Apple postpones return to work plan until at least October

Posted:
in General Discussion edited July 2021
Apple has postponed plans to bring employees back to the office, according to a report on Monday, with the company now expected to hold off on in-person work until at least October due to a COVID-19 surge.

Apple Park


Apple previously scheduled a shift toward normal corporate operations in September as California and other regions seemed capable of better handling the pandemic. A recent uptick in delta variant cases in and around Cupertino, as well as around the world, has given the tech giant pause, according to Bloomberg.

Citing people familiar with the company's plans, the report claims Apple has delayed its plans by at least a month. The iPhone maker will inform employees at least a month before in-office work is mandated.

According to The Mercury News, Cupertino in Santa Clara, where Apple Park is located, is in a Tier 2 zone, where daily new cases hover between 6 to 9.9 per 100,000 residents. Bordering Alameda county is a Tier 1 equivalent with more than 10 cases per 100,000 residents, the report said.

Apple CEO Tim Cook in June informed staff that the company would embrace a hybrid work schedule in September. Employees will be expected to return to the office for at least three days a week and, with a few exceptions, can remote in from home twice a week. Employees can also elect to work from home for up to two weeks a year, pending approval from management.

Days after Cook announced the change internally, participants of a remote work advocacy Slack channel penned a letter asking Apple for more flexibility. Remote work comes with a number of benefits, the workers claim, including greater diversity and inclusion in retention and hiring, tearing down previously existing communication barriers, better work life balance, better integration of existing remote / location-flexible workers, and reduced spread of pathogens.

Apple rebuffed the request.

Last week, a handful of workers threatened to quit should the return to work policy be implemented. A second letter was sent to executives on Monday.

Apple's corporate philosophy holds employee commingling as a vital ingredient to innovation. Late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs was such a proponent that he helped design Apple Park's main building -- effectively a large ring -- to facilitate serendipitous encounters.

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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 13
    mcdavemcdave Posts: 1,927member
    Don’t tell me the 10 employees were the exec team!
    FileMakerFeller
  • Reply 2 of 13
    JWSCJWSC Posts: 1,203member
    Must be the threat of a Loki Variant.  🙄
    sdw2001
  • Reply 3 of 13
    sdw2001sdw2001 Posts: 18,015member
    Total political nonsense. Arbitrary and shifting rules, benchmarks and narratives…all to keep the control and panic going.  The pandemic in the US is largely over, Delta variant or no.  But that won’t stop the media from 24/7 panic porn about breakthrough infections and rising cases and mask mandates.  
    muthuk_vanalingam
  • Reply 4 of 13
    jungmarkjungmark Posts: 6,926member
    Smart move w the delta Loki ramping up. Get vaccinated. 
    tmay
  • Reply 5 of 13
    dysamoriadysamoria Posts: 3,430member
    sdw2001 said:
    Total political nonsense. Arbitrary and shifting rules, benchmarks and narratives…all to keep the control and panic going.  The pandemic in the US is largely over, Delta variant or no.  But that won’t stop the media from 24/7 panic porn about breakthrough infections and rising cases and mask mandates.  
    Why? Why do you believe this makes any sense?
    CluntBaby92tmaylikethesky
  • Reply 6 of 13
    dysamoriadysamoria Posts: 3,430member
    As soon as the CDC said removing masks for vaccinated people was on the honor system, and when mandates were eliminated, plenty of reasonable people immediately saw this inevitable outcome. That was political expedience, which never serves the people.
  • Reply 7 of 13
    sdw2001sdw2001 Posts: 18,015member
    dysamoria said:
    As soon as the CDC said removing masks for vaccinated people was on the honor system, and when mandates were eliminated, plenty of reasonable people immediately saw this inevitable outcome. That was political expedience, which never serves the people.
    The CDC painted itself into a corner by saying the vaccines work but that you still have to mask after getting them.  That made zero sense.  

