Can Apple's Culture Handle Dissent? — With Cher Scarlett

Cher Scarlett is an ex-Apple engineer who led a movement for pay transparency within the company — and suffered consequences. She joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss why she spoke out, how Apple responded, and whether the company's culture can handle dissent. Listen for an inside perspective on Apple's culture and a conversation about the future of dissent within the tech giants. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:03Speaker 01

  LinkedIn Presents.

• 1:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. We hear a lot in the press about how Apple is a humanitarian company, a company looking out for the greater good. But I think you can learn a lot about Apple when you look inside the company and you ask what's going on inside the culture. And especially in terms of the way that the company handles dissent. And we are going to have quite the episode today because joining us today is Cher Scarlett. She's a former principal software engineer at Apple and a leader of the company's internal dissent movement before she left the company last year. Currently, she's a senior software engineer at Control Z.

• 2:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  And it is great to have her on the show. Welcome, Cher.

• 2:11Speaker 02

  Hi, thanks for having me on.

• 2:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  My pleasure. So, I mean, let's just start with your bio. I read the, I read, there's a great profile about you on the Washington Post. Do you mind if I read the first paragraph?

• 2:25Speaker 02

  Go ahead.

• 2:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm gonna read it and you can react to it. Cher Scarlett grew up poor and dropped out of high school. As a teenager, she struggled with addiction, danced as a stripper, and tried to overdose on pills. Her ticket to a better life was learning to code. Last year, she became perhaps the least probable member of Apple's elite software engineering corps. So why the mixed reaction when I said I was gonna read it?

• 2:48Speaker 02

  I mean, it's just, it's weird when it's about you, you know? It's just, it's interesting to see the way that other people view you. Because I'm somebody who, you know, coming up in this industry, especially knowing now, you know what you know about me. I wasn't, you know, talking about any of the stuff I'd been through. I worked very hard to hide, you know, what I felt like made me not belong. And I later became somebody who was just, you know, authentic to a fault in a way. And so, you know, I told my whole life story essentially, you know, to read from the Washington Post.

• 3:32Speaker 02

  And so, just, you know, hearing what he got out of that is like really interesting, I guess. Like, it's, I'm glad that, you know, that that's what he took away, you know, from, like, you know, to introduce me who I am as a person. Because I think it's, it's hard not to see the worst things about yourself as, as just negatives. I mean, that's why I was like fine with hiding it for so long, I guess, you know? Because it was easier than kind of coming to terms with like, you know, things that I've done in the past that are wrong. Or times when I, I struggled and did things that I was ashamed of.

• 4:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and it's a real story of resilience. And I think we'll probably come back to it over the course of the conversation. But at first, I want to talk a little bit about, you know, what ended up starting your desire or your your action to to move and descent inside Apple. And just getting into the meat of the story and in terms of like, your activism inside the company and how they responded. I want to start with a pretty broad question, which I think is is a question I love asking people who've worked at Apple and always elicits some pretty interesting answers. So can you just tell me a little bit about the culture inside Apple?

• 4:54Speaker 02

  So the culture inside Apple is very,

• 4:59Speaker 02

  it's weirdly isolating and simultaneously very well connected. But the connection comes from above. So I don't think the first my first year I saw this, it wasn't until after everything with AGM started that it felt more like controlled siloing. So like controlled connections, I guess, where and you kind of see this with the ways that they've tried to start to change Slack rules, you know, in terms of like who can interact with each other, what you can interact over. And that to me is the biggest example of

• 5:41Speaker 02

  what the culture was like. Now, I never went into an office because I was hired during the pandemic. But I can imagine that, you know, in a building where some key cards open some doors and some not other doors, that there's something very similar to that where it looks like it's this, you know, like You can go anywhere. There's a lot of glass, you know, it looks very open. But in reality, there's some other force underneath that's controlling what you know and who you talk to. And what's funny is because I worked in global security, I actually worked on tools that did exactly that. And I didn't necessarily see it at the time. Because one of the most important things at Apple is the secrecy.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  And you kind of buy into that without um picking it apart too much. And I guess like I was fine to help control the flow and access of information. Because in my mind, at all times, it was something that was necessary to protect the business. And I never would have even considered that there were things that shouldn't be secret, shouldn't have the, you know, flow of information controlled so much because it now we're like, you know, kind of blurring this line of, okay, like, should this actually be confidential? Or is it a, you know, inconsequential confidential? Or now are we talking about things that um something is wrong here?

• 7:09Speaker 02

  And when I got into something is wrong here territory, that's when I started to notice that um maybe it was a little bit by design, you know, that these things were uh getting buried essentially. Even within, you know, a company itself.

• 7:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, okay, that sets the stage really well for um where I'm hoping to go in this conversation. The first thing I'll note is that it is interesting that you you bring it up, like the Apple campus does look like it should be open. I've been there once and my understanding is like it's this big circle, kind of like a UFO looking thing. Large glass windows, like enormous glass windows. And the idea is that it's supposed to promote this interaction between people. Where like as you walk around this big outer layer of the spaceship, you walk into other people and other groups. And, you know, maybe that, you know, generates some ideas or or ingenuity. However, let's talk a little bit about, you know, the isolation.

• 8:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Because you said two things, like Apple is both very isolating and both very connected. And so we're going to get into some of the details of of, you know, what you found and some of the bad stuff that you're talking about. But um let's just do the base layer here. Talk a little bit about the isolation. How is that manifested?

