BuzzBadpants t1_jde2gvs wrote
Apple is one of the few big tech companies that has managed to avoid layoffs since the pandemic. I wonder if fortunes are changing for them.
Azzymaster t1_jde9wda wrote
Probably making unpopular decisions in the hope people quit instead
[deleted] t1_jdeu1i7 wrote
[deleted]
rabidjellybean t1_jdexvmi wrote
Stop doing the extra work. They can't afford to fire you. If they did, it was a burning ship destined to crash.
[deleted] t1_jdf02e3 wrote
[deleted]
zUdio t1_jdf1cky wrote
Just work as long as you feel is good days’ work and then stop. If deadlines are missed, they’re missed. Don’t fret. If they fire you, they fire you, but it sounds like they really need you, otherwise you wouldn’t have all this work.
Don’t be rude about it and don’t say “no” ever. Just say, “yes, I can have it done by [whenever you can have it done by] and leave it at that. If they say, “that’s not good enough”, repeat yourself: “I understand; I can definitely get it to you by [repeat time period].
Don’t internalize the stress. You’re looking to “get everything done” instead of “working a 40-50”. Do the latter; stop worrying about the former. You will miss deadlines. It happens. Just be positive and never say, “no”; always make it positive sounding.
[deleted] t1_jdf1ocz wrote
[deleted]
zUdio t1_jdf2ifd wrote
I was in the same place as you recently until this just clicked for me. We enjoy knocking shit off the list and doing things for the team. We’re good at it and the team knows it. A lot of times the team and middle managers are also inundated with crazy CEOs spouting ambitious visions and shit that they now have to provide a plan for, so they go dump a bunch of half assed ideas on “doer” teams who now have to make sense of the gobbledegook so middle manager cna make their PowerPoint. Society is manic af right now.
AlanzAlda t1_jdgrrj8 wrote
Can confirm, my "doers" get a lot more work than the ones that need prodding and hand holding. As a manager I have limited time too. In the end though, I make sure they are rewarded with bonuses and promotions, but yeah, this is a thing.
Sorry_Decision_2459 t1_jdg0roh wrote
yeah you gotta remember, your health and well being is more important than their bottom line. When it’s lunchtime, you’re on lunch, you’re not helping the company with work. When it’s time to clock out, you don’t contemplate working overtime to finish projects, you clock out, go home, stop thinking about work, and leave it until tomorrow. Overtime pay is so heavily taxed anyway, it’s pretty much not worth it unless you’re hitting a certain threshold and stopping.
You aren’t their property, know your limits, and prioritize your life, time, and health first. When bosses start to realize employees post-pandemic care more about their time and health than their employers’ pockets and we won’t take their shit, they’ll eithe rhave to buckle, or learn to fully automate everytjing from the bottom up and eliminate the need for employees.
A_Contemplative_Puma t1_jdh21wu wrote
Overtime pay is taxed like every other additional dollar you earn, at your marginal income tax rate. It’s withheld at a higher rate, but you’d get that back at the end of the year come tax day.
Sorry_Decision_2459 t1_jdhiw66 wrote
You’re assuming that everyone would even GET a refund at the end of the year
rabidjellybean t1_jdf0mwk wrote
Don't give notice as punishment!
sfmasterpiece t1_jdeufkw wrote
You might be able to start a union if enough of your coworkers realize they're a good idea.
roflcopter44444 t1_jdewytj wrote
If you voluntarily leave they don't owe you severance. Its in their best interest to get people to quit vs firing them.
Vthttps t1_jdf8a08 wrote
Good resources will quit and bad resources stay. Not a great move
do_you_even_ship_bro t1_jde6bq3 wrote
Layoffs are short term stock gain, long term losses. You lose talent, have to pay tons of severance, and lots of efficiency loses due to distractions.
BuzzBadpants t1_jdel67g wrote
Is it really long term losses though? We’ve witnessed how companies were raising prices for goods because of supply chain issues, and then the supply chain is solved but the companies didn’t lower prices because they were finding they could make more money by producing fewer widgets.
