I have to think they’re going to either give key devs/engineers more flexibility than this or they’re going to lose large groups of staff except for those who a

I have to think they’re going to either give key devs/engineers more flexibility than this or they’re going to lose large groups of staff except for those who are there because they really like working for Apple as a company. Anyone there who views it as just another job (even if it’s one they enjoy) who is significantly inconvenienced by longer commutes or the high price of living locally and the degraded work/life balance has got to be eyeing their options. Even a pay cut to go elsewhere is moot if it means you can live in better & cheaper accommodations in a location of your choosing. 3 WFH days a week is what my current employer allows for any dev/it/non-customer-facing roll and my workplace absolutely hates hates hates the idea of WFH. Pre Covid it was banned, for everyone for every reason. They even fought it on “undue hardship” grounds when it was requested as an ADA accommodation. Now they’ve changed because they realize that their ideological opposition to it will (and has) hurt them as they forced people going back to the office. We lost roughly 1/3 of tech-oriented staff before operations degraded to such an awful state that they changed. I lost multiple candidates for a position on my team. I view this purely as a cynical move by Apple to help decrease headcount the way other tech companies are doing and because they’ve clearly not liked WFH in general and know that a cooling job market gives employees fewer options. These moves may even obtain in the short term, but all job markets are cyclical and employee expectations are not going to return to pre-Covid mentality. In the medium term of 2-3 years they’ll simply gain a reputation of being a bit more worker & WFH hostile in the marketplace at the same time the most people and especially top talent have no end of options that will give them the work environment freedom they desire. And when the job market heats up again they’ll have a harder time recruiting, even if they change their policy. It will be harder to trust the commitment to flexible scheduling & work location. Or maybe I’m wrong, I’m not high level executive with an eye on long term labor market & “human capital management” (awful term) and I’m I know there’s smarter people than me at Apple, likely some included in making this decision, but my non expert opinion gained through a bit of anecdotal experience and armchair observation of peers and trends indicates it’s a bad decision made with short-term thinking only.