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Apple Closing Down Internal Slack Channels Where Employees Debate Remote Work (cultofmac.com) 116

Posted by BeauHD from the fanning-the-flames dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Cult of Mac: Apple is closing down internal Slack channels to stop employees discussing remote working options, reports Zoe Schiffer from The Verge. Many Cupertino employees are currently engaged in a Cold War of sorts with their employer over the remote working arrangement coming out of the coronavirus pandemic. As the arguments flare up among staff, Apple has taken the step of shuttering the Slack channels where these are taking place. "Apple recently began cracking down on Slack channels that aren't directly related to work," Schiffer wrote on Twitter. "The company bans channels 'for activities and hobbies' that aren't directly related to projects or part of official employee groups -- but this wasn't always enforced, employees say."

Two public letters from Apple employees have requested more flexible working conditions. A recent petition this month was shared on Apple's internal Slack channel, with more than 6,000 members discussing remote work. It noted that: "We continue to be concerned that this one-size-fits-all solution is causing many of our colleagues to question their future at Apple. With COVID-19 numbers rising again around the world, vaccines proving less effective against the delta variant, and the long-term effects of infection not well understood, it is too early to force those with concerns to come back to the office." According to Schiffer, "internally, [many] people feel like [Apple] isn't listening to their demands." She continues that: "Since Friday, three Apple employees have resigned specifically because of the remote work policies. One had been at the company for nearly 13 years. I've seen a bunch of these resignation notes and they're pretty heart wrenching."
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Apple Closing Down Internal Slack Channels Where Employees Debate Remote Work More

Apple Closing Down Internal Slack Channels Where Employees Debate Remote Work

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  • Life in Mordor (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tough Love ( 215404 ) on Wednesday July 28, 2021 @10:35PM (#61632809)

    If you're an Orc you will love working at Apple.

    • Re: Life in Mordor (Score:4, Insightful)

      by antus ( 6211764 ) on Thursday July 29, 2021 @06:16AM (#61633471)
      Im suprised they didnt expect this. They do know about all the asshole stuff apple do on the manufacturing side, with taxation loop holes, to 3rd party repairers and to their own customers right?

      • They do know about all the asshole stuff apple do

        Love it. When companies want employees to show up to work only 3 days a week, they are now assholes. Let's talk about entitlement.

  • Start your own? (Score:3)

    by suss ( 158993 ) on Wednesday July 28, 2021 @10:40PM (#61632821)

    It's not like you can just start your own chat server, with blackjack and hookers, if necessary.

    • I would, but I know Apple will probably just evict it from the app store as soon as they figure out what's going on.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jwhyche ( 6192 )

        Just start your own Discord server and call it a day. Good luck on ejecting that app from the store. The shit storm would be epic and something I'm sure apple would want to avoid if it comes to just letting a few apple people bitch about working from home, or not working from home.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Arethan ( 223197 )

      In fact... forget the chat server

  • just say we are thinning about an union and then apple really can't shut it down

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      I am retired but remote work is not a new thing at all, Plenty of jobs, hand them a bunch of paperwork and from that paperwork they produce a bunch more paperwork and give it back. Remote working was a way to cut back and dump staff. First you remote worked them, paid them more, because they were now managing their own business and they you cut it, wage and time and then no more work. The rest of the staff don't miss them, they are happier and you got rid of dead wood and got some money out of them. Those w

      • just showed up. Just wondering if Apple remote worked nuts what were Jobs and Johny doing in the office.
        • "internally, [many] people feel like [Apple] isn't listening to their demands." Actually externally people are pretty certain that no one at Apple listens, ever. The culture of selectively hiring autistics, and then exploiting them by expecting them to work long hours, praising an aloof dismissive style of communication, ( think Jobs) cultivating a business method that ignores human values while exploiting human weakness, using slave workers, forcing the customer to use new unfinished interface changes b

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by short ( 66530 )
        > if you live in the same building where you work and you have your own office, separated by walls or separated by floors is there a difference There is, it is worse than in a jail. In jail they at leats bring you the food. Remote working is there to move far away from civilization to your own house in a nature. And your own beach as a plus. :-)

      • Re:just say we are thinging about an union and the (Score:5, Insightful)

        by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Thursday July 29, 2021 @07:33AM (#61633589) Homepage

        dumping people through remote work

        I think you have had some very...unique...work experiences. Remote work as a way to get rid of undesired employees? Why I can see that happening in some weird cases, it sounds like managers without the balls to just fire someone. If you have cause for firing, there's no need to jump through stupid hoops.

        the best employees you buy them a house close to the office

        What company buys houses for their employees?

