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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
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.
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.
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?
Let's not let Apple sugar coat. An appropriate title:
"Apple has layoffs and shadily tries to hide it"
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.
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"
So a job you could do anywhere, wants you to do it somewhere else?
Tesla did the same thing, and failed miserably when the majority of its workforce threatened to quit. Or at least thats what I read. Hopefully Apple fails too.
Although it’s a manual QA team. Of the folks in engineering with leverage, manual QA teams have the least. It’s the department that is one of the easiest to backfill.
Because what Siri needs is less quality.
Im sure they have some grand plan for the investors how many jobs they can replace with AI bullshit to increase those sweet-sweet numbers.
For those that do relocate, Bloomberg writes they’ll be given $7,000 stipends, while Apple will offer the others four weeks of severance plus another week’s worth per year that they worked, as well as six months of health insurance.
It's a scumbag move to try and frame this as anything other than a layoff, but this seems fairly decent of Apple. Admittedly, I'm not sure how this compares to other severance packages though - can someone give context on how this measures up?
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.
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!
People just folded like soggy tortillas when the state and federal governments implemented the laws that allowed women 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.
You're just as guilty friend, you're a people too. Or do you reserve your disdain for others?
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).