[HN Gopher] Tim Cook tells employees the return to offices will ... ___________________________________________________________________ Tim Cook tells employees the return to offices will begin on April 11th Author : polar8 Score : 185 points Date : 2022-03-04 16:53 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.theverge.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com) | givemeethekeys wrote: | Thanks, Tim. I sure love inflation, don't you? | BrianOnHN wrote: | Love that all the companies (see also Google, Twitter) are | utilizing the WW3-panic to sweep these announcements under the | rug. How thoughtful! | | And props to Apple for adding that Friday PR synergy to the mix! | | Edit: my best attempt at a good faith argument here is this: it | was a move that was _supposed to be_ in sync with Biden 's SOFU | comments on returning to the office, but other breaking news | affected the plan. | thisiscorrect wrote: | It's interesting to consider the group psychology aspect. | During the 2020 summer protests, many also said that the huge | crowds were not spreading covid. Maybe this is similar. When | there is a larger issue people are focusing on, concerns about | covid get pushed to the backburner. The real test will come | when the Ukraine-Russia war subsides. | BrianOnHN wrote: | I'm sure the fact that protests are outside with the majority | participants likely being mask wearers based on their | affiliations also added to the risk calc. | batekush wrote: | large crowds of people who do not take covid seriously, who | socially disincentivize transmission precautions (e.g. | sturgis) seem to spread covid. | | on the other hand, large crowds that do take covid seriously, | and socially encourage those precautions, appear to not | spread covid as much. | | where's the group psychology aspect? | stjohnswarts wrote: | "huge crowds were not spreading covid OUTDOORS" is the right | take. Indoors is a recycled hellscape of germs. Viral load is | a real thing. I went to several outdoor concerts and didn't | catch covid however I'm going to continue to work remote. | BrianOnHN wrote: | It's easier to believe the singular "COVID isn't real" than | it is to understand the plurality of viral load, HVAC, | particulate sizes, mask ratings... | | That's the challenge. | giarc wrote: | You can look at any announcement and say "utilizing mid-term | elections to sweep these announcements under the rug... swap | out mid-terms with holidays, COVID, hurricanes, natural | disasters, oil price swings, etc etc etc. | | If you go looking for it, you will find it. Doesn't make it | true though. | BrianOnHN wrote: | Fast followers? Or do you think the decision was synchronized | at the top? | n42 wrote: | are you suggesting they wait for the conflict in Ukraine to | resolve before making announcements? your comment sounds | paranoid. | BrianOnHN wrote: | What a straw man. And thanks for the mental eval! | engineeringwoke wrote: | Love your attitude towards the odd comments. Keep it up | dude | draw_down wrote: | SkinTaco wrote: | I work at a company you've heard of that did something similar | (their announcement was on HN) and, at least in my case, the | announcements had been made internally a few weeks beforehand. | | It is always possible for there to be multiple plausible | reasons for something, and the least generous assumptions can | be frequently incorrect | BrianOnHN wrote: | It's not about current employees as much as future | recruiting. | | PR requires internal employees. That leads me to the logic | that, for most companies, PR is targeted at non-employees. | [deleted] | jmull wrote: | Doesn't it seem more likely this is related to changing covid | conditions than war in Ukraine? | BrianOnHN wrote: | There's "no COVID" in my state, so I don't feel qualified to | comment on that. | Apocryphon wrote: | I forgot what Google's RTO policy is, but Twitter still allows | fully remote work, it's more of an optional RTO. | BrianOnHN wrote: | I've added that Twitter caveat IRL convos. It's an important | distinction and one that I applied them for. | | That said, I still think all 3 PR departments subscribed to | the same strategy, even though Twitter missed an opportunity | to build positive PR b/c their policy is good. | DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote: | Why is it Mon,Tue,Thu? Weird to have flexible Wednesday in the | middle. | | Why not Tue,Wed,Thu with Monday and Friday flexible? | windows2020 wrote: | Maybe it's me, but I have yet to experience 'innovation' result | from a conversation held over coffee or a chance encounter. I've | had better luck creating connections with other parts of the | business and exchanging ideas over the infrequent cocktail party | where it's a mission of the night. Say all you want about open | floorplans and irrelevant quiet encounters. | | Having said that, every situation is unique. | MattGaiser wrote: | Really, do most employees contribute to innovation at all? Can | they? | | I certainly never have except in an explicit innovation job. | The rest of the time I am an implementer. So keep me away from | connections with the other parts of the business as that just | becomes a sideways way to ask for feature requests I have no | say in or other info/support requests. | BlargMcLarg wrote: | The far majority of people do grunt work. Only a small group | actually does anything both innovative _and_ non-obvious, | which is the "use case" presented for these small talks. | Most devs who are not part of that small group and find | something non-obvious have to fight through many layers of | bureaucracy to even get their voice heard, let alone be given | time to prove their idea without having to invest their own | time. This also doesn't take into account the far majority of | those select people have dedicated times where they research | potential innovations, and getting into that small group is | also difficult. | | Even supposing FAANG, fortune 100s or whatever top percentile | is likely to desire more innovation, the idea spontaneous | talks one supposedly only could have in the office | significantly impacting the rates of innovation is pretty | far-fetched and mostly just an assumption. | song wrote: | I have worked in remote companies and companies that had butt | in chair requirements, so far all the remote companies have | been more innovative and had more cross talk between teams than | the companies that required people to be in an office all day, | every day. | | Of course, that's just my experience but I do have a feeling | that certain type of people feel that there's more innovation | around coffee and chance encounter because it's a nice story to | tell oneself but it doesn't really happen. | angryasian wrote: | I'm interested in how you accomplish this. Everything has to | be scheduled in a meeting these days, and meeting burn out | over zoom is real. | | Where as in the office it was just walking around and seeing | someone in an elevator, the hall, "hey lets catch up" or "you | have a minute" or "lets get lunch" | | these types of interactions just don't happen anymore | onion2k wrote: | _these types of interactions just don 't happen anymore_ | | I frequently DM people on Slack with a "How was your | weekend?", "Did you see <url> on HN?" or just "We haven't | chatted in a while, fancy a catchup?" That works just as | well, except it's much easier for people to say they're | busy when they're busy than it is face to face. | asd88 wrote: | In true remote companies everything happens on Slack | channels and meetings are minimal. If you want to see what | a team is up to, you just have to lurk their Slack channel. | Basically almost everything becomes more visible because of | Slack. | angryasian wrote: | even slack is too much these days, I'm in so many | channels. theres so much noise and if you're not part of | the conversation you may miss it completely depending on | if people are using threads or not. | heyitsanewacco wrote: | I go to meetings for a living. Its been a huge productivity | boost to not have to walk 15 minutes across campus to meet | my clients. Plus I never have to worry about not having a | projector. | | Although you're right, I did go back to the office the | other day and spent a good hour talking to a co-worker | about their Caribbean vacation. I hadn't had one of those | in years. Not sure how that boosted innovation and | productivity tho. | angryasian wrote: | >Not sure how that boosted innovation and productivity | tho. | | I think positive interactions with co workers is a | productivity boost, it makes you not hate work so much. | ironman1478 wrote: | > Everything has to be scheduled in a meeting these days, | and meeting burn out over zoom is real. | | At my company, we obviously have to chat over zoom or meet, | but it doesn't have to be scheduled. The way we do it is we | might be chatting on slack, spitballing ideas, doing stuff | in lucidchart or some other charting software, then if it | seems good we talk about it over zoom. It doesn't have to | be so robotic | unsui wrote: | Agreed. | | Pre-scheduling is ONE way of getting people in sync, but | not the only way. | | For me and my team, there is a LOT of ad-hoc | communication, preferrably in public slack channels, | which leads to extremely productive conversations. | | Furthermore, these are SEARCHABLE, which is a godsend; if | an issue comes up once, it's very likely to come up | again. | | And, of course, there are times when we just jump on a | zoom call quickly to review something that may be quicker | than a bunch of slack back-and-forth. | | There has never been a time where I felt "damn, it would | be easier if I were there in person". If anything, in- | person communication has always been hampered by the very | need for co-location (including arranging meeting rooms | or whiteboard, etc), and it's always been difficult to | view someone else's screen unless they connect to a | projector or large TV, whereas zoom has made pair-and | -group programming almost inevitable. | | I understand the social side of people wanting to be co- | located, but from a pure productivity perspective, my | team has been significantly more productive since WFH. | sytelus wrote: | Your anecdata doesn't back up large scale data: | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01196-4 | | A lot depends on culture and process. Usually companies which | had remote on day 1 do better because they get to fine tune and | evolve the process over time. | steeve wrote: | My experience is the exact opposite: most innovation I came | across was the result of a in-person informal discussion. | | So yeah, YMMV | mattwad wrote: | I feel like not everyone works well remotely. Meanwhile if you | can work well remote, you can probably work well at a desk. So | the rest of us must suffer especially at these larger firms. | makeitdouble wrote: | > Meanwhile if you can work well remote, you can probably | work well at a desk. | | This is sadly not universal. I'd wagger there's a decent | number of people who could only barely work in an office. | | I've memories of people who had issues keeping themselves | and/or desk clean, and it wasn't some cute story to laugh at, | it had a direct impact on their performance and if their | managers found any good excuse they'd be out pretty quick. | | Then all the IRL office harrasment stuff, the one that looms | at a level HR doesn't give a fuck but you still deal with it | every fucking day. Going remote makes it weirdly easier on | both sides, I guess some people just couldn't help it and now | they