The anti-worker hostility shown here is callous, presumptuous, and generally appalling. None of you have any idea what any of these employees’ lives are like.
The reason Apple wants to force every worker into being on site for a certain percentage of time probably has a lot more to do with making sure their insanely expensive building/campus isn’t sitting empty, because that would be embarrassing for a company that cares a lot about their image.
It’s been noted that people don’t like working there. Open floor plans and glass walls/doors suck for actual humans and productivity. The main building is like the Powermac G4 cube and the trashcan Mac Pro: all form; poorly-considered function.
Then there’s the basic fact that the 40-hour workweek and officespace culture is just plain unhealthy.
Instead of being bitter about what you see as “entitled” employees who should get shit on just the same as you do, maybe think about trying to raise the bar for EVERYONE (which includes yourselves). Stop licking the corporate boot and acting like you’re living vicariously through the boot wearers.
Nobody here is anti worker. We are actual workers who go to our actual jobs and do actual work beyond answering phones and making presentations. Most of us worked straight through the pandemic, not having the option to hide at home and work. So forgive us if we have little patience for someone who wants to work from home when most of us just don’t have that option.
ON THE ONE HAND, I empathize with employees who want to have greater flexibility for their working conditions. And there are many, many reasons to want Work From Home, and it’s not because they’re “entitled snowflakes” or because they’re lazy or whatever other reductive derogatory rationale a lot of close-minded people have. It can be an issue of cost-of-living in the area around the campus, it could be about family demands, it could be because they are more effective in a WFH situation, or a lot of other reasons. We have the capability to allow people to succeed and contribute to businesses now that we didn’t have five or ten or twenty years ago, and that kind of flexibility can allow for Apple and other companies to find and retain talent that would otherwise never get hired or end up leaving for greener pastures.
I get that.
Throughout the pandemic, I got to witness this firsthand in my profession. Due to my home situation, I had to physically go into work every day in order to do my job even when the vast majority of my coworkers were entirely virtual, but most of my coworkers were just as effective at home—and made a lot of major changes to their home life in order to accommodate WFH. And some of them weren’t happy with the way my employers approached the return to hybrid work. (Frankly, I didn’t like how my employer handled things, either, but I was already coming in 5 days a week anyway.) So I get it, I really do. And I imagine it sucks to change your life to make WFH work, and realize it works really well for you, and then be told you have to come back in for whatever reason.
ON THE OTHER HAND, Apple is already being flexible and it is the company’s decision how employees should work, not the decision of the workers. The workers get to decide if they want to work for the company; and if they don’t, they are entirely within their rights to quit and do something else. The thing that’s getting lost in the reporting on this is that Apple is already compromising by adopting a hybrid model at all. This minority of employees complaining and threatening to quit are like the mouse in the children’s book If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. They’ve been given the cookie, and now they want some milk. They’ve been given a hybrid model that they didn’t have before. They’ve been given other allowances that they didn’t have before. Apple is giving them something. But that’s not good enough; they want more.
I think the way these employees have handled the situation is pretty bad. It has not helped their cause at all. At the end of the day, Apple is not obligated to listen to them, and they are not obligated to work for Apple. Would it make Apple a better company if they compromised further? Who knows! I mean, it will probably be another 1-3 years before we really see any impact on Apple hardware from the pandemic given the long development cycles. And we can all project our own thoughts on Apple’s upcoming software releases, depending on if we think the updates for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS are good or bad. But at the end of the day, it’s up to Apple’s leadership to decide the right course for the company and then make decisions. And employees are, of course, free to voice what they think about it (in appropriate ways), but if they don’t like it, nobody is forcing them to keep that job.
But leaking to the media in what has clearly been an attempt to get public sentiment on your side to force Apple leadership to change their minds about what really is a compromise from where Apple was pre-pandemic? That’s contemptible. If this hybrid model works, press for more changes and flexibility in the future and bring the data to back it up. But deal with it like mature adults who are being well-compensated in order to do a certain job with certain requirements.
So yeah, as much as I understand where these employees are coming from, they are clearly in the wrong and, to quote my favorite euphemistic “you’re fired” phrasing from WWE, I wish them the best in their future endeavors.