• 8:24Speaker 02

  So there's kind of two different sides of it, right? So I I worked on an application that controlled who had access to what information. And in a way, that makes sense, right? So let's say that you're invited to a meeting, right? And this could be, you know, on the campus. Let's just use that for an example. But maybe this isn't, you know, it's a conversation on Slack. Maybe it's a Zoom meeting. This program that I worked on controlled whether or not you could have access to the meeting,

• 9:01Speaker 02

  you know, the conversation by checking to see if you were allowed to have access to the project. And so in a way, you know, any, sure, anybody could invite, you know, you to this meeting. But you're gonna get blocked, right? Like if you don't have the the proper access to this project, as it were. And that is, to me, the most illustrative of how it seems really open. So let's say you can see the meeting, right? It's glass, glass windows, whatever, but you can't get in because you're you don't have access to the project. Now, in some ways, this is really good.

• 9:43Speaker 02

  Let's say the project is, you know, back in the day, the iPhone X. Oh, my goodness, there's a Face ID, right? Like, this is a big deal. This is something we don't want getting out. So, you know, that limiting access, it makes sense from a business perspective, right? I've never actually worked somewhere where the things in the company were secret from employees, too. So that was something kind of different. But again, Apple is the biggest company in the world, so it did kind of make sense. But now let's get into something where maybe it's not so appropriate. If I create a project and I, you know, how it's, you know. You don't have access to this project. But now I'm talking about this wage transparency survey that somebody started and how we're going to address it.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  Does it actually make sense that that meeting is closed to everybody? I don't think that it does because now we're veering into talking about workplace conditions. And I don't know if you saw the memo that Tim Cook had sent out in September after some of the the details from our global town hall had made it to various people in the press. But all of the stuff that I read in the press was about workplace conditions or, you know, things that are not confidential. But that memo talked about them like it was, like that there was no line

• 11:10Speaker 02

  between, you know, talking about the iPhone X facial recognition versus talking about Apple's health insurance when it comes to the abortion law in Texas. Those things were talked about in the same way because of the fact that it was a company meeting. And that's not really quite accurate, right? Like, we're talking about two very, very, very different things and people should not, within the company, should not feel like those are lumped in, but I can tell you that they do. Because people on my team, you know, felt like because I was talking to the press and subsequently sometimes talking about like the fact that we use Slack, for example,

• 11:55Speaker 02

  that I was eroding the company's trust in my very small team whose job it is to ensure that, you know, secrecy is maintained and that we're doing a really good job of it.

• 12:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, so we're into it now. So you've touched on it a bit, but how exactly did you press Apple on un-wage transparency? Why did you do it? How did that go down? Because this is where it sort of came up against their culture of secrecy and eventually that went out into public. So how did we get from like A to Z on that?

• 12:25Speaker 02

  So there's kind of two important things that happened before this. One, I was actually told not to talk to the press. The person who told me that did walk it back. But basically from that moment on, I recognized that something was wrong because, one,

• 12:45Speaker 02

  You can't tell me I'm not allowed to talk to the press. Like you can tell me I'm not allowed to talk about confidential stuff, right? I signed an agreement. She can't tell me I'm not allowed to talk to the press without Apple's permission, right? Especially not about workplace conditions. Um, so that was a red flag for me. Um, and something else had happened, um, actually right after I started, um, where basically I talked about my mental health, which I'd become accustomed to doing at my previous workplaces. Um, and I kind of was told that that made people uncomfortable. And I was the only woman on my team, um, and the only woman in a couple of layers up. And so, you know, it, it kind of, I just was like,

• 13:26Speaker 02

  oh, okay, this is just because, you know, maybe it's just because it's like a very male dominated uh, culture in this pod. Like this certainly can't be the all of Apple, right? Like it's uncomfortable with you talking about your mental health. That doesn't, like, it did not compute. Um, so those two things had kind of like planted a little bit of a seed in me that like something was wrong, right? And so, um, when I was moving, um, back, so I was living in, um, St. Louis, Missouri for a long time. That's a whole story, but, um, I'm from Washington originally and I was moving back to Washington. And I was trying to find out what my wage adjustment was going to be because Apple does geographic pay

• 14:06Speaker 02

  and it was considered an internal transfer because I was going from, uh, weirdly one company to another, which is like Apple Computers versus Apple Incorporated. Um, I have no idea what, what that is about. But yeah, so I was trying to find out what my new wages were going to be and nobody would tell me. And it was super weird. So I started to like, and I needed to plan, like, you know, like, oh, how much rent can I afford? How much this, you know, like trying to figure out like my financial situation? And so I was asking around and I kind of crowdsourced this information that, um, I would expect, you know, a roughly a 10, 10 or 20% bump in my, uh, wages from going to a low cost of living area to a high

• 14:46Speaker 02

  cost of living area. So I was like, okay, like, I'll just, you know, think 10% and I'll base off of that. Well, after I move, um, My wages are updated and they finally revealed to me what my next paycheck is going to be after I've already moved. And it's a lot lower than I was expecting. It was like 4.6% or something like that. So I was like, oh, that's super weird. And I was like, well, maybe, maybe I was a 10% bump would put me like too high for this area, like, you know, in terms of like where I was in like the percentile or whatever. So I went to this website called levels.fyi, which is where a lot of software engineers self-report their wage data at Big Tech.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  And so I went and I looked through the data and it's kind of seemed like maybe the women engineers were making less, significantly less than the male peers of similar experience and doing similar work. And so I had asked in a women's affinity group on Slack if anybody was interested in doing a wage transparency survey. And somebody had actually already started one that morning in a different channel. And so I just kind of went and put my data in there. I was like, okay, cool. Well, then I start noticing that people are like, oh, what happened to the survey? What happened to the survey? They're like, oh, well, the people team told us to take it down.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  And I was like, wait, what? And so then other people are messaging me. They're like, yeah, this isn't the first time this has happened. This happened at this time. This happened at this date. And I was like, okay, this is like against the law. And I knew that because so just a few weeks earlier, the Blizzard case had became public and I was helping my former coworkers organize. And so I learned a bunch about the National Labor Relations Act. And one of those things was protected concerted activity, even if you're not represented by a union. And that's what this wage transparency survey stuff was. I was like, this is covered under the NLR. I was like, I'm almost certain. So I contacted the NLRB,

