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Businesses Apple

Apple Employees Will Return To Offices February 1 in a Hybrid Work Pilot (theverge.com) 45

Apple employees will return to offices starting February 1st as part of a hybrid work pilot and will be able to work remotely for four weeks a year. From a report: First reported by The Information, employees learned of the news Thursday via an internal memo from CEO Tim Cook. The company had previously offered two weeks of remote work per year but added two more weeks to give "more opportunity to travel, be closer to your loved ones, or simply shake up your routines," Cook's memo said. The pilot will start workers at one or two days in the office, then in March, workers will come to the office to work on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. They'll be able to work from home on Wednesdays and Fridays. Some employees may be asked to come into the office four or five days a week if their roles require more time in the office.
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Apple Employees Will Return To Offices February 1 in a Hybrid Work Pilot

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  • As the security arrangements in the office are much better than at homes.

    Of course there will still be the supply chain leaks, but lately it seems a lot of the leak have come from actual Apple employees.

  • I hope... (Score:2, Funny)

    by cayenne8 ( 626475 )
    ...I never have to go back to working in an office.

    Geez, I've been working from home full time for like 9+ years.

    I would have to go out and buy a whole set of new business casual attire, as that I really don't have much now I could wear to an office.

    Hell, I've been asking my CPA if I could write off t-shirts and boxer shorts as "work attire".

    :D

    • Imagine your job is to appear on television, doing the weather or whatever. Good for you! Obviously you need a haircut and something nice to wear. The bad news is those are personal items and are not tax-deductible in The US. However if your employer hires a make-up artist or a barber to work on your appearance, and has a wardrobe department you're golden!

      I like taxes, because that's how we pay for civilization.
      • Obviously you need a haircut and something nice to wear. The bad news is those are personal items and are not tax-deductible in The US.

        It's pretty much all deductible, if you are a contractor.

        I've been working through my own S-Corp for many many years.

        ;)

        Some contracts require you to show up at their sites....or they used to.

  • by crow ( 16139 ) on Thursday November 18, 2021 @02:10PM (#61999801) Homepage Journal

    Dell goes back in the US on January 4th. Employees will generally have the option to be fully remote, hybrid, or fully in the office. They expect most employees to be hybrid.

  • by erp_consultant ( 2614861 ) on Thursday November 18, 2021 @02:36PM (#61999883)

    Of course that only applies to the people that don't decide to up and leave the company. Four weeks a year? Wow...big flippin deal. I'm not suggesting that everyone should work from home all the time. But if you are in an IT position then trying to make a case for people coming into the office 3 days a week is a weak case indeed. Same goes for customer support roles. For more collaborative roles, like marketing, design, etc. then sure it makes sense to spend the majority of your time in an office.

    These sort of top down edicts are really disappointing coming from a supposedly progressive company like Apple. I get that they dropped a billion dollars on that shiny new circular office complex, which is probably a good part of the reason behind them wanting butts in seats. But forcing people to go to that office traps them in the hyper expensive silicon valley real estate market and contributes to already horrific traffic in the Bay area. Recall, this is the same company that has stopped shipping headphones and charging bricks with the iPhone for supposed "Green" reasons. If they really wanted to reduce pollution they should allow folks to work from home where it makes sense to do so. Instead, in typical hypocritical silicon valley fashion, they say one thing and do another.

    • by bws111 ( 1216812 )

      Well, write up a business case about why it is absolutely not essential for you to be in the office. Don't be surprised when they say 'we looked at your proposal, and you are right. Your job has been offshored. Thank you'.

      • When I used to work in the office I spent the majority of my day on the phone with offshore folks.
      • I did and thankfully my employer agreed with me. I now work from home full time. As far as my job being off-shored....if they wanted to do that they would have done that already.

      • If your main contribution to your company is your proximity, then I can see why you would be worried about being replaced with a cheaper body. But in that case, you should also be worried about being replaced by a local body.

      • There is vast and rather perilous gulf between 'doesn't need to be in office very often' and 'can be done by a body shop in India.' I suspect that not making that distinction is likely to soon be a major cause of business failures.

