This Time For Sure? Apple Mandates 3 Days In The Office

Tech giant Apple will require corporate employees to be physically present in their offices three days a week, beginning after Labor Day weekend on Sept. 5, Bloomberg reports.

The move comes after Apple delayed a number of earlier plans to mandate time in the office, which the company attributed to spikes in the number of Covid cases.

Under the latest plan, employees need to be in their offices on Tuesdays, Thursdays and a third day to be determined on a case-by-case basis. That represents a change from Apple's previous plan for in-office work, which would have required a physical presence on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. 

It isn't clear yet how Apple workers will take the mandate. Right now, workers are supposed to be in the office two days a week, up from one day earlier this year.

There has been pushback. In May, Apple’s director of machine learning, Ian Goodfellow, jumped to Google, reportedly because he disagreed with Apple's in-person work policy.

Even so, companies are inching toward more time in the office, and in the face of a possible recession, might have the upper hand.

Apple itself has slowed down its pace of hiring. The company laid off many of its contract-based recruiters, Bloomberg reports, citing anonymous sources, implying that Apple will slow its pace of hiring.

Apple isn't alone in trying to bring workers back to the office. Comcast recently said that it will require all of its U.S. employees, cable and corporate, to work in person on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, starting Sept. 12.

“In-person interaction is core to our company and culture,” Comcast said in a memo to its employees. “We need more certainty and direction to coordinate our in-office time.”