Apple 'Tracking Employee Attendance' in Crackdown on Remote Working

[stocklen]

Not saying Apple is wrong to do this (after all, their corporate culture relies largely on in-person collaboration), but it's always problematic to force people into something they don't want to do. It creates resistance and resentment that corrode culture from within.

I do wonder if paying a bonus for employees who show up at the office would have had a more desirable effect on overall morale...

yes, but....

They presumably interviewed for the position when it was 5 days a week in the office. Thats the job they agreed to do.

Apple are being surprisingly soft touch here even now. 3 days a week? is that all? and people are moaning about it AND apparently just not turning up for work when they are supposed to?

.... and people are criticising Apple for having the gall to dictate their employees working condition requirements?


Do the job you were contracted to do when you took the job on. If you no longer want that job then resign and give someone else the chance. Working from home for most companies is something they needed to accommodate under emergency circumstances as a short term solution to a global issue. That time has thankfully passed now and time to get back to normal. Sure, for some companies they have realised that working from home makes more sense for some of their staff and they have continued - its not for the staff to dictate what their employer wants them to do.

 

[DelayedGratificationGene]

Ya know the USA thrived and achieved incredible things for 250 years by everyone coming together to work. I don’t think we should be messing with that.

 

[dwaltwhit]

Or: "Company Enforces Policy"

 

[chenks]

If you don’t understand the affection Apple fans have for Steve, using his phrase to describe the campus, I question why you are so involved in this thread while repeatedly offering uniquely misguided takes.

i don't idolise him like a lot on here do.
he was a guy that said some stupid stuff in his time.

he was a marketer, and a fairly decent one, he knew how to bamboozle people with nonsense to get his way. i've seen the video of him pitching the case to the local government, he knew how to talk just enough nonsense to get what he wanted.

 

[wanha]

Thank goodness building the nation and winning wars was up to previous generations. Now, life is soooooo hard and bosses are soooooo unfair! I wish people good luck trying to get paid to watch TikTok videos from the comfort of your sofa instead of being “coerced” to, y’know, do their damn job.

Yeah, think about all the amazing things human beings achieved using slavery. We just threw endless amounts of death and suffering at unfathomably large projects and voila, we had pyramids and railroads. This is the way. [sarcasm]

 

[rpmurray]

If Apple was really trying to save money they would do away with the bonuses and other cash grabs in upper management.

 

[nwcs]

I get the philosophy you state and it's probably how Apple views it too, but times they are a-changin - after COVID, remote work is seen as normal and in some cases, even as a right.

As is often the case, when there is coercion and discontentment, the people with the best job options are likely to leave (usually your best employees).

Those with less options (usually not your best employees) will reluctantly stay.

The net effect is that you replace your best employees with average or good employees, while continuing to fester a growing sense of resentment toward the employer.

The assumption you make is that the best employees prefer unequivocally with working from home, essentially. I wouldn’t state that to be the case at all. I would expect, as with many things, there to be a portion of A employees who prefer to work with others in person. Having been in management before as well as not, I wouldn’t say that the B and C employees would be the only ones to stay. I have often found in my years in professional development that C employees often leave first because they think they are A or B employees and are opportunists. Certainly that isn’t a rule of thumb but my observation. A employees, in my experience, tend to be the most loyal and many would see a policy like this as a way of making sure the B and C employees contribute and not slack. Again, just my decades of experience working in tech fields not a scientific observation.

 

[steve09090]

If Apple was really trying to save money they would do away with the bonuses and other cash grabs in upper management.

Or layoff 10,000 employees. But they haven't done that. They just told people they need to go to work.

 

[everlast3434]

I mean, they didn't build that fancy spaceship just for it to sit empty. Anyone who believed working remotely forever was the "new normal" and moved out to the country because of it is just dumb lol.

 

[wanha]

The assumption you make is that the best employees prefer unequivocally with working from home, essentially. I wouldn’t state that to be the case at all. I would expect, as with many things, there to be a portion of A employees who prefer to work with others in person. Having been in management before as well as not, I wouldn’t say that the B and C employees would be the only ones to stay. I have often found in my years in professional development that C employees often leave first because they think they are A or B employees and are opportunists. Certainly that isn’t a rule of thumb but my observation. A employees, in my experience, tend to be the most loyal and many would see a policy like this as a way of making sure the B and C employees contribute and not slack. Again, just my decades of experience working in tech fields not a scientific observation.

I think we misunderstood each other, and I agree with you that happy A employees are often the most loyal ones (my experiences also back that up).

So to clarify, my assumption is NOT that the best automatically want to work from home (that would be naive, I think we both agree on that).

Certainly many of the best employees enjoy working at the office and have no intention of leaving.

Rather, my point was that those employees that value working from home, the best of them will be the ones most likely to leave, simply because they have options and they would still presumably get to work from home.

 

[DesignTime]

Wished Apple cared this much about tracking and resolving their OS bugs. Seems Apple cares more about controlling people (both employees and non employees) than producing products.

 

[chenks]

It can be productive. It can be a real blocker.

But most of the time, it's just easier to ask than to look into it.
Sure have been guilty of this myself, if I know the person next to me can answer in 5 seconds what would take me minutes to figure out. But if it breaks their concentration and flow, I don't see the damage it does.

this is definitely case.
people will more often than not just ask someone if it saves them having to spend a few minutes more working it out for themselves.

they don't see the problem as it's got them moving quicker, but the person they've asked might have been broken out of their concentration and that's been stopped.

