cooler time to happen, even if done remotely through Webex or Zoom. So if you are working from home, see if they can set up a virtual water cooler or something where people can just hang out to socialize once in a while, while on the enforced stay-at-home situation.
The company as of this past week sometime has been encouraging a lot more "work from home" so some people had VPN issues but the company quickly adjusted and got it running.
The biggest thing is to not wait until you have to to try and figure things out and know how to dial in to VPN/Zoom or Webex or whatever you use/ etc. Get set up now, even if you still go into the office. Make sure you know how to access your company VPN, video conferences, etc and have tried and successfully done so.
Our local church leadership just got set up on Zoom tonight and we were testing out a video conference so that the weekly leadership meetings to discuss issues related to the congregation, members needing help, etc. could continue without needing to get together face to face. We did not wait until the first meeting online to try and make it work. We tried it tonight when there was no pressure so that later this week the meeting should hopefully go smoothly without a lot of time trying to get someone connected. Because we already did.
My kids go to a local charter school and our state, Utah, has closed all public schools for the next 2 weeks (as a start -- I bet it goes longer). Luckily their school already issues each kid an iPad (there, I made this Apple related). They already use Google Classroom, something called Canvas, and some other tool, as well as online lessons and practice websites (for things like Math -- ALEKS and Khan Academy for example). They started working on a plan in case they needed to close the school, last week before the state closed all the public schools, so they should be up and running with the kids being home at some point this week. They already had a way to access the school network for the kids -- or at least to let their school issued iPad be used at home in a monitored fashion -- so they should be able to transition to online learning pretty quickly.
My son came to me to get Zoom installed on his phone. One of his teachers had emailed students that he was going to be using Zoom. It was kind of funny as I had just finished working on getting Zoom working for the church leadership an hour before. He already has some other solutions for his informal school groupings and friends.
(My kids' phones are set to have the App Store disabled by default, which is why he came to me to get it installed).
Kids today are pretty well versed in how to communicate and make it all work.
LOL.... If it involves YouTube or Games, they tend to be incredibly competent and completely independent. If they don't already know it, they figure it out on their own or get help from one of their buddies. As for Zoom and remote schooling, you might wonder about the future of the nation with such low functioning kids who seemingly never learned what the enter key does: "I don't understand this!" LOL...