Companies need to be more honest/transparent about power structure and culture. Too many try to have it both ways: egalitarian and authoritarian. People in the workplace or seeking work would benefit from being intentional on how a workplace aligns with one's values. Just like companies and customers demand and drive change, so can employees also demand and drive change. We are all pieces of this puzzle.
If a company is purely vertical, top-down, do-as-your-told, then be that publicly and practice it consistently. Own it, and don't apologize for demanding top performance and obedience. Stop wasting your time and energy pretending to care and putting on a fake fluffy facade.
If a company is all feel good, your-voice-actually-makes-a-difference-here, we-are-all-on-the-same-team, then be that in private and practice it consistently. Own it, and don't apologize for climbing Jane Jacob's ladder of participation. Stop wasting time on people who don't and might never appreciate what you do.
It's like when people say it's only human nature for the strong to survive, the weak to fail, stop whining that life isn't fair, but then those same people whip around and say everyone has to follow the rules or suffer punishment, then also go on to say forgive everyone and be kind. But in a world of strong-survive/weak-fail, being kind and forgiving is weakness and failure, whereas being aggressively Type A is what earns respect and power.
It seems a lot of people don't realize this contradiction. If that sounds 500,000% condescending, I am okay with that. After all, you're either strong or you're weak. Either in charge, or you do what I tell you to. Isn't that how this works?
If a company is purely vertical, top-down, do-as-your-told, then be that publicly and practice it consistently. Own it, and don't apologize for demanding top performance and obedience. Stop wasting your time and energy pretending to care and putting on a fake fluffy facade.
Apple is a top down company. You go there to work for Steve, and when he's dead you work for Tim. Apple never pretended to be something its not. These 0.01% of employees think it should be something it's not. They should go work for Twitter or whatever.
If a company is purely vertical, top-down, do-as-your-told, then be that publicly and practice it consistently. Own it, and don't apologize for demanding top performance and obedience. Stop wasting your time and energy pretending to care and putting on a fake fluffy facade.
Apple is a top down company. You go there to work for Steve, and when he's dead you work for Tim. Apple never pretended to be something its not. These 0.01% of employees think it should be something it's not. They should go work for Twitter or whatever.
Ahhhhh, the good old "If you don't like it, then leave" argument.
And yet, the people who argue that, they do things all the time to stay where they are. They say it's because they rightfully belong there. They've earned it. Sometimes, they leave a situation they don't like. They call it integrity and self-respect. Sometimes, they demand and drive change to make a place somewhere they want to be. They call it leadership and courage. Sometimes, they leave situations they like in search of more. They call it drive and ambition.
I have personally had to promise myself never to work in call centers ever again. It took me several years to realize that line of work requires skills I do not possess. My brain does not work that way. I am very good at some important things there, but overall I am better off elsewhere, and call centers are better off with better-fitting people than myself. One of the call centers I worked for went as far as telling me to undergo sugery in order to keep my job, demands I did not follow through with, and have not needed at all since leaving that place. So yes, I did leave, and I'm never going back.
But I can telll you this, that company is not being public and honest about making demands like that. They always butter it up for the media because image is important. There are other examples of that same company in the news with related fiascos. In many ways that company was and still is amazing. However, they had no right to make such invasive demands of me, especially when the alternative would have been a simple flexibility on their part, something I've enjoyed at almost all my other employers without issue, it's just a given for everyone.
Perhaps this example with Apple and WFH is not so extreme, but I will say that as a publicly traded company with press releases and an HR department, they are not brutally honest about being top-down. They also butter up the power dynamic when speaking publicly, because they wanna look and sound like the good guys, maybe not all warm and fuzzy, but they don't want to sound completely cold-hearted either. If they really wanted to be unapologetic, they could immediately fire this 0.01% of employees and blacklist them across industry allies. If they are so small and whiney a minority, if they are so replaceable, if so many talented and more obedient resources are lined up, then what is Apple waiting for? Apple has a $2.6 trillion market cap. Figure it out. Fire and hire them. What are they afraid of?