        in a high rise, they take the lift down from their apartment to the office

        While I see your point, this assumes that the employee wants to live and work in a high rise, in the middle of a city. To give you a counterexample: we recently moved to a mountain town of 400 people. Living in the middle of a city? No thanks, been there, done that.

        tl;dr: Times have changed. If COVID has brought one positive thing, it has made work-from-home mainstream. Some companies are desperately trying to stuff the genie back into the bottle, for reasons no one quite understands, but it's not going to work. The extroverts out there miss the social aspects of working in an office. Those of us who are introverts have never had it so good - the bloody extroverts can't keep interrupting us with office gossip. We're more productive than ever, and at the end of the day, we turn off the computer and go for a hike.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • the best employees you buy them a house close to the office

          What company buys houses for their employees?

          I don't know if they do this anymore, but IBM used to do something like this.

          IBM set up a lot of R&D labs in somewhat out-of-the-way places (Essex Junction, VT and Boca Raton, FL are a couple of examples). IBM would offer low-interest loans to employees to buy houses in the area and settle down. This made the employee more interested in staying with the company and interviewing with other companies was more of a nuisance because you now had a nice house somewhat distant from other high-tech employers.

      • Re:just say we are thinging about an union and the (Score:4, Insightful)

        by FictionPimp ( 712802 ) on Thursday July 29, 2021 @08:24AM (#61633717) Homepage

        As someone who has worked remotely for the last 7 years 5 of which at fortune 500 companies. I see none of this as true.

        Remote work has made my life better. I spend more time with my wife who also works remotely. We get to eat lunch together every day. I'm healthier because being home means I can do that morning workout without getting up 2 hours early so I can make sure I have time to shower and drive to work. I'm also healthier because we make more of our own meals now that we have free time from the 1-2 hours a day we used to spend on travel. I'm happier because I have less stress. I can take time on a conference call to sweep the floors or do little chores giving me back more of my free time to spend on things I enjoy and not the things I need to get done. Because I can work anywhere, I don't take as many days off or vacations. I can fly on a Sunday to a beach, work a few days right from the airbnb or hotel and spend the afternoons however I feel. I can take that trip to visit my parents without a burning vacation time. I can meet that friend for lunch across town and just work from the Starbucks that afternoon.

        I have less stress about taking time off to meet contractors or repairmen because I can just let them in for my break. I have more money and nicer things. We no longer need to maintain two cars, I no longer need to buy dress slacks and shirts to "look professional", and because I can work anywhere, I work in a place where you can own a home and over an acre of land and still pay less than rent near work. I also have a better chance at building wealth. Because I found employers who still pay the 'city' price, I have more disposable income which I use to invest in my retirement. In the event I do not put it in my retirement, I'm putting it back into the market at small stores, buying things that make my life more enjoyable, rather than into a rent check and gas tank.

        I am more productive for my employer. I write code better in silence instead of that bullpen they call 'open concept'. I don't have to wear noise-canceling headsets to get work done. I communicate more with my co-workers because I'm actually reachable. I have fewer pointless meetings and instead have more meaningful conversations in writing so decisions on my work come faster. I spend less time at watercoolers and more time discussing actual work. I work longer sometimes because I enjoy my work environment with my own private drinks, bathroom, cat, and amazing office furniture. I have more productive breaks throughout the day allowing me to actually relax which makes me more productive. I can take a 30-minute break in the afternoon to take a piano lesson remotely and then feel supercharged to work the rest of the day. Because my work is often performance-based rather than timeboxed (with the exception of meetings) I can schedule my time more freely and take a long lunch or start an hour early to get off earlier without the worry of someone taking notice and complaining, impacting my co-workers (omg you stink, why did you run 3 miles at lunch?). Finally, I've become better at communicating. A culture of writing has allowed me to spend time thinking about what is really behind that problem and writing it down allows me the distance to provide more clarity and develop more mature ideas. This communication has led to faster decisions from leadership and as such, more work output.

        Working from home should be the norm for all roles. The exceptions should be when the role requires someone in person (stores, factories, etc). I would require much more money to go into the office again (roughly 35-40% more). I am living a life that I could have only dreamed about 10 years ago and I wish everyone else could too.

        • I can relate to this almost to a tee. Since COVID I’ve noticed I’m never in a hurry anymore. It’s amazing how exhausting being in a hurry all the time is.

        • Remote work has made my life better.

          No doubt. The flip of that is that folks aren't as productive. Tech folks are always going to tell you they are more productive at home. Of course they do, because it's more pleasant for them. They want to maintain that.

