Malcolm Owen
Apple's need to hire the best and brightest people to its workforce has been a challenge, with the high cost of living in the San Francisco Bay Area apparently pushing the iPhone maker to embrace decentralization.
Hiring in Silicon Valley is notoriously difficult due to the high cost of living in the area. It appears that the expensive living costs for the region are making it extremely hard for Apple's hiring teams, according to Bloomberg's "Power On" newsletter on Sunday.
With executives knowing that hiring and keeping talent is essential to the company's future, Apple is reportedly looking at other ways to expand its workforce with diversity in mind. Engineers have complained of the living costs in the area, but diversity is a bigger problem for recruiters.
So far, the number of employees Apple has employed from underrepresented communities has grown by 64% in the last five years. However, it acknowledges there's more work to be done, but geography is a problem for hiring.
Since Apple can no longer hope more employees will move towards the Apple Park HQ, Apple instead has to go to areas where its potential workforce actually lives, or to areas where it is cheaper to live.
The realization of a decentralized workforce only really came about for Apple's top brass recently, though some members had apparently been pushing for it for years. Johny Srouji, in charge of Apple's custom silicon, was reportedly a strong proponent of the shift, with his group opening offices in many locations, including expansion into Europe, Asia, and within the United States.
Eddy Cue also pushed for decentralization, including offices in Los Angeles and Nashville. COO Jeff Williams has also championed the cost-benefit of more offices, while retail and HR lead Deirdre O'Brien has talked about diversity benefits.
While the company has already created many offices around the world, it is pushing to increase its footprint globally, with quite a few new campuses in development. It has paid out for new office space in Cork, Ireland, as well as an expansion of its New York City offices, and has put 1 billion euro towards a silicon design center in Germany.
It also started the construction of a new billion-dollar campus in Austin, Texas in 2019. In Raleigh, North Carolina, Apple is planning further expansion including a $1 billion engineering hub, in part assisted by $845 million in tax breaks over 39 years.
Remote working continues to be a benefit that many Apple employees still want to use, with one June survey revealing nearly 90% of respondents strongly agreeing with the statement "location-flexible working options are a very important issue to me." Over 58% of Apple employees said they were concerned about colleagues leaving due to a lack of flexible work arrangements, while over 36% said they were concerned that they would have to leave themselves.
In June, Apple announced a plan for employees to return to offices for three days a week starting in September. It prompted some Apple staff to write to Apple's leadership asking for more options.
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Charles Martin
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Wesley Hilliard
24 Comments
In today's day and age, decentralisation is the way to go. Re-location to far off places should only be required only if absolutely necessary or if the job holder actually wants to move. Some will, but the older and more established the hire, the more difficult it is for them to up and move.
A computer scientist friend of mine spent years being head hunted and deployed all over the world. It sounds nice to have a company contract you and provide a mansion for you and your family in Miami for a couple of years, schooling for kids etc included etc but there comes a point when you just want to be 'home'.
COVID has forced companies to adapt even more to the notion of decentralisation but for many multinationals it was already a 'perk' of hard to fill positions to work in places that were not 'too far' from home and where quality of life is relatively high. Moving might be necessary to a degree but not to unrealistic destinations with administrative, cultural or language barriers to manage.
Cork is close enough to most of western Europe for workers to relocate although there are complaints about the cost of living there too. Most Europeans would have no issues relocating within the EU. Of course, for obvious reasons. Most companies (Apple included) have R&D centres dotted around the world and if Apple has decided to expand its footprint, it's a step in the right direction. Especially as competing companies offering similar positions are offering positions that aren't too far from applicants' places of current residence.
It’s not difficult to see why Apple wants everyone centralized - it’s more efficient than managing wfh. It probably would have helped their case if they’d designed the new Apple Park building offices with input from staff, instead they just went for massive open plan which most workers understandably hate. Apple like other software companies have been slowly spreading their tentacles to Southern Cal and eastwards , presumably they’ll need to prioritize that expansion. Every dev I personally know who works in the Bay Area hates being there and wants to move out.
Does this mean that gentrification is finally becoming a bit of a problem for some of the corporations involved in driving it? Maybe Apple should use some of its lobbying power to attack the root of the problem.
That and modification of the stupid open floor plan design of their wealth-brag main building...
Working from home can very much be a part of decentralisation, since workers can be located anywhere. But Cook apparently doesn't want to give that choice to the people that make Apple Apple. Therefore they are enduring issues of their own making.
Also proves wrong all those rabid fanboys who say "Employees who don't like working in the office? Ha! Fire them! Apple will easily replace them!" look pretty ignorant, since Apple is now struggling to get enough hires. It's very much a worker's economy right now, and apparently Cook is a combination of apathetic toward his employees, too far removed from reality to realise the shift in the economy, and sluggish to make the same changes that every other tech company is doing; to make Apple a more attractive place to work. It's not the employees' fault that the spaceship apparently isn't a very good place to work.
I called it. The spaceship was a stupid idea. Sure it looks cool but was obviously a vanity project without considering the long term feasibility. A rare misstep for Steve Jobs. Everyone is moving to Texas now to escape the insane prices of living in California.