For example, so many people are going about saying that they should be paid the same whether they work in SF or Topeka. And the assumption is that means people in Topeka will be paid SF salaries. And that may be true for a few years while we are still inside an extremely tight labor market. However, once there is the slightest bit of slack, it's far more likely that employees in SF will be paid Topeka salaries.

A few years further it's even more likely that people in Topeka and SF will be paid Bangalore or Rio or Mexico City salaries.

If there's no benefit from being geographically co-located, then the market should drive everyone to locate themselves in the cheapest geographies possible.

Now, this may not actually be true, even in a looser labor market, and there may be other reasons that would lead to salaries across Topeka and SF remaining at SF levels, but a clear eyed discussion would start from the earlier assumption, that salaries would drop, and then justify why that wouldn't happen.

What I'm seeing instead is that everyone is assuming that salaries will rise, and then operating based entirely on that assumption, without any discussion about why this may or may not be true.

It seems like the software developer market has much more hiring activity than pre-pandemic so I don't think equalizing to the cheapest geography/salary for remote is going to happen. It appears the trend upwards with a labor shortage is more the case that "A rising tide lifts all boats" type of thing where other markets are also trending upwards.

What would be more interesting about remote work is a discussion about the labor shortage. Is it because more people are leaving for more pay and causing a ripple effect in the place they left (like a game of musical chairs)? Are there a lot more VC, therefore startups and just more open positions?

Although this may force people to skip the overrated bubbles.

Some of that is possible remotely, but I don't think it would have been the same as there was a lot of on and off collaboration and chatting over the course of a month sitting side by side. Especially with someone senior who worked on a parallel team where we might not have talked as much if we'd only been meeting through meetings.

And as someone who's managed teams during the pandemic, I'll say that I saw WFH be especially challenging for some earlier-career folks and new hires, who I've seen trying to learn everything "on their own" and feeling a bit adrift. I went out of my way to have more 1:1 check-ins with them, set them up with other senior peers for regular video "coffee chats" and mentorship opportunities, and so on. But it was challenging.

I've also seen Slack be a powerful force for new or junior people asking questions about how to use a tool or the history of some decision (once we built a culture of "it's fine to just ask questions to this channel, no question is dumb"), especially across teams or offices, so async digital collaboration is powerful as well, of course.

So maybe it would be just different. But hard for me to wrap my head around.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Do you not think neuro-normativity is a real thing? Or do you think that neuro-divergent people will be worse off with a truly flexible work-from-home policy?

I don't think they are requesting that the office cease to exist. It sounds like they want a hybrid approach that has no required office time.

> A lot of these younger folks pushing for full time remote at the start of their career are putting themselves into a box I don't think they fully appreciate

This is condescending. It assumes that people who want full-time remote are not aware of the trade offs. I try to think better of people when they make an effort at self-determination. They know their lives better than I do, I imagine.

I've been working in this industry for 17 years now, and only five of that was in an office. I make an obscene amount of money, so it's not like this has harmed me. The idea that the kids need to suffer through an office so they know what it'll do to their career is about as out of date as the resume advice above.

What works for you may not be what works for everybody, and that's the point.

It could be that remote work would have limited your career advancement.

For me, it's the only reason I can have a career at all.

Instead of making it personal, lets make it general. According to you how many people have a problem working in the office for the reasons you listed?

I think I'd agree with you unless something crazy happened, like a global pandemic that completely shifted the way companies think and made them massively more likely to recruit remote workers.

If that happened then you'd have to be daft to think it wouldn't change anything.

The idea that because you've been working for a decade or two and know how things were before the pandemic, these poor, dumb college kids should just listen to you and let you tell them that everything has always been this way and always will be this way just doesn't hold up to basic scrutiny.

Maybe Apple will loose enough talent over time to where their corp culture will have to adapt. I doubt it. Wouldn't mind if I'm wrong (I think at least having the option for at least some remote work is overall very healthy overall), but I'm not holding my breath.

"They said that Apple's reasons for implementing the policy don't stand up, and that the policy is wasteful, inflexible and will lead to a "younger, whiter, more male-dominated, more neuro-normative, more able-bodied" workforce."

I, for one, have no idea what neuro-normative means.

Anywho, u/EricE isn't agreeing or disagreeing. They're just advising that people can just state their preference plainly, no tortured nonsensical rationalizations necessary.

