TW: Discussions around sexual abuse and rape.
Photo: Arne Müseler/arne-mueseler.com/CC-by-SA-3.0
In 2013, a night of platonic drinking with coworkers took a disastrous turn. Megan Mohr was out with a coworker who offered to drive her home. She, drunk, went inside and fell asleep. She awoke to the sound of clicking. Her coworker had undressed her, removing her shirt and bra, and was taking photos of her.
She remembers him grinning.
Mohr wanted solutions, but she knew better than to go to Apple’s human resources (HR) group, their “People Group.” This wasn’t the first time she faced sexual harassment at Apple. A colleague had broken into her accounts and harassed her, something that seems surprisingly common among sexual harassment victims at Apple, potentially showing a security vulnerability in iCloud. She filed a police report, and went to the People Group. Apple’s HR team wasn’t interested in helping her.
It weighed too heavily on her mind. In 2018, she went to the People Group at Apple. She wasn’t asking for an investigation, just that she not be put in the same department as the man who sexually abused her. A simple request. She wanted them to be aware of his character, in case another woman came forward. They turned it around on her.
“Although what he did was reprehensible as a person and potentially criminal, as an Apple employee he hasn’t violated any policy in the context of his Apple work,” Apple wrote in an email. They compared what he did to Mohr like “a minor traffic incident,” an issue that happened outside of Apple that wasn’t a large enough problem to affect his work or who he was allowed to work with, even if she had proof of his abuse and a confession.
To Apple, sexual assault of an employee isn’t enough to warrant disciplinary action.
Mohr quit her job at Apple. It’s unknown if the alleged pervert is still working there.
Mohr was far from alone. Multiple women came forward with stories of stalking, hacking, and even rape, with a disturbingly similar response from Apple. The Financial Times (FT) interviewed a few of these people. In each case, Apple reportedly brushed off their concerns. Women said their experiences were bad enough that they feared retaliation from Apple. They may have been right to. Many of the women who came forward were “laid off” or fired for supposedly unrelated reasons.
In This Article:
Apple’s Failing Employees, Especially Women
Apple’s been trying to attract more female talent. Women are becoming more involved with STEM, especially computer science, but companies still struggle to hire and retain women. This is often due to toxic and sexist workplaces and a higher barrier to entry for female candidates due to that sexism. Women’s mistakes, especially in STEM, are seen as signs of a lack of skill, whereas men’s mistakes are seen as flukes.
However, despite the difficulties women face getting into tech, Apple claims they’ve increased the number of women in leadership positions by 87% since 2014. According to their own website, in 2014, their leadership was 28% female. In 2021, it was still only 31.4%. Their tech organization hasn’t changed much either. In 2014, Apple’s female tech employees made up 20% of the workforce. Now? Still a disappointing 24%. Overall, in all areas of Apple, including retail, women make up only 34.8% of Apple’s employees.
Apple Tells Abuse Victims Off
Orit Mizrachi worked for Apple from 2011 to 2017. Her father was dying, and she took time to be with him. She reports her manager “bullied and harassed” her for taking the time off. Allegedly, HR “shrugged and put it under the rug” when she reported it. Apple would eventually lay her off, offering three months of severance and a large lump sum payment “for alleged emotional distress.” Apple would only give her the money if she signed an agreement, often called a non-disparage agreement (NDA) that would require she stay quiet about her experience at Apple. She’d have to “fully and completely release, discharge and agree to hold harmless Apple … from all claims, judgements and liabilities” [sic, Apple doesn’t include Oxford commas]. She chose not to take the money so she could talk about it.
Mizrachi said, “My friends said I’m an idiot, ‘take the money,’ but you can’t just pay me to shut up. You have to have a moral compass.”
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Emily (not her real name) was an Apple Store “Genius” in New York. In 2021, she went to Apple’s HR to tell them about two cases of sexual assault. One included a coworker raping her after driving her home from work. According to Emily, HR acted like she was the problem. According to her, Apple responded, “… [the alleged rapist] went on a ‘career experience’ for six months, and they said: ‘maybe you’ll be better by the time he’s back?” According to her, Apple acted as though she was supposed to just get over the rape and work with her alleged rapist in 6 months.
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A male vice president allegedly wanted Margaret Anderson, an IP attorney at Apple for three years until 2015, gone. According to her, he came up with ridiculous, untrue claims. She prepared an entire booklet disproving his claims. She claims HR wouldn’t even look at, reportedly they only “threw it across the table,” and told her that, “If a manager wants to get rid of you, they’ll get rid of you. HR will do whatever the manager wants.”
