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> CEO Tim Cook called in-person collaboration benefits "irreplaceable" and in an email, the executive team talked about the importance of "the serendipity that

• arrakis2021 4y ago
  Another engineer that doesn’t understand there are more jobs in a business than engineering. I say this as someone who works from home and is a huge WFH advocate. We need to stop assuming every role in an org revolves around “I stare at my screen for 9 hours do not interrupt me.”
  • enumjorge 4y ago
    Why not allow the flexibility to let both types of people do their best work though?
    • azemetre 4y ago
      Maybe allow teams, but I don't think allowing individuals to choose isn't good. Having a team that's half remote/half in-person is worse of both worlds. What typically ends up happening IME is that the in-person half typically gets way way way more visibility than those working remote. It's especially worse if the company isn't remote first at all. It's especially terrible if the team is remotely distributed as well. I left my last company because my org had a time preference for their offices in Hyderabad, which isn't bad but they kept forcing mandatory meetings at 7 or 8 am. All the US workers hated it. The idea of core hours didn't exists, you basically had to adapt to Hyderabad time or you suffered. I have no issue with remote teams or in-person teams, but having both in the same team is the worse.
      • edmcnulty101 4y ago
        > Having a team that's half remote/half in-person is worse of both worlds I'm not so sure that's a blanket statement. If teams are properly managed it works out.
        • hallway_monitor 4y ago
          Have you worked in this environment? I have and I agree with the previous comment. You get the low friction interaction of being there in person but then all the people who aren't there get left out. Or you have to do everything on video anyway so there's no point in some people being in person. My bet is in person companies win in the end.
          • Shaanie 4y ago
            Even if it's true that in-person developers are more productive, you also have to account for the preference of developers. If developers prefer to work remotely, then the average in-person developer is probably likely to be worse than the average remote developer (since skilled developers will have an easier time to find the more attractive remote positions). And as we all know, the difference between a skilled developer and a bad one is quite massive.
      • deleted 4y ago
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      • LightG 4y ago
        "in-person half typically gets way way way more visibility than those working remote." That's a management problem, not a policy problem. Sorry.
        • netizen-936824 4y ago
          Yes, and the management solution is to blame the people being managed for not liking it
        • colinmhayes 4y ago
  • scarface74 4y ago
    And those people are already in the office and were in the office during the height of Covid.
  • chc 4y ago
    I don't think they're trying to forcd those people who work better in an office to work from home, are they?
  • LightG 4y ago
    Finance here: "big, unbroken chunks of silence & concentration to do great work. " sounds like an absolute dream ... I'm with the engineer on this.
  • paxys 4y ago
    So then why does this policy apply to engineers as well?
• ilamont 4y ago
  Tim Cook received a degree in industrial engineering before getting an MBA. Not sure I would call him an extrovert either.
• snowwrestler 4y ago
  Cook has an engineering degree and Apple did some pretty good engineering before COVID including the A series of microprocessors, Air Pods, Apple Watch, and most of the M1 development. I understand that people like work from home, but implying engineering can’t be done in an office building is overselling the issue by quite a bit.
  • InitialLastName 4y ago
    There's a bit of a disconnect here in that many on this forum are software engineers, probably mostly working on systems that need no hands-on interaction (or on apps that can be tested easily locally). The products you listed are hardware products (with integrated software) which are much more difficult to work on remotely, especially in a company that prioritizes secrecy as much as Apple does.
    • KerrAvon 4y ago
      Apple software engineers who work with prototypes did this for two whole product development cycles. Access to prototypes _can_ still be managed remotely, it turns out.
      • InitialLastName 4y ago
        It's possible to do (I'm doing it), but it's definitely more complicated than in-person, especially when operating across a team. From a hardware engineering perspective, access to equipment is also important; I have a decent lab setup at home, but I've still needed to go into the office regularly to access some testing tools.
    • nottorp 4y ago
      > which are much more difficult to work on remotely, <Looks at his desk in his home office. It's full of prototype boards he's doing software for.> Difficult? > especially in a company that prioritizes secrecy as much as Apple does. But that's Apple's problem, not the employees' problem.
  • 4y ago
• pavel_lishin 4y ago
  I think engineers tend to under-estimate how much of their work is communicating with other engineers. Yes, you need that focus time. But running into someone on another team can be very valuable - you might learn that they're solving the same problem, you might learn that they're consuming the same API you're trying to figure out, you might learn that they're planning on working with your team in a few weeks, etc.
  • KerrAvon 4y ago
    Sure, but if your company’s productivity depends on these accidental interactions, you’re in serious trouble if you’re as large as Apple is. Apple Park is so large you can roam the halls all day and not run into the people you’re working with on other teams. Many of the teams will be on other campuses anyway. I would argue the benefits of having more of your state in Slack more than make up for “surprise productive watercooler meeting” thing that managers are so hot on. I think I’ve had that interaction maybe twice in 25+ years, and one of those times was just pointless gossip in the end.