If your goal as CEO is to make fewer widgets at a high markup, you don’t need as many employees
Amadacius t1_jdfg0ry wrote
That's just price discovery. But long term their goal is to make and sell more widgets at the higher markup.
Generally companies are expected to grow every single year. Whats your growth plan? How does firing employees help?
Powerlevel-9000 t1_jdf3tw1 wrote
I got downvoted when I said this before. Short term boost for the stock. But costs to rehire people are crazy. It could cost 6 figures to hire and train a knowledge worker.
Amadacius t1_jdfgd9r wrote
Its not even really a short term boost for the stock. Layoffs are seen as a massive red flag for the stock and news of them is usually followed by a drop in stock price.
That could be counteracted by funneling money to shareholders (dividends or buybacks), but since layoffs are expensive, you don't actually have more money to funnel to shareholders. You have to pay a ton of severance, and you will need the liquidity in a few months when you rehire anyway.
belleri7 t1_jdeprrg wrote
Depends on who you're firing haha. You can't assume 100% of employees are good at their job and mass layoffs are a good way to get rid of the not so stellar workers.
[deleted] t1_jdedvxe wrote
[removed]
0pimo t1_jdefum8 wrote
I don't think this is about that.
They built a gorgeous office purpose built for people to bump into each other at random to collaborate.
Fine to disagree with their philosophy, but if they're paying you to do a job and expect you to be in the office and you say "no" then don't expect to keep your job. You're basically telling Apple that you aren't a good cultural fit for the company.
I think some roles can be remote, but I'm also a firm believer that people being in the office leads to better team work and innovation. There have been plenty of times in my life where I've struck up a conversation with someone outside of my circle and it ended up with something great. Had I been remote, it may not have occured to me to talk to that person because other than seeing them in an org chart, I may not even know they exist.
mailslot t1_jdeld5l wrote
That office is more of a showroom than where actual work gets done. Most of the important projects are built in generic offices with cubicles & fluorescent lights from the 1980s. Apple employees that are privileged enough to work on secret projects, get to work even even more drab conditions. No doughnut office for them.
rayinreverse t1_jdewsd3 wrote
I did some projects (I’m in HVAC) at a few of these Apple sites. Just random brown buildings scattered throughout San Jose. Seemed odd considering the size of their HQ.
NoIncrease299 t1_jdf9ncl wrote
Yup. I interviewed at Apple about 10 years ago (or so - the donut was still under construction). Was all excited to visit Infinite Loop ... only to spend my day in some nondescript, beige, Initech-like building in Sunnyvale. Which is where I'd have been had gotten the gig.
Which I didn't. Wasn't all that mad about it TBH. REALLY didn't wanna move up there.
thalientvor t1_jdepk8y wrote
So what company are you a middle manager at? Out of curiosity.
0pimo t1_jdeqc1f wrote
I work in logistics and manufacturing, so me and my entire team have to show up to the office anyways to do actual physical work.
Even when I was in engineering and managing a global team I still went into the office and walked the production floor.
zUdio t1_jdf1kf3 wrote
> people being in the office leads to better team work and innovation
Not when you force people to be there and they know they they have the backs of their 29,999 peers; this is how you get your company sabotaged.... work slowwwww. Mess things up. Oopsies! Guess office work isn’t as efficient and now things are broken. Shucks.
GoNinjaGoNinjaGo69 t1_jdf69he wrote
your whole reply is based on a 1% thing that happened once in your life, lol. what a joke.
Squibbles01 t1_jdf6avm wrote
Yeah but when you get long covid from work Apple will drop you, and then your career is over.
jared555 t1_jdel6bq wrote
I think some of that could be recreated by having "for fun" discord/teams/slack channels. Maybe throw in some company sponsored game servers or something.