• 16:50Speaker 02

  the National Labor Relations Board that governs the NLRA. And I was like, hey, this is what we're doing. This is what's been happening. They're like, we can't say for sure, but yes, what you're doing is protected concerted activity. And attempts to shut it down do sound like they would be violations. And I was like, okay, cool. So I'll just like, let people know that this is, you know, a federally protected right and I'll start the survey. Because they're not going to tell me to take it down. I had way more followers, you know, than any of the other people on Twitter, and hundreds of journalists were following me at the time. So in my mind, I'm like, oh, they're not going to tell me to take it down because I'm going to say I know it's illegal. And they didn't tell me to take it down. Instead, people started messaging me, and I'm talking about like droves of people, like more than

• 17:35Speaker 02

  20 people are telling me that they're being told not to discuss their wages, that that's not a thing at Apple, you know, it's not all right to do here, not to participate in the survey. And then some people told me they were being told not to speak to me at all.

• 17:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And you had said that there it was a company that was very connected at the top.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 17:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  You know, via the top. And so this is kind of, you know, what am I reading this right? That Apple is used to communicating top down, used to having total message control in the press and inside the company. And then there they reflexively, you know, will start to react poorly when something comes from the bottom up, an issue like this.

• 18:19Speaker 02

  Yes. And, you know, it's interesting because I had previously, in the months prior, when we were kind of doing the remote work kind of advocacy, and I was talking about all that stuff, I had actually had some concerns that stemmed from that original conversation about talking about mental health being uncomfortable for people, where I was finding some room for improvement, I'll say, in the accessibility and disability trainings and education materials and access and discoverability of it. I found that there were a lot of people

• 19:01Speaker 02

  who didn't even know that what they had was covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act. They didn't know that they could request accommodations. They didn't know they had what was considered to be a disability. And for me, I felt like, you know, Apple, like the way that they Uh, their image to the outside world is that they're best in class when it comes to accessibility, you know, ever since back when, you know, left-handed people couldn't use the iPhone or whatever, um, you know, they've done a really good job of making sure that they're very accessible to a lot of different users regardless of their disability.

• 19:45Speaker 02

  But what I was hearing from inside was that a lot of people were feeling discriminated against during the, um, ADA accommodations request process and also, um, medical leave, um, a short-term disability, a long-term disability. And that a lot of people, like I said, didn't know that they could request accommodations, didn't know they had a disability. And so it from the inside, none of this was in the press, nothing like that. I tried really hard to bring this collective feedback to the right people and I never found those people. The last conversation that I had about these concerns, um, basically ended in a, like, this type of change takes many,

• 20:29Speaker 02

  many, many years to make inside of the company and you have to make people like you first. And that reminded me of something that I read when I joined. Um, it was, um, like the lead of the accessibility DNA. Uh, so DNAs are the like diversity networks inside of Apple and it, it was just very, I want to say humbling, but that's not the right, deflating. It was very deflating to go into that and think like, okay, well, you're telling me that I have to network and basically it's like nepotism, right?

• 21:08Speaker 02

  I have to like nepotism climb to make changes that are directly affecting me and people like me because I, I'm bipolar and a lot of my criticism, um, or suggestions for improvement were about how they talked about mental health in their existing educational materials. Why, why would I need to make friends in order to be heard on that? I am a person with bipolar disorder. Like, shouldn't you, yeah, I, aren't I the person you should be listening to? Um, you know, not only me, but you know, like, People like me, like what are like, why, what do you mean I need to make the right friends first? Right. But it immediately made me realize that they told me that when I started and I didn't see it.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  You know, because they gave they gave you this, um, uh, it's like a welcome handbook or whatever. And it kind of lays out for you your first, uh, 12 to 18 months. And it's like, how long it's going to take you to learn certain things. And one of the things in there, it says that like you, you need to learn that who you know at Apple matters. And it's like, it says after that, like an addendum, like a lot, like more than anywhere else. It it matters who you know at Apple. And now, you know, looking back on that, like I understand more like what that meant. And I think when I read it, it wasn't, that wasn't how I read it, right?

• 22:33Speaker 02

  Like I, and I couldn't even tell you the mental space I was in, but I was excited, you know, to work at Apple. I thought that it was like the good one out of, you know, big tech. And I, I was just gonna say, and read it, rereading that document through a different lens. I feel differently about the content.

• 22:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  I want to ask you about that because you, you just said that Apple's supposed to be the good one, uh, in big tech. The company has this humanitarian image, like I mentioned at the start. Tim Cook is viewed as in some ways a global statesman. My question is, shouldn't Apple want, if if that reputation holds true, shouldn't Apple want to, uh, see the results of, for instance, this, uh, wage survey? If it's actually trying to improve the world, isn't this something that like, you know, it's a basic thing. Should, you know, should men and women be paid, you know, are men and women paid the same inside the company? Isn't that something that Apple should want to have data transparency on?