have a private space where they can do what they need to | calm down. | | I'd say there's a infinite number of circumstances, up until | now we'd just think these people are just not fitted to work | at any place. Working remote changes a lot of these pre- | requisites. | nso95 wrote: | tbf I think it would be an additive effect, not just a single | encounter that leads to innovation | Apocryphon wrote: | Apple has always been the more stringent about remote work, in | terms of maintaining secrecy by keeping its workers on-premises, | so this is the least surprising move. | Teknoman117 wrote: | I don't work for Apple, but it seems they've managed to get | this far without any leaks so I guess whatever they did | regarding their WFH policy worked out for them? | | I had to go into the office a few times over the pandemic to | use some testing equipment, but that was 7 or 8 days in the | last 2 years? | temp_praneshp wrote: | My friend who works at apple (hardware/wireless stuff?) has | been to the office every day, except for a brief period in | March-May 2020 | xxpor wrote: | I have to imagine a lot of that has to do with the HW work they | do, as a percentage of their business? | | Even regardless of the confidentiality aspect (and we all know | how Apple feels about that), for a decent number of folks, they | might need some decently expensive equipment that wouldn't make | sense to buy for everyone individually. | | At least according to how I perceive the company, the folks | coming from that side of the business really run things, and so | they bring the in office culture with them even to the pure | software businesses. | | Obviously this is a lot of speculation, but it seems like a | reasonable way to explain why they are the way they are. | lmilcin wrote: | I think it is safe to say that most people do not have access | to any expensive equipment. | | I worked for Samsung for a little bit. And even there with | operating system basically borrowed from Google, only very | small portion of people ever needed to use any special tools. | We got some prototypes but the one time we needed to do | anything was to desolder and solder again a battery for a | prototype watch. And that because a mistake (charging | controller circuit badly designed, not powering properly from | external power when battery drained). We had one guy do this | for the rest of the team and everybody else was just working | on software. | silisili wrote: | That's my guess. And not just equipment, but prototypes and | such. | | Imagine trying to make something intuitive and comfortable. | How can you even judge that remotely? First you have to ship | it around(or else make tons more units), then hope video | quality suffices to see everything. | | In person you can get 20 people in a room and let them | interact with widget x. See how they behave, hear feedback, | etc. | adenozine wrote: | Tasty hiring for remote firms! Flee from Apple's iron clutches!! | | Mostly /s | jimbob45 wrote: | Is it /s though? This may be the only time in the next 20 years | that remote-progressive companies have a unbeatable advantage | over Apple and Google. If I'm a top-tier firm, I'm poaching as | many Apple and Google remote employees that I can possibly | take. | mrfusion wrote: | This is a great opportunity for start ups to eat the lunch of big | companies by hiring all the talent that doesn't want to commute. | hackerbob wrote: | Do they share HR offices too! | https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/02/google-tells-employees-to-re... | bombcar wrote: | There's no need to collude when you can just notice how the | wind is flowing; expect a flood of these announcements over the | next weeks. | | Apple didn't just decide to do it because Google did, they'd | already decided it was coming, and perhaps moved up the | announcement now that someone (Putin? Google?) took the news | cycle. | ghaff wrote: | I certainly expect the HR heads of the big tech companies know | each other and talk now and then. Even if they're not colluding | in some illegal way, I'd actually be a bit surprised if they | weren't discussing COVID-related matters. | sokoloff wrote: | To be honest, I'd be way more pissed if my HR and Facilities | teams _weren't_ talking to their peers in the industry and | sharing learning /best practices throughout all this. | ecf wrote: | Not HR, but their finance teams got together and decided what | needed to be done to protect their real estate investments. | michaelt wrote: | An office doesn't cost less just because there are people | using it. | [deleted] | xienze wrote: | No, but it certainly means they're getting at least some | use out of the money they're spending versus what is | effectively just lighting money on fire. | ReaLNero wrote: | That is just the sunk-cost fallacy. | 8bitben wrote: | Hard to see it going any other way given the massive real estate | investments they have made. | bch wrote: | If "real estate" were the real reason, that'd just be an | example of throwing good money after bad. | teeray wrote: | Nobody is immune from the Sunk Cost Fallacy | 1270018080 wrote: | Just look at the butterfly keyboard or removing all the | ports but usb-c. | KKKKkkkk1 wrote: | Personal investments in Bay Area housing by senior execs. | brimble wrote: | Bingo! | | Wanna bet upper management and board members spend some of | their money buying up nearby or distant-but-commute- | friendly property just before a new "campus" is announced? | Not the actual land the campus will be built on, of course. | _That_ would be a conflict of interest. | Apocryphon wrote: | The concept of an exec being the landlord of a new grad | hire or owning intern housing is truly techno-feudalism. | heyitsanewacco wrote: | This is exactly it. We've been spending money in our | suburbs for too long and it's killing the restaurant | businesses that they own. | | The Gov of New York has basically come out and said exactly | that. | sam0x17 wrote: | Yes, they need to prove that commercial real estate still holds | any value at all, though I'm not convinced seeing this | incredible shift towards remote economy. I think they just | burned a bunch of money to be honest. Maybe in 15 years we will | see the Apple campus converted to high quality free public | housing, which would be a good outcome for all and certainly | would create more value for society than it does now. | ClumsyPilot wrote: | > need to prove that commercial real estate still holds any | value at all | | You've hit the nail on the had, the entire human civilisation | could reorganise around smaller cities without the commute to | be more healthy, less polluting and more environmentally | friendly | | Instead we are witnessing whole COVID-is-gone theater only to | protect parasite investors that 'invested' in assets that | don't produce anything | jordanpg wrote: | I suspect that at the root of all of these companies with | massive office investments insisting that everyone gets back to | the office as soon as possible is something to do with taxes. | | Something like deductions that cannot be taken when those | facilities are not used or not used enough in the development | of income. | brimble wrote: | Having X employees _in_ a given city /county/state is often | part of agreements for skipping taxes or even attaining | grants for new office development, that's true. | olliej wrote: | I'm so glad that Covid cares about the economy. | | I also hate the obsession with in office work. I know for many | people there's a social aspect to being in the office, but | honestly I don't consider 4 hours of commuting each day to be | worth the socializing aspect of in office work. | dnathi493 wrote: | I left Apple after years of lack of any flexibility on the remote | work process. They wouldn't allow transferring to any alternative | office for most teams. From what I understood, VPs could protect | a small minority of some of their employees if a senior leader | made a case to them. | | Unfortunately, this just seemed to lead to the most politically | connected folks going remote and directors friends and favorite | hires getting the perk. | | At three trillion market cap, I guess they just realized it | doesn't really matter if attrition shoots up and they'll always | have enough people to fill the trenches. Lots and lots of people | left around the same time. | | Having left, I forgot what it was like to be able to focus on | something other than Apple. Incredibly toxic atmosphere on the | inside. I work at a fast-paced startup and still work on average | 10/hours a week less than at Apple. | xenadu02 wrote: | Fair warning: my experience has been very different than yours | or tombert's in most respects and some things have changed over | time (some OSS contributions are now much easier, a very recent | change). It is also the first company I've worked for that | backed up appreciation for my efforts with compensation to | match, and where my management chain cared about burnout and | mental health with actions rather than empty words. | | It is still primarily an on-site company. That might mean on- | site an an office in San Diego, Austin, Philadelphia, NYC, etc. | But in-office nonetheless. | | Every team does things differently, even down to the department | or individual manager level. Compared to the other FAANGs it is | far more varied in most respects. Just because someone didn't | like (or loves) their role doesn't mean you will feel the same | way about it. If possible I recommend talking to people who | work in the department you are interested in. | Ntrails wrote: | > It is still primarily an on-site company. | | At some point I would like people to quit vilifying a | completely legitimate business setup because it doesn't fit | _their_ world view. | | I _want_ to be in the office, and I prefer it when my | coworkers are there too. I respect that not everyone feels | the same - but I do think it is up to the employer to decide. | So I will be picking companies that suit my preferences. | abledon wrote: | also, isn't their new campus built atop a toxic waste site? | dymk wrote: | It's an empathy building exercise for the Foxconn employees | 30367286 wrote: | That term could fit most of the Santa Clara Valley if you're | operating on the definition provided by the person you heard | that from. I won't link their name here, since I do not | believe it is worthwhile to give them attention. | roastytoasty wrote: | no_one_ever wrote: | lol having a HN account isn't a pre-requisite to being in | tech | krapp wrote: | Most people "in tech" don't even know Hacker News exists. | It's a bubble within a bubble. | eunoia wrote: | I don't think you understand how deep the Apple | secrecy/paranoia culture rabbit hole goes. | | Another example: Have you ever noticed how comparatively | infrequently Apple is even mentioned in FAANG working | condition threads? | | Source: I am a former Apple employee. | bmarquez wrote: | It's likely a throwaway account and I understand the | reasoning behind creating one. Apple has a very secretive, | almost paranoid, workplace culture. If I were in the parent | poster's shoes I'd make one too to avoid blowback. | tombert wrote: | COVID made my situation worse at Apple. I worked in a satellite | office (NYC), and while in the office, most folks in California | were reluctant to schedule meetings later than ~2pm california | time because they didn't want to keep people in the office | late. When we went fully remote, suddenly it seems like any | compunctions about that vanished; I would have meetings until | 9pm 3 nights a