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Apple’s Director of Machine Learning Quits Over Company’s Return to Work Policy
According to The Verge‘s Zoë Schiffer (@ZoeSchiffer), Apple’s director of machine learning (ML), Ian Goodfellow, has decided to part ways with the company due to its return to work policy.
Apple employees across all disciplines demonstrated over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic that productivity and efficiency could both be achieved while working remotely. That being the case, it came as no surprise when employees petitioned to work remotely after Apple last year asked them to come back to the office in September.
The iPhone maker delayed its plans to call employees back into offices several times due to spikes in COVID-19 cases, most recently in December 2021 to a “date yet to be determined.” Corporate Apple employees ultimately started returning to their offices last month under a hybrid home/office work policy, ending two-year work from home stint.
As other tech companies like Facebook and Airbnb loosen up their work policies post-pandemic, with Facebook aiming to have half of its employees working remotely over the next decade and Airbnb last week announcing plans to let all employees “live and work anywhere,” employee demand for flexible work policies at Apple continues to grow.
“I believe strongly that more flexibility would have been the best policy for my team,” Goodfellow write in a note to staff.
Ian Goodfellow, Apple’s director of machine learning, is leaving the company due to its return to work policy. In a note to staff, he said “I believe strongly that more flexibility would have been the best policy for my team.” He was likely the company’s most cited ML expert.
— Zoë Schiffer (@ZoeSchiffer) May 7, 2022
Goodfellow had been at Apple for over three years, since leaving Google to join the Cupertino, California-based tech giant’s Special Projects Group in April 2019. He is credited as being the inventor of generative adversarial networks (GANs), and he was likely Apple’s most-cited ML expert.
His departure is unarguably a big hit for Apple, especially given how integral machine learning and artificial intelligence have become to the company’s products with features like Siri, face detection, and more. Apple Silicon today even contains dedicated AI processing in the form of the company’s Neural Engine.
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Employees can be monitored, if they are able to produce from home just as well as when they’re at work then they should be allowed to work from home.
For some positions, it makes perfect sense. For others, there’s a loss to having them at home. For jobs that require close collaboration, you lose the spontaneous and ad hoc interactions. While you can check everyone’s calendars and schedule something or check if someone is online and call them and hope you aren’t interrupting, it’s not as efficient as stopping into someone’s office or popping your head over their cubicle. It’s similar to the difference between going for lunch or drinks with friends or meeting together on a zoom call. You lose something, even if it’s intangible.
Remote can work, but it does create challenges.
Then why didn’t all these businesses die during the lockdowns!?!?!?!?!? WHO kept them afloat????
You realize how disruptive it is when people just swing by your desk when you’re trying to focus?
The only thing that’s missing is controlling garbage bosses not being able to pry and constantly micro-manage the s$HTt out of their subordinates.
People are adaptable. They compensated for the loss of personal interactions. When we first shutdown, it meant a hell of a lot of OT. That’s not sustainable.
Certainly, there’s a benefit of not being as disrupted by people just popping over, but that’s a double edged sword. You lose the benefits of quick, spontaneous interactions too.
Not all jobs were negatively impacted. For those that are very isolated from others anyway, being at home makes no difference. For others, for whom collaboration and unscheduled interactions provided a benefit, there’s an undeniable loss.
Interesting that this position seems so controversial…as a fairly large team manager, I’m on the same page with you : collaboration has been affected immensely. What used to take 15 minutes to whiteboard and analyze, now requires useless Zoom sessions hard to control efficiently.
A hybrid model is the best (we had that pre-pandemic) and employees should feel more comfortable in the office than at home. But companies are obviously reluctant to improve the work environment to attract people…they try to either cut cost and send everyone home, or force folks in the same conditions as before. I’ve seen only a few corporations (mostly banks and financial institutions) making real effort to cultivate a climate of collaboration and socializing.
Work is work…
Agreed.
Before the pandemic, I was managing teams in two countries, so we already had remote and virtual interaction. But losing the personal, spontaneous interactions with local team members was the biggest complaint from both teams when we shutdown the offices. Today, I have teams in 5 countries and those that are back in the office are reporting much lower levels of stress and more productivity. They no longer feel like they are at work when they are at home. They’ve got a clear line of separation.
We’ll have a hybrid model when the rest of us return to the office.
I don’t disagree that’s it’s no a one size fits all, I’m just pointing out that if it does work by the numbers then it should be used by companies. My wife manages a lot of people and according to her the people are doing just as well from home as they were from the office.
Seems like a win win if companies can reduce overhead and employees can reduce expenses like new clothing and travel (gas) etc.
But ya, it doesn’t work in every situation.
For some positions, it makes perfect sense. For others, there’s a loss to having them at home. For jobs that require close collaboration, you lose the spontaneous and ad hoc interactions. While you can check everyone’s calendars and schedule something or check if someone is online and call them and hope you aren’t interrupting, it’s not as efficient as stopping into someone’s office or popping your head over their cubicle. It’s similar to the difference between going for lunch or drinks with friends or meeting together on a zoom call. You lose something, even if it’s intangible.
Remote can work, but it does create challenges.
As an ML expert, he won’t have any trouble finding work. There may be other issues and the return to work policy could be just an excuse.
Good on him!
If he has the means to walk from a job he’s no longer comfortable for ANY reason is a good reason.
– I see far too many people stuck at jobs they hate for various reasons, I was no different.
Productivity may suffer slightly by working from home – or it might not. So what. The fact is that we found that people are productive enough. But they are a LOT happier not have to spend hours commuting every day. A lot happier working from anywhere they want to work from. The slight productivity gain from going in to the office is not worth it from a societal level. The net good of the flexibility, time savings, reduced pollution from commuting etc. etc. for outweighs making companies a few extra bucks for the effort.
That’s the thing though. The amount of work performed at the office isn’t more than that performed in other areas. If people are going to slack working remotely, they’re going to slack working in the office.
For myself, my workplace has made us go hybrid and I’ve noticed quite obviously that the days I’m that working in the office I get less done. The drive-by conversations, hallway chatter, and less than ideal workspaces make it more difficult to do my job. It’s obvious enough that I (and my coworkers) actually now plan deliverables around that extra non-productive day of work.
It seems to be all about making the upper management types happy to see bums in chairs and less about the actual work getting done.
Yes agreed. Certainly there are many people that work best remotely. And I can grant that there are some that that work better at the office – people and situations are different. But all in all, I think the differences pale in comparison to the hours wasted commuting causing traffic, pollution, stress, accidents etc. It’s just soooooo much more efficient to not have to go through the whole ceremony of dressing up, spreading disease by being packed into subways or causing traffic by driving in, paying for parking and gas etc. etc. If productivity is comparable (which it is), workers and society benefit so much by being allowed to work from wherever works for them best. Not every tech worker thinks Cupertino is the best place to live. Totally agree that it’s all about making upper management happy and not based on anything else.
Who knows maybe this AI/ML director at Apple probably had a conscious and didn’t like the fact that Apple might be doing some scrupulous things with AI. /s We already know that Apple has installed their Nudity detection software onto the latest versions of iOS. Software that is only suppose to be used by parents, and enabled on their kids iPhones, but you really have to ask yourself why does that Nudity detection software need to be rolled out onto every iOS device? Afterall Apple is a closed company, and Apple is not really a forthcoming company. Also I could see other types of object detection happening down the road, like looking for drugs, guns, or other types of weapons, and even people of interest.
Anyone else remember that show called ‘Person of Interest’?
“scrupulous”
You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
You’ve used it a lot lately. A dictionary might be worth the investment.