Apple’s head of retail and people, Deirdre O’Brien, has sought address a number of key issues amongst staff raised by the AppleToo movement. In a video posted before the Labor Day weekend seen by MacRumors, she encouraged staff to raise concerns, particularly around pay, with their manager and “business relations partner.”
Apple Retail And People Chief Indirectly Addresses
AppleToo Movement Concerns
Ms O’Brien (pictured above with CEO Tim Cook,) emphasized that the company has a “confidential process to “confidential process to thoroughly investigate, in a way that treats everyone with dignity and respect.” However some employees are reportedly unconvinced that this system is sufficient.
The Apple executive also said:
We use industry-standard methodology, and we have a dedicated team of experts that runs a comprehensive process to monitor and maintain pay equity. And we partner with an independent third party that analyzes our compensation each year. If this work identifies a gap, we close it. And our approach is considered best in class.
If you follow the MR link (or read TMO), there’s quite a lot of HR issues surfacing at Apple lately. The stories ring true for anyone who’s worked in a large tech company. Not that Apple has found the limit of startup-culture in a large organisation, just that it’s grown too fast, maybe taken in less than suitable staff, too quickly and can’t proliferate the Apple startup culture effectively.
Apple has even bigger quality of work problems. This doesn’t seem to be related to those. This is the usual corporate shenanigans and staff waking up to what’s going on, like Jobs ripping off Woz over a computer game contract – writ ‘largest company in the world’ large.
We’ve heard stories of new developers dictating to the company what they’re going to work on, instead of management properly inducting them into the Apple way of developing before putting them on flagship products. And witnessed the subsequent drop in software quality. This is not the Apple way, and unpopular as it might be to say it, the buck stops with Hairforce One. (Including idiotic iOS15 features the company can’t get working for the meagre iOS release, this year.) Apple productivity took a dive this year, any wonder it wants staff back in the office,
AppleToo may not be related to these issues, but it’s clear, Appke HR is action-packed with issues at the moment. And if Deirdre O’Brien can sort them out (she’s worked in engineering, so she has the depth to see the big picture), she may just confirm her seat as future CEO.