I just wanted to say, fantastic post! Wish I could have been as articulate.
Then quit. There are many who’d love to replace you.
Complaining about going to work at one of the greatest companies in existence.
Sheesh.
Well no, there aren’t. Apple is struggling to get enough developers, just like every other tech company. And this kind of thing certainly won’t help that situation when other companies offer similar salaries on remote working.
Apple used to be forward thinking, dynamic and “skated to where the puck was going”. But under the mundane profit above all Cook, it has slowly changed into another inflexible generic IBM-esque company. What happened to “the square pegs in the round holes”?
I suppose it all depends on where the puck is actually going, not where the flavour of the month thinks it is going. We have a ton of hype on WFH but most employers know very well that you can coast for a while with your team working from home, but is is very hard to maintain a good team over the long haul that way. New hires are denied the natural interactions needed to build trust and integrate into the team that old members had before. Creativity and trust go down and team cohesiveness goes down. You can manage for a while, but it is better to be in person and WFH is only a compromise to keep the peace as much as possible. Inevitably, employees that come in will benefit more than at home employees with more face time with bosses and other team members and they will do better career-wise, so in the long run, a new equilibrium will be reached and those who value WFH more will get what they want, but that will not be the same as those who value in person work more.
I admit this is a sweeping generalization and there are tons of jobs that are perfectly suited for WFH, but generally, not so for teams, particularly when developing hardware where access to physical devices (prototypes, machinery etc...) are needed.
If one thing The pandemic has taught us. Companies can run and operate the admin side remotely.
It has broken down barriers that “butts have to be in seats in the office to be productive” ok boomer…. and now that the cat is out of the bag. Workers have come to realize commutes and being crammed in an office…just isn’t worth it. Good on the 10 people who have stood up and started the hard conversation and good on those giving them publicity.
What they are doing embodies the American fighting spirit. Just because you didn’t/don’t have the balls to have a hard conversation and fight for better working conditions doesn’t mean they shouldn’t. Just makes you sound like the typical boomer who is a 9-5 clock milker who doesn’t even know how to write an email without calling the help desk.
The typical boomer -
“My life has sucked for the last 20 years and I did nothing about it. Nor did I evolve with technology.” Then proceeds to call everyone entitled and snowflakes for trying to enact change and evolve the workplace and environment to something modern that has been starring them in the face. They just refuse to listen. Because it wasn’t their idea.
Sounds like some whining babies. Why is AppleInsider even reporting on this? It is an insignificant story. Poor journalism.
I disagree, it’s actually a very interesting and timely story. The morale at a company affects quality and employee turnover. I side with Apple that they should go back to the office, if Apple is indeed offering some hybrid option it is more than generous. Regarding the comments about the employee with ADA requirements, that is troubling if they are not treated correctly. Possible lawsuit waiting to happen.
When 10 people out of a workforce of over 150,000 threaten to quit because they can’t work from home it’s not evidence of any “morale” or “quality” issues.
And there is no “ADA requirement” that states someone can automatically work from home. What the ADA requires is for employers to make reasonable accommodations. I find it hard to believe that someone has a disability that Apple, a $2.5 trillion company, can’t accommodate at its $5 billion building.
This so-called article provides no information about what disability Apple allegedly can’t or won’t accommodate, nor does it identify what department these people work in. All 10 could be janitorial staff as far as we know.
Lots of woke Snowflakes at Apple and all these tech companies. They need to see what other people have to endure to make a living.
FFS, stop throwing around the word “woke” when it has absolutely no contextual relevance (or meaning) to the subject matter.
It goes with the territory. ‘Woke’ people live in a bubble of deluded self-entitlement believing they can see beyond their contemporaries whilst actually being obviously manipulated by their desperation for self-determination and their defiance of pre-determination. The wolves control the sheep by tricking them into believing they are the wolves.
There are none so asleep as those who believe they are ‘Woke’.
The anti-worker hostility shown here is callous, presumptuous, and generally appalling. None of you have any idea what any of these employees’ lives are like.
