May 31, 2021

Several Apple employees share information about the working environment in the company.

It came as a surprise to many when the company hired Antonio Garcia Martinez, a former product manager at Facebook who had written a tell-all book on Silicon Valley full of blatant and misogynistic undertones, which to many directly clashes with Apple’s carefully managed public image.

This prompted a group of workers to write a letter calling for an investigation, and within hours the letter exceeded 1,000 signatures, leading to Garcia Martinez being fired that same evening.

A week after the letter was leaked to the media, some Muslim employees also wrote a letter asking Apple to release a statement in support of Palestine.

When Apple CEO Tim Cook refused to respond, the letter was leaked to the media again.

These events indicate a slow shift in employee behavior at Apple. Once tight-lipped about internal problems, employees are now joining a wave of public opposition that has engulfed the entire Silicon Valley in public controversy.

There seems to be no sign that Apple’s product launches will be affected by these leaks, which is the part of the business that Apple cares most about, and it has made tremendous efforts to dissuade employees from leaking.

In 2018, Apple sent out a memo threatening to fire and sue employees who shared public information.

Apple employees point out that they have been organizing internally for years, and last year pushed for the company to stop using the terms “master” and “slave” in technical contexts in which one process controls another to steer away from labels.

They also called for Election Day and Juneteenth to be turned into paid company holidays, a request that the company has since granted.

For more information, read the original story in The Verge.