Apple’s efforts to bring its employees back to the office are facing ongoing resistance from an organized group of employees, and there has been at least one notable resignation on the matter.
Verge reporter Zoë Schiffer chilro On Saturday, Ian Goodfellow, Apple’s director of machine learning, will leave the company. He cited the plan to return to the office as his reason for leaving. “I strongly believe that more flexibility would have been the best policy for my team,” he said in a note to co-workers, according to Schaeffer’s tweet.
Current policy sometimes varies by team and role, but in general Apple already requires employees to visit the office one or two days a week. On May 23, many Apple employees will be required to go to the office at least three days a week.
Some employees are unhappy with the gradual return to the office. They coordinated their efforts in a group dubbed “Apple Together”. group recently Publish an open letter Addressed to the company’s executive leadership.
Apple Together lists several reasons why they believe Apple’s return to the office doesn’t make sense for the company and its employees. The group tries to debunk the idea that being in the office together allows for unexpected moments of collaboration and creativity. The group says the company is already isolated, so collaborating with coworkers is more manageable when working from home (when organizing video calls to offices or other departments is sometimes easier) than in the office.
Apple Together looks at the impact of commuting in crowded cities where Apple has offices – such as the Bay Area, Los Angeles or Austin, Texas – on employees’ personal lives, energy and work availability. The group also notes that requiring employees to live on the road from the office limits the types of employees who join the company.
The letter concludes by citing what its authors consider “the most important reason” for Apple to allow more flexible work arrangements. She notes that Apple’s marketing messages position products like the iPhone, iPad and Mac as ideal tools for remote work, even as Apple tells employees who design those products to go back to the office.
The letter notes that Apple’s marketing is a hypocritical tactic and suggests that the employees who work to make these products will better understand customer needs if they live the same work lifestyle.
While Apple is gradually bringing employees back into the office culture, it is using remote collaboration tools so effectively that it has no other choice.
For example, a Wall Street Journal article On how the COVID-19 pandemic is changing Apple’s operations in China, he explains how Apple is using technologies like live streaming, video calling and augmented reality to enable engineers in California to collaborate with colleagues in China amid travel restrictions. Previously, many of these interactions required international travel to meet in person.
Meanwhile, many other tech companies have taken more permissive approaches to remote work. Microsoft still encourages some employees to come into the office, but this varies on a case-by-case basis. Others, like Dropbox, Twitter and Lyft, have announced that most employees can be completely absent indefinitely if they so choose.
As it stands now, Apple plans to move forward with its updated three-day-a-week policy on May 23.
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