        As an anecdote, my job could be done from anywhere with an internet connection provided the person doing it kept the same hours I work. Given the piece of the business I handle starts and ends early it would actually be more natural for someone two time zones East of our home o
    • The I.T. support analyst role I've got now lets me work from home 2 days each week -- very similar to Apple's proposal here. If you don't like the problems with traffic and hyper-expensive real-estate in the Bay area? Well -- best idea is to move out of that area, to where things are more sane ... like anyplace in the entire continental USA except for a few comparably overcrowded cities on the opposite coast?

      Assuming you can justify living out there, I think you have to expect offices will run pretty simil

      • It's not a one size fits all solution that's for sure. In your IT support analyst role I suspect you have to make in person visits to people to solve various computer issues. A lot of that stuff can be done remotely but some of it is better handled by just going over to their cube and talking to them.

        I hear what you're saying about the disconnected feeling. Personally I don't feel that but I know people that do. For me I would rather give up the hour and a half round trip commute for the convenience of work

        • by King_TJ ( 85913 )

          Well, I've worked in one of those scenarios too... where my boss didn't care if I came into the office or not, as long as the work got done and I was going about it sensibly. (Yes, there were times when the right thing to do was to come into the office. For example, maybe they just hired someone new and there was an expectation that you'd try to introduce yourself in person, since they'd be contacting you regularly to help with issues? Or maybe it was a day when an important meeting was taking place and i

      • It becomes a really "disconnected" feeling when you're stuck in your same 4 walls at home, only communicating with co-workers via chat or videoconferences.

        Which is what people do even when they're colocated, while they work remotely with systems on a different continent. It's pointless, counterproductive, and requires a lot of expensive real estate. Heck, several years ago I was flown across the country for an interview, saw one person on-site, and did 4 video conference interviews. It was both surreal and inefficient.

        The hybrid approach is really nice.

        It's a management cop-out.

        You solve all of that "out of touch" stuff and going stir-crazy at home, while still having 2 known days each week where you don't have a commute and can be there to get the door to sign for packages, let repair people in, etc.

        That home still has to be in whatever random, often expensive and/or crappy place $office is. I am disinclined to

  • by Maury Markowitz ( 452832 ) on Thursday November 18, 2021 @02:43PM (#61999907) Homepage

    > will be able to work remotely for four weeks a year

    For all the noise Apple makes about green power and so forth, 1/3rd all of GHG in the US comes from people driving to and from work. 4 weeks a year is pissing in the wind.

    I'm perfectly willing to accept that working from home may indeed reduce overall throughout by 10 to 15% or whatever they're claiming. But the planet burning up and Cali becoming a wasteland (well, LA...) is going to have rather more effect on the bottom line that working from home.

    Grow some balls Apple, its time you led by example outside package design.

    • by larryjoe ( 135075 ) on Thursday November 18, 2021 @03:12PM (#62000005)

      1/3rd all of GHG in the US comes from people driving to and from work.

      Not contending that commuting doesn't significantly contributes to climate change. However, the 1/3 is not correct. According to the EPA (at least for 2019) [epa.gov], all transportation accounts for 29% of carbon emissions. 82% of the 29% is from "passenger cars, medium- and heavy-duty trucks, and light-duty trucks", and less than 20% [transportation.gov] of that 82% is from commuters. So, overall less than 4.7% of US carbon emissions are from commuting. Still significant, but not one-third.

      • 82% of the 29% is from "passenger cars

        and less than 20% of that 82% is from commuters.

        And those commuters drive those passenger cars.

      • There effectively WAS no EPA during the Cheeto administration, so their numbers are suspect. Notable at the above link is the avoidance of the most effective way to decrease the contribution of agriculture.
    • WFH is as much a perk as is quitting smoking.
    • 4 weeks a year is pissing in the wind.

      it's 4 weeks of full-time WFH, the rest of the time is hybrid (2-3 days in the office). Not ideal, but a lot better than the '4 weeks' quote suggests.

  • And now you know why we have the COVID-19 vaccine requirements for employment

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