week, I guess because the managers figured that | we were already home. | | > Having left, I forgot what it was like to be able to focus on | something other than Apple | | Definitely sympathize there; we weren't even allowed to leave | _Github issues_ without Legal 's approval, and when I wanted to | open source something (basically an HLS server I wrote to | handle my home security system), I was told that a) it was too | competitive with Apple because my project had to do with video, | and b) there's no such thing as "my own time" with Apple, since | I was salaried and well-compensated. | VBprogrammer wrote: | > When we went fully remote, suddenly it seems like any | compunctions about that vanished; I would have meetings until | 9pm 3 nights a week | | This is why there is a decline button next to the accept | button. An outage or something disastrous, sure I'll stay | online till midnight to help in anyway I can; a regular | status update type meeting, no way. | CamperBob2 wrote: | Woz to HP management: "Hey, I know we already sell computers, | want to have a look at this one? If not, can I sell it | myself?" | | HP to Woz: "Sure, go for it, good luck." | | Apple to their own employees: "Uh, let's see here.... how | about 'No.' Does 'No' work? Good, then we'll go with 'No.'" | | Gotta love the Valley. You either flame out early, or you | live long enough to become the face on the telescreen. | nebula8804 wrote: | To be fair, the modern Apple is all Steve Jobs and Jobs | always had this mentality that you are bashing. Seems like | any Wozniak related mentality left the building when they | dumped Apple II. And well can you really argue with the | results? Apple was near bankruptcy trying to compete on the | same plane as other personal computers. | birdyrooster wrote: | I don't understand what this is supposed to mean. | neuralspark wrote: | It's a reference to Apple's 1984 commercial | CamperBob2 wrote: | They have not only become exactly what they fought | against, they've refined it to perfection. | driverdan wrote: | Put your work hours in your calendar and auto decline | everything outside those hours. Refuse that nonsense. | abledon wrote: | > b) there's no such thing as "my own time" with Apple, since | I was salaried and well-compensated. | | Is there 1 FAANG company that is the most | friendly/accomodating to someone who wants to develop their | own software/indiegames on the side? | shoulderfake wrote: | no_wizard wrote: | I don't currently work there, so take this with a grain of | salt, that said, it would seem Google is a lot more relaxed | about this sort of thing than any other large company I've | seen. Lots of ex-Google employees end up doing all sorts of | things and lots of Googlers participate in open source | fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: | Not FAANG, but GitHub explicitly allows employees to work | on side-projects while retaining the IP rights, and you get | paid Microsoft stock. | voidfunc wrote: | Whats hilarious is that this is definitely not the case | for regular MS employees | brianwawok wrote: | Which means it will eventually be the law. | mochomocha wrote: | Netflix. As long as you don't compete directly with the | business, the company doesn't care (at least that's how I | interpreted my contract when I joined a while ago). | ModernMech wrote: | > As long as you don't compete directly with the | business, the company doesn't care | | I've found, as long as you're not making money no one | cares what you're doing. As soon as money starts coming | in, a lot of people are very interested in what you're | doing. My totally uninformed guess would be that one of | the first questions Netflix (or really any company) has | about your off-company-time product is 1) does it make | money and 2) how much. The answers to those questions | will determine how the conversation goes from there, and | how many lawyers are involved. | dijit wrote: | Bingo. Not FAANG but it definitely works like that in | Ubisoft. | blcknight wrote: | Not FAANG but Red Hat employees can contribute to open | source on their own time -- even if it competes with | something that Red Hat makes. | sdoering wrote: | Wow. Thanks for the insights. | | > work at a fast-paced startup and still work on average | 10/hours a week less than at Apple. | | I am always floored by statements like this. I work as a | principal data analyst and everything above 40 hours/week is | overtime. While I have overtime included in my contract I still | am able to reduce overtime (it is still being tracked to ensure | compliance with local workers protection laws) if the project | situation allows. On average I do something like 41 hours a | week over the last few years. Including high profile client | engagement or pitch situations. | | I find myself having enough time to also work on my side | business and do work for animal protection charities. While | still being able to work in the garden and shop to relax. | nickff wrote: | > _" While I have overtime included in my contract I still am | able to reduce overtime (it is still being tracked to ensure | compliance with local workers protection laws) if the project | situation allows."_ | | The people talking about working long hours at Apple are | getting paid commensurately. There's a reason why people work | at FAANG companies despite the constant complaints. | giantrobot wrote: | > The people talking about working long hours at Apple are | getting paid commensurately. | | Not really. Most divisions in SWE do stack ranking | (unofficially). The top quintile (decile in some groups) | gets a majority of compensation at review time. The bottom | _half_ is lucky to get a cost of living adjustment to their | base pay. They likely will get no RSUs and little if any | cash bonus. | | Despite the disparity in compensation everyone on a team is | expected to put in overtime. Anyone that doesn't is guilted | over not being a "team player", put on a PIP, outright | threatened with firing. If you get put on a PIP there is | zero guidance to get off. | CSSer wrote: | They seem very rooted in the past for lots of ideas, which is | ironic given the image and culture they try to project. For | example, I've heard at least one story of someone being asked | lots of irrelevant CS questions for a front-end role when they | interviewed there. He did fine, but he said he felt like the | interview somehow felt fifteen years out of date, which really | stuck with me. | LAC-Tech wrote: | What CS questions would be irrelevant for front end? I don't | quite follow. | Qub3d wrote: | I imagine they're complaining about the technical | interview. For the record, when I did the technical | interview I didn't find it too onerous -- mostly a more | advanced sort of FizzBuzz to check you could do some | intermediate math and handle basic data structures and | logic flow. | | My understanding is that at Apple this can vary quite a lot | in difficulty or depth depending on what team you're | looking at, and who is interviewing you. | CSSer wrote: | Deep questions about data structures and sorting algorithms | that are perfectly addressed by the standard library in JS | iirc. I understand that virtually anything in CS is or can | be relevant, especially for such a competitive role. I | don't think one should limit their knowledge wholly to a | specific domain, but it seemed like there was so much | emphasis put on these kinds of concepts that there was very | little time left to put emphasis on things that actually | might be relevant in the day to day. Beyond that though, I | can't say. That's all I got out of it. | tombert wrote: | There were times at Apple that people were given a "no" on | the interview because, despite knowing the solution to the | problem, had compilation errors in there code. I thought (and | still think) that was idiotic. | Apocryphon wrote: | If the role was to do front-end development for internal | tools, that might have not been all that irrelevant. | CSSer wrote: | Maybe, that's true. There were more details that led to the | impression but it's been too long ago now for me to | remember them all. | ModernMech wrote: | This is true, Apple is so secretive they try to get people | into interviews without telling them the role they're | interviewing for. They're so cagey and they expect you to | say "yes" because they're Apple. The guy might not even | have known what role he was interviewing for! It's a great | way to waste everyone's time. | danceparty wrote: | From the article, in office is 3 days per week - | | > We will then begin the hybrid pilot in full on May 23, with | people coming to the office three days a week -- on Monday, | Tuesday, and Thursday -- and working flexibly on Wednesday and | Friday if you wish. | ghaff wrote: | Though personally I'm fully remote, everything I've read and | seen suggests something like this is going to be extremely | common. Most employees seem to want to come into an office on a | semi-regular basis but not 5 days a week. And, if you're going | to do that, you probably want some level of coordination | whether it's at a company, facility, or team level. | CSSer wrote: | Can confirm. We do something like this (2 days in, 3 days | remote). We have one mandatory day and then each team has a | designated day where their whole team is present. I never | minded going into the office anyway because I live in a | fairly small apartment, so it's nice to have dedicated space | away from home. The only downside I've experienced so far is | that the all-teams day can be very chaotic, with more | disruptions than ever before because everyone tries to plan | everything that is more than a little involved for that day. | sam0x17 wrote: | Like I've said before, they need to justify their multi-billion | dollar campus. Barring that, I think we'd be seeing quite a | different situation. | favorited wrote: | Apple Park doesn't even house the majority of Apple employees | in the Bay Area. They could easily keep that campus at 100% | occupancy if it was just about justifying that investment. | whiddershins wrote: | The original headline is different from this one and more | nuanced. | twa999 wrote: | midterms soon. new marching orders out. | fartcannon wrote: | No. | | I don't know how else to say this, but... No. | paxys wrote: | I suspect we are going to see some turmoil in the tech hiring | space with stock prices taking a beating in recent months. Large | companies have gotten away with paying under market price for | talent because employees have seen massive gains from stock | appreciation over the last decade. If total comp starts going | down year over year, suddenly the more traditional, no-frills | system at places like Apple, Microsoft and Amazon isn't going to | look nearly as attractive. | birdyrooster wrote: | Can confirm, Google was really stingy with their RSUs compared | to Apple, but the perks really aren't that good with the | exception of the food, which, when speaking to current | Googlers, they say the food quality has fallen precipitously. | Google at the time I worked there seemed to lean heavily on its | reputation to reduce total comp. | dmitrygr wrote: | An open season on Apple employees starts now. Recruiters, take | notice... | LightG wrote: | You may be wrong. | | 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. | twoheadedboy wrote: | Anyone who has moved or bought a house outside of commuting | distance in the past 2 years is never going back. I know I'm | not. | dymk wrote: | Hybrid work solutions are good only for those who _want_ to | do them. For everyone else, they're