          If WFH was more productive, Apple would 100% endorse it. That's capitalism. If WFH was better for business then companies that didn't do it would eventually be out competed in their industry. Yet we've been farting around with WFH for decades and there's few if any major companies that have

          • Large corps rarely act in their own best interests right away. Having worked for quite a few of them proving it saves money, improves performance, etc is typically met with "that's not how we do it".

            I watched a fortune 100 company spend millions on a technology they never put in production and ultimately killed. Not because it wouldn't work, but because they couldn't adjust their policies to allow it to work. If I wasn't as productive as my in-house compatriots I wouldn't have a job. The fact is I push more

            • Work from home resistance is mostly middle managers afraid to lose their leashes and control, nothing more.

              There's one thing I hope we can agree on. Corporations like money. If working from home saved money and increased productivity (and hence profits) they'd do it.

              The desires of middle managers means jack all compared to the lust for a higher stock price. You could try to chock some of the resistance to WFH to a few naive / unenlightened managers but in decades of employees working from home and not, someone would have figured it out. Ultimately managers are rated on meeting project goals. If WFH furthered tha

  • They should not be focused on COVID in discussions, but about the company and their roles in it. Right now the job market is so hot that no sane employer goes to lengths to alienate a meaningful part of their workforce.

    But, you have a lot of egos at Apple, so not sure how effective a bottom-up analysis is going to be here.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Sebby ( 238625 )

      But, you have a lot of egos at Apple, so not sure how effective a bottom-up analysis is going to be here.

      Yup; when you have upper management type claiming "courage" as their reasoning for their decisions, without even having a clue about how insulting that is to people's intelligence, it's no wonder they're also out of touch and insulting with their own employees.

      • The bean counters are fretting about all that empty desk space and the people that decided to invest in a space donut are still there, which looks like a bad idea in hindsight.

        • Most of that is a non-issue long term; they could migrate everybody from Infinite Loop and leased space around Cupertino and solve vacancy pretty quickly if it was. From the limited direct experience I have had with Apple, the problem is that you have “superstar” SVPs that want to see their feifdom for the few hours a week they work out of the office themselves.

          Apple seems to need the sense of excitement in their workplace to keep up the charade that they are innovating.

    • Agreed. Covid is a straw man and only weakens the argument since we all (1) know covid & variants will eventually not be non-issue.

      The issue should be discussed on its merits. As demonstrated by the usual Slashdot discussion, there are plenty of anecdotes around WFH versus in office, but neither side really has much in the way of data to back their positions.

      It would be interesting if the 5,000 disgruntled Apple employees stopped chatting on Slack and put together some data around productivity, etc.

  • And nobody said good things happen.

  • Dear Apple Employees (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Wednesday July 28, 2021 @11:43PM (#61632959) Homepage Journal

    Feel free to join us and work remotely if you want.

    Sincerely,
    Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Netflix.

  • Corporations don't care about commute released CO2 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Eravnrekaree ( 467752 ) on Wednesday July 28, 2021 @11:52PM (#61632981)

    The situation with climate change looks increasingly bleak, but Apple, Google etc want to make sure their workers contribute as much as possible with CO2 releases in long commutes. Corporate environmental responsibility statements are pure hogwash. Also, people are more productive in a home office then they are in noisy distraction filled offices. Thats a fact. You can't concentrate as well with lots of noise and activity around you.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      That's a good start but you are going to have to wedge in systemic racism somewhere to get full social justice credit.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by Viol8 ( 599362 )

      Not all of us are antisocial aspies happy to sit like a mushroom in a room on our own all day, some of us like getting together and having face to face discussions and find we work better like that. Don't project your own inadequacies onto others.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      wife, kids, and pets are are more of a distraction and less respectful of my time than coworkers in an office.

    • Yeah, that is a highly subjective take on working from home.

      At my old office I had a well lit work space, ample space, and fellow employees who at least tried to respect my need for focus and silence at times. Sure, it could have been better. After all, it was an open office environment with a lot of glass doors which do an excellent job of bouncing the sounds around when someone isn't being quite. But pre-covid I had the option to work from home once a week no-questions asked, and rarely took it.

      I'm ful

      • Yeah, that is a highly subjective take on working from home. I'm full time work from home now (first COVID, then new job for an out of state company), and I'm sitting at an undersized desk, in the corner of my bedroom with my desk chair bumping into the foot of my bed if I turn too far to the right, and 5 people who feel like I should drop everything as soon as one of them wants to say anything to me - no matter how trivial it is, or how time sensitive the thing is that I'm working on.

