Malcolm Owen
Apple employees are not happy with the iPhone maker's return-to-office policy, with a survey claiming half of workers are looking to leave the company over the issue.
After being warned in March about a return to working at Apple Park on April 11, corporate staffers began spending some of their week within Apple's offices. While Apple is keen to gradually return to full-time office work, there is seemingly some resistance from those who work for the company.
A survey by anonymous social network Blind of Apple employees in the week ending April 19 claims 56% of workers were actively looking for employment elsewhere. Yahoo Finance reports it is said that the reason for leaving is specifically due to the return-to-office policy.
In specific responses collected by Blind, one employee said they were hesitant to ever enter the office at all, and joked about being able to put Apple on their resume after working for the company for just three weeks. Another cited the possibility of COVID infections, a toxic company culture, and a lack of work-life balance as behind their wish to quit.
A third posted about Apple's management being "tone-deaf as usual." That respondent anticipated that many people would quit shorty after April 15, which is a stock-vesting date — but that does not appear to have been borne out.
A fourth offered that Apple would see issues when its hybrid work plan is fully enforced by May 23. "Apple is going to see attrition like no other come June. 60% of my team doesn't even live near the office. They are not returning," the employee wrote.
At 652 responses, this is a very small proportion of the Apple workforce. Furthermore, a disgruntled employee has historically been more willing to take part in an open poll request that could be unfavorable to their employer.
According to Blind PR director Rick Chen, the employees were verified via their corporate email address. Chen also said the users of Blind are "overwhelmingly corporate workers in engineering or product roles."
In another poll by Harris that ran from April 8 to April 10, surveying 2,121 people from a variety of industries, a third of hybrid and remote workers said they quit or switched jobs during the pandemic to work from home. Approximately 59% were satisfied with their current work status.
About 15% of hybrid and office-working employees in that poll planned a job change to a more virtual position, and 7% of hybrid and remote workers said they wanted to shift to an in-person job.
Not all of the negative sentiment to the return to office work has been via an anonymous survey. On May 2, the Apple Together group published a 1,800-word open letter objecting to the policy, and arguing that Steve Jobs would've agreed with them.
AppleInsider Staff
Oliver Haslam
Andrew O'Hara
Wesley Hilliard
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
70 Comments
Survey says over half of Apple’s employees leaving over this? Absolute bullshit. One commenter had only been working there three weeks? Gimme a break. Then comes the money shot. The survey predicted everyone would leave after 4/15 when their stock options vested. Didn’t happen.
Steve Jobs was famous for saying he only wanted A listers working for him, not B and C listers. Well, these buffoons are definitely not A types are they. The B and C types are a dime a dozen and can easily be replaced. They do the paperwork, data entry, run the copy machines, they do not work with Johny Srouji do they.
Apple has gotten so big they have been forced to hire entitled millennials who want six figure salaries without producing anything.
Yet another clickbait survey trying to smear large companies.
Do the front and back doors align? Because it is a circle, also are employees allowed to work outdoors, they can run Ethernet cables underneath the ground or get Cat 6 cords which can go for miles to be plugged in. Perhaps it's the traffic to and from work. My work is exactly 4.89 KM away, (8) minute drive, I have to be there since we use our hands for landscaping. Afterwards my team travels to various sites. Vaccination, masks, and distancing, are frowned upon, and they are immediately terminated on site by myself if they follow those rules. - No Joke. My business, My Way or the Hi-Way.
I question the use of the phrase "Apple employees are not happy with the iPhone maker's return-to-office policy,"
It implies that all Apple employees are upset. This is a percentage of, a subset, a minority of the whole population. While they try to position themselves as representing all of Apple's staff, they are just
The Loud Ones
The Complainers
The Squeaky Wheels Who Demand To Be Greased.
By no means are they representative of most Apple employees. The result after April 15 shows that.
Now I understand the appeal of working at home. I am one of the workers who switched jobs spacifically so I could work from home. That was my choice. I did not try to force my employer to let me work from home. I found a job where I could do what I want. Understand that Covid has changed a lot of industries, and working remotely will remain a much larger portion of the economy from now on. But there are a lot of fields that require that you be present, be there in person. Sure software people can code remotely. But when it comes time to load that software into hardware and start running experiments to see if it works you have to be there. The team has to be there. Sure engineers can design things with CAD remotely. But when you start assembling the system, checking the parts, putting them together, you have to be there. The team has to be there, to see what it looks like, how it fits. That's not even counting the jobs that require you to be present full time, everything from maintenance people, to testing technicians, to people who actually make things, (for prototypes and such that I'm sure they do there).
Remote working is fine for some things, but it doesn't work for a lot of things.