The covid pandemic has been one of the most disruptive influences on the current generation and society as a whole. Severe disruptions always trigger changes because we are forced to contend with living our lives differently than we did before the changes. Contending with disruptions exposes us to different ways of seeing and thinking about the world and how we live in it, personally and professionally. In a word, this is called learning.
People and organizations who learn from their life experiences, and especially hugely disruptive ones, and consciously adapt to a new normal are usually better prepared for the future than those who do not. Some people and organizations would prefer to deny that changes occurred as a result of the disruption so they can get back to living and operating like they did before, as if it never happened. But it did happen. This is especially true when they’ve made huge investments and sunk costs in things the disruption altered.
Everyone has their own opinion about what constitutes an ideal work environment. I certainly have mine and I’ve worked in organizations all along the spectrum, from being essentially captive at “work” for months on end with near-zero communication with family and life back home (Navy) to regular 9-to-5 style (actually more like 7-to-7-7-days a week), to mixed team with 2/3rds of the team remote (up to and including being in other countries), to fully enclosed office with a door, to fully open office hamster habitat with “the man” embedded with the team and zero privacy.
I think it’s totally right for companies to find their own way based on what works best for them and their teams. Smart companies learn and adapt and consider all options. Apple is a smart company. I’m not in a position to know what works best for Apple or for each individual Apple employee. I’m not going to deny that the WFH option needs to be on the table and in the mix because we’ve learned that it absolutely works for some people.
There’s at least two sides to most issues and WFH is no different. Some people are concerned that WFH could be a career limiting move (CLM). But the other side of the issue is that in-person work can also be a family limiting move (FLM). I’m not just talking about the commute or the in-office regimen, I’m talking about people relocating far away from their traditional nuclear family location/hub to take on a job at a prestigious firm like Apple. For every “hot jobs market” like Silicon Valley, Seattle, San Diego, Austin, Atlanta, DC, Boston, etc., there are families that have been rooted in other locations suddenly scattered around the country and world. While exciting for many, it’s a sad situation for some others and a depressing scenario for the communities that essentially dry-up from the lack of local employment opportunities for people at the start of their careers. Take a drive through some parts of the mid-west or upstate NY to see some of these lovely but slowly dying towns.
Apple can’t fix the macro issues, but they would be foolish to not consider all of the options that are available to them. It’s never a one size fits all situation. Apple knows it and prospective Apple employees know it.
Only 12,000 of those employees work at Apple Park.
The current CEO, and the next CEO and most of the people in all major leadership positions that actually run the company, the product device prototyping departments, chip design, all the major software departments, are at or nearby to Apple Park.
Brings up another point staying at home won’t get you promoted to any major leadership position that make a difference, someone has to stand guard be there if crap hits the fan at home won’t cut it. Chinese, Japanese, Korean’s, and German’s won’t be at home their infrastructure exist and works.
Comments
Companies need to be more honest/transparent about power structure and culture. Too many try to have it both ways: egalitarian and authoritarian. People in the workplace or seeking work would benefit from being intentional on how a workplace aligns with one's values. Just like companies and customers demand and drive change, so can employees also demand and drive change. We are all pieces of this puzzle.
If a company is purely vertical, top-down, do-as-your-told, then be that publicly and practice it consistently. Own it, and don't apologize for demanding top performance and obedience. Stop wasting your time and energy pretending to care and putting on a fake fluffy facade.
If a company is all feel good, your-voice-actually-makes-a-difference-here, we-are-all-on-the-same-team, then be that in private and practice it consistently. Own it, and don't apologize for climbing Jane Jacob's ladder of participation. Stop wasting time on people who don't and might never appreciate what you do.
It's like when people say it's only human nature for the strong to survive, the weak to fail, stop whining that life isn't fair, but then those same people whip around and say everyone has to follow the rules or suffer punishment, then also go on to say forgive everyone and be kind. But in a world of strong-survive/weak-fail, being kind and forgiving is weakness and failure, whereas being aggressively Type A is what earns respect and power.
It seems a lot of people don't realize this contradiction. If that sounds 500,000% condescending, I am okay with that. After all, you're either strong or you're weak. Either in charge, or you do what I tell you to. Isn't that how this works?
