4 ms·

Not knocking working from home but - 1) Will employees demanding work from home / Utah etc be willing to accept Utah pay rates? You could probably just negotia

Not knocking working from home but - 1) Will employees demanding work from home / Utah etc be willing to accept Utah pay rates? You could probably just negotiate some deal, 50% of pay and full time work from home. 2) Were people hired based on an expectation of 5 days in office or work from home? 3) A fair bit of buzzword bingo - ADA claims, claims around diversity and inclusion. Are these things Apple is prioritizing or is to going to be what they consider useful for product and business execution? 4) The higher performing employees I know don't tend to go on strike, demand X, etc. They just find another job. 5) When someone says Apple Employees with no qualification - is that all employees - if so you'd think this would be bigger news. Apple is likely at 100K+ employees. Even just a basic 10% attrition rate (avg is 17%) would be 10K+ employees per year. My guess is their turnover rate is lower (maybe 5%?) normally. Our own offices went to high wall cubicles to reduce spread of germs, reduce audio distractions for zoom calls etc - I actually like it a lot. High noise absorbing walls (6') does wonders to overall sound in a space if everyone has them. Even have wrap around on desk edge so it's 3.5 sides.

iaw 5y ago
1) Most of the roles can just switch to another FAANG where the largest discount is 85% instead of 50%. 2) Employers have changed the terms of employment at will for decades, I can literally find stories from a hundred years ago. This is a situation where employees are changing the terms (which also happened a hundred years ago in the US) 3) The American Disabilities Act is a law, diversity and inclusion are concepts. There is a large difference between being bad for diversity/inclusion and violating the law. When you violate the ADA you open yourself up to lawsuit (although the loss is a drop in the bucket for a company Apples size) 4) And? Companies need all types. The mid-performers and even the low-performers provide value (otherwise they wouldn't maintain employment). If all you care about are your high performers you'll have a larger churn and pay the price. 5) It's the verge, do you really think they're for high quality rigorous analytics reporting? No, they got a few chat threads and made some inferences. It may be that literally only 10 people at the company care about this (unlikely)
- slownews45 5y ago
  1) Sure - and Apple may be able to accommodate folks asking for a pay cut in return for a change in work situation if they ask. Note that I did this once asking to go to part time at a position in return for a more than pro-rata reduction in pay. I was turned down and found another job. I didn't threaten to quit - and remained on good terms with previous employer who later hired me on as a contractor (!) so my pay was remarkably higher for the part time work I'd wanted in first place - still in touch with them. 2) Employees also find what works and switch jobs. You don't need to throw around things like diversity, inclusion, ADA - you can just go find a WfH job (there are a lot more these days) if that's what you want / need. 3) The claims of violation in this article are thin. It's not clear employees have described medical condition, provided docs, done the interactive process. How has apple violated the ADA? Note that the ADA is not a free pass either. 4) The lower performers may seem to be easier to replace - so may not be key retention targets. Note that I've seen incredible accommodation of key retention target staff (ie, live on a boat, x hours of private jet travel etc). 5) Every industry has higher churn now because of wfH (mine included). This is not headline news necessarily.
cornstalks 5y ago
I work for a FAANG company (not Apple), and regarding item #1: yes, absolutely. I just moved from CA to UT and the 25% pay cut sucks but it's totally worth the 80% reduction in housing prices.
- zebnyc 5y ago
  Looking to move from SF currently. Curious if your location has a good school district. That along with great outdoors and affordable housing are my top criteria for moving.
  - cornstalks 5y ago
    We're in a decent school district (South Jordan). The schools near us are rated a 6ish/10 but all of the parents we've talked to have had really positive things to say about the schools and teachers. The Sandy City and Bountiful City areas have some really good schools. Sandy is the closest to the mountains for skiing and hiking. Bountiful also has a lot of trails you can hike/bike but skiing is ~45 minutes away (whereas Alta Ski Resort is only 20ish minutes from Sandy). Feel free to email me if you have any extra questions. hn@mjbshaw.com
geofft 5y ago
I'm surprised to see the claim that the "buzzword bingo" is somehow at odds with product and business execution after last year. We just experienced an extended period of time, longer than anyone expected in February 2020, where literally everyone was either unable to come to work for, essentially, medical reasons, or required serious and unprecedented accommodations (distancing/barriers, masks, cleaning, etc.) to do so. Companies that were able to look that reality in the face and admit it were able to keep executing. Companies that couldn't admit the facts struggled in the early days, and their most capable employees had plenty of alternatives. The more your company is able to handle the fact that different people have different needs, the more effective your company is at delivering business value, for all sorts of reasons. You can adapt to unusual conditions like a pandemic where everyone suddenly has different needs all at once (and the resulting needs of people who live by themselves are very different from the needs of parents of young children, etc.). You can hire talent who is good at the actual job you want them to do without also expecting them to be good at, say, walking around an office. You can retain experienced employees who become disabled. And so forth.