The reason Apple wants to force every worker into being on site for a certain percentage of time probably has a lot more to do with making sure their insanely expensive building/campus isn’t sitting empty, because that would be embarrassing for a company that cares a lot about their image.
It’s been noted that people don’t like working there. Open floor plans and glass walls/doors suck for actual humans and productivity. The main building is like the Powermac G4 cube and the trashcan Mac Pro: all form; poorly-considered function.
Then there’s the basic fact that the 40-hour workweek and officespace culture is just plain unhealthy.
Instead of being bitter about what you see as “entitled” employees who should get shit on just the same as you do, maybe think about trying to raise the bar for EVERYONE (which includes yourselves). Stop licking the corporate boot and acting like you’re living vicariously through the boot wearers.
Nobody here is anti worker. We are actual workers who go to our actual jobs and do actual work beyond answering phones and making presentations. Most of us worked straight through the pandemic, not having the option to hide at home and work. So forgive us if we have little patience for someone who wants to work from home when most of us just don’t have that option.
This is *exactly* what I’m talking about. It’s not about YOU. Read my last paragraph again. Take the chip off your shoulder. I hated how my employers treated me, too, but that doesn’t make me expect or demand *everyone else* also be treated just as poorly as I was. Raise the bar for everyone.
Your comments remind me of people who hate on the idea of college loan forgiveness because they paid off their loans already and hate that someone else might get some benefit they themselves didn’t get.
Good gosh what a bunch of whiners. I drive a transit bus for a living. Did I get to take time off? No. Did I.threaten to quit? Of course not. Why would I. I still have a family to support. If you can’t hand the fire get out of the kitchen. Go ahead and quit! Apple will have you replaced before you can clear your desk out.
Didn't all of these folks work from home this whole time? Isn't the fight to continue working from home and not go to a hybrid schedule? They aren't fighting and threatening to quit because they are being forced back to work, they are being forced to go back to working in the office and they don't want to.
I personally have worked throughout this pandemic having left the office for good March 23rd of last year. I do not want to go back into the office full time in the least. I would seriously consider looking elsewhere if I was forced to go back full time at this point. I also have bills to pay and people to support so not having a job isn't an option, but looking for a new job is always an option. That is what these folks here at Apple are really saying. Please give us more flexibility after we have proven the work can be done remotely or we will look for something else, or continue to fight. How can you fault that?
The anti-worker hostility shown here is callous, presumptuous, and generally appalling. None of you have any idea what any of these employees’ lives are like.
The reason Apple wants to force every worker into being on site for a certain percentage of time probably has a lot more to do with making sure their insanely expensive building/campus isn’t sitting empty, because that would be embarrassing for a company that cares a lot about their image.
It’s been noted that people don’t like working there. Open floor plans and glass walls/doors suck for actual humans and productivity. The main building is like the Powermac G4 cube and the trashcan Mac Pro: all form; poorly-considered function.
Then there’s the basic fact that the 40-hour workweek and officespace culture is just plain unhealthy.
Instead of being bitter about what you see as “entitled” employees who should get shit on just the same as you do, maybe think about trying to raise the bar for EVERYONE (which includes yourselves). Stop licking the corporate boot and acting like you’re living vicariously through the boot wearers.
So paragraph 1 accuses other readers of being assumptive. Paragraphs 2,3&4 grace us with your assumptions. Paragraph 5 is your summary & advice based on those assumptions. You’re a politician aren’t you.
Sounds like some whining babies. Why is AppleInsider even reporting on this? It is an insignificant story. Poor journalism.
I disagree, it’s actually a very interesting and timely story. The morale at a company affects quality and employee turnover. I side with Apple that they should go back to the office, if Apple is indeed offering some hybrid option it is more than generous. Regarding the comments about the employee with ADA requirements, that is troubling if they are not treated correctly. Possible lawsuit waiting to happen.
The law does not allow for accommodations without medical documentation. Even Universities require the same for grade exceptions.
Medical documentation is for the government agencies, NOT the employers. The details of the disability aren’t necessary for the employers to know. They only need to know that which is relevant to determining job function capacity.
When someone threatens to quit you tell them to resign or be fired for insubordination. If that will not work institute a substantial pay cut to force them out.
