Last fall I investigated working at Apple because of their supposed new openness to remote work in Eddy Cue's organization. After talking to a couple principal

Last fall I investigated working at Apple because of their supposed new openness to remote work in Eddy Cue's organization. After talking to a couple principal engineers it was revealed that since I was currently bay area based I would be expected to be in the office 3-5 days a week, so no they weren't remote. I wrote it off because I am not interested in spending 20-30 hours a week commuting for any job. A few months later, post the start of COVID, I heard that they were now really remote. I re-engaged and again inquired. It turned out that the job was only remote until COVID was over, again, after COVID they would want in-person presence in the office 3-5 days a week. This despite the team being globally distributed. Again I declined to pursue. Then I started to see tweets advertising remote positions in the same group. I was asked on twitter by a former co-worker who works in the same overall organization if I was interested and I explained that I had already investigated and the lack of ability to work remote was a non-starter. He encouraged me to investigate again with his reference. The result was the same as before, London or Cupertino. Being truly remote or WFH in the bay area would only work until COVID was over. 1-2 weeks a quarter in the office was insufficient. I declined to pursue. Even the former co-worker was surprised that they weren't more flexible. I am not sure what the problem is at Apple. They have had issues with remote work for a long time. I recall one incident where they fired a firmware engineer working on the CHRP Macs because he had to move to Montana (spousal or family reasons) and in the process really screwed themselves. A significant part of the CHRP project delays were because they blew a hole in their own firmware team. There had been a couple of people I knew working remote at the time Steve returned to Apple. All of them were let go if they didn't return to Cupertino. This had been a problem even before Steve's return though. Some of it is their silo "super sekrit" culture. It doesn't seem to have changed over the years. In the end, Apple is entitled to have whatever culture they want. I have been a remote WFH since 1997. Unless I can walk to the office in 10-15 minutes I am never going to commute for anyone. That pretty much rules out ever working for Apple.