"If you're explaining, you're losing." -- Lee Atwater

Labor now has greater power. Wield it. Those who would take away your power don't bother to explain themselves. Why should Labor?

Unless, of course, you'd rather be right, over actually winning.

So do you plan to learn what it means, or do you believe that language should remain exactly as it was at some arbitrary point in the past?

Sadly, this group of authors didn't know the meaning either. Typical.

As a rule, I avoid using terms I can't define. If you know any of the authors, please pass that tip along. Thanks.

> ...or do you believe that language should remain exactly...

Wut?

And thus the majority of friction in todays discourse.

Something I still fall prey to more than I like and try to stay vigilant of so thanks for pointing it out!

Having no psychological/developmental conditionals recognized by the DSM

More seriously...

I'm totally on board with navel gazing. But I don't see how (mis)using such terms helps this letter's authors make the case for having the individual choice to work remotely.

So performative.

What I wouldn't give to see you try just to survive a day with my body and my brain.

The base level struggle of someone living in a world designed for people with completely different brains than ours would make whatever trophies you think you earned in actual competitive Little League or whatever look exactly like the worthless little ego strokes you think participation trophies are.

But we can compete with you, now that we can work remotely. If you can't compete remotely, that's because you've been relying on privileges you didn't even realize you had for your success, not because there's something wrong with remote work.

If you can't succeed now that we're on the field, you don't deserve any more trophies.

And I'm not only full time WFH but geographically remote from my office too. Have been for some time. But wouldn't be anywhere near where I am to day had I started out that way.

There is nothing wrong with remote work. What's wrong is pretending there aren't trade off's with remote work. if those trade off's aren't majority negative for you then have at it! But assuming remote work should just be the norm just because it's what an employee wants - that's nuts!

No, it isn't. Businesses tend to play "follow the leader", so the ability to find a company offering substantially different work conditions is limited.

When facing a cartel, the solution is not "find an alternative". The idea of a cartel is to limit alternatives!

Assuming your premise is true, the 'leader' here would be remote-work if we are to believe that amazing benefits and therefore success that it can bring to a business. Businesses tend to copy things that other successful companies are doing.

You calling it a cartel situation is not fair, but I'm going to look the other way and assume you did that just for effect.

But seriously you hit upon a lot of topics us older folks seem to get and younger folks don't and also vice versa. It's also well within their rights to demand remote work and not have to go into the office at all. Perhaps younger minds are better at collaboration than older minds? And even as an older guy who had a "butts in seats" policy when I managed folks, I don't buy the argument that working remotely has serious tradeoffs. If they were so bad, open source software would never have taken off. You don't have to be in the office to collaborate effectively. Maybe if your personality demands it, but a lot of us introverts (or non-neuro-normative if you will) kinda like not being around people who talk all the time.

I just think it's unfortunate that he's dragged culture war contempt into the discussion, as i think that has inhibited our ability to have curious conversation about the tradeoffs.

Yup, and when they get to my age funnily enough they will be sounding much like me.

Much like I sound like my parents despite swearing in my naivety to never be like them :)

Youth is indeed wasted on the young :p (it was wasted on me too!)

They won't have all of your biases and hangups, though. They'll be out of touch with succeeding generations, but not for the same reasons.

Just enjoy being the most privileged and worthless generation this country has ever had. There’s a reason the new generations resent you

These kids could enter a fully WFH workforce without blinking an eye and continue to develop life long relationships with their new colleagues if they desired. I've done both. But to be honest, the only friends I've maintained from previous in person jobs are the ones who I also connected with via a chat program.

It's about spontaneous and unplanned interactions that provide new paths for you. Yes, you can still have those remotely - but they are no where nearly as frequent, nor anywhere near as impactful. They simply can't be - your fighting millions of years of social evolution if you think otherwise. Heck I doubt most of us remember a fraction of spontaneous in person interactions with others in our day to day life - but let me tell you there are a handful in my past that made all the difference in where I am today. None would have happened if I had been working remotely.

Not one of them.

You simply can't quantize the value of those interactions and I fear for those who are seemingly so willing to casually tossing those away. Yes, commuting sucks. Yes, committing to a schedule sucks. Yes, listening to the same story from Bob for the millionth time while you are trying to focus on something else sucks. But there are other benefits that are irreplaceable too.

Probably the best illustration I can think of in pop culture is the Star Trek:TNG episode where Picard's artificial heart dies and he has that whole near death experience with Q. It's a great analogy for this whole discussion. I'm too am glad I had the bloody nose early on and the much more interesting life overall.

