Well the issue is the one size fits all approach, yes Design / HW / SW developers need to be interacting in person, creativity is a group process, day in day out. But Sales and Marketing, you have one or 2 meetings a week and then you work solo, or you are at the customer/partner. The issue is the 3 days from the office and oh you can work from home is optional the 2 other days is quite a loss of productivity and life work balance. I can attest, I had more contacts with customers in the past 18 month's, wasted no time in traffic (on average 2H a day), better sales etc ... My employer is doing an exact copy of Apple and I can attest, nobody in sales and marketing is happy. Yes 2 days where we can do all the internal meetings and socialising is perfect, but 3 days + "optional" at home, in september we will be back at the office full time, drinking coffee, loosing hours in commute, the only good thing is the quality time in the car, making sure at least we contribute to global warming. I do understand the issue that if you differentiate, you will have envy between groups ... so from that perspective a one size fits all approach is the easy solution ...
I’ve experienced pretty much every extremity of this argument, from being stuck at “work” for several months with almost no contact with home, to being part of teams that are 100% virtual, and everything in-between. I feel totally confident saying that there is no perfect one-size-fits-all solution. What works best for me isn’t what works best for everyone else. This is especially true because we all have a much different take on what constitutes the ideal “work-life balance” for our life.
Companies that promote themselves as being very concerned about fostering a healthy work-life balance for their employees may have very good intentions but they are never completely effective because every employee’s life side of the balance is different. All they can really do is to give employees some amount of control over how they handle their “life” side of the balance, but it can never be perfect because the two sides are never totally independent. For example, employers don’t want to pay employees regionally skewed salaries if the employee are not physically in the region, e.g., SF Bay area versus Muncie, Indiana. In a perfect world employees who can work from anywhere should be compensated based on the value they bring to an organization without regard to where they live, but this is not the current reality.
I have my personal preferences with regard to work-life balance and have always tried to steer my career towards opportunities that afforded me the best balance for me both personally and professionally. But I’ve always had a lot of flexibility and the ability to make choices that other people are not willing to make, most specifically around relocation. Not everyone has the same level of flexibility and mobility that I have enjoyed, or enjoyed for the most part, so I understand why there is now an uptick in employees trying to gain more flexibility and influence over their work-life balance without having to resort to extreme measures like quitting their jobs to move to a more accommodating employer or relocate their family to avoid the hellish commutes and insane cost of living where they currently reside. Every problem has a solution, but you may not always like the solution.
I can say from personal experience that SW developers and other creatives in general have specific needs when it comes to work environment. From what I’ve experienced, SW developers need a combination of totally uninterrupted time to themselves but also time and opportunities to interact with other members of the extended team, including other developers, product owners, end-users or end-user stand-ins, and other specialists, e.g., UX designers, testers, architects, marketing folks, etc. Like most humans, developers enjoy the social interactions between team members, which are never better than when done in-person and face-to-face.
The best-fit way to achieve the things that devs crave, imho, is for every developer to have his/her own office or partitioned off space/cubicle (ideally with individual lighting control) with adjoining meeting rooms, collaboration rooms/cubbies, labs, etc. I’ve tried the “scrum pit” high density experiments with the product owner in the pit, and frankly I found it horrible after the first few days of kumbaya wore off and you start to notice some of the less desirable physical and social traits of your coworkers. Your mileage, and fart tolerance, may vary.
All I’m saying is that the disruption of the pandemic, like every disruption that has influenced humankind, has prompted us to consider alternatives to conventional thinking. We are living in a new normal. The conversations should take place between employers and employees to reevaluate the whole work-life balance equation that has been coerced into directions that we otherwise would not have seen or taken action on without the influence of an outside force that we had to deal with over the past year and a half. We cannot pretend that it never happened and snap everything back to where it was. We should learn from it and try to make it better than it was before the disruption.
The future of software development is remote. Apple will learn this lesson sooner or later. Hopefully before they lose too much talent.
Many companies have already realized that gone to remote development -- in India.
And, what's the difference if you're working out of Hoboken or Mumbai? Once you go remote the job goes to the one who puts out the most work for the least amount of money.
So what? I see this as just stirring up shit and the tech media trying to make a big deal out of it. Don't want to come in to work? Fine, find another job.
"While Apple is not doing away with in-person work arrangements, it does appear to moving forward with hybrid models. Later in 2021, the company will test a hybrid work modelfor retail employees that will see them conducting remote customer service and technical support tasks in weeks when they aren't working in a store.”
So customers with issues will no longer be able to make an appointment to speak with a Genius face-to-face? What if face-to-face appointments are limited becasue not enough reps are in the store to handle them? Then why even visit the store?
I fully agree...
At the core of the issue is the question of whether working from home yields the same amount and quality of work as does in office work.
Steve Jobs wanted "A players" saying that "A players don't like to work with B players"...
