Apple to Decentralize From Silicon Valley
Just a few years after completing the multibillion-dollar Apple Park headquarters in Cupertino, California, Apple Inc. is ramping up efforts to decentralize out of Silicon Valley. I’m told that executives at the highest levels of the company recognize that hiring and retaining talent will be one of the biggest challenges to its future success, and reducing its reliance on the Valley is a key step in mitigating that issue.
Apple has traditionally operated on the principle that ambitious technologists yearn for a place in Silicon Valley where they can put their mark on the next iProduct. The company’s top brass for years fought against decentralization. But that thinking has changed for several reasons based on what I’ve heard from Apple employees.
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Some members of Apple’s executive team had been pushing to decentralize out of Cupertino for years before a fuller realization came into place more recently. Johny Srouji, Apple’s head of custom silicon, was one of the strongest proponents of such a shift, I’m told. His group opened up offices in Florida, Massachusetts, Texas, Israel and parts of Asia years ago. It has since expanded in Germany, Oregon and San Diego.
Eddy Cue, Apple’s online services chief, has also pushed for decentralization, investing in multiple Los Angeles offices and a location in Nashville. The chief operating officer, Jeff Williams, has internally discussed the cost benefits of a more global workforce, and Deirdre O’Brien, the retail and HR chief, has evangelized for the diversity benefits.
The company is said to be “losing talent” because employees are struggling to afford the high cost of living in the San Francisco Bay Area, despite being high earners by most standards.
Previously:
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"High earners by most standards" but of course not by Bay Area tech standards. Apple is a notorious salary lowballer.
Apple explicitly targets the 60th percentile of the market for salary for a given position. The theory was that they only wanted people who actually wanted to work at Apple, not just layscale ladder-climbers. This worked a lot better before the company's products exploded (think pre-iPod).
>The company is said to be “losing talent”
Not to mention completely disregarding the vast majority of the population in a serious diversity failing by excluding pretty much everyone who isn't fairly well off to start with.
A lot happens in Cupertino, but it's not like it's ever truly been all. iWork is partially developed near the East Coast. Logic is still, I believe, developed near Hamburg, Germany (because that's where Emagic used to be).
Good to see they're not quite as stubborn as recently suggested.