a compromise, also known | as "the worst of both worlds". | | 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) | mnem wrote: | I think your second paragraph there is the critical point | that large companies (including the one I work at) miss or | purposefully ignore: let the employee control when (and how | many) days they are in. Cohesive teams will self organise | something suitable for their productivity, non-cohesive teams | won't get any better by frustrating x % of the members. But, | fundamentally, large companies simply lack trust in their | employees so do not want to allow this. | | Also, they have a lot of real estate costs to justify. | Nothing like physical tech debt for anchoring your company in | the past. | l30n4da5 wrote: | Back to the office? No thank you. | birdyrooster wrote: | I really hope this date sticks. As a single person, along with | many of my single colleagues, we don't get much social | interaction and being stuck inside for the past two years has | really hurt our mental health. I am all for heads of families | working from home to be with their families, this is beautiful, | but I can't do that. | nostromo wrote: | More people are dying with Covid now than were dying most of the | previous two years, minus 4 peaks of various waves. | | I'm happy we're returning to normalcy, but it just makes me | wonder "why now?" It's like the government and big business just | decided overnight to declare "mission accomplished" when nothing | substantial has changed. Last summer, for example, could have | been the reopening, and we'd have better data and "science" to | support it. | throwaway1777 wrote: | Politics plain and simple. COVID protocols are very unpopular | at this point and not every effective. Florida and Texas are | having big inflows, california and New York huge outflows. | Whatever your viewpoint this is the fact politicians see. And | yes taxes and cost of living are a huge driving force not only | COVID, but as long as remote work goes on people will keep | moving to low cost of living and low tax states. | dpweb wrote: | People are leaving for FL and TX cause taxes you add in the | salt deduction change its considerable. Have lived in FL TX | and NY. | | Add in weather and TX and FL are actually nice places to live | for the most part. | birdyrooster wrote: | Texas weather is awful I have no idea where you are getting | this from. I lived in multiple Texas cities and they are | bad for their own reasons. | seanp2k2 wrote: | ...aside from the flooding in both places that will | decrease property values dramatically over the next few | decades, I guess. Less of a concern if renting and if you | don't mind the prospect of potentially getting all your | belongings destroyed at some point in the future. | CamperBob2 wrote: | _People are leaving for FL and TX cause taxes you add in | the salt deduction change its considerable. Have lived in | FL TX and NY._ | | Why hasn't the Biden administration fixed this, by the way? | Anyone know? | | Frankly it's astonishing how few Trump-era policies have | been reversed by this administration. When the GOP- | dominated Congress acted to remove the SALT deduction, I | always assumed it was just a bit of petty electoral revenge | that would be reverted almost immediately. That appears to | have been wrong. There's no shortage of similar examples, | from immigration policy to idiotic "easy to win" trade wars | to USPS governance, where Trump policies have survived so | long that it's hard to believe that the Democrats don't | agree with them. | LAC-Tech wrote: | I think it's helpful to think of elections as not | replacing governments entirely, but swapping out a very | small publicly facing segment. | atlantas wrote: | Yes, the polling changed and they follow the polls: | | The message is backed by advice from Biden's polling firm, | Impact Research, which studied voter attitudes to Covid and | found that most Americans are "worn out" by the restrictions | and "have personally moved out of crisis mode." | | In a Feb. 16 memo, the firm told Democrats to take "the win" | on Covid, warning that by 49 percent to 24 percent, Americans | are more concerned about it causing economic harm than | infecting them or a family member, and that far more parents | and teachers worry about learning loss than illness for their | kids. | | "The more we talk about the threat of COVID and onerously | restrict people's lives because of it, the more we turn them | against us and show them we're out of touch with their daily | realities," Impact Research's Molly Murphy and Brian Stryker | wrote in the memo, which was viewed by NBC News. They warned | that if Democrats continue to emphasize Covid precautions | over learning to live in a world with the virus, "they risk | paying dearly for it in November." | | https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/democrats- | tur... | throwawaymanbot wrote: | gedy wrote: | Elections coming up as well | tharne wrote: | > Elections coming up as well | | This is the big one. Ever since the upset in the Virginia | governor's race, the Democrats have been very eager to end | COVID restrictions no matter what. The Republicans have | never cared about COVID so, at the moment there's a rare | bipartisan unity on this issue. | birken wrote: | So for example, you consider the 3 Democratic Governors | of California, Oregon and Washington ending their state's | various mask mandates _4+ months_ after the VA election | to be "eager to end COVID restrictions no matter what". | | Do you think the Omicron wave might have had more to do | with the COVID restrictions than the VA governor's race? | tharne wrote: | > Do you think the Omicron wave might have had more to do | with the COVID restrictions than the VA governor's race? | | I don't. | | The case numbers in many, if not most areas, are still | higher than they were during the delta wave in the Summer | and Fall that led to the lockdowns and restrictions being | implemented in the first place. | | If this were truly just about the data then you'd expect | the restrictions to lift once the case counts returned to | pre-delta numbers. | | Edit/Clarification: I say this as someone is/was | generally been in favor of a very cautious response to | COVID. | gdulli wrote: | The current case numbers come with a lower fatality rate | so the same case numbers don't suggest the same level of | action as before. | | Also the context of the numbers matters. They're trending | down now, not up, and the variant spikes are over. In the | middle of delta/omicron we didn't know what was going to | happen. | | And yes, there's fatigue on everyone's part. The relative | lower danger of omicron, plus being past the delta spike | then the omicron spike, means we're just kind of | collectively over it. Citizens have fatigue, they're just | not built to stay on guard for a third year. Policy | makers are fatigued, they can't force people to stay home | for another year to save lives from covid just like they | can't force people to stop driving to save lives from car | crashes. | | So admitting there's a political aspect is fine, but it's | a lot more nuanced than the election cycle, which is a | much more contrived explanation than everyone's response | to a dramatic drop in the numbers. | birken wrote: | The peak of the delta wave was 160k cases/day, and the | current case levels are ~52k/day. So given that, you | think most areas are having higher case loads than the | peak of the delta wave? You just aren't look at the data. | There is also strong reason to believe that right after a | huge wave is over you can expect a relatively smooth | period of time to follow since so many people will have | extra immunity from having recovered from covid. | | The people making these decisions are not idiots, they | can look at the data and make sane and rational | predictions about what might happen in the future, and | then adapt if necessary. | seanp2k2 wrote: | a source: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data- | tracker/#trends_dailycases_... | birken wrote: | You don't think the fact that this country just had the | largest ever COVID wave (in terms of cases), which is in the | process of ending, is at all related to the decisions? | | Also of the scant 40 million people remaining in California, | who haven't yet moved to Texas or Florida, public support for | at least some "COVID protocols" are very high [1]. I'm not | sure you are giving an impartial assessment of the facts. | | 1: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-02-24/califo | rn... | xanaxagoras wrote: | I don't see that where I am. Most people have stopped | wearing masks in public. 2 months ago everyone was wearing | one. | birdyrooster wrote: | When I visited Ohio last summer, no one was wearing masks | inside anywhere | [deleted] | calculatte wrote: | The PR Firm Impact Research sent a report to the Democrats | on Feb 22, 2022 urging them to lift all restrictions & | claim victory for political points. Immediately after, | restrictions lifted. Do your own assessment of the facts. | | Leaked memo https://punchbowl.news/impact-covid- | positioning-strategy-mem... | birken wrote: | So you contend that "the Democrats" (who obviously are a | fully united entity who never disagree) should have kept | all the restrictions even though the Omicron wave is | ending? | | What should they have done? | nostromo wrote: | It's just exposing the lie that "following the data" | meant "following the polling data." | | That's fine, that's how democracy works. But it erodes | trust in the political bodies that made all these rules | and then just overturn them on a whim. | birken wrote: | If the public are also "following the data", then the | polling data and scientific consensus are likely to be | highly correlated. I don't think it is nefarious at all | that the general public and political leaders come to the | same conclusions at about the same time when both are | reacting same set of factors. | calculatte wrote: | "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when | everything the American public believes is false." - | William J. Casey, CIA Director (1981) | gdulli wrote: | With covid numbers falling from the inevitable January | spike after the holidays, lifting omicron restrictions | was always going to happen sometime this spring. (Barring | some new deadly hypothetical variant.) | | But I don't doubt that both parties factor PR into all of | their decisions, down to how they dress. | | The implication that a PR firm could dictate that the | country would remain shut down until November despite | covid numbers this low is silly. But I'm sure timing and | messaging and other details are informed by PR studies. | | Whether from fear of losing their jobs or wanting to | carry out the will of their constituents, lawmakers have | to pay attention to what we think either way. | calculatte wrote: | And arguably the covid numbers were only high was because | of dishonest and inflated counting. Now they are "low" | because the risk policy was changed. | https://fee.org/articles/the-cdc-changed-its-covid-risk- | form... | | Thinking PR doesn't dictate politics is what is really | silly. If PR didn't matter, we wouldn't be inundated with | ridiculous propaganda 24/7. They aren't "paying | attention" to us, they are manufacturing consent and | telling you what to think through all forms of media. | | Now, how long until this gets censored? | yalogin wrote: | I get people are skeptical but let's be objective here. Not | everything needs to be a conspiracy and