Interesting how cherry picking quotes can push whatever narrative you want. In a different article, it said “while there are advantages to the temporary system, a physical presence at the office is irreplaceable, Cook said.” https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/09/22/apple-ceo-tim-coo...
Money aside, that building is a marketing vehicle. It's meant to show Apple in the posh, advanced, and sustainable light it wants to be seen (whether that image is true or not is another question, but such is marketing).
It was also built to draw in new talent, but in a pandemic it's probably not the attractor they hoped it would be. I doubt Cook is losing sleep over it, but the pandemic definitely messed with his long term plans (like most everyone else, of course).
I thought the building was a marketing stunt. Apple has 137k employees and the campus seems to have a 2k employee capacity.
Some funny bits from Wikipedia
> The use of special wood as a construction material was reported to be the subject of a 30-page guideline.
> The design of door handles was reported to be the subject of a one and a half year debate, involving several revisions before the Apple management gave its approval.
Thank you for sharing this. The Bloomberg quote seems to be literally the opposite of what he said. Looks like media has decide "we are going remote" headline gets the clicks
Perhaps you couldn't read the article because of the paywall, but it does include the following:
> Cook said 10% to 15% of Apple employees have gone back to the office and he hopes the majority of staff can return to the company’s new campus in Silicon Valley sometime next year.
The CEO said he goes into the office at different points during the week and he noted that remote work is “not like being together physically.” Working in the office sparks creativity such as during impromptu meetings, he added.
Overall it's a balanced article that shows Cook both acknowledging WFH benefits and reiterating the perceived advantages of the office.
No it's not the opposite. Tim Cook made two statements to bulid a slightly nuanced thesis, and both articles presented the nuance, and some commenters are inventing a one-sided straw argument to attack.
No they didn't, and that's the problem. It's not a "straw argument".
Cook, in an interview, said something that included both a pro-remote statement and a pro-office statement. The AppleInsider article included both of these statements. Bloomberg, OTOH, only included the pro-remote statement in their article.
Exactly this! Journalist should report "from all perspectives". But today rarely we see this - just look CNN and Fox News - only a single perspective is reported on both sides! "It's lying by omission."
Or, both thing can be true. He can believe a physical office is necessary, while also believing changes should be made to make it easier for people to sometimes work from home.
Beside the point of media narratives, I think it tends to depend on the type of work being done. IMO, it's a lot easier to effectively collaborate remotely on most types of software, particularly cloud/web software. It's much tougher to imagine it working out well for troubleshooting electrical or mechanical issues in hardware prototypes.
There's too many tests that can only be done hands-on and require expensive and delicate instruments. Too many issues that can come up with engineers using different physical prototype hardware and different instruments, misunderstanding communication about what is being measured where, misinterpreting results. And too much time overhead in shipping things around the country constantly.
This is a necessary consequence of compressing any non-trivial idea into a single headline, and if you assume without evidence that the only two possible narratives are "no remote" and "all remote".
Both articles, despite your insinutation of different narratives, contain the same quote "I don't believe that we'll return to the way we were, because we found that there are some things that actually work really well virtually,"
>Both articles, despite your insinutation of different narratives, contain the same quote "I don't believe that we'll return to the way we were, because we found that there are some things that actually work really well virtually,"
The actual quote is:
>"In all candor, it's not like being together physically, and so I can't wait for everybody to be able to come back into the office. I don't believe that we'll return to the way we were, because we found that there are some things that actually work really well virtually," Cook said. "But things like creativity and the serendipity that you talk about, these things, you depend on people kind of running into each other over the course of a day. We have designed our entire office such that there are common areas where people congregate and talk about different things, and you can't schedule those things."
And both articles do not contain this same quote. The Bloomberg article only contains a fragment of that quote, which seems to be specifically cherry picked to further a narrative.
Being on the ground at the fruit company, this quote is representative of reality there. Remote is a dud for well over half of employees. If remote work was ever going to be a smash, it was going to be with everyone doing it simultaneously. Remote work will be chilled after this I think.
