Apple asks its San Diego Siri quality control team to relocate to Texas
121 Apple workers have until the end of January to choose.
Seems like something that WFH would solve without having to upend so many employee lives.
A decade ago, a lot of folks would probably seriously consider this. Austin is a rad town and cost of living is cheaper than San Diego. Now moving to Texas could put you at significant risk if you’re a woman.
Apple, a company that likes to value diversity and inclusion, is apparently fine with putting its female employees in harm’s way for a tax break.
Of all the shit Apple has done, this is particularly disturbing.
Edit: Took a few more minutes to look into this, and it appears that Apple covers travel and medical expenses for women that have to travel out of state for care. Although, forcing someone into that position to keep their job is pretty douchey.
Austin isn't even that much cheaper and property tax in TX is heinous compared to CA.
Even covering expenses still puts women's lives at risk.
Sure if you get pregnant and early on decide you want one, they can help out, AFTER you divulge very private information.
But what about all the myriad of other scenarios where people need medical abortions in life threatening situations. You don't always have the time to get yourself to another state, and then you die, or lose the ability to get pregnant again.
Sure its nice they offer it, but fuck them for putting women in that situation anyway. They don't get a pass for covering costs when they can.
With a 2% chance of an ectopic pregnancy, it's a little like Russian Roulette if you're of childbearing age, isn't it?
value diversity and inclusion
Bullshit.
They don't give a shit.
It's something of importance to their target demographic, so they play into it.
Edit: Took a few more minutes to look into this, and it appears that Apple covers travel and medical expenses for women that have to travel out of state for care. Although, forcing someone into that position to keep their job is pretty douchey.
And when the Texas government arrests them to keep them from traveling for an abortion, Apple will break them out of jail?
Not saying this corporate policy makes up for Apple trying to re-lo people to the Texas. Just providing more detail.
Bail money counts as expenses, I'd say.
Sorry, values diversity and inclusion?
Yeah, if you include the slave labour that was literally chained inside their factories in China?
Are they expecting for people to just pack their shit up, and go? We have to stop letting these companies pretend that all the workers are just meat puppets
Honestly, probably not. They probably want them to quit. This is a cost cutting measure that they don't want to admit to publicly.
Yep. Sounds like that to me. Even Apple can’t afford San Diego which is why OP’s WFH idea isn’t an option
They want to force them to quit. Then they can move the office to Austin and rely on cheap illegal labour.
Probably not illegal per se but definitely cheaper and easier to fuck over: Texas labor protections are functionally nonexistent
This is what a stealth layoff looks like folks.
This is becoming a larger and larger ask as the states drift further apart in terms of rights.
Don’t move, don’t quit. Make them fire you.
make them fire you? Start a fucking union and make management's life hell.
No one from California wants to move to Texas.
Its slowing down recently but in 2021 and 2022 it was a very popular topic and many people did move from CA to TX.
And guess what happened in 23? A LOT of those people came RIGHT back to California lol
Perfect example: https://www.businessinsider.com/couple-moved-california-texas-back-santa-cruz-rosenberg-2023-11?op=1
Looking at census data: https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/california-exodus-census-analysis-18509264.php
California was one of 11 states whose inmigration rate was lower than the national migration average of 19.9%. The data says that many of the people (44,279) who moved to California last year came from Texas. The second-highest number of people (31,225) who moved from a different state to California came from New York.
Well, lots of people move to Texas from all kinds of states. You could make an article about each one if you tried. Also, people are moving to California from Texas—and everywhere else. You could write an article about each of those places if you tried.
My point is, people who bleed blue don’t move to Texas unless they have to. And, with recent politics, Texas is a much harder pill to swallow for anyone left of center.
I’m sure the lefties in California would love to get rid of the righties. Maybe they could make a 1:1 trade, lefties for righties.
That's not really true. Most of California is very conservative, just not very populated. There's probably a good number of people who at least would say they want to live in Texas, although they'd probably hate it once they realize what the state of California does for them.
Ffs tech workers need to unionize and fast.
Apple supports anti-abortion misogyny, the murder of immigrants crossing the border, and a deterioration of employee rights for profit. This is the safest conclusion.
And how much do you wanna bet that Apple has received cashbacks or other benefits for moving that office to Texas? It's a huge benefit to Texas. We've seen this when Amazon was trying to choose where to build their next HQ.
“Asks”? So they can just say “no thank you” and keep their jobs?
No?
Then asks is not the right word.
If they're using this as a method to get employees to quit, then it's gonna suck for the few that do move
Well duh, now they'll have to live in Texas.
Its only temporary, those employees will be eliminated later under more lax labor laws.
I'm just shocked to learn that Siri has (had) a quality control team.
Apple likes the labor laws in Texas that allows them to screw their employees over when they feel like it
The company reportedly told employees they can apply for other jobs within the company, though some doubt they’re qualified for other Apple roles in the city, and most don’t plan to move.
Sounds like it's QA people. Which sucks extra hard cause that's a much harder field to get another job in. If they were software engineers, the world would be their oysters. I bet a lot of people will make the move and it's quite shitty and cynical from apple to move a team that doesn't have a lot of options.
If they tried to move an engineering team to texas, they know they'd get told to get fucked
If they were software engineers, the world would be their oysters.
Not with all the layoffs lately.
https://layoffs.fyi
And so begins (continues?) the enshittification of Apple. Siri is dumb as a bag of rocks. These people should all get raises.
Siri is dumb as a bag of rocks, but give them raises? They're lucky they haven't been fired.
Apple's being enshittified a thousand ways, but Siri has always been shit.
You make a fair point
I've heard that the original Siri, before Apple bought it, was good?
What a ridiculous comment, in your opinion Siri is bad so the Siri team should get a raise? That aside, Siri has only gotten better in time, yeah she ain’t Jarvis but come on now
Furthermore, having your employees move to a different location isn’t enshittification, this move doesn’t affect their products at all which is what enshittification is all about, making product changes for the worse. Yeah this move sucks for employees because fuck Texas but that’s not the same thing.
Enshittification, also known as platform decay, is the pattern of decreasing quality of online platforms that act as two-sided markets. Enshittification can be seen as a form of rent-seeking
I didn’t want to get into the increasing bugginess of their software in this thread. I’ve been an Apple user for 17 years, and it’s become infuriating. AppleCare support is also FAR worse than it used to be.
