Apple’s plans to bring employees back to the office aren’t going down well

Apple wants to bring employees back to the office for at least three days a week
A number of employees are opposed to the new regulation
Over 1,400 current and former employees even signed an open letter against returning to the office

Apple’s “Return to Office” met with resentment

Countless employers have sent their employees to work from home due to the corona pandemic. This also included the US tech giant Apple. However, instead of sticking to this rule, the company would now like to gradually return to the “old normal” and plans to bring its employees into the office for at least three days a week from May 23rd. However, this initiative by the company’s management is apparently met with great resistance from a number of employees. As reporter Zo Schiffer writes on Twitter, even the Director of Machine Learning, Ian Goodfellow, is said to have resigned from Apple because of the new “Return to Work” policy. According to Schiffer, before leaving, he wrote in a note to his employees that he was convinced that more flexibility would have been the best arrangement for his team.

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.

– Zo Schiffer (@ZoeSchiffer) May 7, 2022

Apparently, more than 1,400 of his former colleagues share the same view as Goodfellow. They signed an open letter to the Apple management and gradually weakened the arguments for the return to the office.

The fairy tale of the “happy encounter

According to the authors of the open letter, one argument for the desired return to the office is the so-called “happy meeting” of the employees. It’s not just about the fact that the colleagues in the office are happily seeing each other again in reality, but also that in some cases these contacts result in “lucky coincidences” that could be beneficial for Apple. In the open letter from the employees, however, these are stamped as a kind of myth. On the one hand, Apple has numerous office buildings, so many colleagues never meet in the same place. On the other hand, the corporate culture created and desired by Apple in no way promotes the “happy meeting”. Each functional unit is separate from the others and the employees of the respective groups do not have access to the premises of the other departments. “Software engineers don’t talk to AppleCare employees and retail employees don’t happen to talk to hardware developers,” the company’s open letter reads. Luck is therefore not necessary for a contact, but intention. Over the past two years, attempts have been made to exchange information across organizational units via Slack, but Apple has put a stop to this by dividing it into different workspaces. Even the establishment of communal rooms was deliberately prevented by the management.

Where are you more creative – in the office or at home?

Even if the creative process between different departments in the Apple office is not possible due to the “silo structure”, according to the initiators of the “Return to Office” it is still beneficial to inspire each other within a unit. The authors of the open letter agree that being able to work together in a space and not being separated by technical barriers can increase creativity. “However, many of us do not need this every week, often not even every month and certainly not every day,” the employees explain. Should it be necessary to meet in a room, they would organize it themselves. However, open-plan offices, which are prevalent in Apple’s newer buildings, are clearly a hindrance to creativity. To think, the employees broke peace, which they would get better in their own four walls.

No flexibility due to compulsory presence in the office

As Goodfellow wrote in his note to his team, the authors of the open letter would also like more rather than less flexibility. They would understand that not every employee can be assured of working from home. Nevertheless, they would like to be able to discuss the working model individually within the teams and with the responsible managers. A blanket solution that is simply applied to everyone and does not take into account the specific circumstances of the job is inappropriate. In this way, employees would be forced into the office, who could easily do their work from home. “Stop treating us like schoolchildren who are told when to be where and what homework to do,” the open letter reads. After all, you can decide for yourself which form works best for you. Personal circumstances could also be better reconciled with work in this way.

Commuting only brings disadvantages

Another important argument against returning to the office is commuting, which only has disadvantages if it is cited unnecessarily. According to the open letter, traveling to work without sufficient reason is a complete waste of time, as well as mental and physical energy. A drive, sometimes lasting several hours, to a place where you can then also do your work worse is completely pointless. It also makes no sense to drive to the office to video conference with people who are in completely different cities and countries around the world. Commuting thus restricts both the productivity and the free time of the employees. “Is it worth it for everyone to be in the office at the same time? And if so, how about you pay us for the extra time?” the authors of the open letter asked Apple’s senior management . In addition to these very personal disadvantages, there are also the problems of climate change and environmental protection.

The loss of diversity

The employees also see the risk of a loss of diversity within the workforce due to the forced return to the office. The “conservative approach” makes Apple attractive as an employer for fewer people and would above all be suitable for a certain group of people. In the case of new employees, what is particularly important is certain privileges that they bring with them when they are hired: “Privileges like you live in the right place, so you don’t have to move or you’re young enough to start a new life in a new city or starting a new country or you have a non-working spouse who will move with you And having privileges like being the right gender so society doesn’t expect you to take care of social life (kids, seniors) and You can disappear into the office all day without doing your share of unpaid community work. Or you’re rich enough to pay others to do that work.” Ultimately, Apple would become “younger, whiter, more masculine, more neuro-normative and without physical limitations”.

Hypocrisy, your name is Apple

They list the most important reason for the authors last in the open letter. This practically questions Apple’s entire product promise and criticizes the company’s message based on actual practice. Apple makes products for its customers that are advertised as the best solution for decentralized working and their own employees cannot use them to be able to work flexibly without having to go back to the office? With this approach, one can no longer expect to be taken seriously by customers. The authors of the open letter ask themselves how a company can produce products for improved connectivity of people and then not use them for their own work. By forcing the return to the office, Apple is betraying virtually everything it stands for. “It’s bad for Apple, for us and our products, and ultimately for our customers.”

Nicolas Flohr / Editor finanzen.net

Image sources: Zhao jian kang / Shutterstock.com, Gil C / Shutterstock.com