$Apple Inc (AAPL.US) $Another double compromise.
In the past year, Apple Inc has postponed the full resumption plan to return to the company several times. What is a headache for Apple Inc's senior management is that every time they put forward a return to work plan, they will encounter strong opposition from a large number of employees, and even threaten to resign. In the end, it was the employer Apple Inc who compromised, and both of them postponed the timetable of going back to work.
According to the step-by-step rework arrangement announced by Apple Inc in March this year, the vast majority of employees will return to work every day from April 11 to three days a week on May 23 (you can choose flexibly on Wednesdays and Fridays). But Apple Inc also allows employees to work remotely for up to four weeks a year.
This is the fourth time in a year that Apple Inc has announced his plan to return to work. Cook seems determined this time. "this is a long-awaited milestone, a positive sign that we can interact with our colleagues in a more comprehensive way." However, perhaps Cook himself did not expect that he would not be able to achieve his goal this time.
Last week, Apple Inc once again announced the suspension of the full resumption plan to allow employees to return to the office. According to the latest resumption plan, some employees go back to work two days a week, and if they feel "uncomfortable" at the company, they can also choose to work remotely. Apple Inc also said that the company will closely monitor the changes in the epidemic and evaluate and adjust its work policy every two weeks. The news was welcomed by thousands of employees who did not want to go back to work.
Musk, the ubiquitous richest man and opinion leader in the world, did not miss the opportunity to ridicule Apple Inc. He retweeted the news that "Apple Inc postponed his employees' plan to go back to work," along with a picture of a fat, sleepy dog that read, "put on your gym costume and watch TV." mocked Apple Inc's employees for not going back to work because they were lazy.
Musk has not liked Apple Inc for a long time. When Apple Inc poached Tesla, Inc. 's employees in 2015, he openly mocked that "Apple Inc is Tesla, Inc. 's graveyard," meaning that only employees who could not survive by Tesla, Inc. would go to Apple Inc. When Tesla, Inc. was at a low ebb in 2018, Musk tried to negotiate a takeover with Apple Inc, but Cook didn't want to see him at all. Of course, Tesla, Inc. 's share price soared several times later, and Musk became the richest man in the world.
Perhaps Musk cannot understand the concessions made by Internet companies to their employees. After all, Tesla, Inc. 's corporate culture is efficient implementation, and he has never concealed his admiration for the efficient productivity of Chinese factories. Last month Musk even joked about turning Twitter headquarters into a homeless shelter because most Twitter employees chose to telecommute, leaving Twitter's huge headquarters in downtown San Francisco empty.
The technical backbone resigned in protest
Back to Apple Inc, as in the case of several times before, the reason for Apple Inc's senior management to withdraw the policy this time is also from internal and external pressure. After Apple Inc announced his plan to return to work, an online group called "Apple Together" issued an open letter calling on Apple Inc management to reconsider the so-called mixed work arrangements, give employees more flexibility to arrange workplaces, and telecommute with online collaborative tools such as Slack, eliminating the burden of commuting back and forth.
Sina Technology saw at the bottom of the open letter that more than 3000 people signed in support, including 1445 former and current employees of Apple Inc (unnamed), accounting for less than half of the total number of signatures. In other words, only a few hundred employees may sign here. Apple Inc employs more than 100000 people in the United States, including retail store employees.
Surprisingly, whether to go back to work in the office was originally an internal matter for Apple Inc, but these employees chose to put pressure on Apple Inc's management through external public opinion in the form of an external open letter, rather than feedback to senior management through internal channels. This seems to run counter to Apple Inc's consistent culture of secrecy.
Are Apple Inc employees really so resistant to going back to work? An employee of Apple Inc's hardware research and development department told Sina Technology that at least his colleagues around him did not show so much resistance; Apple Inc has tens of thousands of employees, and only a few should be strongly opposed to going back to work, but they stood up and spoke out publicly, attracting media reports and exerting some pressure on the management.
Perhaps Apple Inc's senior management is more worried about the brain drain. This "inflexible way of working" company image will not only affect Apple Inc's recruitment of outstanding technical personnel, but also lead to the loss of existing technical backbones. When Apple Inc announced his step-by-step resumption plan last summer, many employees threatened to resign. It seems that these people are not just talking.
