Alienating your employees who have the most job mobility isn’t back door layoffs. If they had excess staff like others, which by all accounts they didn’t hire at the same rates, they would have done layoffs by now too. This is just them gambling that their preferred management dictate won’t cause too much attrition.

Agree. This is a stupid way to get rid of your best people.

A lot of assumptions there:

1. Software engineers have job mobility.

2. Software engineers who work from home are the best people.

The best people have job mobility, and some or many of them like to work from home.

Absolutely not true if you consider the fact that many of the smartest are on H1B visas.

Wouldn't they be on O-1 visas. Still, I get your point.

H1Bs are royally screwed.

You do what you are told and keep your head down.

Apple has deep pockets though, startups could struggle to compete with that

If Apple employs anyone working on “AI”, I would not describe them as having any talent.

At least not based on Siri’s usefulness.