It's just different now. After covid, even more so.

Nearly all of our younger hires have their social networks _entirely online_, and most of our older employees are in a similar situation albeit with a few token IRL friends.

That said, I work in game development and I suspect that causes some selection bias.

Out of curiosity, I hear a lot of negative things about working in game development. How do you like it?

That said, as an older programmer I would not expect to ever earn anywhere near your earning potential for the skills you'll gain, if you were to work outside of gaming. It doesn't matter that you might single-handedly build the infrastructure to host millions in MAU on a shoestring budget; the profit margins are razor thin, if there's any profit at all, and the wages reflect that.

Your customers don't want to pay you, investors don't want to buy in, the media dislikes you by default, and your industry is saturated with competition.

All that said, I have worked outside of gaming and still keep coming back to it. I've taken substantial pay cuts, leaving good jobs of my own volition, to return on several occasions. I do it because I've never experienced so much _freedom_ as I do as a game developer. If there's something I want to try, build or learn then I generally start on that _immediately_. Nowhere else have I felt so able to express myself and better myself.

* Addendum: YMMV. I've worked mostly in small studios, on Indie titles and subcontracting on AAA titles. I imagine things are different at very large studios.

I wish it were same, but, even as someone who grew up with more online relationships than meatspace ones, I'd be lying if I said it is. Maybe VR in some 15-minutes-after-tomorrow future can bridge the gap.

I experienced how "not the same" it is with in-person and then remote interactions with other young people in college classes and then with older people in work, and, in both cases, I felt things were lost once we went remote.

The only difference is no one is going to tell you to be quiet and get back to work. No one is going to send an email about how there are too many people wasting time around the water cooler!

I just don't see the advantage.

Well, secret in the sense of fully accessible to everyone in management at your company.

I'm in my 30s now, and much of this is unfamiliar to me, but I'm interested in learning more about it. My social network has definitely shrunk significantly these past two years.

That's going to be a lively place though. You might wanna try searching for smaller communities for more niche things.

That's for discord, anyways. My wife uses Facebook for her things (much to my chagrin).

That sounds good. I do have a Discord, but I've only ever used it to make voice calls with a friend of mine...but I think I'll definitely check out these public servers. I know my old university has some too but they don't show up on Discord search, so I'm guessing they're private.

Thanks again--appreciate the response. Sometimes I feel like a dinosaur by how out-of-the-loop I am: Telegram, Discord, etc.

This 100%—I worked remotely for my first 5 years after graduating college, and I thought it was great until I went into a real office and found out what I was missing. I vowed to never work a remote job again (of course, the pandemic forced a quick end to that vow, hah.)

"Why come to the office if none of my team members are there?"

And that's almost certainly gonna be the case here.

People work differently, commuting is a nightmare and gets worse every year, if you want to be in an office I don't think you'll have trouble finding a job to accommodate. A few years before the pandemic I swore I'd never commute again and I intend to live out the rest of my career that way. You will never catch me commuting every day.

s/commute/go to the grocery store ;)

Barring a union contract, seeking shelter via anti-discrimination laws is the best aircover. So you shift from complaining about work conditions to complaining about conditions that do not reasonably accommodate a protected condition.

Being not “neuro-normative” is a great one to use as it feeds into tech stereotypes and is really difficult to disprove.

If there is one positive thing from the pandemic, it did force companies that would have never entertained remote work to at least do it - and many will probably keep at least some remote work as part of their employment package. However I don't see it staying at, of all companies, Apple. Their corporate culture, desire for information control/secrecy - at this point if you are an employee of Apple and surprised they want everyone back in the office - well, that's more your problem than theirs.

But trying to explain this to folks who consider their office careers as pinnacle of their lives with some numbers on account to back this up are relatively high is often futile. Something about strong resistance to admitting mistakes done / direction taken in life that can't be undone.

I don't get why things need to be strictly this or that. Some way in between is almost always best. My needs may be very different from next guy's needs, but as long as we deliver what is expected who cares about the details.

Or to summarize this for those in back seats - WFH gains are not in added work productivity for most (some achieve that, mainly due to crappy offices) but what we gained for our personal lives while still able to perform enough. Its not even only about commuting, for me its 20 mins each way, but overall amount of freedom I gained is massive. Life is damn too short. Don't do decisions that you will almost guaranteed regret later. Chasing career is frequently quoted as #1 regret by dying folks.