In that, he was recognizing the impact that supervisors and coworkers have on one another. When quality and performance (rather than hours spent) are the goal posts, that influence and collaboration make the difference between exceptional mediocre.
For myself, I found that working with exceptional supervisors and team mates brought me up to a new level -- a level I never could have achieved on my own.
Apple has not only set up for a hybrid return, they doubled down on the plan. It appears Cook & O'Brien are not going to change it. If some employees are not keen on the plan, they better have their resumes polished and ready for distribution. I don't feel sorry for them as the vast majority of workers don't have the luxury of working remotely a good portion of their time. Hell, a majority have no remote option available.
Really? Surveys here in the U.K. showed close to 50% of employees were able to successfully work from home during the pandemic with a large proportion wanting to continue to do so. Now it’s true that blue collar workers and some white collar workers do have to go into work, but I’m surprised by your claim the “vast majority” of people in the USA fall into that category. You’re implying the USA workforce has less professional positions that other similar economies. I doubt that.
I wouldn't use surveys as a true gauge of who was able to work remotely. Labor Departments (or their national equivalents) would be much better at painting a better picture of who was able to work from home during the Pandmic. I read business pubs, websites and orgs on a regular basis. They generally report that at most, about a third of the workforce was able to work from home. Most reports show that many (most?) businesses that offered remote work want to get back to "normal" by the end of this Summer, maybe early Fall. Leisure & Hospitality, and service workers can't work from home. Neither can in-home workers (like housekeeping, health aides, nannies/childcare workers, etc) that would still be needed by those that can work from home. Construction, home building and many sale jobs can't be done from home.
Now to your last point: "You’re implying the USA workforce has less professional positions that other similar economies. I doubt that."
I don't have stats at hand, but given how the USA is at the bottom in many/most categories amongst peer nations (ie. OECD member states) I don't doubt that that is the case.
Apple has not only set up for a hybrid return, they doubled down on the plan. It appears Cook & O'Brien are not going to change it. If some employees are not keen on the plan, they better have their resumes polished and ready for distribution. I don't feel sorry for them as the vast majority of workers don't have the luxury of working remotely a good portion of their time. Hell, a majority have no remote option available.
Really? Surveys here in the U.K. showed close to 50% of employees were able to successfully work from home during the pandemic with a large proportion wanting to continue to do so. Now it’s true that blue collar workers and some white collar workers do have to go into work, but I’m surprised by your claim the “vast majority” of people in the USA fall into that category. You’re implying the USA workforce has less professional positions that other similar economies. I doubt that.
I wouldn't use surveys as a true gauge of who was able to work remotely. Labor Departments (or their national equivalents) would be much better at painting a better picture of who was able to work from home during the Pandmic. I read business pubs, websites and orgs on a regular basis. They generally report that at most, about a third of the workforce was able to work from home. Most reports show that many (most?) businesses that offered remote work want to get back to "normal" by the end of this Summer, maybe early Fall. Leisure & Hospitality, and service workers can't work from home. Neither can in-home workers (like housekeeping, health aides, nannies/childcare workers, etc) that would still be needed by those that can work from home. Construction, home building and many sale jobs can't be done from home.
Now to your last point: "You’re implying the USA workforce has less professional positions that other similar economies. I doubt that."
I don't have stats at hand, but given how the USA is at the bottom in many/most categories amongst peer nations (ie. OECD member states) I don't doubt that that is the case.
While I agree with your overall point, I do take issue with its black and white thinking that a person is either "able or not able" to work from home.
It is ignores the quality aspect of work: what Steve Jobs called "A players": people who put out an enormous amount of high quality work -- and who (I think) generally work better when pushed and inspired by a like minded group and supervision.
It is the opposite of the thinking that the work of two people in the same job is always equal.
The setting matters. The environment matters. For some, say those taking care of kids or a sick parent, working from home can enable them to do work they would not otherwise be able to do. But that does not make their work better.
No reason why a company like Apple couldn’t embrace more WFH on a majority basis for employees where it doesn’t impact the outcomes (or even enhances productivity), and combine it with team building events in the office where needed.
Our team is made up of people in China / India / London / HK.
We collaborate with video, screen sharing , peer coding and just get on with it.
Why commute to the office on cramped public transport for 90mins each way just to zoom the same people at a desk. Erm, Yeah, that makes total sense ! A sure fire way to pick up the next variant of Covid too !
Maybe 3-4 times a month for team building stuff is fine , but long gone are the days when companies are expecting you chained to a desk 5 days a week. Plenty of companies to go work for who are more accommodating if yours isn’t being flexible.
No reason why a company like Apple couldn’t embrace more WFH on a majority basis for employees where it doesn’t impact the outcomes (or even enhances productivity), and combine it with team building events in the office where needed.
Our team is made up of people in China / India / London / HK.
We collaborate with video, screen sharing , peer coding and just get on with it.
