Zoom in / Apple’s global headquarters in Cupertino, California.
Apple’s efforts to bring its employees back to the office have met with constant opposition from an organized group of employees, and at least one significant resignation has taken place.
Verge reporter Zoe Schiffer tweeted on Saturday that Ian Goodfellow, Apple’s director of machine learning, would leave the company. He cited the plan to return to the office as the reason for his departure. “I strongly believe that more flexibility would be the best policy for my team,” he said in a note to colleagues, according to Schiffer’s tweet.
Current policies sometimes vary by team and role, but in general, Apple has already asked employees to visit the office for one or two days a week. On May 23, many Apple employees will have to go to the office at least three days a week.
Some employees are dissatisfied with the gradual return to the office. They coordinated their efforts in a group called “Apple Together”. The group recently published an open letter addressed to the company’s executive management.
Apple Together lists several reasons why they believe that returning Apple to the office does not make sense for the company and its employees. The group tries to debunk the idea that living together in the office allows for random moments of collaboration and creation. The group says the company is already divided, so working with colleagues is more manageable when working from home (when video calls to other offices or departments are sometimes easier to organize) than in the office.
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Apple Together notes the impact that commuting to heavy-duty cities where Apple has offices – such as the Bay Area, Los Angeles or Austin, Texas – has on the privacy, energy and availability of employees. The group also points out that requiring employees to live within the scope of travel to the workplace from offices limits what types of employees join the company.
And the letter ends by naming what its authors consider Apple’s “most important reason” to allow more flexible working arrangements. It states that Apple’s marketing messages position products such as the iPhone, iPad and Mac as ideal tools for remote work, even when Apple tells employees who design these products to return to the office.
The letter suggests that Apple’s marketing is hypocritical and notes that employees working on these products will better understand customer needs if they lead the same lifestyle.
While Apple is gradually bringing employees back to office culture, it is effectively using remote collaboration tools where there is no other choice.
For example, a Wall Street Journal article on how the COVID-19 pandemic changed Apple’s operations in China outlines how Apple has used technologies such as live broadcasts, video calls and augmented reality to enable California-based engineers to collaborate with colleagues in China amid travel restrictions. Many of these interactions would have required international travel to meet in person.
Meanwhile, several other technology companies have adopted more permissive approaches to remote work. Microsoft still encourages some employees to come to the office, but this varies from case to case. Others, such as Dropbox, Twitter and Lyft, said most employees could stay completely away indefinitely if they chose.
As it is now, Apple plans to move forward with its updated policy for three days a week on May 23.
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