        This. Way too many people think that their situation is everyone's situation. Until my son left home, it was a bit of a zoo around the house. Even now, I have to treat my home office like a secure facility. When the door is shut, enter only under great duress. I also have some nice Bose Noise cancelling headphones. And as you note, a lot of home offices are cramped and in multi use rooms. I've seen the pics people send.

        I haven't sent them pics of my office, because I'm lucky - 15 by 15 feet, air conditio

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Wow! You miss the point of my post so badly that you appear to have taken away the opposite of my intended message. Try reading the last part again, and focus a little bit more on the last 2 words specifically

          work from home is not some magical situation with no distractions and maximized productivity for all

          TO CLARIFY, my point was that everyone's work from home situation is different. SOME people are more productive from home as was asserted by the OP (Evanrekaree). SOME are not, and so prefer to work from the office (me pre-pandemic). and for SOME it is more-or-less a wash (Me after I switched jobs). T

    • The situation with climate change looks increasingly bleak, but Apple, Google etc want to make sure their workers contribute as much as possible with CO2 releases in long commutes. Corporate environmental responsibility statements are pure hogwash. Also, people are more productive in a home office then they are in noisy distraction filled offices. Thats a fact. You can't concentrate as well with lots of noise and activity around you.

      And if they can replace all of those employees with AIdroids, they will be all the more CO2 neutral or even negative.

      What's more, the former employees can stay at home, with a drastically lessened workload, relieving another form of stress. Carbon Neutral, Everyone at home, and less work. The millennial dream job.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I was wondering if there was a way to encourage companies to care about commuting. Maybe a tax based on employee days in the office per year or something. Can't really do it on the commute itself or it will disadvantage people who live further away, but doing it on days spent in the office means it will depend on how many days the job really requires them to be there.

      Even that is imperfect though, e.g. people who small apartments with no room to work at home will be disadvantaged.

      The UK Labour Party has pro

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Extremely high house prices are the most common issue.

          At least with fully remote people can move somewhere cheaper and get some space.

          • Amen to this. Housing prices are way too high, imo. The value of a house should go down as the condition deteriorates and it's no longer new. Not up. The market is clearly a bubble when the value of used goods increases. Obviously there is some argument that the land raises in value but we should have enough land for that to not be a problem yet. Zoning creates artificial scarcity.

  • Slack?? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Sebby ( 238625 ) on Wednesday July 28, 2021 @11:55PM (#61632991)
    Mark Bober: [twitter.com]

    Biggest news here is that Apple actually uses Slack.

    • Everyone - all big enterprises - use Slack. I've heard rumors that inside Microsoft some teams use Slack. It's the new corporate death star running and taking 2.5GB of RAM at all times.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Dog-Cow ( 21281 )

        You seem to be a fucked-up moron, filled with hate towards something you can't understand. Slack, on my system, is using ~250MB. And I leave it running all the time; this is not a fresh launch.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Malc ( 1751 )

          What system is that? On mine it's 1.2GB

          PROCESS NAME MEMORY (MB)
          Slack 148.70
          chrome_crashpad_handler 1.10
          com.apple.audio.SandboxHel 0.73
          MTLCompilerService 9.60
          PlugInLibraryService 0.63
          Slack Helper 25.30
          Slack Helper 11.40
          Slack Helper (GPU) 297.60
          Slack Helper (Renderer) 710.90
          VTDecoderXPCService 23.50
          VTEncoderXPCService 12.00

          TOTAL 1241.46

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ghoul ( 157158 )
      Apple uses multiple channels including Jive, Confluence, Slack, iMessage. There really isnt a tool they havnt trialled at some time or the other.

  • I'm cancelling the interview, I have no interest in working for any company that censors their employees and is ignorant to the benefits of remote work.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Apple's loss is Walmart's gain ;)

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Eh... cancel if you want to work remotely because Apple leadership has been clear that it's not happening, but I wouldn't be quick to believe the media about the censorship of Slack channels. I work at Apple and checked out the remote work interest channel out of curiosity and it's still alive and kicking with no hints of being shut down and the non-work related ones that are far more interesting like the ubiquiti and investing channels are going strong.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Duds ( 100634 )

        And they would be mad to actually do it because all that'd happen instantly is there would be a discord created to discuss the exact same things the same way except Apple themselves wouldn't be able to see what was being said.

  • Amusing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DuroSoft ( 1009945 ) on Thursday July 29, 2021 @01:03AM (#61633111) Homepage
    They don't want to deal with the fact that their multi-billion dollar campus is worth $0 in a WFH economy. I wonder how many executives will be on the chopping block for that one.

    • I wonder how many executives will be on the chopping block for that one.