None of them - not one - would have happened virtually. There would never had been a reason for me to interact with those people other than I just happened to be in the same physical time/space as them and happened to stop and chat.

It's rather silly when you try to think about it rationally - that so much should ride on random chance; but it's also life. There's millions of years of social evolution favoring in person contact and to pretend otherwise is just silly.

And is it possible that this is not a universal thing? Maybe some people can solve problems or have ideas in a different way? Or maybe in the parallel universe you might have maybe less financial/career success but something even better (less stress more happiness) anyway I can tell you that as a developer you can solve problems, you can help the team from remote too. I have almost 20 years of coding experience only on remote but won't bet that 100% an office job would have been better or worse, we never know.

I say let the experiment run. It will soon become apparent.

- open layout offices are awful places to work where many people struggle to focus at all, to the point where their work is negatively impacted

- separating home location from work location opens up opportunities to work places certain people would never have considered before, unless they wanted to leave their friends/family/social groups/etc. behind

- cutting out a commute every day saves folks time, money, stress, and likely cuts down on a lot of wasteful greenhouse gas emissions

I'm relatively early in my career, but I also love WFH compared to in-office work. Why? I hated the commute, I don't like socializing with my coworkers outside of actual work, and I struggle to focus with folks on calls around me and without decent thermostat control. I acknowledge that some people can deal with all of those things, still be productive, and reap the benefits of in-person work. But there are also those of us whose careers have skyrocketed in the past couple of years specifically because we have a working arrangement that works better for us now.

It's hard to say how much this will impact my career trajectory in the long term. But I'm also more concerned about my private social life and hobbies than I am about my career, and remote work works far better for that, too.

TL;DR: Different strokes for different folks. Young people are not doomed by remote work.

I also don't think it has to be 100% either way. The most productive time in my career was when I split time in the office and at home. Office time was for meetings, collaboration, strategizing with others, networking, pushing the corporate bureaucracy along, etc. At home time was focus time to actually get shit done.

It worked amazingly well and I consider myself fortunate to work for several organizations that did allow and respect at least some remote work.

Like most things in life, extremes in any direction are rarely healthy, especially over time.

What I think is most dangerous about moves like this is by pushing so hard to one extreme they risk convincing a company like Apple that the whole concept is more trouble than it's worth. I dunno, maybe there is enough of a labor shortage of smart people where Apple will really shoot themselves in the foot if they maintain a hard line - but I doubt it. We rarely are as essential to the organization as we like to think we are :)

It will be interesting to see how it plays out but I think there are better ways of making your case than resorting to race bating and victimhood right out the gate.

because then suddenly you draw a conclusion that all personal spontaneity which has life-changing implications must happen in person (and that only these kinds of interactions can be serendipitous) and must happen according to <whatever arbitrary rules you think governs (your personal, remember) interactions>.

however your lens fails to resolve the context for what it is: a set of circumstances around how you personally lived (and worked).

Nothing more, nothing less.

many moons ago i happened to accidentally click on a game server for a game i play which has quite a niche, but super competitive online gaming community (fps). i quickly found myself in a server where there were a handful of people spectating a couple of people playing. all very casually. sometimes taking turns.

i then discovered each person in the server was a professional player, who previously and currently for the time competed for money, and were to varying degrees successful. i spent the remainder of my night unexpectedly well, not playing, and just watching. hanging. getting pointers.

ultimately it led to me making some cool friends, but specifically finding a mentor -- one of them took me under their wing and taught me how to really play the game. that interaction alone pushed me to not only stick with the game and to become a better player -- which under this person's guidance was crazy because of the knowledge they possessed -- but it also left me with a life-long friend.

this friendship is one i very much so value, and it was formed totally accidentally, unexpectedly, serendipitously, and completely 100% virtual -- i have yet to meet this person, or any of the others (they are foreign) in person to this day.

that is one of many personal experiences i have had on the internet.

i have absolutely no idea how people arrive at a general conclusion that `office == only_vector_for_serendipity` other than this line of thinking being a direct consequence of drinking Steve Jobs'/Apple kool-aid (ie: designing bathroom layouts to favor random interactions), while also conflating personal experience with universal truth-ness.

that does not mean in-person interactions, random or otherwise, serve no purpose (ever work with someone who has valuable input but often self-censors? body language is hard to hide). i am just baffled as to how one can make such a sweeping statement about a thing being absolutely necessary.