iaw 5y ago

1) Most of the roles can just switch to another FAANG where the largest discount is 85% instead of 50%. 2) Employers have changed the terms of employment at will for decades, I can literally find stories from a hundred years ago. This is a situation where employees are changing the terms (which also happened a hundred years ago in the US) 3) The American Disabilities Act is a law, diversity and inclusion are concepts. There is a large difference between being bad for diversity/inclusion and violating the law. When you violate the ADA you open yourself up to lawsuit (although the loss is a drop in the bucket for a company Apples size) 4) And? Companies need all types. The mid-performers and even the low-performers provide value (otherwise they wouldn't maintain employment). If all you care about are your high performers you'll have a larger churn and pay the price. 5) It's the verge, do you really think they're for high quality rigorous analytics reporting? No, they got a few chat threads and made some inferences. It may be that literally only 10 people at the company care about this (unlikely)

slownews45 5y ago
1) Sure - and Apple may be able to accommodate folks asking for a pay cut in return for a change in work situation if they ask. Note that I did this once asking to go to part time at a position in return for a more than pro-rata reduction in pay. I was turned down and found another job. I didn't threaten to quit - and remained on good terms with previous employer who later hired me on as a contractor (!) so my pay was remarkably higher for the part time work I'd wanted in first place - still in touch with them. 2) Employees also find what works and switch jobs. You don't need to throw around things like diversity, inclusion, ADA - you can just go find a WfH job (there are a lot more these days) if that's what you want / need. 3) The claims of violation in this article are thin. It's not clear employees have described medical condition, provided docs, done the interactive process. How has apple violated the ADA? Note that the ADA is not a free pass either. 4) The lower performers may seem to be easier to replace - so may not be key retention targets. Note that I've seen incredible accommodation of key retention target staff (ie, live on a boat, x hours of private jet travel etc). 5) Every industry has higher churn now because of wfH (mine included). This is not headline news necessarily.

cornstalks 5y ago

I work for a FAANG company (not Apple), and regarding item #1: yes, absolutely. I just moved from CA to UT and the 25% pay cut sucks but it's totally worth the 80% reduction in housing prices.

zebnyc 5y ago
Looking to move from SF currently. Curious if your location has a good school district. That along with great outdoors and affordable housing are my top criteria for moving.
- cornstalks 5y ago
  We're in a decent school district (South Jordan). The schools near us are rated a 6ish/10 but all of the parents we've talked to have had really positive things to say about the schools and teachers. The Sandy City and Bountiful City areas have some really good schools. Sandy is the closest to the mountains for skiing and hiking. Bountiful also has a lot of trails you can hike/bike but skiing is ~45 minutes away (whereas Alta Ski Resort is only 20ish minutes from Sandy). Feel free to email me if you have any extra questions. hn@mjbshaw.com

geofft 5y ago

I'm surprised to see the claim that the "buzzword bingo" is somehow at odds with product and business execution after last year. We just experienced an extended period of time, longer than anyone expected in February 2020, where literally everyone was either unable to come to work for, essentially, medical reasons, or required serious and unprecedented accommodations (distancing/barriers, masks, cleaning, etc.) to do so. Companies that were able to look that reality in the face and admit it were able to keep executing. Companies that couldn't admit the facts struggled in the early days, and their most capable employees had plenty of alternatives. The more your company is able to handle the fact that different people have different needs, the more effective your company is at delivering business value, for all sorts of reasons. You can adapt to unusual conditions like a pandemic where everyone suddenly has different needs all at once (and the resulting needs of people who live by themselves are very different from the needs of parents of young children, etc.). You can hire talent who is good at the actual job you want them to do without also expecting them to be good at, say, walking around an office. You can retain experienced employees who become disabled. And so forth.