And yet, the people who argue that, they do things all the time to stay where they are. They say it's because they rightfully belong there. They've earned it.
Sometimes, they leave a situation they don't like. They call it integrity and self-respect.
Sometimes, they demand and drive change to make a place somewhere they want to be. They call it leadership and courage.
Sometimes, they leave situations they like in search of more. They call it drive and ambition.
I have personally had to promise myself never to work in call centers ever again. It took me several years to realize that line of work requires skills I do not possess. My brain does not work that way. I am very good at some important things there, but overall I am better off elsewhere, and call centers are better off with better-fitting people than myself. One of the call centers I worked for went as far as telling me to undergo sugery in order to keep my job, demands I did not follow through with, and have not needed at all since leaving that place. So yes, I did leave, and I'm never going back.
But I can telll you this, that company is not being public and honest about making demands like that. They always butter it up for the media because image is important. There are other examples of that same company in the news with related fiascos. In many ways that company was and still is amazing. However, they had no right to make such invasive demands of me, especially when the alternative would have been a simple flexibility on their part, something I've enjoyed at almost all my other employers without issue, it's just a given for everyone.
Perhaps this example with Apple and WFH is not so extreme, but I will say that as a publicly traded company with press releases and an HR department, they are not brutally honest about being top-down. They also butter up the power dynamic when speaking publicly, because they wanna look and sound like the good guys, maybe not all warm and fuzzy, but they don't want to sound completely cold-hearted either. If they really wanted to be unapologetic, they could immediately fire this 0.01% of employees and blacklist them across industry allies. If they are so small and whiney a minority, if they are so replaceable, if so many talented and more obedient resources are lined up, then what is Apple waiting for? Apple has a $2.6 trillion market cap. Figure it out. Fire and hire them. What are they afraid of?
People and organizations who learn from their life experiences, and especially hugely disruptive ones, and consciously adapt to a new normal are usually better prepared for the future than those who do not. Some people and organizations would prefer to deny that changes occurred as a result of the disruption so they can get back to living and operating like they did before, as if it never happened. But it did happen. This is especially true when they’ve made huge investments and sunk costs in things the disruption altered.
Everyone has their own opinion about what constitutes an ideal work environment. I certainly have mine and I’ve worked in organizations all along the spectrum, from being essentially captive at “work” for months on end with near-zero communication with family and life back home (Navy) to regular 9-to-5 style (actually more like 7-to-7-7-days a week), to mixed team with 2/3rds of the team remote (up to and including being in other countries), to fully enclosed office with a door, to fully open office hamster habitat with “the man” embedded with the team and zero privacy.
I think it’s totally right for companies to find their own way based on what works best for them and their teams. Smart companies learn and adapt and consider all options. Apple is a smart company. I’m not in a position to know what works best for Apple or for each individual Apple employee. I’m not going to deny that the WFH option needs to be on the table and in the mix because we’ve learned that it absolutely works for some people.
There’s at least two sides to most issues and WFH is no different. Some people are concerned that WFH could be a career limiting move (CLM). But the other side of the issue is that in-person work can also be a family limiting move (FLM). I’m not just talking about the commute or the in-office regimen, I’m talking about people relocating far away from their traditional nuclear family location/hub to take on a job at a prestigious firm like Apple. For every “hot jobs market” like Silicon Valley, Seattle, San Diego, Austin, Atlanta, DC, Boston, etc., there are families that have been rooted in other locations suddenly scattered around the country and world. While exciting for many, it’s a sad situation for some others and a depressing scenario for the communities that essentially dry-up from the lack of local employment opportunities for people at the start of their careers. Take a drive through some parts of the mid-west or upstate NY to see some of these lovely but slowly dying towns.
Apple can’t fix the macro issues, but they would be foolish to not consider all of the options that are available to them. It’s never a one size fits all situation. Apple knows it and prospective Apple employees know it.
Brings up another point staying at home won’t get you promoted to any major leadership position that make a difference, someone has to stand guard be there if crap hits the fan at home won’t cut it. Chinese, Japanese, Korean’s, and German’s won’t be at home their infrastructure exist and works.
Set a statement on who runs the company, and who are just hired to do a job (and easily replaceable.)