I don't think anyone (or, at least not many people) is arguing against working in the office if you have a specific need to be there. What people have an issue with is requiring a return to the office for no other reason than "group synergy".

Ironically, "group synergy" was given as the reason for cramming people into the open plan offices that everybody was glad to get away from.

I left a job over open office plans. I really hate it. And I am one of those tech + social people too. Like having people nearby.

But the distractions are everywhere. It is hard to flow. It is hard to have a phone call with a prospect or customer. Things get moved, borrowed, lost.

But mostly I hate it because everytime I have seen open plan, the people who set it up have big offices with windows looking out at the people they screwed over and seek to ultra micro manage. (And this is exactly what happened at the company I left)

"I saw you doing that, why?"

"How come you wander around several times a day?"

"Your desk is a mess"

And so it goes. Nope. Do not have time for that. Happy to work elsewhere or make less, whatever.

Anyway, they announced, I counter announced, and then was out before the move. They lost a few people, and that company was sold a while back.

Now pretty much everyone doing that work has a new email and works mostly from home! New owners saw no need for a group office scenario and has small teams all over the place. Given the nature of the work, that makes a ton of sense.

Funny how things can work.

Having talked with the old owner after all this went down, the real reasons were to save money and manage people and their relationships. Profound lack of trust.

“Group synergy” where “group” means “reduced real estate cost” and “synergy” means “fnord.”

Synergy means multiplication instead of addition when things are put together, like male and female oxen. You put them together in an open office and more oxen are sure to be produced.

Oxen are commonly castrated adult male cattle. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Ox

That’s not what synergy means. That’s also not how oxen work.

Do you ever notice the guys pushing the group synergy, generally have big offices?

Average office size : average cube size

An underrated ratio for measuring corporate inequality.

Bold of you to assume they even have cubes

I like this a LOT.

This guy is doing machine learning though. All he needs is an internet connection.

I understand the idea that hardware WFH is going to be a no-go, but software? We already had the revolutionary moment where the internet is everywhere.

That's not established without knowing if they're working on neural engine hardware, for example.

We can probably infer from the fact that they've been remote for 2 years that it is possible to do their job remotely.

Could also be the other way.

It could be that he wasn’t doing his job well remotely and hence the push to get him in.

I work for a large semiconductor company and during the pandemic the test engineers in the lab and IT staff were the only ones allowed into the office for the first year. Even the test engineers were allowed to take a lot of lab equipment home with them. The CEO did an all hands where he shared pics of all the lab people testing and evaluating chips at home.

Having a home lab is awesome!

In my case it is hobby fun rapidly turning professional. The way to fund hobby / new work is to get your investment at home to pay for itself. Free tools and gear essentially.

Early on, as I picked up skills and scored deals on equipment, I ended up able to take side gigs and or take on special projects. Sometimes I would do these on a "keep the gear" basis. No money changes hands. Recommended.

Pros:

Picking up new skills

Research on ones interest and terms

Flex time working is possible

Reduced commute

Work when ideation is high tide, so to speak

Cons:

It can be expected to work more

Personal / company boundaries are less clear (IP and overwork)

Can be expensive

Need space

Summary:

Personally, I have always had a lab at home, and I rarely take company gear home. Sometimes I have, but I try to buy my own, or the gear from the company.

I have had to make a few career jumps and the next one has pretty much been made possible by what I had at home and what I could do with it.

Be very careful about IP. The reward for that caution can be a real opportunity for you.

It can be the place where you show young people stuff they would never see otherwise and or, until much later. This happened for me as a teen and it was a huge boost! And it was where home lab started for me. My bedroom was my shop.

Of course, you gotta sort this for your scene too. The CEO letting people take gear home is nice and maybe a non issue for people. Depends on what one is doing and or plans to do.

Overall though, I deffo recommend doing it.

People are smart enough ( I'm sure there is a hiding bar at these companies) to go to the office if they require access to certain equipment which they cannot take home. Why impose a rule that doesn't make sense.

>The office is where the very expensive labs are.

I know right. I mean to be able to test his his AI algorithms, instead of just walking into the supercomputer room with a briefcase full of punchcards he would either have to make a long distance trip or else FedEx in his punchcards(and expose Apple to the risk of losing them or having them leak).

Sorry, this is 2022 and we have high speed Internet and networked computers. And we don’t have to physically load punchcard into then supercomputer.

Does your snark apply if he was working on development hardware for upcoming "Neural Engine" in a lab?

But why ML people have to be forced in the office ?

He’s a director and is most likely supposed to be an example.

“If the director isn’t coming in then why should I?”

Per his phrasing, part of the reason he's quitting is to be an example.

> "I believe strongly that more flexibility would have been the best policy for my team," Goodfellow said in the email.

Well, why should you? Nobody in that department needs to be at the office.

Totally. Just trying to look at it from Apple’s return to office perspective, regardless of whether it’s appropriate or not.

hard to say, perhaps access to future dev hardware accelerators (neural engines)

I think it’s fair to say that the people asking to be allowed to WFH know they can do their job properly while WFH.