An open season on Apple employees starts now. Recruiters, take notice...
I'm staunch in favour of remote. I like it, it works. But I recognise the benefits of in-person. I would wager that what most people like me want is a bit of control of their schedule and to be able to work in a hybrid manner. The end.
I know as that's what I was going to ask my boss, before he dragged us all back in to the office and stopped remote completely in Nov-21. Most of our team have left and I'm just about to leave.
Hybrid is a reasonable way forward. 100% on-site isn't given everything that's happened, and those are the companies who will lose their employees.
Telling employees that they _need_ to be in the office on days X, Y, and Z destroys most of the utility of remote working. They even chose Monday, Tuesday Thursday so people couldn't have a four day long block for working or traveling elsewhere.
If Apple cared about flexibility, they'd do this, in order of "how much do they care":
- Employees choose if they want to come into an office at all, figuring out their work dynamics on a per-team basis
- If a number of days per week in-office is required, employees gets to choose those days
- The company chooses the days the employee comes in (which is what Apple chose)
We didn't have to set any guidelines, we just did what was needed. If that meant we could fly 5 days a week at home. Fine. If, when lockdown easedup, it meant choosing to come in 1 or 5 days a week, we self organise towards that. And it's fine.
Our team proved we could do that over 2 years, so the sudden yank back into the office was a slap in the face, and destroyed our team. I'm still bitter about it.
Just know that if that's your policy, that's what you're risking. It may not manifest as quick as it did with our team, but the internal cracks will be there that you'll need to manage, if you can at all.
And I don't agree with your "worst of both worlds" wasn't our situation. We were all in agreement about things would be and it worked. In that situation, you declare that as a core part of your organisation and new employees can choose whether they want to be a part of that or not.
Also, they have a lot of real estate costs to justify. Nothing like physical tech debt for anchoring your company in the past.
Only if you're willing to lose a significant fraction of your employees.