• 23:32Speaker 02

  You know, I, I would think so. Um, but I think that what we've seen, you know, even with other humanitarian things like, um, you know, the supply chain, uh, labor. It's not, I don't think it's not that they don't want to fix those things. I think it's that they want to control the messaging around fixing those things. And I think one thing that I noticed kind of looking into the past a little bit with Apple is that when things have come up in the past, they tend to try to, um, I guess, address it themselves and control the conversation about it.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  So that they, I, I honestly think that the branding is so important to the money that they make. And the money that they make is the most important thing. Like, if you think about Tim Cook, like, we kind of view him as being this, uh, I, I guess, like, you know, like you said, like, kind of this global, uh, what, what did you, what did you call him?

• 24:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's like a, a global statesman.

• 24:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, global statesman.

• 24:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm not saying that that's my view of him, but I'm saying that the, you know, the public, the perception of him in public is often that.

• 24:44Speaker 02

  But I, I think that the pub, the perception of him internally is also that, you know, especially when he's, uh, juxtaposed with, uh, Steve Jobs, you know, Steve Jobs is seen as kind of internally as being like, if people worship him, I'm not going to say they don't, but they still think of him as being a jerk, right?

• 25:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  You didn't want to ride an elevator with Steve Jobs.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  Exactly. Um, whereas with Tim Cook, they don't see him that way. He's, he's more like the, it's almost like Old Testament, New Testament, like, uh, you know, the Tim Cook is the compassionate, forgiving, uh, you know, he's, he's not a jerk. You do, you want to get on an elevator with him. Maybe he might even listen to your idea and you could be the next star of Apple, you know? That is internally, you know, how they view him. But what has, what has put Tim Cook as CEO and what has made him, uh, a great leader is actually totally related to him streamlining operations and making the company more money.

• 25:43Speaker 02

  Spend less money and make more money, right? Like, that is what, who, Tim? That's his legacy, really. Like, he's not the Old Testament or the New Testament. No, he figured out through the supply chain, the thing we're criticizing the most, you know, how to make the company more money. And I don't for a second believe that some of that isn't related to maintaining control of the narrative around Apple, because Apple's brand is so important. I mean, if you think about that advertisement that they last put out for Apple Watch, like, using actual 911 calls, where people thought they were going to die. Like, that is such, that's so brazen example

• 26:27Speaker 02

  of like, how this company, like, it's all about tapping into your empathy and your emotions. And I'm not going to say that all of the philanthropy is just like virtue signaling. I don't necessarily think that. But I do think that they put more into external philanthropy than, you know, trying to address issues inside the company, because it's the appearance that's more valuable financially than doing the work itself.

• 26:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Cher Scarlett is with us. She's a former principal software engineer at Apple and a leader of the company's protest movement, currently a senior software engineer at Control Z. This has been a fascinating first half of our conversation, and I want to pick up after the break about what happens next in Cher's story. So we'll be back right after this. This episode is brought to you by AppPoint. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Copilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data, and most teams have no single way to see it, secure it, and prove it's under control. That's exactly what AppPoint does. For 25 years, they've been the trusted layer beneath the world's most demanding data,

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• 29:06Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 29:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on the Big Technology Podcast with Cher Scarlett, Principal Software, a former Principal Software Engineer at Apple. We've been talking a little bit about what it's like to bring, you know, it's like, you can call it dissent, it's even just basic off-message stuff inside Apple, bring that to the fore, and how Apple reacts. And so now we've talked a little bit about how you pushed for pay transparency, Cher. What happens as you do this? I mean, it eventually, from my understanding, leads to your exit, but clearly there's like a process that goes from having people tell their reports not to talk to you to then eventually, you know, things get worse and worse and worse, and then you leave.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  So the, it's interesting because it took so long to get from, I guess, point A to point B, right? Like you said, you, there were people being told not to talk to me. People were filing reports about me that I was leaking confidential information. And so I reported all of that to business conduct inside of Apple, which I thought was, so it, business conduct would be like, it's the legal side of like, you're reporting conduct outside of HR. And I specifically talked about the fact that some of the stuff I was being told was coming from the people team and that I didn't want this to go there

• 30:44Speaker 02

  because the best part of the investigation needed to be about them. My business conduct complaint was closed within two days. No activity and was moved over to the people team. And I was like, okay, I literally said in here that I didn't want this to go to the people team because part of it are about the people team. But when I looked back at what had been essentially transferred over to the, the report and to the people team, it was only that people were harassing me, essentially. And nothing ever happened in that investigation either. So this business conduct report was basically closed, no investigation done. And then the parts of it that only had to do with me,

• 31:29Speaker 02

  being harassed by anonymous people was just never investigated, just left floating in this HR complaint. And after that, I realized that like, I was, I was out, you know, like, that they were gonna try to get rid of me. And I was like, I, I was trying to think of like, what I could do to stop them. So I talked to a lawyer. Got brought on immediately and you know their messaging was like, okay, well, what do you want? Right? Like, what is it the Cher Scarlett wants? Uh, why, you know, what will get her to shut up? I guess. I didn't view it as that way, but um, That was Apple's thing. Yes. And so I told them that I wanted them, among other things, to make a company-wide

• 32:13Speaker 02

  statement clarifying that we are allowed to talk to the press and talk internally about our wages and other working conditions. And so I asked them that at the end of August. They didn't post the thing until November and it took fighting all that time. Um, and then, you know, requesting medical leave. Um, I got told that I was giving my tweeting was giving the executives a headache and they asked me to stop. And on that was the same day that I had requested medical leave and I was going into a really, really bad um bipolar episode. Um, just like it's called a mixed episode. So you both have like a