Yeah "Apple CEO undecided on remote" is a boring headline, but it would be news. To alter it to one extreme or the other is what we call "fake news", in other words, lies to get you to click.
Cook's quotes for multiple viewpoints enable each media conglomerate to have writers champion their leadership's talking points for this moment in time.
Meanwhile, Apple has one of the world's best 3D office spaces for experiencing and designing the future of augmented-reality workspaces. Would Apple spend years of R&D on ultra-precise location sensing (Ultra Wideband, WiFi6) and 3D-imaging (Lidar, FaceID) to surrender the future of digital workspaces to VR and Zoom?
hmm i’ve thought about this but thought it would be way too expensive. any more details on how you did this? what area do you live in? how much approx was it? you let them in your house in the afternoon and they cook and have it ready for when you go home?
I just went through my bookmarks and quite a few of the links are dead... I've been doing this for decades so that's not a surprise. And not really a big deal. Most of the progress I've seen has been made in the last five or so years. Technical interviews might be horrible now, but they used to be way worse!
A LOT of the articles I've read over the years I have not bookmarked because my idea of a good technical interview is the opposite of what those articles recommended.
I normally read everything interview related I come across in HN or Reddit programming subreddits but I'll also do a search every six months or so and see if anything interesting comes up.
Although I have cherry-picked advice from reading many articles over the years, more importantly I've tried really hard to come up with an interview process I myself would enjoy as a candidate. That factor is very important to me because I think the interviewing process sucks at many companies. It's painful for everyone involved and ineffective. I would tolerate painful and effective. But I think it can be somewhat painless and effective.
I remember getting at least a few valuable ideas from these:
Also ask someone in HR what soft skills you need to improve related to interviewing. And then take classes based on that.
Most importantly, and as the article suggested, interview candidates with another person who has more experience interviewing. With a variety of people. You'll learn the most by doing interviews alongside people who are better at it than you. Practice really is what makes perfect. Especially if someone can coach you.
One final thought, recruiters aren't going to give away the store and teach you how to be a great interviewer, but you can pick their brain with questions. If your company will pay for a recruiter then always go back to them with doubts about your process after every interview. They want you to hire their candidates so they will help out a little with advice. I've heard some great advice from recruiters themselves.
This may be the Apple fanboy in me talking, but I think Apple was in a tough spot- seems like the tMBP has supplied-constrained components (I think it was hard to get in-store even 3 months after the launch), so their options were- delay it until they had a large number of laptops built already, charge an "acceptable" price and have people wait months for one, or charge more and have the price keep demand down. They went with the last option because, well, they can. I'm guessing the price should go down soon now that supply has somewhat caught up with demand.
They don't often lower prices. Their justification for that is, "Well we don't raise prices either..." but I don't expect them to drop prices at any point before announcing the next gen of MBP. This has been their model forever.
Never raise prices? Ha! Try living overseas. Apple regularly raises and lowers prices to match local currency to USD exchange rates. They also seem quicker to raise them in response to exchange rates than to lower them. I can't blame them for the adjustments themselves but the raise fast, lower slow, behaviour is irritating and stinks of profiteering.
There were lots of question on whether they could monetize on mobile when they IPO'd. I think their stock went down 33-50% from their IPO price until they showed they could make the transition.
Hmm, I've had the watch for about 6 months too. I agree with the review that I rarely switch from the main screen, and almost never use any apps. Charging is a little bit of a pain but not nearly as much of a dealbreaker as he's making it seem. And I feel like the sports band is super easy to use and way better than normal watches.
It seems crazy that they would do that, but I thought the same when they got rid of the CD drive on a Mac, included only one port on the Macbook, etc. I know people claim it's to make the phone thinner, but I'm hoping there's other reasons that are driving the decision as well.
Well, yeah, if the company isn't doing well and leadership changes, obviously that'll trickle down to employees and culture. No one said it'll be like this forever at Netflix, but it does sound like they put a heavy emphasis on "culture" now.
