Work From Home!
Last week I wrote about the unique work culture in Silicon Valley, in which unproductive employees in bloated organizations are nevertheless remarkably entitled. This falls out to some extent everywhere in tech, but it's at its worst up in the San Jose area. I discovered a new manifestation of this phenomenon at Apple, where for the past two years employees have "worked from home" due to COVID, but management is now asking them to return to the office three days a week in something called the Hybrid Working pilot. From my own anecdotal experience as a cutstomer of companies claiming to have been hurt by COVID, the actual impact of lockdowns occurred in the first half of 2020 but gradually abated throughout the rest of the year. Companies that claimed to have had their ability to serve customers badly reduced by early 2021 were using it as an excuse. For Apple to be trying to get back to normal only in mid 2022 suggests that everyone had simply been coasting, not least ...