Why commute to the office on cramped public transport for 90mins each way just to zoom the same people at a desk. Erm, Yeah, that makes total sense ! A sure fire way to pick up the next variant of Covid too !
Maybe 3-4 times a month for team building stuff is fine , but long gone are the days when companies are expecting you chained to a desk 5 days a week. Plenty of companies to go work for who are more accommodating if yours isn’t being flexible.
Team building is only part of it. Being in the office makes you part of a culture -- rather than one you go to visit on occasion. The great organizations build a culture of success (and hopefully) integrity that can't exist when workers and their leaders are remote.
I agree that remote work is going to be much more common in the future. But those who advocate for it need to be careful what they wish for:
40 years ago American manufacturing (electronics, steel and autos) migrated to Japan because they worked smarter, harder and cheaper than their American counterparts. Now, today, the last bastion of high paying jobs in America is the white collar office job. But, a person can work remotely in one of those jobs as easily from Mexico or india as they can 90 minutes away from the office.
Be careful what you ask for! You might get it!
Another area where we could see an increase in remote work is healthcare: Tests and physical exams can be done quickly and cheaply by technicians and nurses working out of kyosks in drugstores. From there, armed with that data, in most cases a physician in Thailand can perform the work as well as any American doctor -- but far more cheaply. Currently U.S. laws and payment schedules block that from happening. But it will. At $17 Trillion a year treating the symptoms of mostly chronic diseases, there's too much money flowing into the U.S. health care system for it to remain so inefficient.
(I have a number of friends who are counselors, psychologists and psychiatrists -- all of them agree that they prefer working remotely from home and do not relish going back into an office environment.)
Another area we could see an influx of foreign workers is education: If a student is being taught remotely via cyberschool, what difference does it make where the teacher is? He can be in the same neighborhood, another city or another country -- it makes no difference. But, at the same time, that illustrates the risks: Yes, once its set up, cyber school is cheaper but, in the U.S., to a large extent, it was a dismal failure because students need the structure, discipline, peer pressure and leadership they get from in-person classes but lose learning remotely.
Comments
Companies that promote themselves as being very concerned about fostering a healthy work-life balance for their employees may have very good intentions but they are never completely effective because every employee’s life side of the balance is different. All they can really do is to give employees some amount of control over how they handle their “life” side of the balance, but it can never be perfect because the two sides are never totally independent. For example, employers don’t want to pay employees regionally skewed salaries if the employee are not physically in the region, e.g., SF Bay area versus Muncie, Indiana. In a perfect world employees who can work from anywhere should be compensated based on the value they bring to an organization without regard to where they live, but this is not the current reality.
I have my personal preferences with regard to work-life balance and have always tried to steer my career towards opportunities that afforded me the best balance for me both personally and professionally. But I’ve always had a lot of flexibility and the ability to make choices that other people are not willing to make, most specifically around relocation. Not everyone has the same level of flexibility and mobility that I have enjoyed, or enjoyed for the most part, so I understand why there is now an uptick in employees trying to gain more flexibility and influence over their work-life balance without having to resort to extreme measures like quitting their jobs to move to a more accommodating employer or relocate their family to avoid the hellish commutes and insane cost of living where they currently reside. Every problem has a solution, but you may not always like the solution.
I can say from personal experience that SW developers and other creatives in general have specific needs when it comes to work environment. From what I’ve experienced, SW developers need a combination of totally uninterrupted time to themselves but also time and opportunities to interact with other members of the extended team, including other developers, product owners, end-users or end-user stand-ins, and other specialists, e.g., UX designers, testers, architects, marketing folks, etc. Like most humans, developers enjoy the social interactions between team members, which are never better than when done in-person and face-to-face.
The best-fit way to achieve the things that devs crave, imho, is for every developer to have his/her own office or partitioned off space/cubicle (ideally with individual lighting control) with adjoining meeting rooms, collaboration rooms/cubbies, labs, etc. I’ve tried the “scrum pit” high density experiments with the product owner in the pit, and frankly I found it horrible after the first few days of kumbaya wore off and you start to notice some of the less desirable physical and social traits of your coworkers. Your mileage, and fart tolerance, may vary.
All I’m saying is that the disruption of the pandemic, like every disruption that has influenced humankind, has prompted us to consider alternatives to conventional thinking. We are living in a new normal. The conversations should take place between employers and employees to reevaluate the whole work-life balance equation that has been coerced into directions that we otherwise would not have seen or taken action on without the influence of an outside force that we had to deal with over the past year and a half. We cannot pretend that it never happened and snap everything back to where it was. We should learn from it and try to make it better than it was before the disruption.
Now to your last point: "You’re implying the USA workforce has less professional positions that other similar economies. I doubt that."
I don't have stats at hand, but given how the USA is at the bottom in many/most categories amongst peer nations (ie. OECD member states) I don't doubt that that is the case.