 

[StudioMacs]

i don't idolise him like a lot on here do.
he was a guy that said some stupid stuff in his time.

he was a marketer, and a fairly decent one, he knew how to bamboozle people with nonsense to get his way. i've seen the video of him pitching the case to the local government, he knew how to talk just enough nonsense to get what he wanted.

Part of marketing involves creating the right products. To that end, Steve believed the unique design of the campus would improve face-to-face collaboration between disparate teams.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise Apple is continuing to do business guided by one of the core philosophies of it’s founder, yet here you are arguing.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Well, at least they aren't putting AirTags on their people.

I interviewed at a large company, and I needed a badge to get into the restroom while waiting for an interview. Obviously they had the tech to monitor employee restroom usage, and that gave me the creeps. I didn't get the job, and that next Friday I was out with friends describing the freaky bizarre every door having an electric badge lock, and how they really could, and likely were monitoring loo access when someone at the bar appeared to take umbrage to my astonished comments and the jokes that were going on. I guess some people really buy into that level of surveillance.

 

[chenks]

Part of marketing involves creating the right products. To that end, Steve believed the unique design of the campus would improve face-to-face collaboration between disparate teams.

i'm sure he did believe that, he also believed in a lot of other stuff that wasn't necessarily right.
but this thread has nothing to do with him.

 

[steve09090]

Wished Apple cared this much about tracking and resolving their OS bugs. Seems Apple cares more about controlling people (both employees and non employees) than producing products.

I would love to know the basis of that. None of my many Apple products have bugs. But then I don't force Beta versions on to them. If I did, then I would expect bugs.

 

[chenks]

None of my many Apple products have bugs.

which apple products do you have?

 

[cocky jeremy]

The only thing they should track is if employees are getting the work done and doing it correctly. Who cares where they're doing the work From? Apple is just trying to save face and not make this billon dollar facility look like a waste of money.

 

[steve09090]

i'm sure he did believe that, he also believed in a lot of other stuff that wasn't necessarily right.
but this thread has nothing to do with him.

Some of us also believe stuff that isn't necessarily right either and believe working from home is the best thing ever. I get that psychologically, it can help someone who is that way inclined and I support that. But for those people who are capable of working from the office, you know, where they are employed to be, then it is probably where they should be. For those people, I would suggest it is out of selfishness or laziness. Because, you know. They have a job to do for their employer.

which apple products do you have?

A decent range. iPhone, iPad, Watch, Apple TVs, Macbook Air, Powerbeats, Homepods, Use Homekit all the time, Services. Siri is my only bug. Why is it important? I have the feeling you are going to criticise me for something, but not sure what yet. I'm logging off anyway. I'll find out later what I have done wrong.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

When Steve Jobs pitched the idea to the city council during one of his last public appearances, he referred to the building as looking like a spaceship had landed.

If you don’t understand the affection Apple fans have for Steve, using his phrase to describe the campus, I question why you are so involved in this thread while repeatedly offering uniquely misguided takes.

I'm sure Steve Jobs was someone to deal with. Apple succeeded both because of him, and in spite of him. I had a client that had a personality in the owner that was possibly a lot like his. I would be schmoozed and celebrated for backing things he wanted, and slammed and insulted for backing employee aims for their IT environment. When got the game down, I could laugh it off. And yes, several times I'd suggest changes, and he would hotly deny needing them, only to circle around and say 'he' thought of them, and to implement them. I never made the comparison until sitting reading this thread. Working with him was interesting. He WAS a genius. It was a machine tool company, and he could design just about anything. He knew so much about the ins and outs of machining and casting. He just blew me away. Some of the local companies would send him their designs to get his opinion on them. His company helped prototype all kinds of products from aerospace to aviation, oceanography, and all kinds of vehicles from cars trucks and motorcycles. But some hated him. There were ex-customers that refused to even retrieve equipment they 'loaned' them to assist them. It was so odd to watch it all. People knew he was a genius and didn't like the bad news, and the way he passed it on I suppose. I dropped them for nearly a year over some of the games I encountered. Those were the days...

 

[vicviper789]

I was hired as a remote employee to a company an hour away. They changed the policy to force us to be in the office 3 days a week. My solution was to just count the commute as part of the work day. It is an arbitrary job requirement so it's fair.

 

[hovscorpion12]

Construction workers with punch cards have entered the chat

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

The only thing they should track is if employees are getting the work done and doing it correctly. Who cares where they're doing the work From? Apple is just trying to save face and not make this billon dollar facility look like a waste of money.

It did look foolish to build such a massive structure in a place where earthquakes are common, and storms too. I was surprised they didn't install a monorail system to transport people around the ring. I think they missed an opportunity to do something truly space-age and unique. Although the ring isn't all that huge, but I'm sure it consumes a bit of time walking the ring...

 

[StudioMacs]

i'm sure he did believe that, he also believed in a lot of other stuff that wasn't necessarily right.
but this thread has nothing to do with him.

The campus itself is one of Apple’s most important products, and this thread has everything to do with the face-to-face collaboration Steve envisioned for that campus.

 

[Fukui]

will give employees "escalating warnings" if they don't come in the required three times per week

because not enough bumping into those invisible glass walls at work...