an evil scheme. | California and NY followed CDC guidance. We are past the | Omicron phase and may be the data shows we are in the clear. | If losing out people was the issue then did NY just | participate in this "scheme" out of solidarity to California? | majormajor wrote: | The not-just-poll-driven view of this is that you also should | take into account: | | - for many - not all, but many - of the more vulnerable to | hospitalization and death, it's now a matter of choice. | | - As a result, a bigger spike in cases caused much fewer | hospitalizations and deaths than previous spikes, meaning | less impact on the rest of the health system. | | - behavior has changed dramatically in terms of things like | event attendance even in areas with more cautious government | policy. Compare how many people went to movie theaters in | late summer 2020 when they reopened in limited capacity in | California with now. The limited capacity isn't the biggest | difference, it's the behavior. | | - we can see that, say, California has fewer cumulative | deaths per capita than Texas or Florida despite the urban | areas being somewhat denser[0] (which itself seems to play a | big role), and Arizona has more than NY or Massachusets | despite being far less dense and with much milder winters... | but the differences aren't orders of magnitudes. | | - masks are cheaper and more available than they were | earlier, and treatments are becoming more widely available | too | | So this is a reasonable point to say "we aren't able to | eliminate this thing, but fortunately, it's much less | dangerous to most of us than it used to be." | | But make no mistakes: the biggest factor there in terms of | danger is the vaccines, which have now been available over a | year. | | [0] https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/cumulative- | covid-1... | icedchai wrote: | Yes, deaths are higher than they were the same time a year ago. | Cases are still very high. Things only look better relative to | the January peak. Everyone just decided they had enough. | s9w wrote: | GoodJokes wrote: | seanp2k2 wrote: | agree; when I look at | https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2022/03/friday-february-e... | I don't come to the conclusion that now is the best time. | 8note wrote: | Deaths lag hospitalizations which lag infections. Policy is | operating on what the expected amount of deaths in 3+weeks will | be, not the current amount | | There are also differences now in how many people are either | vaccinated, or have recovered from covid vs a year ago | nrmitchi wrote: | > More people are dying with Covid now than were dying most of | the previous two years, minus 4 peaks of various waves. | | I'm not disagreeing with your point, however IIRC this is | heavily concentrated among unvaccinated individuals, and I | _believe_ that Apple /Google/etc employees are overwhelmingly | vaccinated. I would be _shocked_ if these companies didn 't | have accommodation processes in place for individuals who are | still at high risk. | | I'm not disagreeing with your overall point, but there's no | guarantee that the same trends/statistics exist in this sub- | population. | basisword wrote: | >> More people are dying with Covid now than were dying most of | the previous two years, minus 4 peaks of various waves. | | You can't just exclude the data that disproves your point. The | peaks were the original variant, Alpha(?), Delta and now | Omicron. Deaths in this wave are extremely lower than in any | other wave due to severity, immunity and vaccinations. Hospital | stays are reduced and shorter. The original point of avoiding | covid en masse was to prevent the healthcare system from being | overwhelmed. Although it varies from place to place the | healthcare systems in highly vaccinated countries are no longer | seeing that kind of pressure even with high case numbers (still | lots of pressure but not enough to risk overwhelming the system | entirely). | katabatic wrote: | Deaths are currently at around 2,000 _PER DAY_ in the United | States. That is not in any way, shape, or form "extremely | lower" than earlier waves. The Omicron wave was equal to the | initial wave in severity, and we're still not out of it. | basisword wrote: | Interesting. Deaths in the US are still a lot higher than I | realised. I was basing my thoughts on UK data which I'm | more familiar with and I thought would be relatively | similar to the US but surprisingly not. | nojito wrote: | Deaths from COVID is different from Deaths with COVID. | jb1991 wrote: | kemayo wrote: | I think you're both right, but sort-of arguing different | issues. Here's two points: | | * Covid deaths per-day are at-or-near their highest ever | levels | | * the current wave is less dangerous | | These sound contradictory, but aren't: deaths are high, death | _rates_ aren 't -- if you catch Covid you're more likely to | survive than ever before, but you're also more likely to | catch Covid. This is because we're (currently) in a wave of a | high-infection low-mortality variant. | gtirloni wrote: | _> More people are dying with Covid now than were dying most of | the previous two years_ | | That's surprising. Do you have a source? | jeffbee wrote: | Deaths this week in California are higher than at any time in | 2020, when every office and school was closed. | | https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/corona. | .. | gdulli wrote: | I don't understand that trend happening in California since | it doesn't match the rest of the country and doesn't line | up with a spike in cases a few weeks prior. | | But what's different between 2020 and now: | | - We understand covid risk, treatment, etc. better now. | There's a box around it. In 2020 we didn't know what would | happen, if there would ever be a vaccine, or what variants | might do. We don't know what the next variant will be, | we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, but "variant" | is a less scary word if only due to having been through two | of them and come out. | | - In 2022 the deaths are more voluntary than in 2020. Of | course some people can't get a vaccine or remain at higher | risk despite a vaccine. And it's a tragedy that the world | will remain more dangerous for some, maybe permanently. But | after 2 years of on and off measures we know we can't keep | it up forever. | | I'd be all for making it a social convention to wear masks | (at certain times) going forward every flu season, which | some cultures already did before covid. While wearing a | mask I didn't get my annual cold last winter, which was | awesome. If you de-politicize it and think of it as a piece | of cloth, it stops being a big deal. But keeping stuff | closed needs to stop. | nostromo wrote: | https://i.imgur.com/aO5zJwL.png | hn_version_0023 wrote: | Is a random image on imgur really a _source_? Really? | aaronbrethorst wrote: | It's from | https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid- | cases.html | [deleted] | jb1991 wrote: | That stat has been widely reported, in the U.S. at least. | There are more deaths from Covid occurring currently in the | U.S. on an average daily basis that at any prior time in the | pandemic. | | https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/24/health/covid-deaths- | now-y... | | NY Times, Washington Post, and other media have similar | stories. | jjulius wrote: | From your article: | | >The people dying from Covid-19 now tend to be younger than | before, and they're overwhelmingly unvaccinated, experts | say. | | To be honest, I'm at the point now where the vaccine has | been available for a year. Everyone who was going to get it | has had it, and you're not likely to change the minds of | those who won't get it. As heartless as this sounds, I'm | tired of waiting for those people to come around. They are | making the choice to not get it, let them live with | whatever the consequences may be instead of keeping shit | closed/restricted just because that group is making poor | choices. | | Edit: I realize that some people _can 't_ get it for | various medical reasons, and I empathize with them. It's | everyone else I'm referring to. | mkr-hn wrote: | That's one approach. Another is to pay attention to what | they're saying and try a different approach to | persuasion. It turns out it's not actually that hard to | convince a lot of them if you just treat them like human | beings. Perhaps even enough to achieve herd immunity and | moot the rest. | | A good recent video on the subject with something | resembling science: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va0RCgbywGc | gdulli wrote: | "More than 2,000 Covid-19 deaths have been reported in the | United States each day for the past month" | | This is 2 weeks old and already out of date. Numbers are in | freefall. It's now at 1,357. And cases have dropped sharply | and consistently for a few weeks which means the (lagging) | drop in deaths will continue for a few weeks. | robertoandred wrote: | What? The daily average is still at 1,800. | gdulli wrote: | Worldometers says 1,357 for the 7-day average. But | regardless of differences in sources and collections, the | trends are the same. | mschuster91 wrote: | It's still about four airplanes worth of people crashing | daily, to put it into perspective. | | Not to mention people under immunosuppression or | legitimately unable to get vaccinated (e.g. allergies or | immunodeficient) - these poor souls are effectively | locked into their homes as a permanent jail. | heyitsanewacco wrote: | Yeah its only World Trade Center tower 1 every day. Its | not like we'd go to war over those numbers. | sokoloff wrote: | Must we then have vaccinated people join them out of some | sense of solidarity? | | There are people confined to wheelchairs yet we allow | others to walk. | tanseydavid wrote: | >> _these poor souls are effectively locked into their | homes as a permanent jail._ | | Why do you believe this to be true? Seems exaggerated to | me. | quickthrowman wrote: | From Covid != With Covid | nightski wrote: | CNN is basically a tabloid at this point. | heyitsanewacco wrote: | Everything is a tabloid, including government reporting. | We won't know how many people have died of COVID unitl | the academics start studying excess deaths and get into | years long fights over the minutiae of "with" and "of." | We still don't have exact numbers on any modern genocides | and likely won't ever. | | I never expected a "free democracy" to run into basic | stalinist subversion of facts, but here we are. | jb1991 wrote: | If you don't like the source, there are plenty of other | sources saying the same thing. | TrevorJ wrote: | I'm confused, the graph they show in the article refutes | the headline. | nradov wrote: | That is misinformation. The current US daily death rate is | significantly lower than the January 2021 peak. | | https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/#graph | -... | jeffbee wrote: | The CDC excess deaths count shows the Omicron peak was | about the same as any prior peak. Note that the CDC | excess deaths data has a tendency to rise until it is at | least 12 weeks old, due to state bureaucracy, as | explained on their page. | | https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths. | htm | miked85 wrote: | The midterm elections is the only reason. | mherdeg wrote: | Something I read[1] that resonated a few months ago: | | > Dying from Covid is more or less optional at this point. If | you want to remove the risk of dying, get the vaccine. If you | want to take the risk, don't. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29561158 | | This is a bit reductive -- people in some countries may not | have easy access to the vaccine, people whose immune systems | don't respond to the vaccine may need still-scarce antiviral | treatment to maintain a mortality rate on par with the | vaccinated, and in the US there may still be people who | genuinely cannot logistically manage getting the vaccine. | | But this is something I've been thinking about a bit lately: | when will be the "tipping point" after which more than 50% of | all US covid deaths will have been a personal choice? | | We're at about 950k deaths now. The "everyone will be eligible | to schedule an appointment" date was in April 2021 (at about | 570k deaths). So maybe another 3 months? | lamontcg wrote: | Every wave now is also very likely to be less of a strain on | the health care system than the last. | | The virulence of the virus isn't changing that much, the | biggest effect is that most people have gained immunity. | | The fact that 90% of the people in hospitals are unvaccinated | though while vaccination rates are at least >60% everywhere | is a sign though that the unvaccinated population still has | failed to achieve a level of immunity equal to vaccination. | | They're going to just accumulate immunity the hard way though | with more human casualties and death. There isn't a lot to be | done about that though. | | Eventually the rates of unvaccinated in the hospital with | each wave will start reflecting the population rate of | unvaccinated and we'll be at pretty much 100% seroprevalence | finally. | aimor wrote: | I have the same questions. We've seen government and businesses | try to be aggressive on relaxing lockdown policy in the past, | and then quickly re-implement restrictions when the next wave | of infections hit. Multiple times I've seen schools, | government, offices set terms that had to be met before moving | to the next 'phase' and every time those terms avoided their | expectations they just declared that it was a bad plan to begin | with, scrapped it, and moved on to implement whatever policy | they wanted regardless of the current status. | | I check https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid- | cases.html to track how things are going. I don't like that, | with ~2,000 people dying each day and Spring Break around the | corner, the strongest push to reopen is happening now. | | "Why now?" Just speculation, but: Because midterm elections are | this year, because consumer spending is up and inflation is | rising and the government wants to encourage the economy to | remain strong, because businesses are seeing lower performance | from employees especially regarding sensitive work, because | ICUs have capacity and vaccines are readily available. | jjulius wrote: | >More people are dying with Covid now than were dying most of | the previous two years, minus 4 peaks of various waves. | | And these people are overwhelmingly unvaccinated. At this | point, it's been a year that vaccines have been available. | You're not going to change their minds, and the rest of us - | heartless as this sounds - shouldn't continue to be held back | just because of other people's stubbornness. They made the | decision not to get it, they should live with whatever | consequences may result from that choice. | | Edit: I realize that some people _can 't_ get it for various | medical reasons, and I empathize with them. It's everyone else | I'm referring to. | giarc wrote: | Likely vaccination rate. | [deleted] | throwaway6734 wrote: | The only thing that matters is death rate for those that are | vaccinated. | lokar wrote: | What about the death rate for people who can't be vaccinated? | tomp wrote: | They're free to lock down indefinitely, if they want. | | Also, the flu! | Lascaille wrote: | Not everyone survives. That's life. You can't expect | society to shut down to protect the tiny percentage of | people who can't be vaccinated or are immunocompromised. | That's never been an expectation of society before so why | would it be one now? | lokar wrote: | It has been. The reason these people survive is because | vaccines are required for everyone as a child (in the | US). Without that they would catch mumps, measles, polio, | etc. | | And wearing a mask inside public spaces is not shutting | down society. | Lascaille wrote: | >vaccines are required for everyone as a child (in the | US) | | Do continue please | kaczordon wrote: | I remember when we used to care about hospitals overflowing. | GoodJokes wrote: | nradov wrote: | We didn't care about hospitals being overwhelmed by | influenza in 2018. | | https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu- | patie... | standardUser wrote: | There is hardly any threat of that at this point. At least | not in areas with high vaccination rates. | sharken wrote: | Some numbers to back up that claim would be nice. Make sure to | discern between cases where COVID is the primary reason for | dying and where it is not. | | As a data point, Denmark have been without restrictions since | first of February 2022. There are still 20.000 infections | daily, but most with very mild symptoms. | | There are 1.600 hospitalized, which is considerable more than | December, where there were about 600. | | So number wise it doesn't make a lot of sense to remove | restrictions, but I'm personally very happy having the old | normal back. | mylons wrote: | not in the united states. the early 2021 was the peak, and was | never surpassed in the recent uptick. | jmull wrote: | The death rate is a _trailing indicator_ so it 's not the right | thing to look at when considering what you should do in the | future. | Aeolun wrote: | I find the 'cases going up' and 'cases going down' indicators | quite compelling. | gdulli wrote: | Deaths and cases are both dropping sharply, and since deaths | lag cases, the deaths should be expected to continue to drop | steadily for a few more weeks. | | Something substantial has definitely changed. That's not the | same as knowing there won't be future variants or spikes. But | if there's ever a time to get back to normal, now would be it. | It's not total victory and may never be, but at some point we | either declare that we can live with this while having normal | lives, or we're tacitly declaring that we never intend to. | xienze wrote: | > Something substantial has definitely changed. | | Yeah, it's called midterm elections are coming up and the | Democrats are staring down the barrel of getting absolutely | crushed if they continue on with mask and vaccine mandate | policies. | gdulli wrote: | That's nonsense. Mandates are going away because (1) mid- | January was the predictable post-holiday travel and | gathering spike, (2) several weeks later the numbers were | predictably down, and then (3) lawmakers needed several | more weeks to feel safe enough about the trend to act on | it. | | Lifting mandates now leaves enough time for another spike | (followed by more restrictions) to arise before the | elections. By your thinking that timing would be a | disaster. | | Lifting mandates 6-7 months from now would maximize the | impact on the election and minimize the risk that | restrictions will have to be rolled back before the | election. | | Everything is obviously political, but the conclusion that | lifting mandates right now is strategically tied to | elections in 8 months is so far from logical that I can't | imagine arriving at it, only starting with it. The covid | numbers provide a simple, logical explanation. | infamouscow wrote: | What peer-reviewed research is being used to inform | policymakers on this recent shift? And I'm referring to | COVID-19 reports, not political ones. | criddell wrote: | That's how it should be, no? If constituents want to end a | policy then their representative should work to do exactly | that. | dylan604 wrote: | Lots of constituents don't want to wear a seatbelt. | | Lots of constituents want to drink before the age of 21. | | Lots of constituents want to buy alcohol after midnight | and on a Sunday before noon. | | Lots of constituents want lots of things that the reps | clearly ignore. Where do you draw the line of "as it | should be" and "those damn gov't bastards!!"? | standardUser wrote: | And arguably each and every one of those things should be | legal. | ghaff wrote: | The evidence probably supports that if the _majority_ of | constituents support something that isn 't clearly | unconstitutional it does tend to happen. See weed | legalization in many states which at least in | Massachusetts passed in a ballot question with the | legislature kicking and screaming through the whole | process. | r2_pilot wrote: | Yet in Mississippi when we had a ballot initiative for | medicinal marijuana supported by 2/3rds of everyone, not | only did they not pass legislation then (it's tepidly | being addressed now, over a year later), but the | Mississippi Supreme Court stripped us of our citizen's | ballot initiatives because of poorly written legislation | in the 90s, which also hasn't been corrected over a year | later. But I don't claim to live in a representative | democracy these days anyway. | [deleted] | ghaff wrote: | To say nothing of the fact that a great deal of behavior | is driven by individuals and individual businesses | whatever government mandates and recommendations are. | There are exceptions like airplanes/airports but in a lot | of places, including places that aren't Texas or Florida, | people are doing what they want to. | tinus_hn wrote: | If you look around the world, many countries are lifting | all measures. And they definitely are not affected by US | elections. They are affected by hospitalization, ICU and | death numbers that are falling as infections are rising. | briandear wrote: | They are affected by their own elections though. | tinus_hn wrote: | Everything is, that's hardly a conspiracy. | tanseydavid wrote: | No one in the thread (except for you) has used the word | 'conspiracy.' | tinus_hn wrote: | No, the claim was that mandates were being abandoned not | because it was scientifically prudent, but because of a | nearing election. | WithinReason wrote: | > More people are dying with Covid now than were dying most of | the previous two years, minus 4 peaks of various waves. | | There is a huge difference between "dying with COVID" and | "dying from COVID". | lazide wrote: | Covid sucks. My toddler (for various shitty reasons I was | unable to prevent) got it three times in the last 12 months. | | Even vaccinated (and never testing positive), the immune | response I got from taking care of a highly infectious | toddler screaming in my face was terrible and really brutal. | I'm not old, fully functional immune system, etc. and it had | me out for weeks, brain fog, exhaustion, off and on high | fever, you name it. I suspect I still am suffering side | effects from the last infection in Jan. | | If I hadn't been fully vaccinated just before the first time | he got it, I'd probably be dead. | | Pretending that someone who was not as strong or healthy, | gets it, then dies didn't 'die from Covid' is probably | disingenuous at least 90% of the time. | | We all die eventually, it's the norm for whatever obvious | change occurred to be blamed for it, not 'inevitable entropic | reality' or whatever. | | At the end of the day, someone has to made a judgement call | about the appropriate factor in a complex system. | briandear wrote: | > If I hadn't been fully vaccinated just before the first | time he got it, I'd probably be dead. | | Statistically speaking, that isn't true. | lazide wrote: | Statistically, people don't have a screaming peak | infectious toddler in their face without a mask let alone | proper PPE for an hour+ (before I could even attempt | basic precautions). | | Statistically, Li Wenliang shouldn't be dead either. | | The statistical results reflect the range and | distribution of the entire populations exposure and | immune responses, which by their nature have outlier | situations and responses. | | Most diseases, the more exposure you get, the more chance | it has to take hold before the immune system can fight | it, and the worse it gets. | | I'm pretty confident, but I guess the only way we could | know for sure is find a statistically significant | population of infected toddlers and unvaccinated | otherwise healthy middle aged adults to hold them for an | hour. | colinplamondon wrote: | That was true from the beginning. Legacy bureaucracies like | the CDC are just recognizing what was clear in 2020. | space_fountain wrote: | Well, excess mortality was high earlier and is now low. The | current Covid strain is both more infectious and less | deadly so we should expect this change | majormajor wrote: | It's quantitatively much different now.