Earlier this month, Apple Inc machine learning director Ian Goodfino (Ian Goodfellow) announced his resignation in a high profile. The direct reason for his resignation is Apple Inc's policy of returning to work. "I firmly believe that more flexibility should have been the best policy for my team," Goodfino wrote in a resignation letter to department employees. "
The news not only attracted media attention, but also alarmed the management of Apple Inc. Although he is only 36 years old, Goodfino is no ordinary technical talent. He is a recognized industry technologist in the field of AI and the designer of the Generation-versus-Network (GAN). The generation of adversarial network makes the two neural networks learn from each other in the way of game, which brings subversive innovation to machine learning technology.
In 2019, Apple Inc spent a lot of money poaching Goodfino from Alphabet Inc-CL C to become the machine learning technical director of the Special projects Department (Special Projects Group). This special project department is Apple Inc's new product research and development department, which reports directly to Cook; although the specific work cannot be disclosed, it is speculated that Goodfino is likely to be in charge of Apple Inc's self-driving technology.
At this level of Daniel, salary is no longer the main consideration, but comfort is the focus. Goodfino earned more than $1 million a year in Alphabet Inc-CL C a few years ago. Now, dissatisfied with Apple Inc's policy of going back to work, Goodfino has chosen to return to Alphabet Inc-CL C (this is his third time as Alphabet Inc-CL C) and join the DeepMind team of Alphabet, the parent company. This reason for leaving really embarrassed Apple Inc.
Free to choose to work remotely
So, why are those Apple Inc employees so resistant to going back to work? The epidemic is of course a direct reason. The Omicron mutation is still spreading rapidly. Santa Clara County, where Silicon Valley is located, has a population of 2 million, with an average increase of more than 1000 in seven days.
On the other hand, it seems that Americans don't care about Omicron with mild symptoms. Restrictions have been lifted across the country, and the strictest Silicon Valley no longer requires indoor masks. Silicon Valley Highway 101 is congested every day, and shopping malls and restaurants are already crowded. Since daily life has returned to normal, why don't you want to go back to the office?
According to a survey of telecommuters by the Bay area News Group (Bay Area News Group) in November, the main reasons for their reluctance to go back to work include unwillingness to put up with commuting (80 per cent), concerns about the epidemic (63 per cent), autonomous working hours (59 per cent) and being more comfortable at home (55 per cent). Nearly half of the respondents thought it was more efficient to work from home, but half admitted that collaboration in the office was indeed very efficient.
Another employee of Apple Inc's software department told Sina Technology that he had no objection to going back to work, but what made many people unhappy was not that they had to go back three days a week, but that the company did not allow people to telecommute freely. And this is the biggest difference between Apple Inc's return to work policy and other large enterprises. Apple Inc employees are dissatisfied with the lack of flexibility and autonomy.
Of course, there are inherent reasons for Apple Inc to actively promote going back to work. Unlike Internet companies such as Meta and Twitter, Apple Inc's integrated software and hardware research and development requires more internal cooperation and higher confidentiality requirements, so Cook prefers employees to come back to work. After the outbreak of COVID-19, as employees were unable to travel smoothly between China and the United States, Apple Inc's R & D work was also significantly dragged down and delayed. The postponement of the release of iPhone 12 in 2020 is a direct impact. Before the outbreak, Apple Inc sent hundreds of engineers from headquarters to China every month.
But they all work in Silicon Valley, and there are differences only when there are comparisons. In this respect, employees of Internet enterprises such as Alphabet Inc-CL C and Meta do enjoy more freedom. Goodfino returned directly from Apple Inc to Alphabet Inc-CL C, which highlights the gap in this respect. An employee at Alphabet Inc-CL C headquarters revealed that although Alphabet Inc-CL C announced the mixed work system as early as April, hoping that employees would return to the company three days a week, this is not a mandatory requirement. Employees can decide for themselves, "one day you don't want to go to the company." just say hello to the boss, it's the same output at home anyway. "
Moreover, Alphabet Inc-CL C employees have more choices. They can apply for a period of time or long-term telecommuting, or they can change their mind and apply to go back to work at the company. However, compared with the empty office space of Apple Inc's spaceship headquarters (which encountered the COVID-19 epidemic one year after its official launch), the office space of Alphabet Inc-CL C's headquarters is relatively tight, and it is not so easy to go back to work.
