Just a few years after completing the $5 billion Apple Park headquarters in Cupertino, California, Apple is reportedly ramping up efforts to decentralize out of increasingly expensive Silicon Valley.
I’m told that executives at the highest levels of the company recognize that hiring and retaining talent will be one of the biggest challenges to its future success, and reducing its reliance on the Valley is a key step in mitigating that issue.
The company has been losing talent who, despite being high earners by most standards, have said they could barely afford the extraordinary cost of living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Many engineers lamented that they couldn’t balance living expenses with other pursuits like college tuition for their children and long-term savings…
The cost of operations is extremely high. Apple could get the same work out of employees demanding far lower salaries in less pricey regions…
Some members of Apple’s executive team had been pushing to decentralize out of Cupertino for years before a fuller realization came into place more recently. Johny Srouji, Apple’s head of custom silicon, was one of the strongest proponents of such a shift, I’m told. His group opened up offices in Florida, Massachusetts, Texas, Israel and parts of Asia years ago. It has since expanded in Germany, Oregon and San Diego.
Decentralization across the company is entering full swing, and Apple has engaged in a costly expansion from the sunny coasts of LA and San Diego to the Pacific Northwest of Oregon and Washington, the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, Iowa’s Midwest, the Eastern Seaboard of Massachusetts, Miami, and New York.
MacDailyNews Take: One Infinite Boondoggle.
Biggest waste of 5 billion dollars by any private company. Apple will NEVER get a return on that money.
I disagree. Every wheel needs a hub – no matter the number or length of the spokes.
The new Apple Park was fully occupied the minute it was done. Apple was still renting more space around the South Bay even though they had just finished this very capacious facility. It is one thing to report the news that Apple is expanding world wide (good for them), it is irritating to see these stories where the author feels like they know more than the managers at Apple (or Google, or Amazon, or FB, …).
Now if the idiots would diversify out of china and actually move SOME production of iPhones into the USA. Cook is a failure, he fails to understand business 101. Don’t put all your production eggs into one hostile communist basket.
I couldn’t tell you if China or the US ranks better for political stability.
Thats precisely why you distribute the risk