There is s book about these types of employees who rock the boat and create malcontent. It is called “Who Moved My Chese”. Letting this type of attitude go will lead to more problems.
You sound like the exact kind of employer or middle-management that every worker should avoid... or you sound like someone who would like to BE that type...
After Covid there's going to be a lot of highly skilled people that realize that they can get as much or more work done from home without a lot of the stress or the hassle. A lot of smart companies are going to realize they can get some really talented people by going along with it, and saving costs by not having to pay for expensive offices. Is Apple one of those smart companies? Time will tell.
We came out the other side pretty quickly here in NZ but most companies employed a hybrid attendance model. Our lockdown was a lot shorter so behaviours will be different but the takeaways are;
1) Most people miss the office vibe. 2) Whilst WFH can be beneficial for focus on some tasks the lack of incidental interaction stifles innovation. 3) WFH days result in longer work hours & remote working tech basically puts everyone ‘on-call’ without compensation. 4) Excessive WFH has been culturally destructive especially around employee engagement & retention; it takes a relationship to get through challenges & WFH dilutes that relationship.
These people should be careful what they wish for.
The anti-worker hostility shown here is callous, presumptuous, and generally appalling. None of you have any idea what any of these employees’ lives are like.
The reason Apple wants to force every worker into being on site for a certain percentage of time probably has a lot more to do with making sure their insanely expensive building/campus isn’t sitting empty, because that would be embarrassing for a company that cares a lot about their image.
It’s been noted that people don’t like working there. Open floor plans and glass walls/doors suck for actual humans and productivity. The main building is like the Powermac G4 cube and the trashcan Mac Pro: all form; poorly-considered function.
Then there’s the basic fact that the 40-hour workweek and officespace culture is just plain unhealthy.
Instead of being bitter about what you see as “entitled” employees who should get shit on just the same as you do, maybe think about trying to raise the bar for EVERYONE (which includes yourselves). Stop licking the corporate boot and acting like you’re living vicariously through the boot wearers.
Wow. I certainly hope your opinion isn't widespread. It would be cancerous.
Also, I suppose you've been to Apple Park since you commented on it.... I found it a very welcoming environment in which to work. There are many places where employees can run into each other, just like Jobs envisioned. And the amenities are second to none... it's a great place to work. I can't believe our opinions of the same place are so different.
Thanks for your reply.
Cancerous? Which part?? Treating human beings as people in a society instead of as a means to an end? Huh. That’s ... disturbing. 11 other people liked my post, but I’m not sure that’s enough for it to be cancerous... Maybe I am missing your target with the “cancerous” comment.
I’ve never been to Apple’s main campus. I’d happily visit it, but I don’t think that’ll ever happen. I have commented based on the reports of employees who’ve been written about in articles on this site (and elsewhere) in the past. If you found it a lovely place, that’s great for you. Did you work there?
I personally wouldn’t work for Apple, even if I had some value to them (and clearly QA is of no value to this current version of the company), because the corporate culture is absolutely wrong for me.
Frankly, it’s creepy just talking to their support people (for whom I actively feel bad when I try to put myself in their shoes). The scripting is more Uncanny Valley than most others; it stands out as being very Apple, in a bad way (I get that they’re going for a sympathetic but corporate-friendly tone, and it misses sympathy by a mile while sounding creepily under the control of authoritarianism).
Then there’s the weird combo of selective Puritanism mixed in with the public progressivism.
No. Very much NOPE.
But that’s how I feel about *most* corporations at this point, so, take my Apple commentary in the appropriate context: Maybe Apple are a better employer than many. Maybe even better than most. I’m not saying Apple is particularly horrific, or even particularly egregious. I don’t think they’re an evil company; not by a long shot (though terribly misguided in several ways, currently). That’s one of the reasons I stick with them for my computing needs: the alternatives are worse corporate cultures.
(and this part is for everyone)
The anti-worker commentators here keep trying to demonstrate fealty to Apple; acting as defenders of a trillion-dollar corporation that doesn’t need the defense. They’re yelling at me for saying Apple is anti-worker, which I never said. I was clearly directing the “anti-worker” comment at the *commentators*... 🤷🏽♂️ What can I say to correct a misunderstanding that comes from people’s unwillingness to understand...??
