I totally agree removing friction is key. I have really enjoyed Korg Gadget https://www.korg.com/us/products/software/korg_gadget/ - most people are familiar with the iPad version, but the Mac version has the keyboard mapped out like sampulator for immediate playing like an instrument.
Apple is a hardware company, and you can't WFH using giant anechoic chambers, laser cutting machines, electronics labs, and who knows what else. The products may be manufactured overseas, but there is a lot of expensive hardware needed for designing, prototyping and testing.
I get that Apple does a lot of software these days, but one of the things they are also known for is tight integration between the hardware and software, which doesn't happen without them working side by side.
There may be a significant fraction of employees that can work remotely, but it would significantly change the culture of the company to split the workforce like that.
Sure but many Apple employees don't interact with hardware at all. There's a good chance that many people who do interact with hardware only do so part of the time. Another section might work with hardware but could maybe take some of it home with them (clearly physical hardware has left Apple in the past).
Sure, the remainder have to be physically present but that is the job/career they picked and even probably enjoy. Letting everyone else WFH means those remaining on-campus employees can have better offices & live closer to work. Seems like a win-win to me.
I agree; I tried standalone boxes like the Electribe 2 and Circuit, and the iPad with Korg Gadget is just way more flexible and quicker. The soft synths available are truly equal to desktop apps now. DAWs like Cubasis and Aria are way more powerful than the OP-1s abilities, although I still feel like the workflow could be improved.
I've only seen this as an internal move, which is how I did it. Ask to take ownership of a project, even a small one. Do it successfully for at least one delivery. Learn the technical ins and outs and the political relationships within the organization. Become known as the $PROJECT person. Every organization handles projects differently so learn and use the specific lingo and process in yours.
Once you do that, you can formally ask for the role.
One way to think about this is traveling to places where connectivity is literally unavailable -- national parks, mountains, etc. Your boss cannot prevent you from traveling to those locations, so even if you aren't somewhere where you are unreachable, why should you be expected to be available?
Most of my bosses have left their contact information for when they are away from the office, but I've never had reason to use it. I would feel bad interrupting someone's time off except in cases of true emergencies, which might happen more often in other company cultures or industries.
They have perfect grades because of grade inflation. It's cruel that because the boundaries of what is tested have narrowed, those who wish to prove themselves must focus on perfection rather than mastery.
Then the grading system should be changed so it's not as easy to get perfect scores and a bunch of people aren't clustering at the top.
Somehow this is made to work in other countries. Many of them have competitive university entrance exams where people are ranked in order, and nobody or nearly nobody gets a perfect score.
Totally agree. I believe Agile works well in environments with shallow tech stacks, but it has worked terribly in my experience in product companies that build hardware, FPGA dev, embedded software, and other disciplines that can't deliver on two week increments or increments that align well with other disciplines.
Agile can work well in embedded, I've seen and done it.
The thing people have to forget is the notion of "deliver on two week increments". It's not about delivering a product that can be fielded each increment, in the case of an embedded system, but about delivering something that has some improvement or new testable component. I can't make an embedded radio handle, in two weeks, a completely new message type (well, depends). But I can do things in each two week interval that is verifiable. I can show that I've actually received the new message, that I can send it back out, that I can pass it through the various internal processors (if multiple processors are used) or processes (if a single one). Then I can start transforming it, storing it, changing other things about the radio state based on the message contents. Each of those is independently verifiable and completable within a short period of time. But taken as a whole, it's a 6-month project. The agile way has you make those small things, verify them, and then move on to the next thing. I can deliver (to the test team, to others using the system) the partially-completed system, it just can't be fielded (and that's fine).
And that's not unique to embedded. If you only focus on things that can be fielded in each increment, you'll never develop the more complex tasks, or address the tech debt.
This is not strictly true. Health insurance has always been available for purchase by individuals, and the ACA expanded access to this by providing income-based subsidies. When you lose your job, you lose access to your employer's subsidy and risk pool.
That doesn't change the fact that heath insurance and healthcare is expensive, it's just pointing out that the only way most people can afford to have it is because their employer is paying for most of it. If that cost was more transparent to salaried people, it might spur a more useful conversation about how to bring down the cost of healthcare.
At our institution, every staff member is required to be a part of the rotation on the benefits committee. Also, we are required (state funded institution) to send out the full cost of every staff and faculty member to them every year.
When the letters go out, people open their eyes when they see the institution spent 1/3 of their salary on health insurance. You can tell when someone is on the benefits committee, because they don't complain about salaries for about 3 years.
>> Health insurance has always been available for purchase by individuals
Not true. Before Obamacare, anyone with a pre-existing condition was excluded. "Pre-existing condition" means you ever saw a doctor more than once for the same thing. My family was denied because one of my children was in the hospital for a week AT BIRTH. She was 5 when we applied, and not been sick for a day since then.