    And  in your previous post you questioned why it made sense that the media and government were pushing 24/7 panic porn. Are you kidding?  
  • Reply 8 of 13
    tmaytmay Posts: 6,312member
    sdw2001 said:
    Total political nonsense. Arbitrary and shifting rules, benchmarks and narratives…all to keep the control and panic going.  The pandemic in the US is largely over, Delta variant or no.  But that won’t stop the media from 24/7 panic porn about breakthrough infections and rising cases and mask mandates.  
    Obviously you aren't the person who would visit this site. Nonetheless, I will link to this DailyKos diary;

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/7/20/2040870/-We-have-to-eliminate-COVID-19-not-learn-to-live-with-it-because-we-can-t-live-with-it

    NEVER PUTTING OUT THE FIRE MEANS IT WILL COME ROARING BACK

    It’s not as if there isn’t already a threat. NBC News tallied 65,000 breakthrough cases in 27 states—and those are the states that are still bothering to report detailed data. Unlike Florida. Unlike Missouri.

    But every person infected brings around 10,000,000,000 new examples of the SARS-CoV-2 virus into existence. Every single one of those is subject to mutations. Those mutations then get winnowed by the one evolutionary pressure that faces viruses: getting that R0 number ever higher. 

    The idea that viruses always mutate to become less deadly over time is simply not true. Viruses become more contagious. That’s it. 

  • Reply 9 of 13
    escanescan Posts: 7member
    sdw2001 said:
    Total political nonsense. Arbitrary and shifting rules, benchmarks and narratives…all to keep the control and panic going.  The pandemic in the US is largely over, Delta variant or no.  But that won’t stop the media from 24/7 panic porn about breakthrough infections and rising cases and mask mandates.  
    Websites should permanently ban stupid people from spreading out misinformation like this. 
  • Reply 10 of 13
    cgWerkscgWerks Posts: 2,952member
    Well, with that kind of timing, they might not need to change policy at all. By October, the lockdowns should start again** and they can just keep working from home.
    (** Assuming we keep using PCR w/ higher cycle counts.)
  • Reply 11 of 13
    splifsplif Posts: 603member
    sdw2001 said:
    dysamoria said:
    As soon as the CDC said removing masks for vaccinated people was on the honor system, and when mandates were eliminated, plenty of reasonable people immediately saw this inevitable outcome. That was political expedience, which never serves the people.
    The CDC painted itself into a corner by saying the vaccines work but that you still have to mask after getting them.  That made zero sense.  

    And  in your previous post you questioned why it made sense that the media and government were pushing 24/7 panic porn. Are you kidding?  
    I don’t think he's kidding. Why not answer the question that he asked? Enlighten us all. 
    likethesky
  • Reply 12 of 13
    https://apple.news/A6yLvgIt6TImkIV6M-A-Fog

    “This is not a decline [in life expectancy] that happened in other high-income countries, so something went terribly wrong in the U.S. where the number of Americans who died was vastly in excess of what it needed to be,” said Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University and one of the authors of the BMJ study.

  • Reply 13 of 13
    cgWerkscgWerks Posts: 2,952member
    splif said:
    sdw2001 said:
    dysamoria said:
    As soon as the CDC said removing masks for vaccinated people was on the honor system, and when mandates were eliminated, plenty of reasonable people immediately saw this inevitable outcome. That was political expedience, which never serves the people.
    The CDC painted itself into a corner by saying the vaccines work but that you still have to mask after getting them.  That made zero sense.  

    And  in your previous post you questioned why it made sense that the media and government were pushing 24/7 panic porn. Are you kidding?  
    I don’t think he's kidding. Why not answer the question that he asked? Enlighten us all. 
    No doubt. The number one killer is obesity. Number two is anxiety/stress/fear. Whether they used that tactic to raise the number dead, or if it was just to see how high they could push compliance, I suppose we won't really know.

    Also, that (masks after vax) is FAR from the only thing that doesn't make sense. If you know anything about the history of disease control, respiratory viruses, or science, there have only been a few things that HAVE made any sense.
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