The anti-worker hostility shown here is callous, presumptuous, and generally appalling. None of you have any idea what any of these employees’ lives are like.
The reason Apple wants to force every worker into being on site for a certain percentage of time probably has a lot more to do with making sure their insanely expensive building/campus isn’t sitting empty, because that would be embarrassing for a company that cares a lot about their image.
It’s been noted that people don’t like working there. Open floor plans and glass walls/doors suck for actual humans and productivity. The main building is like the Powermac G4 cube and the trashcan Mac Pro: all form; poorly-considered function.
Then there’s the basic fact that the 40-hour workweek and officespace culture is just plain unhealthy.
Instead of being bitter about what you see as “entitled” employees who should get shit on just the same as you do, maybe think about trying to raise the bar for EVERYONE (which includes yourselves). Stop licking the corporate boot and acting like you’re living vicariously through the boot wearers.
Wow. I certainly hope your opinion isn't widespread. It would be cancerous.
Also, I suppose you've been to Apple Park since you commented on it.... I found it a very welcoming environment in which to work. There are many places where employees can run into each other, just like Jobs envisioned. And the amenities are second to none... it's a great place to work. I can't believe our opinions of the same place are so different.
Marxism IS like a disease, the more you are exposed to it the more likely you will succumb to it. It is frightening to think people believe such stuff, but those people probably find it equally frightening when somebody doesn't. It really is a sad statement as to the direction of this country. It really does sadden me when I read tripe like what dysamoria wrote... and calling wd4fsu bitter is like the pot calling the kettle black.
Read the text that’s in front of you and stop inventing things I never said. I never addressed wd4fsu directly (until my quote reply of his quote reply of me). I never said he was bitter. I was directing that “bitterness” comment at the anti-worker commentators, of which there are many examples in this thread.
Also: I’ve never read Marx. Marx himself has said that Marxism isn’t his creation. You sound like a Cold War propagandist. Contextually ridiculous reference to Marxism, & throwing FUD, as an ad hominem attack, rather than any substantive argument.
Cold War propaganda was bad for everyone, but it is also well out of date; yet people keep parroting it today. Some of the people parroting the propaganda weren’t even born until after the Cold War ended. It’s just mindless nationalism.
THAT is what’s truly frightening.
Take an honest look in the mirror, and then re-read everything with critical thinking skills switched on.
Lots of woke Snowflakes at Apple and all these tech companies. They need to see what other people have to endure to make a living.
From my experience, people using language like this, are the biggest snowflakes, quickest to claim victimhood, and usually projecting onto others their own traits. They're doing it with an air of superiority, too.
I wanted to say the same but couldn’t put my words together with patience.
Sounds like some whining babies. Why is AppleInsider even reporting on this? It is an insignificant story. Poor journalism.
I disagree, it’s actually a very interesting and timely story. The morale at a company affects quality and employee turnover. I side with Apple that they should go back to the office, if Apple is indeed offering some hybrid option it is more than generous. Regarding the comments about the employee with ADA requirements, that is troubling if they are not treated correctly. Possible lawsuit waiting to happen.
When 10 people out of a workforce of over 150,000 threaten to quit because they can’t work from home it’s not evidence of any “morale” or “quality” issues.
And there is no “ADA requirement” that states someone can automatically work from home. What the ADA requires is for employers to make reasonable accommodations. I find it hard to believe that someone has a disability that Apple, a $2.5 trillion company, can’t accommodate at its $5 billion building.
This so-called article provides no information about what disability Apple allegedly can’t or won’t accommodate, nor does it identify what department these people work in. All 10 could be janitorial staff as far as we know.
This is a story about nothing.
Have you considered there is a chance that many more than 10 employees are not happy with having to go back, they may just be quiet? You can be sure thousands of Apple employees are talking among themselves… I don’t support the work from home ideas after the pandemic is over. We keep hearing about “work life balance”, well it is out of balance with people at home all the time, working all hours of the day and night. That said, having an option to work a couple days a month remotely could be a good thing. Good point about the ADA stuff, not sure if anybody will know what happens with this case though.