    • 1minusp 4y ago
      The watercooler comment resonates: i keep hearing it as justification to be back in-person and even in cases where i feel i've ha da productive watercooler conversation, it has very rarely resulted in anything crucial or important emerge from it. Businesses have problems that need solving (using technology): it is unlikely that the problem is identified at a watercooler (or other metaphorical equivalents) or the solution is identified in a one hour in-person meeting. One might 'feel' that the outcome from the quickly made decision in the 1-hr meeting was useful, but thats questionable too.
  • jsiaajdsdaa 4y ago
    I shouldn't need to run into another engineer to find out how the fuck to call their API successfully and what I can expect in return.
  • ryandrake 4y ago
    > Yes, you need that focus time. But running into someone on another team can be very valuable - you might learn that they're solving the same problem, you might learn that they're consuming the same API you're trying to figure out, you might learn that they're planning on working with your team in a few weeks, etc. Out of all the companies out there, I'd imagine Apple benefits from this the least. With all the badge-locked doors, literal curtains hiding projects from one another, and internal NDAs preventing one engineer from even disclosing what they are working on with another engineer, cross-pollination of ideas is going to be almost impossible. "Serendipitous conversations" is not something that comes to mind when one thinks about Apple's internal engineering culture.
• deleted 4y ago
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• ryandrake 4y ago
  Lots of companies' executive officers are relaying identical messages, even down to the same choice of words. "Serendipity." "Collaboration." "Magical hallway conversations." I've never seen all of Corporate America, including fierce competitors, so closely aligned on a very particular narrative, as I've seen them aligned on returning to physical offices. It's as if they all received the exact same memo with the same talking points and are all desperately following it. Never seen anything like it before.
  • SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
    This isn't some artificial set of talking points, it's what business leaders genuinely believe and have believed for decades. (This isn't the first time that remote work has become a big public debate, although it was called "teleworking" last time.) That doesn't prove they're right, but it's not some kind of astroturfed conspiracy.
  • solenoidalslide 4y ago
    > It's as if they all received the exact same memo with the same talking points and are all desperately following it. But enough about the Wall Street Journal
• paxys 4y ago
  Doubly so because "accidental" product launches because two engineers bumped heads in the cafeteria and came up with an idea is not how things work at Apple. That's Google culture. At Apple employees in a hallway will not be allowed to talk about each other's projects at all. All the product directives are strictly top down. As an individual engineer you have zero say in the product and very little in broader engineering decisions.
• washadjeffmad 4y ago
  So, I get that. However, that doesn't make those engineers better at communicating, being communicated to, or understanding where they work. They're at risk for being underrepresented due to the siloed and likely insular nature of their work. Most of my success has been because I'd spoken, independently and unofficially, to people in unrelated divisions who hadn't met who _really needed to talk_. I don't expect others to take this on because they're almost definitely busier than me. And I don't necessarily like taking to people, but I'm really good at this one stupidly simple thing, and I'd rather be the one getting dragged into the meetings instead of everyone else so they can focus. It's why corporate org charts are so bullshit to me; the real work happens when people can form their best structures, which typically takes knowing who you're working with or being known by someone who can protect that for you. For some, that's churning out work while being with their families way the fuck away from everyone else. For others, it's being wherever they can get some perspective and inspiration digging in and deciding something about the trajectory of the org they're at, usually involving people. If it works, it's valid.
• yibg 4y ago
  As a software engineer I find I'm much more productive in the office. Probably because a lot of my work does involve talking to other people (other engineers, PMs etc) and really understanding what the problem space is. Sure I need focus time too, but I can get that in the office too.
• robertoandred 4y ago
  And outside of those chunks you bump into colleagues after meetings, on the way to the bathroom, in the cafe, etc.
• ianbutler 4y ago
  Hi senior engineer here, I enjoy being with my co-workers and you can definitely make people understand you need your time in an office setting. This sounds like a communication issue that a lot of devs have but that's squarely our failing not other people in our orgs.
• closedl00p 4y ago
  I'm more on the introversion end of the spectrum, and as someone who's been both an engineer and a manager I'm a big believer in big unbroken chunks of silence and concentration for focused engineering ("makers vs managers schedule", etc). And... I would say a majority of the major project setbacks / failures I've seen over my career have not been due to engineering failures, but have been due to either: 1) Misalignment or lack of agility about priorities / goals and inter-team dependencies. Situations where people and teams put their heads down and do a lot of engineering... that ends up not being the right engineering. 2) Interpersonal conflicts that simmer, escalate, and aren't defused early enough and harm collaboration. In theory, both of these could be addressed well in fully remote environments, with careful product, product, and people management. In practice, I have personally seen it be much easier to head these problems off in environments where people are having regular informal face-to-face and non-transactional interactions. The lunch / coffee break / hallway-chat-after-the-meeting sort of discussions. Even being in separate buildings across a large tech campus has been a barrier to this. Again, I would be personally happy to WFH, but I do feel I've multiple times seen significant project and company-level benefits from shared workspace interaction, so there are tradeoffs.