The Alphabet Inc-CL C headquarters employee explained, "if you apply for long-term telecommuting, your position may be assigned to other colleagues, and then you may not have a vacancy if you want to come back to work." The company has hired a lot of people in the past two years, and many newcomers don't even have their own positions. "
The way you work has changed.
Since the full outbreak of the epidemic in March 2020, employees of many technology companies in Silicon Valley have experienced more than two years of home work, and their pace of life and work style have also changed. Many people have left Silicon Valley, moved to surrounding areas a few hours away, or even moved out of state. Now let them go back to the office and get used to experiencing the pressure of high-speed commuting twice a day in the morning and evening, which is not so easy to accept.
For many employees of technology companies, this choice is natural and practical, especially for young people who do not have children. Why put up with high prices and rents in Silicon Valley when you can work anywhere when you are allowed to work from home?
The data don't lie. From 2020 to 2021, San Francisco's emigration rate reached 56000, a drop of 6.3 per cent, making it the region with the highest population outflow in the US, second only to New York's 6.6 per cent. While San Mateo County in Silicon Valley ranks fourth in the United States with 3.2% of migrant population, Santa Clara County ranks fourth in the United States with 2.3% of the population, and nearly 50,000 people choose to move with their families. By contrast, the cities with the largest population migration in the same period are Dallas, Houston, Austin and other cities in Texas, where low taxes and low prices obviously played an important role.
Despite high inflation in the United States over the past two years, with average rents soaring 16%, rents in the San Francisco Bay area have not soared, but are lower than they were before the outbreak stopped in March 2020, according to a report on apartment rents released by Apartment List. In a sense, Silicon Valley is one of the few parts of the United States where rents are still lower than they were two years ago.
Of course, this does not mean that Silicon Valley has become livable. In April, the average monthly rent for an one-bedroom in San Francisco was $2900, 3.3% lower than it was two years ago, and the rent in Santa Clara county in South Bay was 1.3% lower than it was two years ago. By contrast, rents in holiday retirement areas like Miami, Florida, have soared by 34%.
Amy, a young employee at Meta, applied for telecommuting last year and moved from Silicon Valley to Denver, Colorado. Although this means a pay cut, she, who loves skiing, is very satisfied with it. Living in Silicon Valley, skiing requires a five-hour one-way drive to Lake Taihao and high weekend hotel fees, while Colorado is a paradise for outdoor sports, and she has a good time around almost every weekend. "back to Silicon Valley? That's not the life I like. Although my income here is a little less, my happiness in life has improved too much. "
Live and work elsewhere
Although Internet companies such as Alphabet Inc-CL C, Meta and Twitter allow employees to apply for long-term telecommuting, leaving Silicon Valley also means accepting different wage cuts because tax rates vary from region to region. This makes many employees who want to live a more comfortable life and do not want to get less money hesitate. The shared hostel website Airbnb stands out in this respect with its humanized policy and becomes a leader in employee welfare.
While Apple Inc's employees protested by resigning and demanding the right to telecommute, Airbnb announced that it would allow employees to telecommute permanently, and no pay cut was needed no matter where they worked. Brian Chesky, co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, says the office has become "a thing of the past in the pre-digital era". "the office as we understand it is over, and now we have to move on."
Chesky made it clear that over the past two years, Airbnb has allowed employees to telecommute, and instead of reducing productivity, it has improved. And allowing employees to choose their own office space also helps to attract more talent. After Airbnb announced full telecommuting, the job page received more than 800000 hits. Obviously, everyone likes the benefits of Airbnb, and working in any corner of the world can enjoy the remuneration package of Silicon Valley.
But Chesky also admits that the existence of an office still makes sense and that it is a space for cooperation. But he believes that the mixed work system of going back to work three days a week by companies such as Apple Inc is not sustainable. Airbnb's choice is to get employees together for a week every quarter so that they can collaborate more purposefully. No matter what kind of work system is adopted, improving office efficiency and attracting talents is the first priority.
After all, Airbnb's service is to let people "live elsewhere", and it is logical to allow their employees to "work elsewhere". For a long time, Chesky, a billionaire worth more than $8 billion, also had a home in the four seas, constantly wandering in various cities and experiencing his own residential services.