Let's not let Apple sugar coat. An appropriate title:
"Apple has layoffs and shadily tries to hide it"
this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
131 points (94.6% liked)
Technology
60082 readers
2363 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Leave a state with abortion protections and move to a hellhole where you can be thrown in jail if you have an abortion, or left to die if you have a complicated pregnancy. This is basically a potential death sentence (or jail sentence) for any women on the team.
That’s according to Bloomberg, which reported that an Apple spokesperson confirmed that the team, which listens to recordings of Siri interactions to make sure it responded appropriately, will “have the opportunity to continue their role with Apple in Austin.”
Why do you need to uproot people and force them to relocate to a dangerous backwoods shithole just to listen to recordings on their computers anyways? This is a work from home job.
It's just another stealth layoff. They've calculated that x% would rather quit than move, and that probably roughly corresponds with the amount of people they want to cut. On top of that, Texas probably provides tax incentives and has a cheaper labour pool and fewer labour protections.
Return to office has roughly 30% quit rate across the board.
Job relocation, especially that far away, is nearly 100%. Very few people are willing to uproot their entire lives, and those of their family, just for a job.
In effect, Apple has decided to lay off this entire office and hire a new one in Texas.
Speaking of labour protections, is this even legal? Or is it a case of illegal, but good luck with the courts? I would think that at least California would have protections against something like this.
For example, let's just consider housing: imagine you bought a house when interest rates were 3% - now they can just force you to sell it and buy a new one with a 9% rate (or force you to rent)?
But I guess they can just call it a layoff instead so they can get away with it or something
It's perfectly legal, unless there are some additional details not mentioned. For instance, if it amounted to discrimination on race, or was in retaliation for unionizing. What would be illegal about it? California can't just force a company to stay in one place. Companies move offices, even headquarters, all the time.
Your math would be covered by what's known as a relocation package. Often, it's a basic lump sum to (theoretically) cover the costs of moving. You can either accept it or not. Same for any pay adjustments that may come with it.
Layoff isn't a legal term. The closest would be terminated without cause, which is exactly what this is. Since California (along with every state that isn't Montana) is an "At will" state, this again is perfectly legal.
It's a shitty decision, but there's nothing stopping them from making it.
Thanks for explaining. That's insane. I guess the only real solution is to unionize. If there's no legal protection, then I suppose a union is the only thing you can rely on to prevent yourself from getting fucked over like this.
I sincerely hope people take their experiences from this dark period of history and learn from them.
Tesla did the same thing, and failed miserably when the majority of its workforce threatened to quit. Hopefully Apple fails too.
That's the point, this is just constructive dismissal.
Fired
So move to a place that will strip your human rights away if you're a woman or be laid off.
Nice.
Not to mention if you're trans. The thought of moving to Texas is terrifying.
Siri has a quality control team? What do they do all day?
Yeah I’m not in favor of constructive dismissal, but maybe these layoffs are justified….
Someone has to make sure Siri understands what I’m saying in a situation where I might as well use my fingers to get the same stuff done, but doesn’t understand a single word when I’m driving.
They make sure siri responds correctly. I'm surprised their jobs aren't being replaced with ML, although I'm sure Apple is working on it.
Google is dropping the Assistant team, and Amazon is dropping the Alexa team. This sounds a lot like Apple is trying to avoid an explicit layoff and forcing employees to quit instead.
Constructive dismissal lawsuit?
Edit: see this comment https://sopuli.xyz/comment/6157509
Not constructive dismissal, because the goal isn't to place the burden on the employee. On whatever date, they will all be terminated without cause (layoff) if they choose not to relocate. There is no goal of forcing them to quit. Presumably, Apple has filed (or will file in due time) things like the WARN Act notification.
This is a PR move to hide the layoffs from the general public, but not from the law.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. This could have the makings of constructive dismissal. Relocate to a place with vastly different legal protections or be fired? Hmm. Since it also would possibly disproportionately affect female employees, I wonder if some discrimination could also come in to play?
Not a lawyer, just spitballing ideas.
If they are offering a relocation package, and it sounds like they are, then this likely doesn't fall under constructive discharge. Also in CA a constructive discharge lawsuit often only makes you entitled to the same benefits as if you were fired (i.e. severance and unemployment). These guys aren't being fired for cause so they still qualify for unemployment and the severance deal Apples offering is probably already worth more than many would get in a lawsuit. A lawsuits not gonna force Apple to move the office back.
I don't know why everyone always jumps straight to "constructive discharge" and "this must be illegal". Guys, we live in a legal hellscape, Apple may be being shitty but they aren't doing anything illegal.
Huh. So they're all dropping their voice assistant teams. Is this because it turns out people only ever use them as voice activated kitchen timers because it turns out talking to computers sucks, or is some worse generative AI shit coming?
What seems to be going down is that tech firms are laying off AI teams that aren't based on large LLMs like ChatGPT. My read: they're thinking it's time to lay off those workers in anticipation of replacing that functionality (in siri, cortana, echo/alexa) with a large LLM stack
People just folded like soggy tortillas when the state and federal governments implemented the laws that allowed them to be killed. They folded by allowing these megacorporations to accrue dragon's hoard levels of wealth and by allowing lobbying to continue to exist. My sympathies are all but non-existent. People are allowing this type of stuff to happen to themselves because they think it won't happen to them.
Sandiego is just way too expensive.
And Texas is way too fascist.
Plus it's Austin, none of the cheap house benefits (unless you're coming from California money), all of the high property tax downsides (and almost of the social benefits of said taxes).
That is not a concern for capitalism.
all my homies hate ~~apple~~ billionaires.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The article reports that the staff was surprised by the relocation, which Apple had indicated would involve a move to another campus in San Diego by the end of January, rather than going to Texas.
Apple has mostly avoided layoffs as other companies have made heavy cuts over the last two years.
The San Diego team reportedly listens to Siri recordings in multiple languages, including Hebrew, English, Spanish, and Arabic.
Apple has generally been perceived as being behind the AI curve, at least when it comes to its digital assistant, despite using people to quality check Siri recordings, as Google and Meta also do.
That perception didn’t change with the introduction of LLMs, but Apple has been pouring vast resources into catching up, and it’s reportedly been courting news outlets to buy training data.
It recently released its so-called frameworks and libraries supporting AI development on code repositories and is working on optimizing LLMs for use on its iPhones.
The original article contains 348 words, the summary contains 159 words. Saved 54%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Apple spokesperson confirmed that the team, which listens to recordings of Siri interactions to make sure it responded appropriately, will “have the opportunity to continue their role with Apple in Austin.”
"have the opportunity"