Apple to over 100 California employees: Move to Texas or lose your job

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 144 points –
chron.com

Apple to over 100 California employees: Move to Texas or lose your job::Most of the team working on key Siri operations is already based in the Texas captial's Apple campus. Others in San Diego are receiving al ultimatum.

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"I'd rather be dead in California than alive in Texas." - Lucille Bluth

Arizona* Lucille wouldn’t even joke about moving to Texas

This should be illegal

It often is https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/eta/warn/glossary.asp?p=Constructive%20Discharge

Note that isn't illegal, it just means the company doesn't get to get out of paying unemployment when it happens. And that's only if someone is willing to challenge them on it.

You don't "challenge them on it". You just file for unemployment.

They have to prove it's not constructive dismissal to the unemployment department. No, the government arbiter will not like Apple claiming it's not a hardship. This is a slam dunk case and may result in a fine due to the WARN act.

This is essentially a layoff. Employees signed employment contracts to work in a particular location. You can't just move that location out of the local area.

What do you mean? If it was, they would just fire someone in CA and hire someone in TX.

It’s just sneaky layoffs through attrition. Honestly these are work from home jobs (listen and evaluate recorded snippets) so there’s no other reason to make them move.

“No.”

California has some pretty decent laws tilted to employees, I’m curious how this will shake out.

Anybody at Apple will have half a dozen offers by the end of the week if they tell LinkedIn they're open to new opportunities.

A couple years ago, sure! Today, the entire tech sector is downsizing.

It's a bit of a weird time. The big guys cut thousands of jobs last year, but if you were willing to go to anything that wasn't FAANG, there were jobs everywhere.

I had ~5 offers within a month of being laid off last spring.

AANF(M) engineers can still write their own check generally speaking.

I still get random emails from companies offering me job interviews every week and I haven't been searching for jobs in over 5 years. The amount coming from the massive companies like Amazon and Google have plummeted, but I still get an email from one of those every few months asking if I want to talk.

I’m not sure people from the Siri team are going to be in high demand.

Hopefully not without moving assistance. I can't imagine that people can just pick up stakes and move 3 states away!

Especially to fucking texas. I couldn't handle that political 180. It's why I moved away from the south and back to MN.

It’s Austin…

Yes it's Austin, but Greg "let them drown" Abbott is still the governor in Austin too...

Let's not forget about Senator Ted "if it gets too damn cold, join me in Cancun" Cruz... The whole state is led by political winners.

Oh is abortion not banned in Austin but only the rest of the state? That's a relief.

I'm somewhat a fanboy of Apple but this would ruin it for me. No way you could get me to step into the state with the lowest quality of personal liberties in the country.

Take the severance, then get a job somewhere else near home. They’ve worked for Apple—the world is their oyster

The resentful employees, once relocated to Texas, should all instantly adopt ridiculously OTT cowboy wear with the boots and oversized hats and rhinestone chaps. They would walk around the office with their thumbs in the belts and a weird bow-legged swagger, doing cartoon-like impersonations of Texan cowboy jibber-jabber at all times, occasionally bursting into a blood-curdling screech of “YEEEEEEEEEE-HAAAAAAAAAWWWW!!!!” and firing shiny cap-guns up into air. ALL.THE.FUCKING.TIME.