Former Apple Executive Joins Google for Its Superior Work From Home Policy

Some people will go really far to keep working from home. And to be honest, we can’t blame them. There are many benefits to working from home, including saving money and, you know, peace of mind. 

That’s why a former Apple executive, Ian Goodfellow, quit as Apple’s director of machine learning because the company wouldn’t let its employees continue working from home. 

What’s even more surprising is that Goodfellow managed to land another job less than five days later, on May 11. Not only that, but according to a report from Bloomberg, Goodfellow will become part of Google, another huge tech company. 

According to the report, Goodfellow now forms part of Google’s DeepMind division and will work as an individual contributor. The DeepMind division is part of a Google project that wants to take artificial intelligence to the next level. It’s working on technology that can learn and solve puzzles and problems by itself. 

Goodfellow was part of Apple’s Special Projects Group and was in charge of machine learning and artificial intelligence. This means that Goodfellow might be able to help a lot with Google’s project. However, it’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time Goodfellow has been part of Google’s team. The former Apple employee was part of Google back in 2019 as a senior researcher. 

Why did Goodfellow do this? Well, it’s all because of Apple’s new working-from-home policies. Apple had stated that it would continue to work from the office and some workers didn’t like that, including Goodfellow. Apple doesn’t make any exceptions with its policy, so Goodfellow decided to leave instead. 

On the other hand, Google’s policies let its workers only come to the office three days a week. Moreover, Google states that it can make invidious exceptions depending on the person. 

Goodfellow probably managed to get one of those exceptions to continue the dream of working from home. 

As of right now, Goodfellow is the most well-known Apple employee with a big senior role that has resigned because of Apple’s new policies, but more employees aren’t happy with that decision. There have been countless employees that have complained about the new policies. 

Unfortunately, Apple seems insensitive to the needs of its employees on this issue. We’ll have to wait and see if this starts a movement among Apple’s employees.