Former Apple employee (retail, then corporate). I’m shocked that Tim Cook, an out gay man, would allow such a move. Texas is a hellhole. This is bullshit. Fuck Apple for this one.
A capitalist is a capitalist first, a capitalist second, a capitalist third, and then everything else he is after that. He’d sell the blood of his fellow queers if he thought he could turn a profit.
I’ve met multiple out gay people who aren’t LGBT friendly (or, more commonly, aren’t ‘BT’ friendly) even without the profit motive of being a piece of shit like Tim Cook has.
Being LGBT certainly makes you more likely to take progressive attitudes, but it far from guarantees it.
Tim Cook will never have to live in that fascist state, he only has to donate to watch others suffer from the safety of his Palo Alto home where his rights are respected.
It’s not just “one of the 50.” Texas is now an authoritarian shithole and (also Florida) a blueprint for the GOP for how they want to rule all the other 50 should they get all branches of government. Deal with it. Women there have no bodily anatomy and likely soon, no more right to live if they have an ectoplasmic pregnancy because of a god that they may or may not acknowledge but the state government does. If the state government could have their way, they’d probably not hesitate to roll back women’s right to vote and execute LGBTQ individuals. Fuck Abbott.
And have you seen some of Texas’ laws? Be they labour laws or laws like women not having body autonomy? Batshit insane gun laws? Or them being the 2nd worst state for mass shootings in 2023, and worst in 2022?
Idk, from an outsider looking in, Texas seems like a complete and utter shithole.
Is it surprising that Apple, like every giant tech company that is way too big, treats its employees like shit? Do we think Google and Microsoft don’t treat employees in a similarly shitty way? Or even any other huge company?
I have no love for Apple, but it seems like OP thinks this is something that makes Apple special. I mean single out Apple for shit like their products being overpriced or their notebooks not having enough RAM for their OS unless you want to pay a premium. This is just (really unfortunately) typical of modern late-stage capitalism.
First, I think it has more to do with OP reacting to the article they linked rather than searching for bad things Apple specifically has done. Second, we can talk about shitty Apple products or policies for ages, but this action in particular isn’t like ‘Oh no, the first-gen AR/VR goggles I bought for $4,000 aren’t making the world literally Ready Player One’. No, this is (one of many) business decision that is directly fucking over their own employees in ways that are threatening to their entire livelihoods; ‘Either uproot your lives and move hundreds of miles away to a place statistically less safe for most of you, or you’re fired’
Sadly, most tech companies are doing this, and they’re doing it in a way that frames it as you volunteering to leave, resulting in people losing their job and being able to claim unemployment benefits.
Given how shit the job market is for certain roles (recruitment, especially), it’s a horrid thing to do.
I don’t like forced in-person work unless it’s just a quarterly on-site where they fly us in and pay for accommodations. I agree that Texas is fucked until they fix their abortion laws, however it is worth mentioning that Austin is a liberal city and does not function the same way as the rest of Texas in many regards. It is becoming a tech hub and would be cool if my company relocated there, as long as they flew me in quarterly and didn’t expect anything more than that. Really great BBQ. They do have a bad homeless problem though.
Being in a liberal city in a horribly red state doesn’t protect residents from the cruelty of said state. It doesn’t stop the racial profiling intended to terrorize immigrant/mixed stays families, it doesn’t re-attract healthcare workers, it doesn’t prevent kids getting harassed for their pronouns in schools. In many places, Texas makes laws that takes away power from it’s more liberal areas, like how Houston schools have been taken over by the state, or how Denton can’t ban fracking in its city limits. Also, Texas doesn’t have a ton of public lands (state/national parks) for people to use. But what people lose by moving to a state like Texas, they gain in so many new experiences: being sued by anyone and everyone for abortions, waiting for hours to vote, the glorification of guns, legislators arguing to put the 10 commandments in every classroom in the state, $7.25 minimum wage (hell, again, the state doesn’t even allow cities to set higher minimum wages within their limits), right to work/get fired, an electric grid not up to federal standards, and so much more. But yeah, the BBQ is really fucking good. And the fresh flour tortillas, those are amazing. I wish I had a Chuy’s nearby…
Yeah. I don’t want to live there, but if my company wants to tax shelter there and fly me in occasionally for Franklin brisket and La BBQ everything else, that would be perfectly fine. The state will hopefully improve in time.
They are just a small startup they can’t afford to pay 121 people on their meager earnings. Hell they can’t even afford to update their phone design in 3 years.
If this forces you to quit, would it be an option to start initialing a union to get fired, instead of quitting? Forcing them to pay compensations that might be in your contract. Or would this be a bad idea with regard to the references in your résumé? (I’m not from the US.)
Sadly, there is a HUGE anti-union sentiment in tech, almost to a religious degree. I don’t think the tech industry is smart enough to unionise, similarly to the video game industry, who have dealt with equal amounts of shit, yet still plug away in horrible conditions.
With that being said, while I think unions should exist in tech, I truly believe that the likes of Apple and co would gladly kill off 100k jobs and delay launches, if it means killing off union efforts. For it to be effective, it would need to be internationally recognised, have a large enough number of people to make mass firings near impossible without significant business harm, and be solely tied to minimum income equity.
I truly believe that the likes of Apple and co would gladly kill off 100k jobs and delay launches, if it means killing off union efforts.
I’ve been pondering this and I honestly am not sure… because I can see them being that scared of unionizing, but there’s also the modern capitalist notion, especially in the tech sector, of endless growth. So would they delay launches when it could cost them revenue? I honestly do not know the answer here.
Obviously, I want the tech sector unionized. I just don’t know what exactly Apple and the others would to to stop it. They would do something, and something very nasty. I’m just not sure about mass layoffs and delayed product launches.
Sadly, there is a HUGE anti-union sentiment in tech, almost to a religious degree. I don’t think the tech industry is smart enough to unionise, similarly to the video game industry, who have dealt with equal amounts of shit, yet still plug away in horrible conditions.
The fact that the pro-union people won’t even try to hide their contempt for the people they claim to represent certainly isn’t helping matters. Unionization involves a lot of trust and union organizers seem unwilling to lift a finger to earn that trust, instead jumping immediately to insults whenever someone doesn’t instantly toe the line.
I work at Apple in the Apple Care department, but not for the Apple Care yalls moms call for help. This has been happening for literally years and I’ve spoken about it before but no one really took it seriously but now here we are. We were told that we be in a hiring freeze for the foreseeable future and that hiring and promotions would only happen onsite. If we wanted to be promoted we needed to move to Austin or San Fran, the two most expensive cities in the country with no guarantee of a promotion, on our own dime, knowing we won’t make a living wage there. Keep in mind that this meeting was being given to a massive department who’s main workforce is and has always been WFH.
This type of crap should be mega illegal. I feel like I see this all the time. I don’t know how you would ever prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they are actually “laying people off” tho which I presume means it’s unfortunately gonna stick around as a method for companies to avoid severance which sucks.
Also, not for nothing but San Fran and Austin are definitely not two most expensive cities in the country. San Fran is kinda up there. Maybe like top 5 in some lists. I legitimately couldn’t find Austin in a single one but I only checked up to like the top 25 or 30 cities.
Having lived there for a decade, plenty of us called it SF or SanFran ironically. It’s a bad comment and it didn’t make any sense without your context.
The commenter didn’t claim to be from San Fran, he was bitching about being made to move there. So of course he, like me, doesn’t give a shit what folks from San Fran call it.
Hiring freeze? I had an Apple recruiter reach out to me just a couple weeks ago. That’s in EU though. They weren’t happy that I was not willing to relocate for them.
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