Apple’s corporate employees returned to the office this week after two years of work-from-home
Ditching the new normal for the old normal at Apple Park.
COVID-19, and the various State and corporate responses to it, has had a profound effect on how Americans live and work. Many people suddenly found themselves working from home in March 2020 for the first time in their careers. Some companies returned to in-person work fairly quickly, some pivoted to all-remote, others to hybrid work, and still others plan to return to in-person at some point but haven’t done so yet. Apple on Monday began requiring all of its corporate employees to return to the office, at least part time.
Some of Apple’s employees and teams have been back in the office for some time, but April 11 marked the first time that all corporate employees had to return to the office at Apple Park or Apple’s various other corporate offices. Here’s a breakdown of Apple’s return-to-office plan from Chance Miller at 9to5Mac:
“Starting today, corporate employees are now required to work in person at least one day per week. Starting three weeks from today, on May 2, employees will be required to work from the office two days per week. Then, starting on May 23, employees will need to be in the office three days per week.”
The unique challenge that Apple has faced with COVID and changing work preferences is that it has always been an almost exclusively in-person company. Working collaboratively in person is part of Apple’s culture, and they’ve shown no signs of changing that, despite these recent factors. Working from home has become popular in a lot of industries, but particularly in Big Tech and in California. Apple has undoubtedly lost talented employees due to their insistence on in-person work and almost certainly will continue to do so going forward.
My personal feelings on work-from-home in the broad sense are that I’m glad there are more work-from-home opportunities for those who want them, but I personally prefer working in an office face-to-face with my coworkers. I also think in-person work is something necessary for Apple to maintain its company culture, and while I certainly can’t prove it, I think work-from-home caused Apple’s software priorities and timelines to slip. So I applaud Apple for sticking to its guns on this and gathering its people at Apple Park again.
While I certainly see remote work being a normal part of how many people work going forward, I think there’s a trendiness factor to its current level of popularity and that over time, in-person work will again see a resurgence. All of those thinkpieces about office buildings lying dormant forever will be time capsules of the early 2020s. So while this may be a particularly challenging thing for Apple to work around for now, over time that will subside.
I also think Apple’s phased approach will likely work pretty well. For people who haven’t returned to in-person work at all in over two years, there’s going to be some level of fear and discomfort associated with working directly with other people post-COVID. I think most of that will evaporate once people get back in the routine of it.
It’s also currently fashionable online and in the corporate tech press to present in-person work as unpopular amongst Apple employees, largely on the basis of some widely reported internal campaigns against Apple’s previous return-to-office plans. That kind of stuff makes for juicy headlines for reporters covering the “labor” beat, but I don’t think they’re at all representative of what most Apple employees think of the issue.
We’ll see how this affects Apple’s ability to attract and retain employees going forward, as well as how it affects Apple’s ability to ship great products. I suspect most employees will enjoy seeing familiar faces at the coffee machine or the cafeteria.