ON THE ONE HAND, I empathize with employees who want to have greater flexibility for their working conditions. And there are many, many reasons to want Work From Home, and it’s not because they’re “entitled snowflakes” or because they’re lazy or whatever other reductive derogatory rationale a lot of close-minded people have. It can be an issue of cost-of-living in the area around the campus, it could be about family demands, it could be because they are more effective in a WFH situation, or a lot of other reasons. We have the capability to allow people to succeed and contribute to businesses now that we didn’t have five or ten or twenty years ago, and that kind of flexibility can allow for Apple and other companies to find and retain talent that would otherwise never get hired or end up leaving for greener pastures.
I get that.
Throughout the pandemic, I got to witness this firsthand in my profession. Due to my home situation, I had to physically go into work every day in order to do my job even when the vast majority of my coworkers were entirely virtual, but most of my coworkers were just as effective at home—and made a lot of major changes to their home life in order to accommodate WFH. And some of them weren’t happy with the way my employers approached the return to hybrid work. (Frankly, I didn’t like how my employer handled things, either, but I was already coming in 5 days a week anyway.) So I get it, I really do. And I imagine it sucks to change your life to make WFH work, and realize it works really well for you, and then be told you have to come back in for whatever reason.
ON THE OTHER HAND, Apple is already being flexible and it is the company’s decision how employees should work, not the decision of the workers. The workers get to decide if they want to work for the company; and if they don’t, they are entirely within their rights to quit and do something else. The thing that’s getting lost in the reporting on this is that Apple is already compromising by adopting a hybrid model at all. This minority of employees complaining and threatening to quit are like the mouse in the children’s book If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. They’ve been given the cookie, and now they want some milk. They’ve been given a hybrid model that they didn’t have before. They’ve been given other allowances that they didn’t have before. Apple is giving them something. But that’s not good enough; they want more.
I think the way these employees have handled the situation is pretty bad. It has not helped their cause at all. At the end of the day, Apple is not obligated to listen to them, and they are not obligated to work for Apple. Would it make Apple a better company if they compromised further? Who knows! I mean, it will probably be another 1-3 years before we really see any impact on Apple hardware from the pandemic given the long development cycles. And we can all project our own thoughts on Apple’s upcoming software releases, depending on if we think the updates for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS are good or bad. But at the end of the day, it’s up to Apple’s leadership to decide the right course for the company and then make decisions. And employees are, of course, free to voice what they think about it (in appropriate ways), but if they don’t like it, nobody is forcing them to keep that job.
But leaking to the media in what has clearly been an attempt to get public sentiment on your side to force Apple leadership to change their minds about what really is a compromise from where Apple was pre-pandemic? That’s contemptible. If this hybrid model works, press for more changes and flexibility in the future and bring the data to back it up. But deal with it like mature adults who are being well-compensated in order to do a certain job with certain requirements.
So yeah, as much as I understand where these employees are coming from, they are clearly in the wrong and, to quote my favorite euphemistic “you’re fired” phrasing from WWE, I wish them the best in their future endeavors.
Well-thought & worded comment, though I disagree with your ultimate conclusion.
We don’t actually know all the details of the employees and how the information was released (or any details??).
I suspect there’s probably room for further compromise on Apple’s part, because of the facts of infrastructure that’s been demonstrated in work-from-home thus far, Apple’s excessive wealth (ability), and their hand-waving on justifying the return to office-spaces. Though it’s true the halfway return is itself an outward sign of compromise, I would like to know why they feel the need to change back to office work (aside from my suspicions).
My disgust here has been mostly aimed at the commentators, not at Apple. Apple isn’t going to suffer even a molecule of harm from my negative opinions, but the anti-worker, bootlicking, pro-corporate sentiment expressed here is, to quote another user here: cancerous.
Comments
I admit this is a sweeping generalization and there are tons of jobs that are perfectly suited for WFH, but generally, not so for teams, particularly when developing hardware where access to physical devices (prototypes, machinery etc...) are needed.
…a population that won’t be told.