      Only one, and he's dead.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by functor0 ( 89014 )
      There's no way that anyone could have predicted the pandemic so I don't see why anyone would possibly be penalised for it.

      • There's no way that anyone could have predicted the pandemic so I don't see why anyone would possibly be penalised for it.

        No penalties? Sure. They're flush with cash anyway, not like they're hurting to pay the mortgage.

        No way to predict it? Bullshit.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

      • The tech for working from home was in place already. The dumb decision was to spend billions to force thousands of people to burn thousands of gallons of gas each day to go to a place none of them needed to be at to do their jobs. It was a dumb decision the moment it was made.

  • Tell highly trained tech employees they cannot communicate. Surely they will not find other ways other than the Slack channels the company provides them with...

    • Can they find alternative ways? Sure. But will they? I wouldn't be so sure. There is likely a group highly interested in this topic that will, but most employees are likely in the "maybe would be nice" group and if you introduce inconvenience into the process they may decide not to bother.

  • Not quite (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I saw the news and was surprised, and as an employee I decided to hop on a few non-work related channels, even the one where people are bitching and moaning about not being able to work remotely and they're all still fully functional with no hints of being shut down. I'm not sure where the reports are getting their information, but it doesn't reflect reality.

    • I saw the news and was surprised, and as an employee I decided to hop on a few non-work related channels, even the one where people are bitching and moaning about not being able to work remotely and they're all still fully functional with no hints of being shut down. I'm not sure where the reports are getting their information, but it doesn't reflect reality.

      I'm burning prior mods to respond because this is the second post I've seen here that says the same thing. I understand why Apple employees would post AC; but that "bitching and moaning" pejorative in this one makes me wonder if Apple is engaging in damage control.

      OTOH I guess the source of the original report might also be Apple employees looking for more leverage.

  • Employees felt "[Apple] isn't listening to their demands."

    Here's a hint for working something out with your employer (or really, anyone): don't start by calling them demands.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by robi5 ( 1261542 )

      sometimes in history, today's worker demands are tomorrow's basic rights, and it'll be weird to look back and see how backward we used to be

  • That's just evil because these workers, being spread around the world, now can't discuss these issues in person either

  • Surely we have better things to discuss than a corporation not allowing employees to use their network/servers to discuss topics that aren't popular with management.

    That was in agreements that I signed ~20 years ago . . . expect it to be enforced.

    Apple shutting down a channel it can monitor and potentially judge people based on their opinion, while not altruistic, it's downright decent when you think of how other companies are currently handling that.

    It's Thursday . . . I think I'm finally getting

  • Ham-Fisted Measure Will Meet Streisand Effect (Score:5, Insightful)

    by luis_a_espinal ( 1810296 ) on Thursday July 29, 2021 @09:17AM (#61634003)

    "Apple recently began cracking down on Slack channels that aren't directly related to work,"

    And that's pretty fucking dumb. All it did is push employees' concerns to other channels. So no Apple will fly blind. Whoever thought of this was an idiot.

    The best approach would have been to let it happen where Apple could watch. Let employees blow steam and see if you can meet them in the middle, or offer a compromise where they could meet Apple in the middle.

    With Delta and the new Colombian variant flying around, it is not unreasonable for workers in general, and knowledge workers in particular, to consider remote work options. Surely some will use it as an excuse, and a few others will simply slack around.

    But those are exceptions, not the general rule. People in general try and want to do the right thing, for their families and employers (sans these anti-mask/anti-vaxx covidiots that are fucking it up for the rest of us.)

    So why slam the door on your own workers. All this does is create dissatisfaction. This ensures that many will start considering getting out of dodge. If restaurant workers are giving a big "fuck you" to asshole customers and employers, you can bet that well-paid workers with much better options will do the same.

    And don't be mistaken, the most valuable workers in any company typically are the ones with options. And some workers in Apple will exercise that option.

    This is not how you treat your employers. Bad move.

  • Apple: "We need everyone to come back to the office so that we can foster culture when people just chat about off work topic things." Apple Employees: *Use slack to talk about off work topic things.* Apple: "We're shutting down the conversations about off work topic things over the work communication platform. Everyone come back to the office to talk about off topic things."

  • My take, is that remote work was not part of the original contract signed on to.
    There was a clear expectation, to be on campus working, right from day one.
    Covid changed neither my original offer letter, nor my expectations.
    I fully expect to be back on site, as soon as allowable.

    Remote work is a nice perk, but it was not agreed upon.
    If I wish to avoid working in office, conditions agreed to for employment, I fully expect to need to individually bargain such an agreement (likely to fail), or find a new job.

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