[0] There's been a | crowd pushing the idea that the hospitalization numbers are | highly misleading for two years now, and they're trying to | claim that they were right all along _based on numbers that | are only happening after a year or vaccination campaigns | and a less-lung-oriented strain emerging_. | | "About 7% of L.A. County's total staffed ICU beds are taken | up by COVID-19 patients, compared with 15% during the | summer Delta wave and more than 50% last winter. " | | "In early November -- before Omicron swept around the | world, and Delta was still dominant -- 75% of coronavirus- | positive patients countywide were in the hospital for | COVID-related medical issues, Ferrer said. | | By late December, the same was true for 45% of coronavirus- | positive hospitalized patients, Ferrer estimated." | | "During last winter's COVID-19 surge, about 80% of | coronavirus-positive patients in the emergency department | at L.A. County-USC Medical Center were being admitted to | the hospital, and nearly half of those went to the ICU, | Spellberg said. Now, about a third of coronavirus-positive | patients are admitted, and 20% to 25% are going to the | ICU." | | [0] | https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-01-07/fewer- | co... | WithinReason wrote: | The last wave amplified the difference. In the UK for | example the last wave doesn't show up in the ICU patients | chart [1], while it's clearly seen in the death chart [2]. | The last wave seems to simultaneously correspond to a | sudden spike in death statistics [2] and a sudden drop in | excess mortality [3]. Point being, "deaths with COVID" | doesn't mean a causal relationship any more, you need to | look at other statistics to see how many people are dying | as a result of COVID. | | [1]: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data- | explor... | | [2]: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data- | explor... | | [3]: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data- | explor... | infamouscow wrote: | > There is a huge difference between "dying with COVID" and | "dying from COVID". | | The distinction you're making isn't new - it's literally | years old at this point. | theptip wrote: | A very under-appreciated point. | | Given how hard "with vs. from" is to tease apart, excess | mortality is a good way to look at things, eg | | https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/17/us-excess- | deat... | | You also need to take into account the fact that that most of | the deaths in the US are amongst the unvaccinated (something | like 20:1 last I checked) so your personal risk of death, if | vaccinated, is very different from the overall death rate. | saturdaysaint wrote: | This line of argument doesn't hold up to the slightest | scrutiny. First of all, it's quite pedantic and naive to | assume that governments and medical bodies in the richest and | most advanced countries haven't worked through similar issues | of causality with innumerable other diseases. More to the | point, the peaks in COVID deaths magically align with | proportionately large spikes in all cause mortality not seen | in prior years that have yet to be explained by anything | else. | WithinReason wrote: | > More to the point, the peaks in COVID deaths magically | align with proportionately large spikes in all cause | mortality not seen in prior years that have yet to be | explained by anything else. | | In the UK they are in fact inversely correlated for | Omicron. See my comment here: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30558089 | mdoms wrote: | Here in New Zealand a gang member was shot to death and was | recorded as a covid death because he tested positive | posthumously. This is apparently in line with international | practices. If you don't see the absurdity in that then I | don't know what to say. | dzhiurgis wrote: | I assume it's this story | https://www.1news.co.nz/2021/11/11/new-lynn-shooting- | victim-... | | It's not really true if you read further into it. Think | about it - if you get nasty infection while under surgery | - was cause of death surgery or infection. | mdoms wrote: | I have looked into it, and what I said is absolutely | true. From your linked article, | | > "The clinical criteria will continue to be guided by | WHO definition which is basically to report any death | where the person had an acute Covid-19 infection | regardless of what the cause of death might be," | Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield told RNZ. | | The death was reported as a "death with covid" in | accordance with WHO guidelines. Again, if you don't see | the absurdity then you can't be helped. | | > Think about it - if you get nasty infection while under | surgery - was cause of death surgery or infection. | | How on earth is this relevant? The victim was not showing | symptoms and did not undergo surgery. | dzhiurgis wrote: | As I said - read further - they confirmed later by a | coroner. | LAC-Tech wrote: | Covid helping to do the job our police and military | can't. | nojito wrote: | Very few states record COVID deaths properly. | | How do you remove people who die in the hospital for other | reasons but have a mandatory COVID swab done and are | positive? | pmarreck wrote: | https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus- | excess-... | | If you just look at the all-cause mortality increase, it | neatly works around this problem, and looking at it that | way gives a staggeringly higher number than the official | tolls | NoSorryCannot wrote: | The person you responded to mentioned all-cause | mortality. Remove the base rate, then you're left with | excess deaths. How do you explain excess deaths if they | are not covid? | | And that's not to say an explanation other than covid is | impossible, but it would need to be compelling. | briandear wrote: | > How do you explain excess deaths if they are not covid? | | Delayed medical care because of Covid fear. I missed my | annual physical two years ago and ended up with a heart | attack I barely survived last October. People were | delaying routine screenings such as mammograms, | physicals, and other preventative care. | | There are also increases in suicide, deaths of despair, | especially in younger people. Addiction especially. | | Nobody wants to talk about vaccine injuries and related | deaths. But that is non-zero. | mehlmao wrote: | Suicide rate was lower in 2020 and 2021 than it was prior | to the pandemic. | robertoandred wrote: | So how many people are currently dying because of covid? | WithinReason wrote: | For the UK see my comment here: | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30558089 | spaetzleesser wrote: | Probably whatever you want the number to be. If somebody | dies while Covid-19 positive you can either blame it on | COVID or you can blame it on other conditions or somewhere | in between. | pmarreck wrote: | Doctors already have a protocol for this since senior | citizens often die of multiple causes. Turns out there is | usually one "proximal" cause (the "killing blow") and | multiple "distal" causes. Presumably, they use the same | evaluation protocol here to determine primary cause of | death. | | This great tiktok doc broke it down a year and a half | ago. | | https://vm.tiktok.com/TTPdAAjux1/ | jesusofnazarath wrote: | lasereyes136 wrote: | The pandemic is over because we as a society have decided it is | over and most people accept the number of covid deaths as part | of being in society. Numbers and science matter less than what | we are willing to live with. People that don't agree will | continue to protect themselves as much as possible. | kemayo wrote: | My understanding (which could be wrong!) is that the current | _absolute_ death amounts are high, but the actual _rate_ of | deaths per-infection is low. This is because the trend in | variants has (so far) been towards more-infectious but less- | fatal, along with improved knowledge of treatments... so we | have a vast number of people infected but they 're mostly- | surviving. | | Said deaths are also _extremely_ focused in unvaccinated | people, meaning that outside of the immunocompromised (whose | situation _sucks_ here), it 's at least mostly people who chose | the risk. | rhino369 wrote: | It's not "mission accomplished." It's more like our withdraw | from Afghanistan--admission of defeat. Omicron was like the | Taliban taking Kabul in 2 weeks. We just lost to Covid--at | least for now. | | Essentially everyone has an immune response to covid now-- | either by vaccination or because you already had. That is why | case number are cratering. The immune response effectiveness | will fade, but all evidence points to long lasting protection | against severe infections. | | Last summer was the re-opening a la "mission accomplished." | Then omicron evaded previous immune responses. Why won't that | happen again? It might, but less of the population is | vulnerable b/c Omicron spread to more of the population. There | was a big group of unvaccined protected by heard immunity. | | Post Omicron how many people haven't gotten a vaccine or covid? | Probably less than 10% of the public. | [deleted] | throwaway743 wrote: | Who knows if the next variant will be milder (common talking | point about how viruses evolve to be more contagious/less | deadly) or worst (the unknown and media fear mongering... not | to mean theyre equivalent), but if the trend points to anything | it's that things peak twice a year. Around January/February and | August/September. Not to mention, America is in an election | year and the economy is tetering, so everything is about optics | and giving people some feeling of autonomy over their lives at | the very least :/ | fundad wrote: | It seems like a crucial thing to deal with surges is to | dramatically increase hospital capacity. Making health care | universal would fund it. | | What blocks any expensive investments in US standard of living | is the cost. The costs is so high, it's almost as much as the | cost of inaction and that's too damn much. | | See also climate change. | closeparen wrote: | The difference is now almost everyone dying is unvaccinated, | and almost everyone unvaccinated (in the Western industrialized | world) is that way by choice. | | We cannot force these people to vaccinate for their own good, | but neither can we be held hostage by them. | nradov