Apple loses key employee due to its return-to-office initiative
Apple continues to face some pushback as it scales back remote work post-pandemic.
The Verge’s Zoe Schiffer, reporting on Twitter:
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.
I’m not super familiar with the internal makeup of Apple’s machine learning team. Schiffer presents him here as if he is THE director of machine learning. Over on LinkedIn his title is indeed listed as “Director of Machine Learning,” but then under the resume section he states, “I’m a Director of Machine Learning in the Special Projects Group.” Either way, he seems to have been a staff member of significance in a key area of Apple’s technology development.
Apple is in an interesting spot culturally. It’s located in California, and specifically in Silicon Valley, both areas that took pretty hard-line precautions with COVID. While many areas of the country have effectively returned to a 2019 standard of living with respect to health precautions, Silicon Valley has not. On the other hand, Apple is a fairly conservative company with respect to how it views collaborative work. While Apple has offices all over the world, most of its corporate employees work in the greater Cupertino, California area. Apple always has been a work-in-the-office company, and it’s shown pretty strongly that it hasn’t changed that core philosophy and has merely been awaiting the “right time” to return fully to the office. It’s been about a month now since Apple’s teams began to return to partial in-office work en masse. Perhaps Goodfellow and others were hoping Apple would relent, and now that they see Apple is serious about return-to-office, they’re having to make hard choices.
As I’ve said before, I’m glad that there are more remote work opportunities for employees and companies who want them, but it’s not for everyone or every company. During the height of the pandemic, I saw endless conversations on Twitter where people were asserting that work-from-home will be the new normal and office buildings will remain perpetually empty. But that’s hogwash. There will certainly be more work from home post-pandemic than there was in 2019, but I think many people and companies will remember their preference for in-office work once concerns about COVID become a thing only of memory.
It’s true that Apple could face so much internal revolt against return-to-office that they allow remote work to continue indefinitely, but I don’t see Apple’s core culture changing around that issue. That means that some employees for whom that’s a deal-breaker are going to have to find work elsewhere. I suspect that won’t be hard for someone with Goodfellow’s resume. Frankly, I think a lot of these decisions are very “prisoner of the moment.” In five years I don’t think we’ll be seeing this kind of thing being a major barrier to Apple attracting and retaining top talent. For now, it’s going to have to weather this season.