• 32:57Speaker 02

  ton of energy from the mania, but then you feel extremely depressed from the depression, um, which uh basically puts you high risk for um uh self harm, uh life-ending self harm during that time. And so I requested the medical leave. They asked me to stop talking about them because I'm giving them headaches. And then that same day, Tim sends out that memo saying that leakers don't, you know, believe at Apple and he's talking about this global town hall. Well, during the global town hall, people were accusing me of being the one that was leaking um the information, which I I didn't even want to argue about it because one, I had never done anything that violated the terms of my employment and two, the stuff that was going out was protected. So it was kind of

• 33:41Speaker 02

  like I, one, I don't want to defend myself because I I shouldn't have to, but two, like the fact that people are being this um. Uh, what's the word I'm looking for? Uh, vindictive over talking about what they're, they're talking about the remote work, um, response. They're talking about pay equity. They're talking about the Texas abortion law. Why are people angry that somebody, me or otherwise, is talking to a journalist about this when a lot of times, one, this, I couldn't even get into this, um, meeting right away. So I was, uh, there was somebody in Slack that was doing like a, a play by play, like giving the information. And that was how I was getting it. And some people

• 34:24Speaker 02

  were saying that like, that person shouldn't have even been doing that. And it's like, again, the only stuff that was being disseminated was about workplace conditions. And considering the fact that I had learned during, you know, this whole thing, that a lot of things like, Apple employees would only find out from the press. And that goes directly back to that, you know, controlling the narrative. When we look at like what happened with Antonio Garcia Martinez, from the outside, it looks like, oh, employees got mad, wrote a letter, the company gave them what they wanted. Well, one, we didn't ask for him to be fired. And two, the way that we found out that he was fired was from Axios, the same way that everybody else found out. They had never responded to anything that we talked about. Nothing. Not a single thing. None of our

• 35:08Speaker 02

  letter was addressed at all.

• 35:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, what, what were you, um, looking for with, with, you know, speaking out of Antonio? Because you, you know, I mean, do you want to tell the story quickly? I mean,

• 35:19Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 35:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Because, you know, let's, let's talk about that for a minute.

• 35:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. So he got hired and I had read his book and somebody messaged me and they were like, hey, did you see this guy got hired? Because the press was already talking like negatively about it. And, um, one of the things that struck me when I was, um, kind of reading through this article is that he had written more stuff, like he had written some op-eds, he had written for Wired, for example. And so I went and read this article from Wired where he was talking about why he chose Facebook over Twitter. And he celebrated, uh, or was enamored, I would say, with the way in which Facebook was able to make users addicted and talked about how a woman,

• 36:05Speaker 02

  uh, shook her baby to death. Um, and that that, that nobody else was making what he's called legalized crack. And it was so jarring to me that I just couldn't.

• 36:18Speaker 02

  I could not reconcile with how the company that I thought that I got into would hire somebody in advertising who was excited that the advertising could kill someone, you know, uh, uh, or that that could be done, you know, like that, that frightened me. And so I, since I had all of these people coming to me with concerns that he was hired, and now I shared that concern, I tried to find somewhere where I could share this, uh, group concern, um, internally in the company and get some sort of feedback. And I found that there was no way to do that. I kept getting redirected back to my HR rep and she, you know, she wanted

• 37:00Speaker 02

  to know like what exactly my issue was with this hire because he's in another department. And I'm like, it's, it's not, I felt like I kept repeating myself that it's not just about my issue. It's a lot of people are having this issue and we just want to voice some concerns. So I ended up finding a group of people, um, that were working on the letter that ended up getting leaked. Um, and, and we sort of talked about like what we wanted and what we wanted was to know, one, how this person got hired, if we have this, you know, no jerks rule, and we have all of these things that seem completely, you know, um, in contradiction to this person's values, what they appear to be. And so we wanted to know how this person got hired and then two, what they were going to do, like what,

• 37:43Speaker 02

  what are they going to have in place to protect employees from, you know, hiring somebody like Antonio Garcia Martinez, um, you know, if those values that he's portrayed to the public, like how you're going to protect employees, not just from him, but from, you know, other employees who may have, uh, viewpoints that are damaging, you know, this, this man wrote a book about, you know, his colleagues too, like how are you going to protect his future colleagues from ending up in a book like Chaos Monkeys?

• 38:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And so, but you know, you mentioned that you didn't call for his firing, which is true, but you, you must have known that it would probably, I mean, that something like this could lead to that. I mean, the, the first line is we're profoundly distraught by what this hire means for Apple's commitment to its inclusion, inclusion goals, you know, like, like in, in our society today, like that, that's like, you know, wink, wink, like, we should, we should fire this person.

• 38:39Speaker 02

  I honestly don't think that, because it was something that we talked about, like, obviously, there were some people who just wanted him to be fired. I'm not going to say that there weren't, but the overall consensus was not that. So I really don't think that anyone was thinking, oh, you know, this guy is going to be fired, or at least fired because of us. I don't necessarily believe that he got fired that quickly from our letter. I think that the negative press that was building around him being hired before, you know, our letter ended up in The Verge, I think that that was already possibly going to happen.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  And again, that kind of goes back to Apple controlling the narrative. And maybe it was the combination of the negative press from employees and the negative press from the public, I don't know. But it definitely felt like it happened so fast that it wasn't because of our advocacy at all.

• 39:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and I'm actually kind of curious about how you've used the press in your efforts, because, you know, we talked a little bit about how Apple is so interested in controlling the narrative and even, you know, I guess like going to the press with like, you know, issues that are coming out from this, from like the meetings, for instance, like, it's probably because you didn't feel, I mean, is it because you didn't feel Apple was, you know, responsive enough? And then as you were going, did you like, keep in mind that like, Apple, this is going to really make them mad, because they are so image conscious?

• 40:13Speaker 02

  You know, I, I think that I maybe was a little bit naive that I thought that, I didn't expect them to react the way that they did at all. And I think that was a little bit of like naivete, like I, maybe I had drank the Kool-Aid more than I realized and I truly believed that, you know, that Apple was going to be willing to hear. Our criticism and i- in terms of the press, I started talking to the press at the onset of the Wage Transparency Survey a little bit more.

• 40:53Speaker 02

  And it was all precisely because when, so my tweet about Antonio Garcia Martinez ended up in the Bloomberg piece. Um, and a lot of people took that to mean that I wrote the letter and because I had edited it, my name did appear on it internally. And so a lot of people internally, or the backlash I was getting out like on um, employee stuff was very much like talking about me talking publicly about issues airing dirty laundry, you know, and I'm just like, I, it, it, one, it wasn't me who sent it to the press and two, I wasn't the only one who, you know, wrote this letter. We had intended for it to be internal for sure. Um, but when I was talking about, so I started getting a lot of reach out from press after my tweet ended up in that article, of course.

• 41:38Speaker 02

  And I felt like I wanted to be able to speak for myself. Um, because what was left was journalists talking about this tweet and talking about, you know, me having participated, um, without me getting to have a voice in that. And that's when I got told not to talk to the press. And I did it anyway, you know, and I don't know if I necessarily, I, I know that I didn't expect what happened to happen because I'd actually started writing, uh, I'm writing a book and I'd started writing it then and I had to start over because the way that I talked about Apple in May and June was very different than how I feel about it now and how I talk about it now and the experience I went through. I never would have believed

• 42:23Speaker 02

  at that point that that's what would happen. I did not at all believe that. And now I know that that is the common trajectory. Like even the NDA that I got offered in October, the one that I sent to the SEC. Um, you know, I know that they handed me that because that's what they're used to. That's like their normal is take the money, be quiet, go away. Yeah, that's not what I did.

• 42:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. You know, but you did you did end up leaving. I mean, I appreciate you speaking to me today. And, you know, I'm curious, I like just like did a round of, you know, some of the high profile workplace activists inside big tech. People like you, Meredith Whitaker and Claire Stapleton, who led the Google walkout. Timnit Gebru, who protested inside of Google's AI organization. Your your two colleagues at Apple, who also left, who either left or were pushed out. I'm curious if you if you what you make of like whether employee activism inside these companies can be successful.

• 43:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Has, you know, you, yeah, it has your opinion changed at all because, you know, we haven't heard a lot about it recently. It's been kind of quiet on the employee activism front inside the tech giants. And I think that's, you know, in one way largely because a lot of the people who did speak got pushed out. And potentially that might have scared other people away who were thinking about doing so. So having been through it, what's your perspective?

• 43:57Speaker 02

  You know, it's daunting and obviously, I think, what did I say in that Washington Post piece? Like, I know I can get another job. It was actually a lot harder to get another job than I thought, which my whole entire career, like, you know, I'm not exactly coming from privilege or anything like that. I but I never really had a hard time getting a job. I didn't. And I'm good at my job, you know, so like that kind of always just, yeah, I don't know. It just kind of worked out that I could get a job. But I actually had a really extremely hard time getting a job for the first time in my career. And I think that I it's like, I don't want to discourage anyone from speaking up

• 44:41Speaker 02

  about things that happen inside of their workplace. But you should also know that there is a cost and there is, you know, an alarming danger in that, you know, one, obviously, like, it did not feel good to be treated like, you know, I didn't belong in my workplace. And trying to continue to stay there, it didn't work because there the way that some of my own teammates looked at me just.

• 45:09Speaker 02

  I could never, I couldn't work there anymore. Like they, they, it was very extremely uncomfortable, probably from both sides. But I do think that there is that important role and I wouldn't look at the, you know, the sort of lull or silence as an indicator that people aren't going to speak out. I think that what happened over the summer and into the fall has sort of served its purpose. You know, NLRB and SEC are still investigating their things. Um, but I do know that change is happening inside of Apple and employees are continuing to organize inside of Apple. They're just doing it quietly right now.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  Um, you know, A, because they've, they've gotten some things accomplished. You know, there are, you know, improvements to some safety protocols that, um, you know, some retail employees were calling. There is, there are things happening. And when we look at, for example, the, um, the shareholder proposals, you know, both of the shareholder proposals that were sparked by what happened over the summer and over the fall, both of them got approved. So the NDA one and the civil rights audit, both of those things got approved. And that is, that's a signal, right? Like that even though there aren't, you know, all, all three of us are gone. Um, and there aren't, there isn't anyone that's like publicly talking about Apple right now.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  There are going to be things that change, um, inside of Apple, uh, somehow. And obviously Apple's going to get to control that narrative. Um, but at least those changes are, are going to happen. And I, I do honestly believe that there will be uh, unions inside of Apple. I don't know if there will be like one like Google. Um, but you know, employees see that now, you know, if they are loud, if they do say something, that there can be changes, even if, you know, their company still tries to control, uh, what that, how that change is, uh, I guess spoken about. Whose idea was it?

• 47:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  We've danced around it a little bit in this conversation, but can you talk about like the exact circumstance of your departure? So what happened? Did Apple basically come to you? You met with the lawyers? Did Apple basically come to you with a document and be like, just sign this and go?

• 47:29Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, so that actually happened in October after the Washington Post article came out. And it's so interesting because I got given that on the 15th and it was extremely like, limited my ability to help other Apple employees organize or file charges against Apple if there was any wrongdoing. I'm talking like EEOC, NLR, like everything. Also, you know, obviously limited my ability to talk about Apple in any capacity.

• 48:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  That agreement isn't fully being enforced, or, sorry, go ahead.

• 48:07Speaker 02

  Well, I didn't sign it.

• 48:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, okay.

• 48:10Speaker 02

  And they also wanted, so I, when I filed the charge on September 1st, I used something called a

• 48:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  With the National Labor

• 48:20Speaker 02

  With the National Labor Relations Board, yeah. I used something called a cover letter so that there was data that I could give to the NLRB around like what I was told and by whom that Apple could never get their hands on. And I had said that I would send it to anyone who wanted to testify and give testimony to the NLRB, so they could see like exactly like how I was representing, like what I was told and how I was protecting people. And the only people, of course, who asked me for it were people who were in it. And Apple, in the agreement that they offered me on October 15th, they asked for the cover

• 49:03Speaker 02

  letter and a list of everybody that it was given to. And that caused me so much anxiety, obviously, because, one, I can't do that. I'm not, I'm not giving them that, right? And they made this huge deal about it. And this is in October. And then, so they're making this huge deal. They like want this list. There's no deal without that. And

• 49:25Speaker 02

  Uh, ended up uh changing lawyers, but during that time, uh, the the no action that Apple had filed on the NDA uh shareholder proposal, so the it was like a concealment clause audit. Um, they told shareholders and the SEC that they didn't need to do that because they didn't use those types of agreements. In terms of uh, you know, the all of these things. And there was also um, like a uh I was like a statement that I was allowed to say about why I left. Um, and they said also in that no action that they didn't ever try to stipulate what you were allowed to say when you left in a separation agreement.

• 50:05Speaker 02

  So that is what prompted me to um, instead of try to figure out how to work out this agreement, um, go to the SEC. Um, and then later I ended up also giving that to uh the press, obviously, and to NIA Impact Capital. After I found that there wasn't a good way to disseminate the information to the public. Um, so that I could possibly turn that shareholder vote, you know, like, sure, I filed this thing with the SEC, but I don't know when they're gonna do an investigation, if they're gonna do an investigation, all these treasurers saying do an investigation, whatever. But like, I didn't know what was gonna happen, so um, I gave gave that over.

• 50:45Speaker 02

  And I knew at that point that whatever agreement I came to them with was going to be hindered, you know, by um by giving this document to the SEC. Uh, but at the time I did it, I hadn't planned on talking to the press about it because I didn't recognize what all needed to happen. Um, but then at the end of November, after I got a new attorney, um, the agreement that I signed was much less restrictive. Um, and also had a limit on the time period, so it was only for a year. And um, took out all of the non-incitement and that was like, you know, helping others organize and file charges.

• 51:21Speaker 02

  Um, but the NLRB did not accept it. They asked Apple to make 22 changes to it and Apple um refused to do so. And also the tile, the the the notice, you know, that you're allowed to talk about um wages and workplace conditions. Um, I was upset that they only posted that the week that the basically all of corporate had off. So um, yeah, I I tried at the beginning of November to actually stay, but

• 51:54Speaker 02

  I just couldn't like it. It was so uncomfortable with um as one of my teammates had sent me an email the talking about how I eroded um the company's trust in our team and that, you know, their line was, you don't talk about anything um to do with Apple outside of Apple. And it just felt like they didn't want me there and that

• 52:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep.

• 52:15Speaker 02

  it was time for me to go.

• 52:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Uh, a couple of questions before we end. Uh, I'm curious if your view of Apple changed from before you worked there to after. Um, I have like, I I heard that um at one point, and maybe you can confirm or not, that they actually did post some patrons' parents here on the HR site before uh like a Thanksgiving break. And then when everyone got back to work the next week, it was gone. Now clearly, it seems like there were, you know, some some games played or that the company didn't exactly like live up to some of the public image that it's had. So how how has your view of Apple changed from before and after?

• 52:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the notice I was talking about, that was part of my agreement. And part of my agreement was that I wouldn't say that that was part of my agreement because they wanted it to look like and you know, it was posted the day like the day that I quit. So they wanted it to look like, you know, they're living up to the they want everybody to know you're totally allowed to do all this stuff, but they were not willing to make it seem like it was connected to my NLRB charge at all, you know? And they certainly weren't going to give me any credit for making that happen. Uh, but yeah, they like you said, they took it down. Uh, so it was posted November 19 um after the end of the workday, of course. Um, and then it was gone by the following Monday. Don't know exactly what day they deleted it, but yeah.

• 53:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  The notice that people can't talk about their pay.

• 53:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, they they so that was posted and it was a part of my agreement that they can talk about their pay and other working conditions.

• 53:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  It was gone by the time people got back from Thanksgiving break.

• 53:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, so essentially no one saw it.

• 53:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Yeah. And just to confirm what your uh NLRB charge, it was that basically for Apple trying to bust the concerted activity. Uh, Apple, I think this is from from it that Apple engaged in coercive and suppressive activity that enabled abuse and harassment of organizers of protected concerted activity.

• 54:06Speaker 02

  So, yes, but then there's also surveillance and, you know, I didn't really know what I was doing when I filed that. And a lot of other things. I had to give a supplemental witness affidavit. Because there was a lot of things that were related that I didn't realize at the time that after my conversations with the National Labor Relations Board were related. So it goes, you know, it's retaliation, it's surveillance and, and, you know, it's unlawful rules, unlawful application of rules. There's so many things, you know, that that it encompasses and it's been taking forever because it's such a high-profile case for the NLRB that they,

• 54:50Speaker 02

  you know, that has to go to Washington DC, you know, to make sure that they're interpreting the law, you know, in the way that best protects employees. And so that's what we're, we're still just waiting on that. But yeah, and there's stuff, you know, that hasn't been in the press that's in there because

• 55:13Speaker 02

  the only people who can corroborate it are, were only willing to talk to an external authority. They were not willing to talk to the press about what had happened. And so it'll be interesting to see how much, how much Apple is willing to negotiate if they, you know, if they come back that there is merit to it. Well, it'll be interesting to see like how they want to address it because there's a lot of stuff in there that people would be like honestly appalled.

• 55:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh.

• 55:43Speaker 02

  And I, and I, and I will tell you like the, the question you asked me was like, has my view of Apple changed? Absolutely. I no longer believe that any corporation can be just good. I, I don't, I don't think that that's possible. I think that, you know, at the end of the day, corporations, their mission is to make money and they have to be that way. And I think that Apple is really good at it in ways that. I don't view Apple as being the problem. I view that we are not having oversight enough over especially big corporations, corporations in general, but especially big corporations

• 56:23Speaker 02

  that are so inserted into our lives that in a way they are as or more powerful than the government.

• 56:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh yeah, we've had that debate on whether they're more powerful in the government until they hold standing armies, I would say. The government is still going to be more powerful than them.

• 56:39Speaker 02

  But there's, there's different types of control though.

• 56:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  They do have different power for sure, cultural power, no doubt about that. Do you have any regrets looking back? I mean, you learned a ton in the process.

• 56:50Speaker 02

  I think the thing that I would have done differently now, knowing what I do know is I think I probably just would have left sooner. Because everything that I'm doing from the outside, I think I could have done from the outside back then. You know, my mental health really took a terrible turn and ended up in a, you know, like a lot of problems with harassment by ex colleagues. And it put me in a very, very, very dark, dark place. And I would love to go back and not have been in that dark place.

• 57:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep, totally. Final question for you. We started with culture, let's end with culture. You mentioned that Apple is like a pretty isolating place when it comes to the disclosures and the fact that like people can't talk within Apple about what projects they're working on, can't walk in the room, for instance, some of the stuff that you worked on. And it's, it's absolutely fascinating, you know, your period of time inside the company, given exactly what you said, that you haven't been there physically. So I'm curious how work from home, Slack, you know, all these things that we've used to communicate during the pandemic, might challenge Apple's culture of secrecy. And how much were they actually responsible in

• 58:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  the end for, you know, the momentum built within your, you know, with your activism inside the company?

• 58:18Speaker 02

  You know, I think that they are, I mean, I definitely think the pandemic has flattened hierarchies and organizations in general in a way that it's more difficult to silo in the way that Apple is used to. And I think we saw that over the summer with, you know, retail losing access to certain channels that were just for advocacy. And, you know, they introduced moderators, for example, in Slack channels that can control the narrative inside of these channels. And, you know, it's certainly no coincidence that all of

• 58:57Speaker 02

  these rules started being implemented around, you know, first Antonio Garcia Martinez, and then remote work advocacy in Palestine, the Palestinian letter. You know, all of this workplace advocacy seems like it is directly resulting in Apple trying to control the narrative and flow of conversation and who connects with one another. Because retail has, since I was there, been pretty drastically cut off from certain conversations across the global workspace.

• 59:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Well, sure. Look, I appreciate you coming on. It's always fascinating to speak to people involved in work like you've been involved in. And honestly, just learning about Apple is always an interesting experience to me because the company culture is so fascinating. And clearly, they don't, they don't seem to react well when, when challenged. That's what it seems like.

• 59:53Speaker 02

  Somebody, somebody said to me, so I was talking to somebody who said that one of the things that Apple did was very reckless. And I, I had mentioned that to the SEC. And he said that he doesn't think that he's, they've ever had to deal with somebody that seems like they're one of them. And then, nope, nope, just totally the opposite. And that they've been a little bit on the back foot ever since I started speaking up.

• 1:00:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Uh oh, um, okay. Oh, wait, wait. So you you said someone told the SEC. Can you elaborate on that a little?

• 1:00:26Speaker 02

  I told the I I so I I was talking to I I've been talking to an investigator with the SEC. And I told him that um, the the job I don't know if you saw, but um, I lost out on a job opportunity or I had a job offer rescinded because Apple um furnishes everybody that leaves job titles to Equifax as associate. And I failed a background check because it didn't match the job title. It wasn't even close to the job title that I had.

• 1:00:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:54Speaker 02

  Um, and ended up learning that they do that to everyone. And so it's talking to the SEC about it before I knew it happened to everybody. And that I mentioned that my uh, and it's not my attorney, but an attorney had told me that it was very reckless of them to do. And the SEC said that he didn't think that um, they had ever dealt with anybody like me and that they had been a bit on the the back foot ever since I started speaking out.

• 1:01:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes. Okay, wild. Um, well, look, I hope we can keep in touch. Um, you know, obviously the story isn't over here. Um, if people want to follow you on Twitter, um, where where can they find you?

• 1:01:30Speaker 02

  I am Cher the Dev.

• 1:01:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. Um, well, look, Cher, thanks again. Great speaking with you. Thank you to all listeners for sticking around with us. Appreciate you being here every week. Um, thank you, Nick Guatney, for doing the editing and mastering. Uh, appreciate you, man. We got you the episode a little early this week. And thanks uh, to LinkedIn for having me part of their great podcast network. Um, always great to be a part of this network and um, folks will have some more stuff going on on LinkedIn. You could subscribe to a newsletter there about the podcast. I'm just finding my page, Alex Cantor Woods. And that will do it for us. Join us next week for a new conversation with a tech insider or outsider agitator. Until then, take care.

• 1:02:21Speaker 03

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