Hundreds of current and former Apple workers are complaining about their work environment.
Apple, known among its Silicon Valley peers for a secretive corporate culture in which workers are expected to be in lockstep with management, is suddenly facing an issue that would have been unthinkable a few years ago: employee unrest.
On Friday, Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, answered questions from workers in an all-staff meeting for the first time since the public surfacing of employee concerns over topics ranging from pay equity to whether the company should assert itself more on political matters like Texas’ restrictive abortion law.
Mr. Cook answered only two of what concerned employees said were a number of questions they had wanted to ask in a meeting broadcast to employees around the world, according to a recording obtained by The New York Times. But his response was a notable acknowledgment that the workplace and social issues have taken root at Apple
Over the past month, more than 500 people who said they were current and former Apple employees have submitted accounts of verbal abuse, sexual harassment, retaliation, and discrimination at work, among other issues, said Cher Scarlett and Janneke Parrish, two Apple employees.
A common theme is that Apple’s secrecy has created a culture that discourages employees from speaking out about their workplace concerns — not with co-workers, not with the press, and not on social media. Complaints about problematic managers or colleagues are frequently dismissed, and workers are afraid to criticize how the company does business, the employees who spoke to The Times said.
“Apple has this culture of secrecy that is toxic,” said Christine Dehus, who worked at Apple for five years and left in August. “On one hand, yes, I understand the secrecy piece is important for product security, to surprise and delight customers. But it bleeds into other areas of the culture where it is prohibitive and damaging.”
“Never have I met people more terrified to speak out against their employer,” said Ms. Scarlett, who joined Apple as a software engineer in April and has worked at eight other companies.
An Apple spokesman pointed to a company policy that said employees could “speak freely about your wages, hours or working conditions.”
Slack has been a key organizing tool for workers, several current and former employees told The Times. Apple’s siloed culture kept different teams of employees separate from one another, another result of efforts to prevent leaks. There was no wide-scale, popular internal message board for employees to communicate with one another until Apple began using Slack in 2019.
When employees were told to work from home at the beginning of the pandemic, Slack became particularly popular. “For a lot of us, this was the first chance to interact with people outside our own silo,” Ms. Parrish said. Previously, “none of us were aware that anybody else was going through this.”
In May, hundreds of employees signed a letter urging Apple to publicly support Palestinians during a recent conflict with Israel. And a corporate Slack channel that was set up to organize efforts to push Apple to be more flexible about remote work arrangements once the pandemic ended now has about 7,500 employees on it.
Apple declined to comment on specific employees’ cases.
Ms. Dehus, who worked at Apple to mitigate the impact of mining valuable minerals in conflict zones, said she had left Apple after spending several years fighting a decision to reassign her to a role that she said had involved more work for less pay. She said Apple had begun trying to reassign her after she complained that the company’s work on the minerals was not, in some cases, leading to meaningful change in some war-torn countries.
“Their culture is: Drink our Kool-Aid, buy into what we’re telling you, and we’ll promote you,” he said. “But if you’re asking for anything or making noise, then they won’t.”