Your comments remind me of people who hate on the idea of college loan forgiveness because they paid off their loans already and hate that someone else might get some benefit they themselves didn’t get.
You’re a politician aren’t you.
Medical documentation is for the government agencies, NOT the employers. The details of the disability aren’t necessary for the employers to know. They only need to know that which is relevant to determining job function capacity.
That’s false equivalence.
1) Most people miss the office vibe.
2) Whilst WFH can be beneficial for focus on some tasks the lack of incidental interaction stifles innovation.
3) WFH days result in longer work hours & remote working tech basically puts everyone ‘on-call’ without compensation.
4) Excessive WFH has been culturally destructive especially around employee engagement & retention; it takes a relationship to get through challenges & WFH dilutes that relationship.
Cancerous? Which part?? Treating human beings as people in a society instead of as a means to an end? Huh. That’s ... disturbing. 11 other people liked my post, but I’m not sure that’s enough for it to be cancerous... Maybe I am missing your target with the “cancerous” comment.
I’ve never been to Apple’s main campus. I’d happily visit it, but I don’t think that’ll ever happen. I have commented based on the reports of employees who’ve been written about in articles on this site (and elsewhere) in the past. If you found it a lovely place, that’s great for you. Did you work there?
I personally wouldn’t work for Apple, even if I had some value to them (and clearly QA is of no value to this current version of the company), because the corporate culture is absolutely wrong for me.
Frankly, it’s creepy just talking to their support people (for whom I actively feel bad when I try to put myself in their shoes). The scripting is more Uncanny Valley than most others; it stands out as being very Apple, in a bad way (I get that they’re going for a sympathetic but corporate-friendly tone, and it misses sympathy by a mile while sounding creepily under the control of authoritarianism).
Then there’s the weird combo of selective Puritanism mixed in with the public progressivism.
No. Very much NOPE.
But that’s how I feel about *most* corporations at this point, so, take my Apple commentary in the appropriate context: Maybe Apple are a better employer than many. Maybe even better than most. I’m not saying Apple is particularly horrific, or even particularly egregious. I don’t think they’re an evil company; not by a long shot (though terribly misguided in several ways, currently). That’s one of the reasons I stick with them for my computing needs: the alternatives are worse corporate cultures.
(and this part is for everyone)
The anti-worker commentators here keep trying to demonstrate fealty to Apple; acting as defenders of a trillion-dollar corporation that doesn’t need the defense. They’re yelling at me for saying Apple is anti-worker, which I never said. I was clearly directing the “anti-worker” comment at the *commentators*... 🤷🏽♂️ What can I say to correct a misunderstanding that comes from people’s unwillingness to understand...??
Read the text that’s in front of you and stop inventing things I never said. I never addressed wd4fsu directly (until my quote reply of his quote reply of me). I never said he was bitter. I was directing that “bitterness” comment at the anti-worker commentators, of which there are many examples in this thread.
Also: I’ve never read Marx. Marx himself has said that Marxism isn’t his creation. You sound like a Cold War propagandist. Contextually ridiculous reference to Marxism, & throwing FUD, as an ad hominem attack, rather than any substantive argument.
Cold War propaganda was bad for everyone, but it is also well out of date; yet people keep parroting it today. Some of the people parroting the propaganda weren’t even born until after the Cold War ended. It’s just mindless nationalism.
THAT is what’s truly frightening.
Take an honest look in the mirror, and then re-read everything with critical thinking skills switched on.
👍🏽
We don’t actually know all the details of the employees and how the information was released (or any details??).
I suspect there’s probably room for further compromise on Apple’s part, because of the facts of infrastructure that’s been demonstrated in work-from-home thus far, Apple’s excessive wealth (ability), and their hand-waving on justifying the return to office-spaces. Though it’s true the halfway return is itself an outward sign of compromise, I would like to know why they feel the need to change back to office work (aside from my suspicions).
My disgust here has been mostly aimed at the commentators, not at Apple. Apple isn’t going to suffer even a molecule of harm from my negative opinions, but the anti-worker, bootlicking, pro-corporate sentiment expressed here is, to quote another user here: cancerous.