wrote: | Why not now? We have to return to normalcy eventually so what | do we gain by waiting? Everyone is going to be exposed to the | virus occasionally so whether that happens in an office or | somewhere else hardly matters. | guelo wrote: | I refuse to get infected no matter how much political people | seem to want me to | gdulli wrote: | I could refuse to get into any car accidents. But refusing | to drive or be a passenger or pedestrian near cars isn't a | way I can live my life. So, ultimately, I've decided that I | don't refuse to get into any car accidents. | Lascaille wrote: | >I refuse to get infected | | Avoiding COVID just isn't possible unless you're prepared | to curtail social interactions to the point at which you're | barely living. I leave my apartment about once a week (yay | depression) yet I still got Omicron. You're deluding | yourself if you think it's avoidable. | gfodor wrote: | It's not like they just decided - they did, they actually just | decided. The change in cloth mask guidance proves it: no new | data, we always knew they were ineffective. | elsonrodriguez wrote: | There are a few cloth masks in this data set showing around | 50% filtration of test particles smaller than Sars-Cov-2: | | https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1M0mdNLpTWEGcluK6hh5L. | .. | | N95s and similar are obviously better but cloth masks do ok. | Also remember they changed guidance to recommend | cloth+surgical masks, which everyone laughed at. Lo and | behold that combination tests in the 80% filtration range. | | So cloth masks work, the guidance for double masking was | valid, and the N95 recommendations more valid still. | veilrap wrote: | Cloth masks are estimated to be in the 50-60% effectiveness | range. To me, that's quite effective, not ineffective. | Especially when applied across an entire population. | krona wrote: | I think you're off by an order of magnitude (5-6%) if | you're referring to the risk of infection vs not wearing a | basic, correctly worn surgical mask. And this is pre- | omicron; omicron is far more transmissible. | | Happy to be corrected. | infamouscow wrote: | Estimated effectiveness is not empirical evidence. There's | nothing scientific about just guessing random numbers. | m0llusk wrote: | That 50% plus number is highly contested. The study cited | for that does not necessarily support that conclusion. | gfodor wrote: | No. Cloth masks are understudied and probably don't do | much. What _does_ do a lot, probably, is a dynamic where | millions of people wearing ineffective masks thinking they | are effective, and making bad choices entirely due to that | bad assumption, like _not_ wearing an N95, closing distance | with people, or going indoors when it could have been | avoided. | | https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/mask-studies- | reach-a... | hemloc_io wrote: | Well there's new data it's just not health related. | | "In fact, support for mask mandates has reached its lowest | level since we began asking in August 2021. Now, a narrow | majority (51%) support their state or local government | requiring masks in public places compared to the roughly 63% | that had over the last 6 months." | | https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/axios-ipsos- | coronavir... | codingdave wrote: | > "no new data" | | There is literally new data every day. Case counts change, | hospital usage changes, etc. The change in mask guidance is | also not universal - it is dependent on that exact data. The | CDC maintains a county-by-county map of the data so you know | exactly what the guidance is each day based on the latest | data. | | If you want to keep up with the data, the map is not a bad | place to start: | https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your- | health/covid-... | gfodor wrote: | There was no new data to support a change in guidance on | cloth masks. The argument made is that omicron was the | factor which warranted the updated guidance on cloth masks. | There is no data to support the idea that cloth masks were | suddenly uniquely unsuited as countermeasures. | | Edit: The CDC is so infuriating. They still link the term | "masks" to this page, that shows a picture of some useless | facial decorations on the same page discussing N95 | respirators. If we had a sane CDC, _all_ imagery and | messaging would be around N95s. They have killed thousands | of people with the implicit lie strewn across all their | messaging that there some kind of meaningful equivalency to | be made between all masks. The unqualified term "mask" | should have been struck from the messaging two years ago. | https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting- | si... | standardUser wrote: | The threat to hospitals is essentially gone now that immunity | is widespread thanks to vaccines and recoveries. All that most | restrictions were ever intended to do was to stop everyone | getting sick at once, which would have resulted in mass | casualties from lack of healthcare resources. | furyofantares wrote: | A lot has changed in the last year? Loads of people have been | vaccinated that weren't a year ago (even if they were eligible | then). | | Kids became eligible to be vaccinated only a few months ago, | which even if it wasn't actually risky to them it was a major | concern for many parents. | | Right about that time, the omicron wave hit, and ever since | late december we've known it was very likely we'd peak and then | crash on cases. | | So we didn't return to normal last summer because loads of | people weren't vaccinated yet, and kids weren't eligible. We | didn't return once kids became eligible because omicron was | looming. And we didn't return during omicron peak because | hospitals were overwhelmed. | theoldlove wrote: | Under 5s still aren't eligible. | JeremyNT wrote: | > Last summer, for example, could have been the reopening, and | we'd have better data and "science" to support it. | | Things trended well last summer, but 1) everybody expects a | lull in warm weather and 2) vaccination numbers were still low. | It was reasonable at the time to hold onto precautions hoping | the unvaccinated people would come around before fall. And good | thing too, because delta proved to be a real pickle before | being displaced by omicron. | | At some point, it becomes obvious that a large number of people | just won't bother getting vaccinated, and you can't | realistically keep asking the entire country to go out of their | way to protect the people who won't protect themselves. | | We'll see another wave in the fall, either omicron or some new | variant, and hopefully our vaccines will stay ahead of it. | waah wrote: | As hospital occupancy goes down, the major public health reason | for restrictions goes down as well. | lazide wrote: | chadash wrote: | Deaths tend to lag behind peaks of cases and we recently passed | the peak of our biggest wave by far (official numbers for this | peak are around 800k/day in the US, vs 250k for previous peak | in jan 2021, but this doesn't account for the likelihood that | many cases didn't get reported due to widely available at-home | testing and other factors). Deaths going forward for people who | catch it now will probably be far lower. | pmarreck wrote: | but it's all rural Trumpist counties at this point; ostensibly, | the people lying in the bed they made for themselves don't | typically work for Apple | tanseydavid wrote: | >> _it's all rural Trumpist counties at this point_ | | Do you have any idea how parochial you sound when you make | generalizations in this manner? | m0llusk wrote: | Numbers of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths are all way | down and still dropping. Vaccinations have turned out to be | highly effective both against severe disease and long COVID. | The Omicron variant is far less deadly than the Delta variant | and has almost completely replaced the Delta variant. | newsbinator wrote: | I didn't use death rate for supporting closing and I won't use | death rate for supporting opening. | | Covid's main threats for most people are: | | * Filling up hospitals to the point they stop functioning | (that's been true here in Canada). | | * Putting 10% ~ 20% of workers everywhere, including hospitals, | out of commission for weeks at a time while they're acutely | sick with Covid or infectious to others. | | * Disabling some large % of people temporarily or permanently | due to lingering symptoms of the virus. | | The death rate for covid is significant but not substantial | enough in itself to cause the world to lock down. The points | above though, are. | endisneigh wrote: | > The death rate for covid is significant but not substantial | enough in itself to cause the world to lock down. The points | above though, are. | | For USA the death rate is still higher than times when we | were not RTO. | 30367286 wrote: | The people dying of COVID and the people working from home | are different cohorts. We have a vaccine, anti-virals, and | natural immunity. Will the WFH cohort see an increase in | deaths due to RTO? Certainly. We'll also see more car | accidents. The world has never been free of risk, and we | are now emerging from the pandemic with a newly integrated | risk model for this disease. It's going to be touch and go | for a while -- years -- but it's important to remember that | flattening the curve was always the goal. COVID Zero was | never in play. | endisneigh wrote: | > The people dying of COVID and the people working from | home are different cohorts. We have a vaccine, anti- | virals, and natural immunity | | Well, yes. The people dying were always generally | unvaccinated. | majormajor wrote: | > * Putting 10% ~ 20% of workers everywhere, including | hospitals, out of commission for weeks at a time while | they're acutely sick with Covid or infectious to others. | | This one seems like a dubious point to me, services during | the early-2020 lockdowns were much more impacted than they | were during the Omicron spike which saw much less enforced | lockdown but much more "shit, all our employees are sick" | closures. | | Completely agree with the hospitalization concerns, and I | would add that the calculations also changed a lot re: | protecting others after widespread vaccine availability. | freyr wrote: | The underlying assumption seems to be that future waves | will be mild because Omicron was mild, either intrinsically | or due to improved immunity. I hope it's the case, but time | will tell if this is true. | | Alternatively, they're planning to more reactively bring us | into the office when we're in a lull and have us WFH when | we're in a wave. | endisneigh wrote: | RTO should've begun the minute it was shown that vaccines stop | deaths. | | given that you have to be vaccines to rto at Apple it didn't | really make sense to wait this long anyway | lokar wrote: | And do you have to RTO if you have an immunocompromised | family member at home? | mikestew wrote: | You should probably ask your employer rather than some | random on the internet. | briandear wrote: | Midterm elections coming up. The (political) science has | changed. | throwawaymanbot wrote: | jdrc wrote: | I think the cat is out of the bag for remote work and most | companies are going to have to settle differently | Wiseacre wrote: | I recall hearing about the Slack channel Apple employees were | using to push for long-term remote work. | | I wonder if Apple will try to retain remaining employees with a | cost of living wage increase. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-03-04 23:00 UTC)