Something is rotten in the state of Apple

Apple recently announced a set of (rather large) retention payments for some engineers. (I assume that these are senior engineers.) The payments are in the form of restricted stock units which vest over a four-year period. Apple is making these payments to prevent employees from leaving for other companies. It's not clear, but these appear to be one-time payments. (That is, this is not a new, recurring payment to employees.)

This is not a good idea.

If employees are leaving Apple, that is a problem. And the problem has two (for this post) possible causes: employees are unhappy with wages, or employees are unhappy with something else.

If employees are unhappy with wages, it is quite likely that wages are not in line with other companies. If that is the problem, then the correct action is to adjust wages to competitive levels. A one-time payment (even spread over years) will not fix the problem.

I tend to think that Apple's wages are competitive.

If employees are unhappy with something other than wages, then a monetary payment does not fix the problem. Employees could he unhappy about many things: working conditions, opportunities to work on fun projects, opportunities for professional growth, political involvement of the company, or projects deemed unethical by employees. (And more!)

Monetary compensation does not fix any of those problems. The problems remain, and the unhappiness of employees remains.

I suspect that in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, Apple requested (demanded?) that employees return to the office, and a number of employees -- senior-level employees -- refused. Not only did they refuse, they refused with "and if you make me return to the office, I will leave Apple and work for someone else". (This is all speculation. I am not employed by Apple, nor have I spoken with any Apple employees.)

Apple has not one but two problems.

The first problem is that employees are leaving, and Apple has addressed that problem with bonus payments.

The second problem is that Apple thinks this tactic is a good one. (They must think it is a good idea. Otherwise they would not have done it.)

Payments of this type must have been discussed at the highest levels of Apple. I suspect that even members of the board of directors were consulted. Did anyone object to these payments?

In the end, Apple decided to pay employees to address issues that are not related to compensation. It is the wrong solution to the problem, and it will probably make the situation worse. Bonus payments were offered to some employees. The other employees will resent that. Bonus payments vest over four years. After the last payment, employees who were given these payments will see their compensation drop significantly. They may resent that.

Apple has a problem. Retention payments don't address the underlying issues. Is Apple addressing the underlying issues? Possibly. (Apple would not advertise that.)

Let's see what happens at Apple over the next year. I expect to hear about changes in the organization, with the resignations of several senior executives.

I also expect that Apple will continue on its current course for its products and services. Those are sound, and have a good reputation with customers. I see no need to change them, other than the typical improvements Apple makes each year.

Employee productivity and remote work

The first question is: how does one know that employees, working remotely, are in fact working?

It's not a trivial question, and the answer is far from simple. Too many managers, I suspect, think that their remote employees are "goofing off" during the time they claim to be working. Some managers may believe that employees are working only part time (yet getting paid for a full time job). A few managers may suspect their employees of working multiple jobs at the same time.

It is probable that all of the above scenarios are true.

The second and third questions are: Do managers care? And should managers care?

Managers probably do care. One can hear the complaints: "Employees are goofing off!" or "Employees are not working when they should be!". Or the shrill: "How dare my employees work for someone else!"

All of these complaints condense into the statement "That's not fair!"

Managers and companies have, naturally, installed mechanisms to prevent such abuse of remote work. They monitor employees via webcam, or -- in a particularly Orwellian turn -- use AI to monitor employees via webcam.

It strikes me that these measures assume that they can obtain good results (employees working) by eliminating bad behaviors (employees walking the dog or making a cup of coffee). They subtract the bad and assume that the remains is good. Theoretically, that sums.

But do managers want merely an employee sitting at a computer for an eight-hour shift? (And doing nothing else?) If so, I am willing to work for such companies. I am quite capable of sitting at a computer for hours. I can even appear to be busy, typing and clicking.

Managers will answer that they want more than that. Managers will (rightly) say that they need results, actual work from the employee that provides value to the company.

Can managers quantify these results? Can they provide hard numbers of what they expect employees to do? For some jobs, yes. (Call centers rate employees by number of calls taken and resolved, for example.) Other jobs are less easy to measure. (Programming, for example. Does one measure lines of code? Number of stories? Number of stories weighted by size? Does quality of the code count? Number of defects found during testing?)

It's easy to take the approach of "remove the bad behaviors and hope for the best". One can purchase tools to monitor employees. (It's probably easy to justify such purchases to budget committees.)

But perhaps some of the effort and expense of monitoring bad behavior could be redirected to measuring good results. Business is, after all, about results. If Programmer A produces the same results as Programmer B, but in 75 percent of the time, why not let Programmer A have some time to make coffee?

Another thought:

Lots of employees in the tech world are paid as salaried employees. Compensation by salary (as opposed to hourly wages) implies that the employee has some discretion over their work.

If employers push the monitoring tools, employees may decide that their compensation should be hourly, instead of salary. Companies won't like that arrangement, as they have been using salaried compensation to extract unpaid overtime from workers. But workers have some say in the issue. If employers focus on hours worked, then employees will focus on hours worked.

Ed Snowden's Disclosure is Small Compared to Booze-Allen-Hamilton's

The NSA, Booz-Allen-Hamilton, the US Justice Department, various politicians, the media, and developers have been stirred up by the activities of Edward Snowden, who disclosed activities of the NSA. While we've all been watching the fun, there is a small detail that has been overlooked, one that may have significant consequences.

Booz-Allen-Hamilton terminated the employment of Snowden:

Booz Allen can confirm that Edward Snowden, 29, was an employee of our firm for less than 3 months, assigned to a team in Hawaii. Snowden, who had a salary at the rate of $122,000, was terminated June 10, 2013 for violations of the firm’s code of ethics and firm policy. News reports that this individual has claimed to have leaked classified information are shocking, and if accurate, this action represents a grave violation of the code of conduct and core values of our firm. We will work closely with our clients and authorities in their investigation of this matter.

This of course is not surprising.

The termination of his employment is not what interests me. What interests me is what people have been ignoring:

Snowden, who had a salary at the rate of $122,000

That's a high salary for a 29-year-old with no college degree.

I'm sure that a lot of employees of Booz-Allen-Hamilton are thinking about their salary, and perhaps finding it somewhat less that Snowden's.

Now, Snowden was employed in Hawaii, and Hawaii has a high cost of living. Someone in North Carolina could live just as comfortably on a lower salary, and I'm sure that Booz-Allen-Hamilton adjusts their compensation with geographic areas.

Booz-Allen-Hamilton has said nothing about Snowden's specific duties or the skills required for his position, and there may be some obscure talent needed.

But even adjusting for those factors, that salary is going to get people thinking. It's going to get developers thinking. And they will be thinking: "Hey, perhaps I can earn that kind of salary."

Snowden, in an interview with The Guardian, claimed that his compensation was $200,000. Booz-Allen-Hamilton states that his salary was $122,000. The two claims are not necessarily in conflict; Booz-Allen-Hamilton may have paid a bonus on top of the salary. (I have no insight into Booz-Allen-Hamilton's compensation packages, and I am guessing here.)

Bonus or not, by stating his annual salary, Booz-Allen-Hamilton will have started a lot of people thinking. My guess is that developers will start asking for compensation to match Booz-Allen-Hamiltion's statement.

Compensation information for large companies, is, as a rule, held as confidential. By exposing this salary point, Booze-Allen-Hamilton may have created a problem across the entire US IT industry.