Apple is checking constantly that its employees work in the office at least three times a week. This was reported by Zoë Schiffer, Managing Editor of Platformer, citing sources within the company.
The Cupertino company has always been among the least inclined realities to grant smart working, believing face-to-face activity fundamental for the development of ongoing projects and the promotion of interpersonal relationships. According to the internal regulation, once the Covid emergency is over, Tim Cook has the minimum mandatory presence on site is set at three days a week. But apparently not everyone would be respecting this rule, rissuing official calls and, potentially, also the dismissal.
To monitor employee attendance Apple would be analyzing the badge data used for joining the company: if this shows that the employee goes to the office less than three times a week then a first call is triggered, warnings will be increasingly frequent if the behavior is recurrent. Up to the loss of the job as an extreme consequence.
Some analysts believe that the rigidity of Apple’s management is due to need to step up the pace of work to bring to the market some unpublished products necessarily this year. The thought goes, for example, to the mixed reality viewer, which has been talked about for some time now and which many expect to make its debut shortly despite the fact that development is still ongoing.
With the wave of layoffs affecting realities such as Amazon, Google and Meta the world of big tech work is certainly not having its best moment. Apple has repeatedly stated that it does not want to make staff cuts, limiting himself to reduce hiring. Not complying with the rules imposed on office attendance, however, could lead to initially unscheduled interruptions in relationships.
In closing the tweet, Zoë Schiffer reported that also Elon Musk would be calling employees to order: with an email sent at 2:30 in the morning, the owner of the social media would have reminded them that “the office is not optional“. Apparently yesterday the San Francisco office was half empty…