The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic changed the operations of the world’s leading tech giant, Apple. With the introduction of Slack for team collaboration, Apple employees also found a platform to discuss hobbies, pets, social issues, and more importantly, the company’s policies which concerned some of them.
Now, Zoe Schiffer of The Verge believes that “Apple’s fortress of secrecy is crumbling from the inside” because some employees have gone public with their grievances with the tech giant and have even filed complaints with the U.S. national labor agency of discrimination and pay inequality.
Apple employees are pushing back against its hierarchical and secretive culture
Since the announcement of the company’s hybrid work model, reports claimed that the company’s employees have actively voiced their concerns amongst themselves and shared them with senior management. A group of employees unhappy with the new hybrid work model wrote to CEO Tim Cook requesting him to adopt a more flexible approach to the remote work model. Then, pay equity surveys were crushed, the #AppleToo movement was organized and recently an engineer was fired who alleged harassment and discrimination.
These recent events have given rise to the opinion that Apple’s empire of secrecy is “crumbling”.
“There’s a shift in the balance of power going on here,” says Jason Snell, the former editor of Macworld, who’s been covering Apple since the 1990s. “Not everyone is afraid that their boss at Apple is going to fire them. They’re saying, ‘I’m going to say some bad things about Apple, and if you move against me, it’s going to look bad for you.’”
To some employees, the bargain of working at Apple is to endure the hierarchical, secretive nature of the company. But to the workers who are pushing back, the question they’re asking is: does it really have to be this way?