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“It got stranger. One day, Ted hurriedly built a homemade gun silencer out of a water bottle, cotton, and soap, put on military gear, and sprinted out the door in a panic, saying a drug deal had gone wrong.”
– Jayna Whitt, former Apple employee, on Lioness
Jayna Whitt was a director in Apple’s legal department. HR was aware of a relationship she had with another lawyer at Apple for a period of time. However, he reportedly became increasingly unhinged, making outlandish and violent threats. This culminated in someone hacking her devices and digital stalking. She reported his behavior to Apple. By now, you can likely guess how that went. He still works at Apple. Meanwhile, Apple suspended her and later found what she claims was an unrelated indiscretion from six months prior. You can, (and definitely should) read more of her story here. Her story helped others feel comfortable coming forward about Apple’s alleged lack of action on abusers at their company.
HR Isn’t Your Friend… But it Shouldn’t be Your Enemy, Either
Chris Deaver worked at Apple from 2015 to 2019 as an HR Business Partner. He started the “Different Together” cultural initiative. The goal was to make a more accepting place to work at Apple. He claims a “middle block of leaders” pushed back with a toxic, harsh workplace. They potentially based this on popular opinion of Steve Jobs being overly harsh, thanks to interviews and biopics after his death. According to Deaver, “There were some managers who thought, ‘that’s what success looks like.’ From what I saw, a lot of that is going away, but there are remnants of that.”
Employee reviews on GlassDoor are largely favorable, until you look more closely at them. According to Comparably, when men rate their manager, they give them a score of 71. Women, on the other hand, rate their manager as a 37 (out of 100).
Other breakdowns show large issues in Apple’s “People Group.” The HR department, for example, gives Apple a ‘C’ for their corporate culture, a score of 65. These are the people who see the reports and cultural issues at Apple firsthand. They’re sounding an alarm while, according to the women The FT interviewed at Apple, continuing to ignore serious problems at the company.
Apple’s legal department also gave the company a score of 65.
Other reviews mention a culture of burnout and toxicity in hundreds of reviews. The #AppleToo movement exposed similar problems within Apple. When employees tried to organize an employee-ran salary comparison, to test Apple’s claims of no pay disparity, Apple shut them down. Apple is a secretive company, but when employees do speak out, they frequently don’t have anything nice to say.
Apple’s Response
Apple has responded that they work hard to investigate misconduct claims, contrary to these stories.
“There are some accounts raised that do not reflect our intentions or our policies and we should have handled them differently, including certain exchanges reported in this story. As a result, we will make changes to our training and processes.”
– Apple’s response to the FT article
Apple has not detailed any changes, what decisions, specifically were wrong, or made any promise to correct these mistakes.
Platitudes and Initiatives Aren’t Working
Apple tries to paint itself as a forward-facing, progressive tech company, but, according to these employees who have spoken publicly, it’s a toxic workplace that tosses aside complaints and the employees who make them. Initiatives to help women or non-white engineers get their start, or start their own companies, are hollow when Apple’s reportedly not fixing the culture they’re pushing these people into. Women and minorities in tech need more than a boost. Once we’re allowed over the high barriers of entry, we enter a landscape that’s toxic to us. Boosting female participation without improving the workspace is like buying new tires every day just to run over a bed of nails. You can’t propose “new tires daily” is the solution when you’re driving over nails every day.
The solution is getting rid of the nails.
Another thing is very clear here. Tech companies often use NDAs to prevent employees from talking about the often illegal abuse they faced at a company. We need to outlaw them. The Silenced No More Act was supposed to do just that, passed last year in California. But it’s not a nationwide law, and companies often break labor laws because the penalties for doing so are practically non-existent. How do you punish a company with thousands of dollars in fines when that’s barely a drop in a bucket for a trillion dollar company?
When I first started this blog so many years ago, I thought I may one day have to stop. I figured one day I may get my dream job at Apple and have to stop writing about Apple, perhaps tech in general. I’m glad I put more effort into broadening my skillset and working for other companies. From these and many other reports, the atmosphere at Apple sounds too toxic for anyone, especially women. For many, Apple’s shiny reputation of being an open and welcoming ally in tech is gone. Now it’s the company that allegedly tells sexual abuse victims to walk it off.
Sources and Further Reading:
- Kyle Barr, Gizmodo
- Anna Kramer, Protocol
- Patrick McGee, Financial Times via Ars Technica
- Jayna Whitt, Lioness