The technology company Apple decided to consolidate the AI unit in one office and put more than a hundred employees in front of a choice: move to another city (almost across the country) or lose their jobs.
The tech giant is closing one of its AI offices in San Diego, California, which housed part of the Data Operations Annotations team. She is engaged in the development of the virtual assistant Siri and other products based on artificial intelligence. The company has already offered 121 employees of the division to move to Austin, Texas, reports Bloomberg. If they do not agree to these conditions by the end of February 2024, they will be released at the end of April.
The corresponding decision was made by Christine DeFilippo, Apple's deputy vice president for machine learning and AI strategy. She noted that most of the division is located in Austin, and its unification will improve work efficiency. The Data Operations Annotations team analyzes user requests and determines how accurately Siri recognizes and executes voice commands. Most of the employees still working in San Diego are against the move, especially since the company continues to hire people for that office in other positions.
All those who agree to the move will keep their positions and will receive an additional $7,000 each. compensation. The rest will receive severance pay and health insurance at the company's expense for six months.
Apple is one of the few major tech companies that hasn't resorted to mass layoffs, unlike Meta, Amazon and Google, which have laid off tens of thousands of people over the course of the year.. CEO Tim Cook noted that this is a “last resort”, so this option was not even discussed in the corporation despite the market situation.
However, in March of last year, Apple issued an order to return to offices, and in April it closed its corporate retail division. His employees were offered to submit resumes for other positions in the company or to resign.