Long-time Apple watchers have noticed a change at the $2 trillion company. Employees are organising and pushing back on an executive team that has traditionally held a very tight grip on the decision-making at the company. One thing is being blamed for this power shift – Slack.
The online messaging platform, marketed as a more productive alternative to email, has changed the way employees communicate at the tech giant. Whereas Apple employees previously worked in ultra-siloed teams with little opportunity to meet people outside their current project or department, they now have access to communication platform that cuts across projects, departments and silos.
As a result, shared grievances are now being discussed and many of them are being leaked to the media. There were employees asking for better tools to protect their privacy, then requests for transparency around worker’s pay, after that there were demands to fire author of Chaos Monkeys Antonia Garcia Martinez, and recently the focus has been dissent over Apple’s return to work plan. For the notoriously secret tech giant (to the point where Steve Jobs removed all names from the ‘About’ section of Apple’s software), this is a culture shock but one that likely isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
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