Of course some managers would have to ruin it though. "You must share between 2 and 4 pet pictures a week, spend 1 hour exactly in the open voice channels and place/destroy a minimum of 10,000 blocks on minecraft a month."
dislikes_redditors t1_jdelx8h wrote
imo being on slack or teams is a big distraction compared to being in the office
[deleted] t1_jdf9fgh wrote
[removed]
jared555 t1_jdfq1yx wrote
I meant you could recreate some of the "in person collaboration" crap by actually encouraging people to communicate while working from home.
ortho_engineer t1_jdfz2uy wrote
How do you know how to recreate some of the in person collaboration if you are not seeing it yourself?
I have a lot of engineers reporting up through me that started their academic, and now professional careers post-covid. We are all still "partially remote", and will be for the foreseeable future - we still try to come in on Wednesdays for those of us that enjoy interacting with another adult live and in person.
In summer 2021 I was in office looking at (blue) prints in a common area, everyone for the most part was still working from home, and I saw a feature callout that seemed way too bogus/weird to be coming from the lead design engineer, so right there I picked up the phone and conference-called the lead engineer and hashed it out - to the conclusion that yeah it is a weird way of controlling things, but its nuances actually work better than the alternatives.
It wasn't until a bit after hanging up and going on with my business, that I realized one of my fresh college grads was sitting in a cubicle just next to the area I was sitting in... and while he has never mentioned it, that was likely the very first time in his professional life that he heard two senior level engineers parse through a difference of opinions toward a successful conclusion.
I'm a Director now days, and I see the difference between "pre-covid" employees and "post-covid" employees grow every single day, and it concerns me - and not from an "I'm their boss" perspective, but rather, from the perspective someone that genuinely loves the art of engineering. I am very open with my team that what I want is to progress our craft, and that our company has already outlasted 3 generations of employees and will long outlast us - how how we move the field of engineering forward will last forever... Melodramatic, I know.
So much engineering, and just corporate live in general, is learned through osmosis. You learn how to lead by watching others lead. You learn how to navigate healthy conflict (which at the core is what engineering is - we progress our craft by being proven wrong) by watching others model the appropriate behavior live and in-person. When we first went home for Covid March 2020, I missed being able to just speak questions out loud to my cube mates so much that a few other engineers and I would call each other at ~8:30 in the morning and mute ourselves, and whenever one of us had a question we'd just unmute and ask, have a short discourse, and then back to mute and eventually end our ~8 hour phone call at the end of the work day.
I don't see our post-covid people having buddies like that anymore. My cross-functional peers and I are having to teach and mentor concepts that were never even topics of discussion pre-covid. These fresh engineers are so smart, but they are lost - like a baby animal without a parent to imprint.
Neverlookedthisgood t1_jdg7bf3 wrote
I agree with some points of your assessment. I was training some people pre-Covid, and things certainly changed after Covid wfh. You know what though, I also changed. Instead of getting up and writing on a whiteboard we hold Teams sessions, where I share my screen, or I produce how-to videos, or sometimes I have someone else share their screen while I instruct. Just because something was always done a certain way doesn’t mean that’s the way. We as mentors have to learn to adapt, and be inclusive in a virtual environment. Now instead of training one person at a time at their desk when they have a question, I reach the whole team if I need. While there are certain circumstances like you mentioned, that would not be an issue if you were discussing this in a group manner.
[deleted] t1_jdfu3p9 wrote
[removed]
jasonw754 t1_jdfercu wrote
If I meet someone outside my circle in the office, I have to put on all the technical filters or else the conversation isn’t going to last very long. Can’t really innovate, but there is a value in those people knowing that I exist.
I’m actually in a pretty ideal scenario right now. I work in the office a few days of the week, and yeah, there’s usually office socializing that cuts into my productivity, but all the people that need to ask me for stuff are mostly remote so I still get the benefit of asynchronous communication instead of getting pulled out of ‘the zone’ all day long.
tacobelle685 t1_jdentdu wrote
I’ve heard they’ve been secretly doing quiet layoffs (or redundancy in positions on product team), but they’ve been under the radar
Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments