Apple sees rise in departures from Health, iCloud teams
Apple's teams working on iCloud, AI, and Health, are apparently seeing more employees departing the company, according to a report, with a lack of optimism and Apple's back-to-office strategy alluded to be reasons behind the staff shrinkage.
Three Apple teams have seen their headcounts go down recently, with there being an increase in the number of people leaving Apple in favor of fresh pastures. The exits include a few high-profile names from the Health and iCloud teams, which could potentially hurt development in each group.
According to the Bloomberg "Power On" newsletter, Mark Gurman reports Health AI research chief Emily Fox is leaving Apple for a position at a university later in 2021. Meanwhile, former Netflix platform engineer Ruslan Meshenberg has apparently left his role leading Apple's team working on cloud infrastructure in favor of Google.
Gurman offers a number of reasons for the departures, including how it is plausible that after onboarding an "atypically high number of engineers," an increased rate of employees quitting can be expected.
It is also theorized that Apple's push for employees to return to offices in October could be another reason for the exits. Apple management has been especially keen to bring back employees to offices, despite pleas from employees asking for a more flexible arrangement.
"We believe that in-person collaboration is essential to our culture and our future," said Apple SVP of retail and people Deirdre O'Brien in June. "If we take a moment to reflect on our unbelievable product launches this past year, the products and the launch execution were built upon the base of years of work that we did when we were all together in-person."
A third reason for the departures could be because employees are "less optimistic about their work." This includes Apple's Health team, which has apparently "struggled with its own internal issues," while users clamor for new Apple Watch sensors, such as for blood-sugar monitoring.
A lack of optimism was previously raised by Gurman, who reported teams working on the Apple TV being pessimistic about the company's living room strategy.
Read on AppleInsider
Three Apple teams have seen their headcounts go down recently, with there being an increase in the number of people leaving Apple in favor of fresh pastures. The exits include a few high-profile names from the Health and iCloud teams, which could potentially hurt development in each group.
According to the Bloomberg "Power On" newsletter, Mark Gurman reports Health AI research chief Emily Fox is leaving Apple for a position at a university later in 2021. Meanwhile, former Netflix platform engineer Ruslan Meshenberg has apparently left his role leading Apple's team working on cloud infrastructure in favor of Google.
Gurman offers a number of reasons for the departures, including how it is plausible that after onboarding an "atypically high number of engineers," an increased rate of employees quitting can be expected.
It is also theorized that Apple's push for employees to return to offices in October could be another reason for the exits. Apple management has been especially keen to bring back employees to offices, despite pleas from employees asking for a more flexible arrangement.
"We believe that in-person collaboration is essential to our culture and our future," said Apple SVP of retail and people Deirdre O'Brien in June. "If we take a moment to reflect on our unbelievable product launches this past year, the products and the launch execution were built upon the base of years of work that we did when we were all together in-person."
A third reason for the departures could be because employees are "less optimistic about their work." This includes Apple's Health team, which has apparently "struggled with its own internal issues," while users clamor for new Apple Watch sensors, such as for blood-sugar monitoring.
A lack of optimism was previously raised by Gurman, who reported teams working on the Apple TV being pessimistic about the company's living room strategy.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
You know, the money you get to pay for life’s necessities: food, housing, healthcare.
Or do you think you get paid for life’s luxuries? 🤣
Unless they simple are getting paid more. at the new. gig. Then it may be worth it.
And the entitled bunch who think they could work remotely while still cashing in on high Silicon Valley salaries: good riddance, entitled brats, draining Apple’s coffers. Employees exist to SERVE the company, not the other way around; that’s why people get paid, after all. If the company were there to serve the employees, like some seem to think, the company would need to get paid.
Spoiled brats having an issue with SERVING and servitude, but yet wanting money and safety…
…if you don’t want to serve, open your own business, and look how far you get without SERVING your customers.
The sense of entitlement in some you making comments similar to yours is typical of the naive and inexperienced who have a very limited range of vision. It doesn't extend beyond the length of your arm or so it would seem.
People should know by now that Mark Gurman is always trying to spin some negativity about Apple from the most absurdly vague information. He only named two people and is trying to setup some kind of mass exodus narrative. Apple has over 100,000 employees, their new HQ capacity is 16,000. Anything under a hundred employees is a fart in the wind.
They only hired the engineer Ruslan last year:
https://www.macobserver.com/news/apple-hires-ruslan-meshenberg/
He was an infrastructure engineer and possibly worked on their cloud services and Apple TV. If there needed to be improvements to their infrastructure, he probably made them.
There's an article here from March about Emily Fox moving to a new position:
https://statistics.stanford.edu/news/emily-fox-will-be-statistics-newest-professor
Years ago people like Mark Gurman had insider info on things that were actually worth reading. Since so many sources are dried up, they need to sell subscriptions to something so they've moved into the world of fiction where they sell downbeat narratives. Everybody has to make a buck but always keep in mind how people are making it.
Let's not turn this into a soap opera, this is just what happens when we are living in a strong economy with high demand for certain people with certain skills. If we were in a deep recession and big tech companies were slashing and burning through their workforce with mass layoffs we'd be seeing the other side of the pendulum swing. Employees would be keeping their heads down, cranking out the work, and sucking up their grievances to make sure they can still make their mortgage payments.
You can invent or attach all kinds of your own rationale or forced narratives to these cyclical swings, but you're just making stuff up and playing silly games with yourself as the only interested party. Nothing to see here, other than the pendulum swinging widely in favor of certain people with certain marketable skills playing their cards for maximum gain. Let's hope it lasts.
Is that the case here or is this a departure by employees unhappy with WFH coming to an end or direction of their department's product dev? First, this is nothing but a story akin to 'Apple to release big screen Tv!' or 'Apple to announce M series MB pro series at WWDC'. Never assume something like this is true. These stories are too manipulated by those with an ulterior motive. But if Apple has seen greater than normal departures for one or the other reason, both the company and the worker should see it as a chance for something better.
GTFO then.
Unlike many other sectors, developers are in high demand, and there are way more options than Apple out there. In fact, Apple has historically been stingy with salaries, and mainly attracts people because of their "alternative-ness" and the idea of working with such a mass impact. But they can get to other FAANG companies for that, or work in some startup and get better salaries (not to mention in finance companies).