Apple is delaying its plan to return to mandatory in-person work because of the increase of COVID cases driven by the Delta variant, according to Bloomberg. The company had laid out a roadmap for returning to its offices in early September, with employees expected to come in at least three days a week, but now that deadline has reportedly been extended “by at least a month to October at the earliest.”
Apple’s return to offices was controversial among some of its employees. A group of workers in an internal Slack channel for thousands of “remote work advocates” collaborated on a letter to CEO Tim Cook and the rest of Apple’s leadership, making the case that the company should embrace a more flexible work-from-home policy. Deirdre O’Brien, Apple’s SVP of retail and people, responded to the request by saying “in-person collaboration is essential to our culture and our future.”
Apple was notoriously unfriendly to the concept of remote work pre-pandemic, and…
