Apple Makes Remote Work Easy - Unless You Work For Apple

Apple's culture of centralization, secrecy and internal focus was established by Steve Jobs. It's products are designed to make tech work easier from anywhere. But that cultural precedence is limiting the company's leadership from allowing employees the same freedom.

Whether Apple can continue to recruit and retail the same caliber of people as it always has thanks to its reputation is being tested by what is now an equally strong demand from skilled employees for flexibility. JL

Mark Bergen reports in BusinessWeek:

Despite the two-plus years of the pandemic, Apple hasn’t shipped a major new product category developed remotely. The majority of Apple corporate jobs, from hardware engineering to marketing to software development, require a Bay Area address. This reflects the needs of a company that is, at its core, a hardware designer. Apple is also pushing for at-office work to protect its culture of secrecy, which is easier to maintain when everyone is in the same physical space. It was also a hallmark of the culture developed by Steve Jobs.

The Apple employees demanding to work remotely are a minority; Many engineers began returning to the office before the April 11 deadline. The company declined to comment, but pointed to previous remarks from Cook in which he said that the return to the office may be an “unsettling change” and that the company is dedicated to giving employees support and flexibility.

The new normal

Apple’s remote-work policy is in a pilot phase, and it could be either the beginning of a new normal or a step toward a return to pre-pandemic expectations. For now, its policy is less flexible than those of some of its biggest rivals. Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook) is allowing permanent remote work for those not engineering hardware; Amazon says it’s leaving the decision to individual divisions.

“We are intentionally not prescribing how many days or which days,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a message to employees.

Apple wants its own staff to start coming back to its multibillion-dollar suite of global offices. Bloomberg

Microsoft is allowing most employees to work remotely half-time, but requiring approval from a manager for any more than that. Alphabet’s Google, which has begun to require employees to report to the office three days a week, is approving remote work on a case-by-case basis. It says it’s approved 85 per cent of requests to relocate or work remotely.

There’s disagreement about how long a more permissive approach to remote work will last. While it’s not hard to find predictions of a permanent shift, former Google HR head Laszlo Bock predicts that things will gradually revert to normal over the next three to five years. In part, workers will realise that physical proximity is helpful to landing promotions and plum assignments.

Bock also says companies will likely “boil the frog” by making small shifts toward more stringent policies as workers re-acclimate to getting dressed and showing up five days a week. “There will be some gamesmanship driving them back to the office,” he says.

Certain Apple divisions are becoming more flexible in allowing employees to work outside of Silicon Valley, so long as there’s another Apple office they can join. Apple’s chip team is scattered across Florida, Texas and San Diego, in addition to Cupertino. Apple Pay is setting up shop in North Carolina, southern California and New York. AI teams have taken over offices in Seattle, and Apple’s media teams are, predictably, working out of Los Angeles, New York and Nashville.

The majority of Apple corporate jobs, from hardware engineering and design to marketing to software development, still require a Bay Area address. This partially reflects the specific needs of a company that is, at its core, a hardware designer.

Despite the two-plus years of the pandemic, Apple hasn’t shipped a major new product category developed remotely. An Apple Car is still at least three years away, and the company’s long-in-development mixed-reality headset has seen multiple delays and may not ship until 2023.

Apple is also pushing for at-office work to protect its culture of secrecy, which is easier to maintain when everyone is in the same physical space. It was also a hallmark of the culture developed by Steve Jobs, whose name marks the on-campus auditorium where the company introduces products. He heralded the circular-shaped Apple Park design as a way to spark random conversations and ideas.

Revolutionary potential

Some employees say that bringing workers back to the office isn’t going to produce the returns on productivity that some executives may be expecting. Employees argue that the pandemic is still not over, with a variant of omicron actively spreading.

People are worried about catching the virus at the office and bringing it back to unvaccinated kids or high-risk family members. While Apple provides shuttle buses, some employees spend up to two hours a day driving to and from work, an activity that some say shames both their own productivity and Apple’s environmental goals.

“We’re trying to save the planet, but now our employees are driving two hours so we can justify our multibillion-dollar headquarters,” says one employee who asked to remain anonymous.

Software engineers, marketing employees and sales teams could make a stronger argument to work from home than those involved in hardware development. For months, retail employees lamented that they were expected to be in the stores while corporate workers stayed home.

In 2020, Apple launched a remote Retail at Home program that let retail employees split their time at the store and at home, assisting with online sales and technical support. That program is now ending.

Apple already knows the benefits of remote work in certain cases. For years, the company has selectively allowed a small number of engineers across the company to work remotely under certain circumstances, employees say.

It’s also had a program allowing technical support staff to work from home. This has resulted in people working in Idaho and the most distant parts of Texas. Remote workers had to remain within a few hundred miles of an Apple office and visit from time to time. Those people will continue to work from home after Apple’s return deadline, irking some engineers who have to return to the office.

While the key takeaway of Escape From the Office is supposed to be the revolutionary potential of Apple devices, there’s another one: if you don’t like your job’s approach to remote work, you should quit.

The message may be getting through. With the perception that Apple’s policies on remote work aren’t as good as those of its competitors, its recruiters are expecting some people to leave, and preparing to find replacements.